these are rough copies. i like the second one best.
 
this juxtaposition: the demerol, the viccodin, the percocet, the cefelexin, the special cookies, the spiked cough syrup, the joints, the jizz, the jam, the wall melting slowly undulating hair pulling laughing cumming crazy talk-lick, the tipsy, the tinkerbell ball, the bear pong, that fucking guy with the fucking glasses carrying that fucking broom in that shamefull kitchen with the confederate flag tacked next to the national flag of Ireland
 
love note: the force of me wanting something sounds like a military airplane taking off from McCord Airforce Base heard from 45 miles away while in bed with a teddy bear. So don't tell me you don't feel me.

     Got to the doctor this morning for yet another follow up and they tubes were removed. The girl did it pretty much the same way Jake pierces people. "Take some deep breaths for me, good. Okay, it's gonna happen on the next exhale. Are you ready, exhale." And then she yanked almost a foot of white perforated plastic out of the tiny tiny less than one centimeter wide opening in my side. I oozed fluid onto the crinklie paper sheets...iiiiiicccckkkkkkk! Shit was I glad she cut the stiches first, that could have be disasterous for everyone involved. Even so it was dramatic but it didn't hurt too much, I mean, my body forgot it in less than 15 minutes. That's pretty good. The second one hurt even less than the first one, which was funny because that also reminded me of getting my nipples pierced. I screamed during that particular proceedure though. There was no screaming in doctor plastic's office of slightly altered humans, not even from me. So then, the nice nurse practioner lady told me to come back in a week and they'd take out the stiches that are right around my nipples and the remaining strips surgical tape aswell, yeayea more fun for me, chickapaw (jazzhands). 
     Now that the tubes are out, everything is easier. I can bend over a little easier (the whole pendulous breast thing is still not happy at all for any reason. It still sucks let's be clear here, but it's a little easier) I can breath and laugh and there's no issue. It's kind of...nice. The "lighter" feeling is still there. I was wobbling a little this morning because...I'm not used to my weight being distributed this way. I'm not used to feeling this light. I'm not used to having this much stress on my back, which is...not fucking much. My back feels fucking amazing. My neck still hurts a little but hell, I can't wear a bra yet; it's still all soft cotton and fleese for me. Yummers, let me tell you.
     Does it itch still? Yes, if I'm sitting any where and you see me twitching and flinching slightly it's because this shit itches (!!!!!), but I can see my feet, which is weird and also nice. Can I reach for things easier? Yes I can, but it's still got to be fairly glacial. Anything that moves quickly is bad. Bad, bad, bad. I can't jump up to get the door, I can't plop down in a chair, I can't react quickly to catch the milk that's about to spill all over the counter. I couldn't let that carton of milk spill I just had to lurch forward to catch it and that was too much movement; my left side started to swear at me in Russian, it was hard to understand but I got the message loud and clear..."NO LERCHING OF ANY KIND!!!" motion seconded, thirded and carried.
     I can see my fucking feet...and I need some nail polish remover...stat!

