Party like it’s 1499.

Kat had a very full social itinerary planned out for my return to St. Louis. While my trips to St. Louis are generally comprised of my lounging on the sofa with the dog and devouring numerous books - stopping occasionally for a nap to recharge - I decided to go along with Kat and meet lots of her friends. I figured that she knows I’m not so good at meeting lots of people in a short period of time, so if I took anyone’s head clean off with my hating-these-new-people attitude, it would not be my fault.

Kat’s circle of friends are almost all participants in the Greater St. Louis Renaissance Faire. She took on the name “Kat” when I knew her in college, but to St. Louis folks she is known as “Kate.” To the Faire Folk, or “Rennies,” she is “Bob.” In the faire she portrays a Spanish courtesan turned pirate named Bob.

St. Louis Ren Faire, 2005

This isn’t Bob, but it’s what I imagine her garb must look like. Did you see that? Garb? I can even use faire lingo.

Faire Folk are low-dose people for me. There’s this je ne sais quoi about them, and often I find myself wanting to run in the other direction. Many of them tend to be gamers, though not exclusively of the role-playing variety. It’s hard for me to give my attention over for long stretches of time to conversations about characters and magical powers and fantasy realms. Yeah, I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit, but that doesn’t mean I want to play a game as an elven princess. And so help me, the person who addresses me as “M’Lady” in everyday conversation is risking several broken limbs. But these folks are Kat’s family, of a sort, so I was determined to be perfectly polite.

I went to the parties. I behaved myself. I met a few people who made me grind my teeth and wonder why it is that everything coming out of their mouths had to be louder and more obnoxious than what anyone else was doing. I played a round of Plague & Pestilence, and held my own through a couple rounds of Fluxx. The nights were filled with references to just about everything from Monty Python to the Muppets. I was told several times that Rennies are insane, and their minds are dirtier than most. In order to prove it to me, there seemed to be a constant one-upping each other in noise levels and bawdy remarks. Alas, I remained unimpressed.

However, I did take a liking to one friend of Kat’s. Bill impressed me very much. Bill is quiet and thoughtful - but not withdrawn -and he understands how to frame humor for the best effect. His face is very open and gentle and caring. He’s a very inviting person. And did I mention patient? At times during the evening, I could see his face tense as the idiocy levels rose in the room, but I just smiled back at him and rolled my eyes. He understood where I was coming from, being the Stranger in a Strange Land. Bill portrays the Elven King at Faire, and it’s now because of Bill that I’m seriously considering a visit to the 2006 St. Louis Faire.

I should totally go to Faire as one of the fay!

Super-Fantastic-Orgasmic Organic Turkey.

Kat-Monster set out to prove a point to her family (a family she has long felt at odds with): that prepared in the exact same manner, an organically fed and cared for turkey would be just as good, if not better, than the family’s traditional growth hormone-stuffed variety.

Kat took a lot of shit from her family about this turkey. Everyone had some smartass remark to make about this turkey. “So, what’s so special about this bird? It didn’t have to mingle with, or get shit on by, the normal turkeys?” Her reasoning about a healthier bird fell on deaf ears because she uses an emphatic school marm voice when she’s trying to make a point. Nobody cared. I tried to explain to her that this super-fantastic-orgasmic organic turkey makes it kind of look like she’s thumbing her nose at the lowly plebs who are going to eat the same kind of turkey they’d been enjoying for years. In fact, I’d been enjoying that same kind of turkey with them for 7 of those years.

The trappings of St. Louis suburbia.

Whatever. The organic turkey was cooked the night before because there wouldn’t be time the next day. It didn’t cook thoroughly, and wasn’t prepared EXACTLY like the family bird. So on the big Turkey Day as I was setting out the good china and crystal, Kat’s bird was back in the oven being warmed up. When the bird came out - looking nice and brown, I would like to point out - Kat was getting edgier by the moment. The big taste-testing was coming up and she thought no one would want to try her turkey because it was all dried out now. It didn’t help that the jokes and jibes about the turkey continued throughout dinner, but I thought the turkey was very good.

L to R: Kat, Linda, Pat, Karen (we had to take the fighting ouside; no blood on the sofa.)

The family members I get along with better: Fuzzy (above), Shadow (left), and Gracie (right).

