this is the hottest album cover i have ever seen. right after highschool i had this job for a company where we would go around and take inventory in retail venues such as Kohl’s and Kmart and Handy Andy hardware stores and the latter was the worst because we would have to count bucket after bucket of little screws and knobs and rust colored odd shaped objects like hundreds or thousands of these things and it was endless and we had these little calculator like machines we would strap around our powder blue smocks to take count we would be there for hours on our knees on ladders on our tippie toes to reach the merchandise counting away. i was doing a lot of acid and raving back then and jobs would often be early Sunday morning so i would show up in uniform with pupils the size of space crafts and remnants of glitter on my face burping up whatever the LSD had been cut with all day. i was young, the bounce back was easy. my favorite stores to inventory were CD shops which were usually in the mall. we started work after the shop closed and were never there more than two hours because counting flat square objects was a breeze and i was really entertained by the CD covers and this is when i came across Type O Negative’s Bloody Kisses image and i was probably stoned which has always been an aphrodisiac and i got so turned on by it i hid the CD in its big plastic security case under my smock and took it with me to the bathroom so i could rub one out really quick which i could do quite easily like i mentioned before i have this technique and then return it to it’s home and i never bought the CD i never heard the music it wasn’t important to me i just loved that image two women face to face close up looking like they’re about to cum or really into whatever the fuck was going on down below and i wanted that to be grinding of some sort and i really really really wished i was not counting headphones at a music store in the mall and instead doing what they were doing that i could jump into that scene and be one of them in their state of heat and hunger and live that moment and be that uninhibited and last night i did.

i was just at the corner bodega buying a Sunday sort of pack of cigarettes and the woman in front of me who had just purchased a sandwich and a toothbrush added a lottery ticket on to her purchases at the last minute. she yelled out numbers, i think they were 854 and 50 and 50. the way she said it went “854, 50/50″ or at least that’s the way i visualized it in my head. i never play the lottery and was mystified by this process. was this a type of ticket? was this her number pick? did these numbers hold any relevance in her life? like she was born at 8:54 in the morning and did she like the soda 50/50? isn’t there a soda named 50/50? i kept thinking about this as the clerk who had clearly done this before and knew what to do with that information went to the lotto machine and he asked, “850?” and she replied “no no 854…or wait, did you say 850? yeah go with 850. 850. go with that.” she muttered something about it maybe being a good luck charm like it was meant to be that he made the mistake and maybe it was God or fate or some higher being trying to tell her something. the clerk wished her good luck as he handed her the ticket. i thought that was pretty cool and wondered if she was going to win. i was watching TV a few years back and a guy i used to date in my early twenties was an actor on one of those lucky lotto commercials, the one with the cartoon like character that has a big head. he was really sweet and had once bought us tickets to go to the opera and the night of i didn’t pull it together on time and was an hour late to pick him up. we missed the opera and ended up drinking Rolling Rocks and dosing on Robotussin in his apartment all night long. no one has taken me to the opera since.
it’s interesting, nowadays i feel that i have the most fun when i am writing this blog.

when i was a teenager my mother told me that life didn’t really start until her 30s. how much wiser she felt how much less she cared about the petty shit. how amazing it will be, when i am in my 30s. at the time i could barely wrap my brain around this, 30 years old seemed so old so far away. but i liked what she said, it gave me yet another thing to look forward to. it made me feel safe and secure, knowing that life would be amazing one day. because at the time it wasn’t so great and i needed that hope. and then all of a sudden i was in my 20s. and it was a hard ten years filled with a ton of mistakes and a lot of fun. reckless fun. i dated the wrong men and i blew off the right ones. i drank a lot and did a great deal of drugs including a summer of heroin. i dropped my compulsive masturbatory habit and picked up a compulsive spending one. and then i picked back up the compulsive masturbating. i had a ten thousand dollar credit card debt by the time i was twenty three. i dropped out of art school. i suffered i cried and i liked to chain smoke until my lungs and teeth hurt i enjoyed that pain. my 20s were filled with pain, most of it self inflicted. and always in the back of my mind sat what my mom had said, and my 30s didn’t seem so far away anymore and i looked forward to them. because i believed her. i believed it would get better. and believing it made me take action. and here i am, now thirty five. here i am in New York. and it did get better and it was a lot of work and it was blood sweat and tears. and i am wiser and i am having the time of my life. today is my mom’s birthday, she is sixty three years old. we were just on the phone and i asked if her 30s were still her best years. and without hesitation or pause she said “oh god no, it was my 40s. or 50s. no no, my 60s”. another something to look forward to. happy birthday Maw Maw.

