AdventureWorld

I See London, I See France

 I See AG’s Underpants!
This afternoon as I was walking down the hall, coming from the bathroom, I felt something in the leg of my pants and I thought dear gods please don’t let that be the toilet seat cover because that would just be the most disgusting thing ever. So I sidestepped into the copy room and shoved my arm all the way down my pants to retrieve the mysterious mass.
At least it wasn’t the toilet seat cover; it was a pair of underpants ..and not the ones I was wearing. Evidently a pair of silky boyshorts were clinging to the inside of my pants leg ALL DAY and I didn’t even noticed it until they lumped up.
In between laughing my ass off and gasping for air I told my RightHandWoman I had just fished some underpants out of my pants leg and what if they had fallen out onto the floor while I was standing up doing that presentation.
There is no way one could handle having one’s underpants fall out on the floor during one’s presentation. One could die of embarrassment though. Most assuredly.
Attack of the killer underpants!
RHW and I said it could only be worse if they were red and lacy ..or crotchless, of course, but that wouldn’t be readily apparent unless they fell just so. And of course, if they were mine they would fall just so as in spread-eagled. And then when I tried to quickly kick them under the table out of sight I would most likely make a hasty miscalculation of force and trajectory and they would soar through the air in a slow motion arc and land on the CEfuckingO's head.
Now that would be A Really Bad Thing and A Half.

Black Holes and Revelations

I've thought so much about my trip to Alaska and all the things that happened, things that I know weren't just random. And I think I see how they tie together and how they fit into the bigger picture.
Like this whole thing that was going on with connections. I talked to meebs about it last night, what I thought the message was. It was an interesting revelation conversation.
Someday I'm going to figure out how to write it down because I really don't want to lose any of these things. Especially, two things of connection perfection that blew my mind.
I know they're important, even the things I don't yet fully understand. I've got a ways to go on the understanding part. I remain, as ever, slightly confused. I like to think of it as part of my charm, something like endearing befuddlement.
And, yeah, ShagQuestAlaska was as unsuccessful as ShagQuest2004, ShagQuest2005, and ShagQuest2006 (there is no ShagQuest2007 for patently obvious reasons). But it could've happened for whatever the fuck that's worth. And I don't think it was just the age difference, I think it was also because I was overcome with that ballbreaking fatigue. It was like BAM, suddenly outta nowhere I just hit the wall. There's some bad fucking timing for you.
And I'll be damned if I'm going to end this Accidental Celibacy with some half-ass, limping to the finish line fuckery. Uh-uh, no way--I'm coming out with a bang, baby, a big motherfucking  BANG. <----pun not intended but I'll take  it
And then there's going to be a hootenanny and a hoedown. Heh. Hoedown.
I did get a goodbye kiss, though, the first kiss I've had in five (but who's counting?) years. Oddly enough, hell did not freeze over; swarms of locusts did not descend upon the fields.
Also, I met a hypnotist. Yes, really.
And, no, he did not make me cluck like a chicken.

Do You Believe In Magic?

Someone was kind enough to share words my friend wrote about me in a letter. He said I had shown him that life could be lighthearted. Nothing has comforted me more than hearing the lovely things he said about our relationship, but that part especially. I was so glad to have someone confirm for me that he was as happy as I thought he was in those last days of his life.
We talked on the phone a lot in that last month. I had no idea he was dying, nobody did, because that's the way he wanted it ..and he thought he had more time. And he still had hope that this time he just might beat the bad hand he'd been dealt.
I know that he was happy and hopeful about the future and we were laughing our asses off even when we were talking about heavy stuff. We were good with the dark humor.
We always believed that there was something mystical and magical about the way we found each other. It's something we talked about often--the string of "coincidences" that brought us together, and later the parallels of our lives that we kept discovering, and even the adversity that had forged our friendship like steel.
So, what better way to honor his memory on this, the anniversary of our last day together in this world, than with something funny and mystical and magical. He would like that.
A couple of nights before he died we were having a downright riotous time on the phone. Then suddenly (and delightfully randomly!) he let out a roar like nothing I'd ever heard in my life. I spit water halfway across the room and then I was laughing so hard I could barely get the WTF was that all about?? out of my mouth.
But it was the most magnificent, totally non-human sound I'd ever heard. I couldn't believe a sound like that could come from a person.
It was a lion's roar but not like any one I'd ever heard but I'd never heard a lion roar except in movies and it sounded nothing like movie lions. No, this was really different in a way that I find impossible to describe. There was something more tonal yet at the same time deep. There was something that sounded like longing.
But he was laughing, too, loose and easy laughing--the very best kind.
This was just days before I was taking off for Botswana and I told him when I heard the real thing I'd let him know if he nailed it or not.
At Kwetsani, my cabin was way above the ground (as shown here). I really loved that place, I think the best of all. One night I was really sad thinking about when I came back to the Real World he was not going to be here ..and he had been a really big part of my life. I was starting to cry when all of the sudden a lion roared from right beneath my cabin!
It sounded e-fuckin-xactly like Jcube's roar. Powerful but kinda plaintive, with that odd tonal note of longing. I just about peed my pants of course, but with delight, not with fear. I literally clapped my hands over my gobsmacked mouth in utter amazement.
And the lion didn't stop. He stayed there for ages roaring and roaring.
The next morning my guide Dan came to get me and he asked me how I liked having my lion-friend roaring under my window all night. He said they'd never had a male lion come into camp like that, they'd all been talking about how strange it was. Then he laughed and said we think the lion came to serenade you in the moonlight.
Indeed.

