Dorinda D.'s Open Salon Blog

Existential

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 14:04:33 -0400

Age 28 August Tallahassee, Florida OR If I had paid attention I learned everything I needed to know about sex and men in one day. I did not pay attention.

I am in existential hell and being punished.

Outside the air is muggy and miserable – a typical Tallahassee August.

I am inside my office reviewing Florida Bar materials/videos used by attorneys for professional credit. Our team is reviewing these so we know what they learn. We are reviewing the materials for all statutes.

I was given Statute 794 for a reason.

The month before I had been in Jacksonville for work meeting concerning sentencing guidelines. Our team presented numbers to a court official about very long sentences handed down for young men arrested in that county from Dade County for drug possession. All had Hispanic last names. The sentences were within the guidelines but widely different than those for the same crime and same group in Miami where many first offenders are sent to acupuncture as an alternative. We didn’t tell the court official what to do but just provided the numbers. The court official was elderly and old school in every way.

He informed us that the strong sentences were due to the intersection of I-10 and I-95 making that county essential to transporting drugs up and down the East Coast from Miami. He was not worried about the discrepancy. He then picked up a bowl of candy from his desk and gave it to me. I was the only woman in the room. “Would you like some candy little girl?”

After work I went to the Riverwalk where I met the only male ballet dancer I will ever know. He did not train to be a ballet dancer. He was originally a handsome and hulky landscaper who saw pretty girls going into a ballet studio and followed them inside.

At 10:00 that night there is a knock on my hotel room door. It was the court official coming to see the pretty girl. I had no idea how he got my room number although he did know where my colleagues and I were registered. He is knocking loudly saying, “Little girl let me in.”

The ballet dancer got up from bed , opened the door stark naked, and said, “She is busy.”

My colleague comes in and asks how it is going. The very dull attorney in the video is standing in front of a wall of books discussing all crimes related to sex in the State of Florida. He has been at it for hours. He makes sodomy boring to hear about. I have very few notes other than . . . lying to an innkeeper . . . it is the charge used to get johns in jail if the act of prostitution can’t be proved and the language is biblical. The very dull lawyer deconstructs lying to an innkeeper and the only association I have in my head is Joseph in Bethlehem. Did Joseph lie to an innkeeper when he took his wife with him for a tax audit? So I tell my colleague that. He says he is glad I have a sense of humor about my existential hell.

I was assigned 794 partly due to having sex on the company dime. The court official had not been amused. My boss had been notified. Thus my existential hell was learning Statute 794 backwards and forwards.

It is not fair.

Do you want to go to happy hour? Some state troopers are gonna be there who know about the gruesome shit in Gainesville. Interesting stuff.

There is hardly anything on the news.

Yeah they know about the investigation.

I meet them at happy hour. The victims’ fingers were cut off to delay identification. The bodies were staged in various forms of sexual activity. In one instance a head was left on the fireplace mantel. This is distressing. I impress the state troopers with my knowledge of Statute 794 which definitely applied to the case. I don’t drink much of my drink.

I am expected at a friend’s house for a late dinner and drop by a poetry reading at a local student hangout where I meet another friend. We hear a long reading of a rather juvenile poem about incestuous siblings building a coffin for the dead grandmother in a basement. We go to the bar for a drink and decide to call the poetry readings “incestuous dead grandmother night” from then on.

The young woman next to me is crying because her boyfriend is breaking up with her. He says he loves her but not her child. He says no matter what happens to them he will always see evidence of another man in the kid’s face. I feel bad for her but say nothing.

I go to my friend’s house for a late dinner. He is a realtor and had been meeting with a client about selling her house. We have steak, salad, and red wine. I tell him about Statute 794. He tells me about the client – a woman in her 40s. He says the whole meeting was awkward. She was dressed seductively to impress and had food and drink. Her language was suggestive. My friend is in his 40s and going through a divorce. After dinner I do the dishes. He likes to watch me do that. He holds me as I wash them and says, “Why would I want that when I have 28 at home?”

Sometimes I Learn Stuff

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 10:04:12 -0400

For several years I wrote for OS every day as a writing exercise. Life got in the way in a happy way so I stopped. I need to write again but can't ever go every day again.

I am just going to start with today and try for a few times a week ;0)

.....................................................................................................................

At night before my children go to bed I hold them and ask them questions.

Who is the prettiest girl in the world?

Me.

Who is the smartest girl in the world?

Me.

Who does mama love?

How much does mama love you?

To outside and outside space.

Who else loves you?

Daddy, stepmom, grandma . . . .