I feel weird blogging this...because I want this to be perfect....because I want people to hear what I'm saying and take it for what it is and think about it. I don't want a lot of reactions or angry people. I really don't want this to affect my music. I just want to say my peace and be done with it because this has boiled my blood.
Last night I was bullshiting with ..Tara.. and I said, "I have to get around to calling you girl, you know I don't have no black friends, right?" I was funning with her but being serious at the same time. This black dude playing pool was like, "So you don't like black people?" and I said, "That's not what I said. I tend to prefer black people who are 40+. All my black friends are my grandmother’s friends and I can't take them out to the bar. I guess I meant to say I don't have any black drinking buddies," and this dude came back with, "So you don't like black people?" I was done with the conversation at that point. It lasted for another moment or so but then I walked away from it because this is two months of conversation (non-stop) of how long I could go on about how I feel about black people.
Black people are mine. They are my own and I feel and it makes me feel...it makes me feel more like me. Just yesterday I was in a room filled with black women (my grandmother's friends) because my grandmother had asked me to sing for the Founders’ day celebration. I did a little talk about classical music's flirtation and extendedly long love affair with the black female singer and then I sang, "Sweet Little Jesus Boy," which is traditionally a Christmas song. Scott played keys for me. It was really nice; I had a great time doing it. Scott and I arranged it at the last minute to get it ready for last years Christmas program at St. Charles Borromeo. We got paid too, which felt way good, and the notoriously bloodless Catholics liked me, which was a change from the last time I sang for these particular Catholics. So we did that piece and then the people in the audience...they were so excited, they clapped their hands and were so happy that I was there and I grabbed my sweater and made to leave the stage and they were actually shouting, "One more, one more..." and so, I did. I talked a little bit about the first time I heard "Every Time I feel the Spirit," and what that song means to me and how I went about learning it and my experience having a black female voice teacher at a white school in the pacific north west. Then I sang it and they clapped with me, they sang softly with me under their breath, they were really with me in a way that I've never felt from black people before. I felt apart of them truly, well, I always feel apart of these particular women because I've grown up with them and they've grown old. They remember me from when I was 5 and was dragged along to meetings with my mother and my grandmother. But, I felt understood by my sisters. I felt like..."I got up here and sang some negro spirituals in the classical style and these black people were down and I felt amazing."
Then later that night, after one of the most enchanting nights of music that I’ve ever witnessed (saw The Bad Plus at Jazz Alley –terrible service by the way—and they covered some Pink Floyd and I got to meet two out of the three members and I was all flabbergasted and starstruck and shit!!) this dude paying pool with his buddies at the fucking bar at 1 in the morning decides to give me shit. Cause you know what I heard when he was talking to me right? You know that I heard those same motherfuckers I went to fucking Jason Lee with saying, “Whatchu be reading and learning for, you think you’re smarter than us, you think you’re white, stupid bitch!” and then they didn’t talk to me and I felt terrible. I felt terrible and abused and just fucking bad. I felt bad!!! I felt bad for years about that shit. I’m still somewhat standoffish to black people who look like that and dress like that. You know the type. The people who watch BET and read nothing but dime novels written by black people and have no concept of their place in this global history that surrounds their very being here at this moment. They wear prison fashion baggy jeans, oversized shirts bearing the name of the current faborite football team or basketball team or fucking hip-hop guy “mogal” person and an artfully cocked baseball cap and they get to think and say to people that they’re fucking cool and they’re black. They listen to KUBE and know all the songs to and the fucking Soljah Boi dance or whatever and that’s what makes them black and me? Me? No, I’m not black. Book reading, classical music loving, opera loving, knowledge loving, poetry loving, academically minded, open-minded, bi-sexual, artistic, songwriting, guitar-playing me?? I’m not black enough to make sense to him. My very presence offends him. He hasn’t noticed that I’m wearing cowboy boots by oh if he did, wouldn’t there be hell for me to pay.