My Mr. Big

I think I was always drawn to the Carrie and Mr. Big storyline because it reminded me so much of a six-year on again off again, sometimes-lovers- sometimes-lovers-attempting-to-be-friends relationship that I once had. This was before Ex-Beloved was my Beloved so at that point in my life my Mr. Big was the undisputed Love of My Life. 
He came in and out of my life and if I was involved with someone else then we did the just friends thing. But that didn’t really work because even as “friends” there was just too much heat between us. I’ve never cheated on a boyfriend and didn't want to start . You know what happened to Carrie when Mr. Big came back into her life and she fucked up her relationship with that guy from Northern Exposure—that’s exactly what I didn’t want to happen.
We weren’t “just friends” and we couldn’t make it so just because we decided that’s what we would be. So mostly we had an intermittent relationship, in between our other relationships. Sometimes it would last a long time, sometimes not so much. Sometimes we would even say it was over but it kept on being not really over for ages.
And it was so easy to start up again. One time we hadn’t seen each other for a couple of years and we picked right back up like we’d never been apart for a day. That was ten years ago (ten years?! Holy crap!)and that was the last time we were together.
We were always long-distance, first San Francisco and Boston, then San Francisco and New York. So, when you’re in that situation you're never together for long periods of time so it’s really hard to know how it would be if you were. We spent a lot of time apart, pining for each other big-time, interspersed with too-short times of togetherness, times of really hot sex and loads of romance. It’s incredibly intense in a good kinda way. But it's not Real Life in the ordinary day-after-day way.
So even though I was so into him it hurt I could also see the reality of the unreality of the situation. And anyways, he was a total commitment-phobe for almost all of those years and when he was finally ready to co-locate and co-habitate I was long gone. It took him too long to decide and by the time he did I had already decided his hesistancy told me all I needed to know about needing to move on.  And had. I had turned down the job that would have relocated me near him. As I told Fabulous Gay Friend, it was our Sliding Door.
Eventually we both moved on to long-term relationships that didn't make it. He called me out of the blue every so often and we had a few laughs and caught up on each other’s lives.
So, here’s the spooky part. It was at lunch yesterday that I was telling FGF all about my Mr. Big. I don’t even know how it came up. I hadn’t even thought about him in a long time. Oh, and now I have to digress or the next part won’t make any sense.
I give people fun nicknames all the time and years ago I nicknamed him El Papel Grande de Reciclado because he was also the Mr. Big of the recycled paper world. So that was my bad Spanish nickname for him. He was a Marketing Genius Exec who was way ahead of the curve with the whole green thing. He had anticipated that recycled paper products were about to be really big so he had become the biggest fish in the pond. 
I called him El Papel or sometimes just El. He would call me and at his hello I would say El Papel Grande just like Tuco said Blondie in The Good The Bad and The Ugly. It was our shtick.
He called me Princess Mylastnameinspanish de Hislastnameonia (which was what we called the big old farm he owned in the country). So princess of his country. He most often just called me The Princess which is the funniest nickname ever considering the fact that I was a total tequila swilling cigar-smoking little wildass back in the day. It was the epitome of incongruity. [I bet Oldest Brother just said no kidding]
So, last night I checked my messages and there was El Papel himself imitating me imitating Tuco. Looking for The Princess. My jaw was fell agape so hard that my ears popped. I was going to replay it but the phone rang before I could do it and it was him.
We proceeded to relive all our most zany adventures and other stuff. We agreed that if killer sex could really kill we would have died a thousand deaths that Tall Ships weekend in Boston. Yes, really. It was nice to remember that I used to be such a playa considering that I’ve been sitting on the bench for so long. *sigh*
And even better was talking about the unbelievably hilarious things. He reminded me of how we’d exited the subway one time to whiff the most god-awful stench of rotten fish. I didn’t even say a word I just took off running as fast as I could go, flying down the fucking street like I was running for my life ..while all around me people were looking like WTF? Then I remembered I didn’t know where I was going because I had never been in downtown Boston in my life so I stopped. Then I realized there was somebody playing guitar just like Carlos Santana ..so of course it was Carlos Santana because nobody can play the guitar like Carlos Santana except the man his own damn self. So we hung out and got our groove on (the fish smell was waaay down the street).
And there were tons of other stories about all kinds of things and people who had been a part of our coupledom. The Lake People who had this parott that was always sitting on my shoulder ..or on my head. The Lake People thought it was cute, I thought it was really creepy. But he was a really mean parrot and I feared he was going to peck my eye out if I tried to shoo him off. In every photo taken at their house I look like Long John fucking Silver. El Papel is going to try to find them and send them to me.
We laughed and laughed and he kept saying you sound so good. I told him yeah, I am good.
And then I laughed because I realized I actually meant it.

