100 Coyotes, Three Cathedrals, and One Serial Killer

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Previously, I described how a wealthy third grade friend sparked a love of nature within me.  She led me through woods, across swamp, and to the bank of a river that were all part of her family’s property, and I found them every bit as voluptuous as the mansion that fronted their land. Then I had the great fortune to spend summers at my grandfather’s cabin in the Pocono Mountains (the grandfather who fed me ice cream, not the grandfather who fed me wine).  It was a time and place when kids could roam freely, and play by circadian rhythms… Continue reading →

Secret Ingredients

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 My grandmother was typically a pretty poor cook.  But then she’d knock out a Thanksgiving feast of such perfection that it might have gotten the European invaders to agree not to rip off the Natives.  (No, I mean REALLY agree.  And keep it.) WTF???  My mom, on the other hand, was usually a great cook.  Not so much in the lean years.  Actually I remember a lot of Spam in those years.  (No, not the unwanted mail; the mystery meat.)  Fried Spam.  Baked Spam.  Sandwich-Spam.  I will never again eat Spam.  Continue reading →

Lesbianism – It Ain’t for Sissies Part 2

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So there I was, entering high school, and along with all the other anxieties (‘Will anyone like me?’ ‘Can I pass geometry?’) was the worry that I might be a lesbian.  My mom had as much as told me I was after she caught me and a girlfriend kissing.  The gross tongue-stabbling I got from my first date pretty much sealed the deal.  Then another boy’s kiss also left me totally cold (I didn’t know it could be due to depression following a serious car accident and facial disfigurement…) Continue reading →

Lesbianism – It Ain’t for Sissies

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Before I get into the heart of this post, I must comment on what it’s like to type the word “ain’t.”  I use it occasionally in vernacular speech, if I want to sound blue-collar-cool, or make some kind of point.  But I wonder if I’ve ever actually written it before.  If I have, I must have been on my second martini, and even then I’m not sure… Continue reading →

Food and Drink and Love and Sex and…Health???

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 So far, this blog is chronicling how I came to be interested in the topics of food, sex, love, relationship, health and nature – enough to link them in my book in progress, Licking the Spoon.  My first food was breast milk, the best food for an infant, only I don’t remember it.  What I do remember was the sexy feeling I got…

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Innocence Lost and Found Part 3

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In Innocence Lost and Found Part 1 and Part 2, I began describing the year I spent in a small New Jersey town when I was eight: Cool Walter who claimed me with his kiss in the woods behind the baseball diamond.  My upwardly mobile and disappointingly racist mom.  Jealous Melinda, rich Nancy.  African-American Cassandra being treated like a contagious disease in Nancy’s pool.  I got in with her mostly because I couldn’t swim, partly because I couldn’t bear to see someone’s feelings hurt, and, well, I had liked Cassandra in the first place, DUH… 

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Innocence Lost and Found

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When I was eight, I did a brief stint in prison.  By “prison” I mean a small town in New Jersey.  Don’t get me wrong; there were some lovely things about that town.  It was the pastoral small town of times gone by, with only two main streets, a lake in the middle, and the kind of safety that permitted third graders to roam unattended.  But unbeknownst to me…

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Pretty Girls, Phallic Symbols and the Mysterious Human Brain

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I don’t know why, but I wrote my first poem when I was six.  It was an ode to female beauty that started, “Her face was the color of peaches and cream, with strawberry juice in between.”  Not exactly subtle, huh.  Born already of stories about blushing princesses and sleeping beauties that so shape the young lives of women.  I say women and not girls because I think that the images and parables of such stories, though created in youth, last for a lifetime – even when we decide that we don’t want them to…

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