You are very lucky to have so many people who love you. Think about them before you go to sleep.

My daughters are lucky because they have a father who loves them and wants to be an active and involved father.

We do not like each other very much and disagree on the specifics of how that should work out. Sometimes it is a huge disagreement requiring assistance from people with law degrees.

However when I am honest I realize that I love my daughters and very much want them to have a loving relationship with their father . . . if only for enlightened self-interest.

I see too many single women raising children who are not looking for someone whom they can be with but for someone who will be a father for their children. I don’t look for that and I don’t want it. My children have a father who very much objects to anyone usurping that role in any way.

The man I was with for over two years did not even meet my daughters until after a year. I refused to introduce him to them unless he was going to stick around. So I said if you are still here next year then we will talk.

He is no longer around for several reasons.

However, on that one year anniversary he took them to Epcot. We spent my daughter’s 18^th birthday reliving a princess breakfast she requested as she had loved it when she was 10. It was a $250.00 breakfast and she realized 15 minutes in that it was more fun when she was 10. Being an intelligent person he knew that would happen but he took her anyway in mid-August in the heat and he hates theme parks and even more so hates spending $250 for breakfast.

He had never had children, never wanted to, and was doing better than his best. I will always love and thank him for that day. In the end he realized he did not want to be around children and deal with the complications it created in my life and consequently in his. It was hard to accept that but I finally have.

It is unlikely I will ever be able to be with anyone who does not have children. Lesson learned. The hard way. That is the way most lessons are learned.

This past week I have spent time with several friends who are male with children and who have left or are leaving relationships that they took very seriously. They are good men. They love their children. They don’t talk about them much . . . their children are precious and personal and not for public consumption.

Last night I spoke with an old friend whose daughter recently had what could only be described as a painful learning experience. One of those experiences one can only watch from the sidelines and resolve to be there when it was over to say, “I love you and I will help.” One of those experiences that as a parent one wants to step in and stop . . . but the better way to parent is to let a grown child be her own person and learn her own lessons. One of those experiences that is worse than any dark room scenario in any horror movie.

Been there and done that and much of the love and respect that I have for that friend comes from knowing how much strength of will it took for him to do that.

At night before my children go to bed I hold them and ask them questions.

Who is the prettiest girl in the world?

Me.

Who is the smartest girl in the world?

Me.

Who does mama love?

How much does mama love you?

To outside and outside space.

This might be a good time to tell someone I love them.

Daddy I love you to outside and outside space.

Savannah: Memoir of a Place

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 11:03:35 -0400

Savannah

August 2007

I am on my way home down I-95 to Orlando from the rural north of Charleston where I visited a friend who tries so hard but is so terribly conservative and ex-military and we just are not meshing. His elderly dog stays on the old-fashioned sleep porch watching Fox news all day amusing me in bad ways.

I stop in historic Savannah on the way home for lunch. I love River Street, the city parks, and the general elegance not found elsewhere. I buy a cool Harley Davidson t-shirt with long fake tattooed sleeves and have shrimp and grits with two glasses of Chardonnay for lunch. This means I have to kill two hours before driving again.

I walk down the street and see a palm reader storefront.

A week before I had been diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer. The prognosis is iffy. I had read the following information from the National Cancer Institute.

Prognosis describes the likely course and outcome of a disease—that is, the chance that a patient will recover or have a recurrence. IBC is more likely to have metastasized (spread to other areas of the body) at the time of diagnosis than non-IBC cases (3). As a result, the 5-year survival rate for patients with IBC is between 25 and 50 percent, which is significantly lower than the survival rate for patients with non-IBC breast cancer. It is important to keep in mind, however, that these statistics are averages based on large numbers of patients. Statistics cannot be used to predict what will happen to a particular patient because each person's situation is unique. Patients are encouraged to talk to their doctors about their prognosis given their particular situation.

It might be amusing to spend $25 to see if the fortuneteller sees that.

Hmmm . . . . There is a man in his late forties who has dark hair, dark eyes, problems at work, and the need to discuss said problems with me.

Gee, I’m a woman with experience -- what are the odds that this could be true?

Also, the next year will be a healthy year for me and I will triumph.

OK. We’ll see.

I leave and ask a concierge at a nearby hotel for directions to the nearest Starbucks. I am severely addicted to Starbucks unsweet iced tea and spend a fortune on it every month. Fortunately this iced tea is easily found. I need caffeine in my system to balance out alcohol so I can drive home. The concierge tells me to go down the street and turn left at the front of the silver-plated domed government building. (That should tell you what Savannah is about.)