Later that evening as Kat and I spent time with a friend of hers, she recounted the whole tale of the turkey; the ridiculous injustice of her trying to prove a point to her family, but she was robbed of the victory because the birds were not prepared exactly the same way. In reality, I think Kat was the only one who was carrying a grudge - over even really thinking about - that fucking turkey.

What lesson can be learned here? When it comes to family, you have to pick your fights. With this turkey thing, I wouldn’t have even put the gloves on; wouldn’t have even stepped into the ring.

Craft-A-Turkey.

American Goth.

My long overdue visit to St. Louis began with a visit to a local club downtown with Kat, former roommate. I call her Kat-Monster (for no reason that I can remember). We found this club courtesy of the St. Louis Gothic site.

I didn’t have anything particularly gothic to wear but I managed something in all black (pants, t-shirt, hoodie) and called it good. Kat made a much better show of it with a burgundy wig and dramatic make-up.

There were drinks, conversation, people watching, and I was introduced to goth dancing. Then Kat went to pay the bar tab and left me alone on the couch. A girl approached me, smiling very wide, and swaying so that her black-ribbon encased pigtails moved from side to side.

“Hey! How’ve you been?”

“Hello.”

“It’s been a while, huh?”

I guess the blank look on my face threw her off. She plopped down on the sofa next to me to explain.

“Don’t you remember? A few weeks ago you were sitting here with your friend? And me and my friends were sitting across the room? We were totally hopped up on meth, and you were totally coked out, and we just stared at each other across the room all night! You don’t remember?”

“Um…”

“And then like a week later, we were all back here again! Tonight I wanted to come over and say, Hi.”

“Well, we’ve never met. I’m from Minneapolis - never been here before. Nice to meet you though.”

“I’m Rain.”

“I’m Morgan.”

“Well, have a good night!”

It seems I need to be more careful when I hit the goth scene totally coked out. Coke makes me rude, and I stare at people.

National Compulsive Overeaters Day.

Everyone at Tuesday Group seemed to be on edge about the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. I heard stories about nightmare relatives and in-laws, and everyone was running scared that they would eat their weight in turkey and cranberry relish before the day was out. It’s certainly understandable. I’ve been there, and done that many times before.

This year, however, I have a little more perspective about this disorder and as a result I have a little more peace of mind. Of course, I’m not writing this as I sit with a plate full of yummies in front of me - it might be a totally different scenario later on in the afternoon.

But I think the best thing I have going for me is that I am bypassing the family stresses entirely. Instead, I choose to be with my capital F Family, a group of people I’ve been amassing since I moved to Iowa in 1998. I’m with my St. Louis Family this holiday weekend. They took me in for many a holiday and weekend throughout college (their daughter was a roommate of mine), and though I can get caught up in the dysfunctionality at times, I like the fact that I’m more comfortable with these folks having chosen them rather than being stuck with them.

I get in on the fighting, I’m expected to pull my weight with the chores, and I think I have a very real chance at seeing part of the inheritance that Uncle Mike will be passing down. This is my advantage as a non-biological family member: Uncle Mike thinks I’m incredibly charming compared to the rest of the relations.

I will not stress about food this weekend. I will sleep a lot, read many books, and play mean tricks on the new cat.

Cleaning House.

Once upon a time I worked as a commercial cleaner in a bank to supplement a wholly inadequate income from an art museum. I totally hated it, but I loved my work at the museum and was willing to clean up after slobby bank tellers and their customers so I could stay at the museum. In a similar vein, artist Maria Adelaida Lopez worked her way through grad school by cleaning houses in the Philadelphia area. So she scrubbed and cleaned and vacuumed, and then turned it into art.

This piece has got me thinking about the groundbreaking (earth-shattering!) exhibition WomanHouse, 1972, a woman-centered installation that explored gender constructions in the domestic space.

Lopez uses the stuff of the domestic space - vacuum dirt and lint - to create a visualization of the home experience. Though I haven’t seen anything framing her Dust Houses explicity as feminist pieces, I wonder if they’re a visualization of not just the home experience, but the homemaker’s experience. After all, the homemaker role is still largely placed in the realm of the feminine. Lopez worked as a homemaker to earn a living in Philadelphia, and successfully works as a literal homemaker - or home builder - with this piece.