Like Jet Li

I thought I’d write a quick post before I run away with Brisco. I have to do it now because later I’ll be imbibing a few sippy cocktails that will most likely contain 1 part mixer to 15 parts tequila so I might be slurring my keypad. Heh. Just kidding—I never use more than 14.
So, this week has been crazy. Literally. You probably won't believe me if I tell you and I have to speak in code which might be hard to follow (if you didn’t have the secret decoder ring). And that might just be really annoying. So I'll try my best.
Yesterday I just happened to be wearing a  kimono top. This may be relevant. Or perhaps not at all. 
And yesterday I had to thwart Someone’s attempt to act on some vindictiveness (against others, not me) about some perceived gross injustice. Trying to reason with Someone got me nowhere and the situation became dire indeed.  Finally I had to physically block Someone from gaining access to where she wanted to go. (And Someone has recently done some really disturbing things of the boiling bunny variety).
So, Someone tried to take off running around me, and although I may be gimped up I still have the reflexes of a Chinese ping pong player and I was right in front of her, blocking her path so fast it stopped her dead in her tracks out of sheer surprise. 
But then she reached in her bag and I had no idea what she was going to pull out of there but, of course, the thought did cross my mind that it just might be a gun.
Later, while I was talking to the police officers, Someone turned to my friend and said “is she a ninja?”. When my friend told me this I laughed so hard that the whole hullabaloo was almost worth it.
Well, not really.
Because mostly it was really not funny at all.

It’s Not Mean If It’s True

When I work with clients in leadership development much of it is about helping them develop self awareness about how they show up as a leader. Many clients are surprised to learn that their “strengths” can often hurt them more than their “weaknesses”. I call it overplayed strengths.
Years ago, through feedback from a friend/associate, I realized that being too straightforward was my overplayed strength. I valued being a straight-shooter so much that I didn’t realize that I was putting a little too much shot in the straight-shooter for some folks. An AK47 is pretty straightforward, too, but nobody likes to be on the receiving end of that action.
So, I had to learn to temper my honesty with finesse and timing and a zillion other things that one must consider when treading in such a delicate dimension. And that's a very good thing and I'm glad I changed. I like the kinder, gentler AdventureGirl way more than I liked my younger self.
Anyways, the other day I remembered something I’d read by a favorite writer who was talking about how mean his friend’s Korean aunties are, how they are constantly criticizing his friend. But the aunties don’t see it that way at all, they believe they are just telling her the truth for her own good so it’s not being mean. 
Of course, that made me think how easy it would be if you could just tell people the unvarnished truth. Just think about it—when that trampy looking, always-asking, attention-sucking co-worker asks you if her outfit makes her look like a whore you could say “You look like a five dollar hand job”.  Because it’s not mean if it’s true. And, after all, it's for her own good.
And when your friend says for the fiftieth time today that she thinks you don’t really like her new boyfriend wouldn’t it be such a relief not to have to wrack your brain to think up some evasive answer that isn’t also total bullshit. Ah, to be able to simply say “No, I don’t really like him but I’m not the one dating him so it really doesn’t matter. So, get over it. Please.”
And when some Big Eyed Innocent fronting back-stabber says I don’t know why you don’t trust me you could say “Well that would probably be because I really find it hard to trust people who motherfuck me, and I find it particularly difficult to trust people who motherfuck me like clockwork and then insist that my lack of trust is simply some kinda character flaw on my part ..and then demand that I give them a hug.  Go figure. Motherfucker!” [See also What Samuel L. Said]
See, I could do this all day. It’s cathartic. It’s fun. It’s better than a trip to Disneyland.
Feel free to join in. Let your Korean Aunty flag fly.