I do that and walk three blocks to Starbucks and then stand in line because well Starbucks always has a line and is always crowded. A homeless man behind me is curiously obsessed with obtaining an espresso brownie.

I think whatever and tell him, “I will buy you the brownie.” He does not realize he has scored and continues about hospitalizations, surgeries, miseries etc. I tell him that is in my future, I’m sorry it is in his past, and I will get an espresso brownie too because I never had one before. So I get to the cash register and order the iced tea and brownies.

On the way out of Starbucks a half dozen of Savannah’s lovely citizens stop me to say they will pray for me because their family members/loved ones had cancer too.

I sober up and drive home.

I do not know that I have cancer in 2007 and will yet again in 2010.

March 2012

I am on a train from Kissimmee to Savannah with a new gentleman friend. As noted earlier the previous gentleman friend tried hard but we did not mesh. My train companion is not necessarily new but he is a kind, handsome, progressive Atheist who enjoys live music and works hard at entertaining me He knows I love to hear the sound of trains in the night and romanticize them. We can mesh with the best of them. He is also pragmatic and when gas is at $4.00 a gallon a train is cheaper. We now know why Europe has so many trains.

Thus he is on a train with me for over six hours. We spend some time in the lounge car being as I describe “Nick and Nora” and when I remind him of the old movie characters he says he remembers. We see many lovely views of the St. Johns River and cool shotgun shacks with tin roofs out in the middle of nowhere. I decide I want one of those instead of the stereotypical cabin in the woods. I want to hear rain on the tin roof while the trains pass at night. We converse with our overeducated lounge car bartender about philosophy. My friend is very interested in the obscenity of American exceptionalism and I just like Emerson. The lounge bartender has thee graduate degrees . . . one in behavioral mathematics. I decide I want to Nick and Nora the whole trip. We know we are going to see John Hiatt and Lyle Lovett in an acoustic performance for the Savannah Music Fesitival. We will also stumble onto fabulous gospel and blues performances by Ruthie Foster and the Campbell Brothers.

We check into a luxury hotel with a balcony view of all of Savannah that twinkles in the moonlight all the way to the ocean. There is a light rain and we set off walking down shining old cobblestones through lovely parks until we improbably find a Middle Eastern restaurant called The Casbah where we enjoy meeting the waiters, learning how to grill fabulous mideastern tomatoes, and have the attention of a belly dancer in a green I Dream of Jeanie outfit. We leave The Casbah and walk one block until the rain gets heavy so we duck into a small Irish pub to learn to like Bushmills Black and dislike the shrill fun being had by a bridesmaid’s party.

Back at the hotel other stuff happens. We wake up late and I need the tea. I am and likely always will be addicted to Starbucks iced green tea UNSWEET and must have the largest trenta cup available. We go to Starbucks where there is quite a line. My friend sits in a comfortable chair reading and waiting as he has learned to do. I go to the counter to order my tea.

Then I realize where I am. I had forgotten which Starbucks I was at in August 2007.

I get my tea and find my friend sitting in a chair located where some stranger prayed for me five years before. Starbucks has likely redecorated a few times. I have my tea in my hand and am crying when I kiss him.

Ruthie Foster “Full Circle”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZH7022c7G4

March 2013

It is Friday evening and I am in the oasis of an art-filled condo with expansive views of low country marsh and a small sailboat marina along Tybee Island. I am recovering.

My girlfriend and I go to a lovely outdoor concert space at a museum in downtown Savannah on MLK Jr. Blvd directly across from boarded up project housing. I think in my head that when Chris Rock makes comments on the human condition he is usually right . . . as in if you ever find yourself on MLK Jr. Blvd in any city you might want to run . . . which is a peculiar way to honor a beloved leader. She and I hear Lil Wayne Ol’ Two Step who is a young man from Opalousas, Louisiana. He is younger than the other Lil Wayne. I do not know why there are two of them. He introduces the rather elderly and very white crowd to Zydeco hip-hop and plays the hell out of a squeezebox if not all night long for two hours. I grab the woman seated next to me to dance with and we meet other dance partners on the dance floor for those hours. I hope that my lack of skill in dancing is made up for in enthusiasm.

Dancing can be a form of exorcism. I am recovering.

Later in the evening my friend and I sit on her balcony overlooking the low country marsh sipping Jameson whiskey and looking up at the moon in a cloudy sky.