And that shit sticks in my craw like three day old fuck on a wall!! I’m not black enough?! You know what, nigga black people invented Rock N Roll, Jazz, Blues, The Negro Spiritual, The Negro work song, peanut butter, modern gas masks, open heart surgery which really opened the door for the field of cardiac medicine, Washington D.C., traffic lights…I mean I could go on mother fucker! Name me two black poets? Can’t do it? Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes. Name me two black activists from two different eras? Little lost are you? Angela Davis and Majora Carter. You want me to get down with something you know? Okay, name me two black athletes from two different eras. Michael Vic and Paul Robeson. Ah ah, not only was Paul Robeson an amazing Basso-Profundo style opera singer he was also a noted athlete and public speaker. He spent years in ..Russia.. and was impressed by the communist spirit and thus was chased out of ....America.... during the Red Scare. Nigger, I know the fucking score. I know who I am and who the fuck is you? I know who I am and where I came from. I heard Angela Davis say that it’s a shame that Martin Luther King has come to be so associated with the Bus Boycott of Alabama because of all the men and women, cab drivers and cleaning women who walked miles and miles for a whole fucking year as a group to prove a point. And what about the people who died on Bloody Sunday during a peaceful march? And what about the people who died because they wanted to vote? And what about the slaves who were brutalized? And what about the people who died on the middle passage and the people who pitched themselves overboard as human ballast because they knew what shackles meant even if they didn’t know who their captors were and where the fuck they were going in the middle of the night and maybe you don’t owe all those mother fuckers but I do. I owe them. I am their dream and if I do nothing but live my little life and raise my kids to do the right thing and be the right thing and not embarrass me in public then I’ve lived it up for them. I’ve lived it up for my people who were lynched. I’ve lived it up for my people in poverty and my people who still today live in ignorance. I live it up for you, sir, because you are lost in some white man’s idea of what a black man should be, want, do, act like and how he should love. This shit is marketed nigger. This shit is made up in the board rooms of ..New York.. and ....Los Angeles..... It doesn’t bother you that the majority of top 40 songs by black people on the radio are about fucking and infidelity? It doesn’t bother you that these white music production company owners make money off of making you feel like you’re not a man for being faithful to one woman or taking care of your children and your family because you promised her in front of god, your momma, and everybody you know, nigger fuck you! I’m fucking angry and I’m not putting up with that shit. I’m black and I’m fucking proud. Proud enough to say nigger every day because I know the history of the word as a pejorative term and it makes me happy to make other people uncomfortable with one fucking word! There’s power there, sir. There’s power in the fact that I handle my business and I take care of my fucking family and my friends, I mean my real down hommies get taken the fuck care of!
My whole body is vibrating with this sense of righteous indignation. My whole being hums as I sit here and pontificate like the fucking loud mouth that I am but I just needed to express myself. I grew up a little Cosby and I know you laugh at that and you think that’s funny or whatever but I grew up with a community of black people, mostly women, and they all had jobs, they all went to college, they all had degrees, they’re all married or widowed and they all had babies and shit got taken care of. I knew as a child that I had to go to college. I knew in the first fucking grade that that shit was expected. I dragged my feet and I didn’t want to do it but I did it because it made my mother happy and why not? I know she was only in labor for four hours but she carried me for longer than that and I owe her, too. No one told her she was good enough. Teachers told her in high school that her best bet was to skip college and get a job as a secretary or a nurse because she couldn’t be a doctor or anything like that eventhough she spoke French better than the instructor and had the chance to go do ....France.... for a summer and learn to speak more fluently. People told her she was ugly because she was black and the same black kids from the neighborhood teased her because she read and danced classically and wasn’t “black” even though moms was all down with Angela and the Panthers and Nikki Giovanni and all that hot seventies revolutionary resistance style shit and I think she’s amazing. I think she’s good enough and I’m good enough too. Weather or not this dude or that dude thinks I’m pretty, weather or not this dude or that dude wants to fuck me, weather or not I got my way or if I was “black” enough for some people at the end of the fucking day…I’m alright. I’m just fine. My blackness is not quantified by my musical tastes or who I choose to pass my days with but by my very being, my walking, my style, my senses, my passion and fortitude as a fucking human. I’m black and proud and well spoken just like she raised me to be and don’t fuck with me about it because I’ll crush you and rain down upon you with my righteous mind and my righteous spirit. Yes, I’m black, I’m weird but I’m black and call me weird, shit, call me crazy, dismiss me, but do not attempt to take from me what is my birthright. Read a book. Learn about yourself. Fuck you very much. Now get the fuck outta my bar!
 

Call it the idealist dream of a simple girl but I feel the need to stand up for my dignity. I have never in my life been so insulted by another co-worker let alone an authority figure. I haven't cried like this since the last time my heart got broken and it's been going on like this for 2 days.
I will not be bullied nor will I be intimidated or talked down to, even by a superior. I will be paid for hours that I have worked. I will not be made to feel like a trained money could do my job. I will not sacrafice my pride and my dignity for the lives and comfort of others, even if those others are the children that are the light of my days.

I'm so Angry I could Pop!!!!
Thanks for reading.
Show on Friday at the Four Season in Enumclaw.
Show on Saturday at the Summit Pub in Puyallup.
Please come out and show your support.
Peace and Love
sJ