Credit goes to Eyeteeth for bringing this to my attention.

Walk with Jesus

I wasn’t too impressed with the film Jarhead. Though I thought that Jake Gyllenhaal could do no wrong after Donnie Darko, and Peter Sarsgaard is unstoppably fantastic, the film is largely lacking in any interesting characterizations. Aside from a few scenes, a narrative filled with vein-popping, shrieking drill sergeants does not make a good film.

Personally, I think Kanye West saved this film with an incredible song. Jesus Walks, yo.

In an attempt to cheer myself up I…stepped on the scale.

The larger portion of my brain knows I should throw out the scale. The smaller portion, however - the portion still ruled by society’s notions of health and beauty - convinces me to step on it from time to time. It was a moment of intense delusion this morning when I thought I could actually boost my mood and congratulate myself on some compulsive eating abstinece by stepping on the scale because surely - surely! - my work has manifested itself in a number change on the scale.

I see the number. I see the trap I walked right into. I see a big, fat guilt trip headed straight for me.

I need a different mood booster, and since I don’t have a supply of Lexapro handy at the moment, I will settle for some greyhounds. These two urban cuties were at a London protest in 2004 against the cruel treatment of racing greyhounds. Activism + Greyhounds. That’s better.

The difference between caretaker and babysitter.

I’ve spent 10 long, arduous months training my tenants to bring their legitimate apartment problems to me. Ten months of frustration, of fighting the incommunicative property manager, and of wondering how it was possible that all the stupid and crazy people of the neighborhood ended up in my buildings.

Now they won’t leave me alone. EVERY problem is now a legitimate apartment problem. Can you guess which of the following three scenarios does not qualify as a legitimate apartment problem?

1) 12:15 pm - Tenant calls to say he is feeling “weakish” and would I please run over to the BBQ place on Nicollet and pick him up some lunch. He would, of course, buy me lunch for my efforts.

2) 1:30 am - I nearly go into cardiac arrest as the apartment buzzer goes off - sounding like a herald of nuclear disaster - and I can barely hear the person outside over the sound of my heart hammering against my ribcage. “Hi, Morgan, I just got back and forgot my keys. Can you please let me in?”

3) 2:30 am - My phone rings and though I’m still not calm enough to sleep after the Nuclear Buzzer of Armageddon went off, I still don’t make it in time to answer and end up sitting for a few minutes waiting for the voicemail to pick up. “Morgan, someone is in my parking space. I don’t have 45 minutes to drive around and find a space on the street, and I don’t pay $50 a month for someone else to park there.” In the following hour and a half, I will have made a tow truck driver’s life hell in trying to back into our little alleyway of parking spots, and I will have publicly shamed one of my tenants at the top of my lungs once I realized who was stupid enough to park illegally behind the building. Yes, I could have just let the car get towed, but I instead drug the offending resident’s ass out of bed to move their vehicle (which had to be jump started) and made them apologize to the tenant whose space they occupied.

Good fucking gracious, how long is it going to take for this triple caramel mocha latte to kick in this morning??

How to Charm Me.

Be the sweetest, funniest caretaker a girl could work with, and call me for no other reason than to say that you’ve signed the letter of permission that will let me go forward with the adoption of Kiba, my soon-to-be wonder greyhound.

Poetry Nostalgia.

Does every college girl go through an arty phase? I do have a sincere love of photography, and death - death! - awaits the person who tries to mess with my beloved Nikon SLR, but whatever possessed me to think that I could be a poet?

I was possessed by Tori Amos.

I found a notebook lying around my apartment containing a few lyrical oddities from my college years. However, I was smart enough to never reveal these poems that in some moments are, at best, very thinly veiled references to Amos’ own lyrics. I suppose I could dodge the charge of plagiarism by saying imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I’ll do it instead by making sure these pages never see the light of day again.

Okay, I’m being a little harsh. I found one unfinished piece that I can honestly claim is my individual work:

She came into the room full of purpose.
50 years old in a tattered wedding gown;
Too many years with a tattered heart.

The crowd split open like a wound to let her pass,
And she came right at me with an uplifted finger and a cruel stare.
She leaned in close and laid that finger upon my lips.

(Your slip is showing, I thought.)

There you have it. Instant inspiration for your day.