Saturday morning my friend takes me to a breakfast dive café appropriately called The Breakfast Club located on the beach at Tybee Island. I have an omelet made with homemade sausage and local shrimp, grits drenched in butter, and some of my girlfriend’s pecan waffles. It is a cold gray day with a strong bitter wind. We walk out to the beach where choppy gray waves create terrible beauty.

I ain’t afraid of no ghosts . . . horrific or romantic.

The heavy cold rain and a wind do a job on my umbrella as I walk down River Street in Savannah. I am chilled to the bone. So I am forced to buy a new hoodie from a tourist trap shop for my tacky tourist hoodie collection to keep warm. I choose turquoise to combat the gray surrounding me.

I walk down Broughton Street toward the Trustees Theater for an afternoon performance. We did this last year. I was defiantly wearing a white hoodie with Skittles in my pocket to protest the recent death of Trayvon Martin. I stop in front of the abandoned storefront of what used to be the Casbah. It is closed and abandoned now. There are no longer Arabian rugs on the walls and a dancing belly dancer in green. Instead there is a dusty floor with some bright colored stool and lamps in the corner. The reflection in the window places me with my blue umbrella and blue hoodie in that abandoned space. It seems appropriate.

I ain’t afraid of no ghosts . . . horrific or romantic.

I buy nosebleed cheap tickets to hear 83-year-old Amad Jamal and his quartet school the audience on the art of fine jazz. My seatmate and new friend is 80-year-old Evelyn who is refined and beautiful black woman who does not look a day over 60. She tells me she followed Jamal around jazz clubs in New York City during the 1960s and describes the music, dancing, and her life.

I walk out with her through the crowded lobby and she leaves me standing on the Broughton Street sidewalk to head to a bus stop calling out, “Take care of yourself young sister.”

I ain’t afraid no ghosts . . . horrific or romantic.

I walk two blocks to the small Irish pub where we had learned to love Bushmills Black last year. I am the only patron. I order a Bushmills Black neat and sit in the cozy listening to Irish ballads and occupying myself watching a silent rugby game on the television. This seems appropriate.

I ain’t afraid of no ghosts . . . horrific or romantic.

It is time to think about the four-hour drive home. I walk one block to the Starbucks and see the same gray chairs and same long line as always. I open the door to go inside for the unsweet green iced tea and hear music from the Starbucks station . . .

It’s a rainy night in Georgia . . . and it feels like it’s raining all over the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDRbF80NKDU

Cutting Tuition Assistance for Active Military is Misguided

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:03:40 -0400

I have taught online for several years for a university where many students have been military learners. I am not from a military family or background. Recently I took a faculty training class where I learned 55% of the students are military learners.

My only contact with military sponsored education is that I know my father and uncle came from a dirt poor Southern Arkansas background. Through the miracle of the G.I. Bill my father became a successful lawyer/politician while my uncle stayed in the military with a high position in Army intelligence. They were the first family members to attend college. My uncle always seemed to be one of the last Americans to leave countries I would hear about on the news. My uncle learned to speak seven languages through military colleges including I believe Arabic, Japanese, Spanish, and Russian. He earned at least one degree from the university where I teach. He has since died but earned a very good living after retiring translating for international companies and advising them on cultural differences.

So I understand students may not only be earning degrees to better their own lives. They intend to change the lives possible for their children so they have options beyond what in my case would have been the Arkansas oil fields. I am a college professor, my sister was a manager at a brokerage firm, my brother is a senior adviser for the governor of Arkansas, and my other brother is a logistics manager. This is all because one person received assistance from the military for his tuition. I could list my cousins' accomplishments as well but my point has been made.

You are deficient. I am munificent.

Tue, 2 Oct 2012 02:10:22 -0400

Here is a mop.

Here is a broom.

Get off your ass

and clean that room.

My mama says

you do not try

so you can just

cry cry cry.

You want love.

You want to dream.

Shut your mouth

you stupid thing.

Do not leave.

I will not let you.

Oh no no

I will never forget you.

Give me babies.

Shut your mouth.

Just like they do it

in the South.

You want love.

You are not worth it.

I only fuck

women who deserve it.

You were pretty

now you are fat.

I can find

better than that.

Sleep alone.

I will not.

There is a woman

in Tampa who is hot.

Shut up. Shut up.

You cannot leave.

If you do then

I will make you grieve.

I will find them all

you bitch.

Your children will know

you are a witch.

I will find them

everyone

and tell them

you cannot have fun.

I will tell them

one and all

what you did

and make you crawl.

You are mine.

Do not forget it.

No life for you.

I will not let it.

Who is next

in the love me line?

My future love

will be just fine.