i worked at McDonalds when i was sixteen. each shift i always ate the same thing, the number two value meal, which consisted of two cheeseburgers and a large fry and a large coke. this was before supersizing, otherwise i would have done so. i topped it off with an apple pie smothered in caramel sauce. it was utterly amazing, i can taste it now. each Monday night was hamburger special night, burgers going for twenty five cents and cheeseburgers thirty five. there were lines out the door at the 79th street McDonalds and all of us employees knew everyone in them. there were the Cregers and the Gardners and the Johnsons and the Swansons and everyone from Burbank would come out for the occasion. and it was kind of a big deal to get that shift almost like a promotion and only the best employees worked allowed to work it. one had to pay their dues which included fry duty and closing shift. both were absolutely wretched in different ways. fry duty meant standing over hot no scalding grease dumping frozen fries into a metal basket and three minutes later dumping them cooked into a bin and salting the piss out of them and then if they got too cold dumping them into the garbage can. closing shift meant cleaning each and every meat juiced pot pan utensil used that day and at the very end dumping out the large vat of daily collected grease. after about six months and all sorts of dumping i was granted the sacred Monday night shift. and man were we slammed from five pm until close. i would sneak extra burgers into my friends bags maybe even a pie or two and enjoyed the rush it gave me to do something naughty. at this time in my life at sixteen in Burbank, Illinois this was my idea of being bad even though at nights before i fell asleep i would lay there in anticipation for what lay ahead, and i just knew it was going to be mischievous and adventurous and liberating and a solid time and my spirit would try to jump out of my skin it was such a strange sensation i was just so dam excited for the future. they gave you a striped button down short sleeve brown and white striped shirt and a visor with the McDonalds logo on it. one time i forgot my hat and had to wear the “if you forgot your uniform this is what you have to endure” paper cap which sat four inches high and felt very dunce like.

Worship Our Goddess Feet. that was the first line in the ad on the last page in the classified section four of The Chicago Reader. it went on to describe how one could worship the goddesses feet (kissing licking smelling sucking massaging they could trample your face the toes could squish your nose) and the sort of feet they had (dirty size seven pedicured panty hosed smelly size ten bony smooth heeled ) …the list was quite colorful took up four lines and at the very end it simply said Now Hiring. i called. about a week later i was in a room on a couch in my bra and a long black wig and my red and green plaid polyester pants and combat boots. there was a girl on either side of me, we didn’t know one another. he was fat with long curly hair and noisy breathing and a video camera. he explained that this was part of the audition. we each had a pair of panty hose and green plastic army figurines the ones that are in action like pointing a gun or mid grenade throw. they were small and i could hold one between my forefinger and thumb. we were told as soon as the video camera went on to slowly work the figures down to the foot of the nylon then put the stockings on and then play with the action figures with our toes in the hose while laughing maniacally throughout. i’m no actress nor was i used to being in a bra in front of a wheezy man holding a camera so it took me a bit to get into character. he noticed this and suggested i throw my head back every so often and raise my eyebrows and shake my from side to side to really get into it. i’m sure i looked ridiculous. i blushed the whole way through and i remember the cold fall air felt so good on my skin once i had left. i also remember thinking that i had blown the try outs. that i’d never hear from him again and i’d never have anyone worship my feet or be called a goddess or have a goddess foot and i wasn’t too sure what any of that meant but i wanted it. i got the call a couple of days later. i’ve always loved that Marcie called Peppermint Patty sir.

my brotherfriend Tim Pigott is in a group show this Friday Dec. 2 at the Maxwell Colette Gallery. i would be there if i could be but i can’t be so if you can be there you should be. Tim was the very first blogger that i knew i think over a decade ago or close to. his style of writing has been influential on my own. go check out the show.

once i sat down and ate an entire pumpkin pie. i am thankful for so much i don’t know where to begin.