How Jenna Jameson Ruined My Life

Note to blog-reading Oldest Brother: I’m going to be talking about poon grooming—don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Note to Deadwood pals:  I think this one's for you.

Sometime during my sexual coma of the past few years porn became mainstream (yes, I did say years and, also, shutup). I blame this porn mainstreaming on the ubiquity of Jenna Jameson. She should have won a Golden Globe for Omnipresence. 
Now, although I’m personally not a fan of the porn, I could care less about it’s popularity or who or how many “regular people” have gotten into it--except when it has a direct effect on my life. As in when it leads to a burgeoning mainstream expectation that non-porn-star women must have porn-star-poonicured hoohas.
What the fuck?! I’m anxious enough about my imminent ..uh.. deflowering without the added pressure of this fucking nonsense. And now, evidently, just ripping off most of your pubes with hot wax isn’t even good enough—now you’ve got to trim your trim like a topiary.
People! For fucking fuck’s fucking sake! We’re talking about poontang, not Pearl Fryar’s garden. Also, I think I want to go back into my coma.   
And, boys, what’s up with wanting us real life girls to to sport a hootchie-cootchie-hooha?  I think you need to stop gazin’ and get to grazin’ if you know what I mean and I think you do.  If you just want to hang around looking at it they’ve got magazines for that ..lots of them. For $4.95 you can look at that thang forever. Oh, wait ..maybe that's what started this nonsense. Nevermind ..and put.the.magazine.down.
Anyways, I’m not waxing anything but my surfboard. It may be a long cold summer.
Edited to add:
Don't get me wrong--I'm no granola girl, I'm all about the basic grooming ..a little prudent pruning is a good thing. After all, no one wants to look like she has a small animial hiding in her panties. And, also as Monkeygirl so wisely pointed out (after I posted that creepy picture of myself) I'm going to scare all the boys away if I don't watch out.

A Lesson From A Greek Goddess

My tiny Baby Greek Goddess niece is not just the prettiest baby girl ever but she is also perhaps the smartest sprog in the world, at least in the 0-1 year old category.  She says a lot of words and she’s not just babbling—she knows what she’s saying.  Of course her cleverness captivates me even more than her prettiness.
My favorite thing BGG did was demonstrate how she knew the difference between “that” and “this” ..which interestingly enough led me to a  Life Lesson™.   The Universe speaks through my teeny-ninesy BGG.  Go fucking figure.
BGG was very earnestly going about showing me the difference between “that” and “this”.  She's very keen on the fact that she gets the difference and wanted to make sure I got it, too.  (By the way it was so adorable I could hardly stand it—watch auntie AG go all squishy with bebe-love.)
So, BGG will point to something she wants and say “that” as in “that is what I want” and then when she actually has it in her little mitts she will hold it up and say “this” as in “this is what I have”.   And when she does this she does it with the seriousness of a teacher explaining a complex lesson—her wee face is the very portrait of earnest endeavor.  She stares at you with her big hazel eyes until you acknowledge that you get it ..then she stares at you a little longer with a look of mild skepticism ..and later she repeats the lesson in a different scenario to make sure you understand all applications of the concept.
She also understands (better than many adults) that you don’t always get to make  “that” your “this”.  As she was demonstrating this notion The Universe snuck in a Life Lesson™.  Crafty bastard--crafty bastard meaning The Universe, not BGG.
BGG was in front of an open china hutch going after a “that” that happened to be a highly breakable cup.  No, I said, “this” and handed her a plastic cup.  She looked at the china cup on the shelf and the plastic one in her hands.  She pondered her predicament.  She had asked for “that” but she got “this”.  What to do?
She didn’t cry the way babies often do when they can’t have what they want.  She just turned the cup over in her little hands and took a pretend-sip out of it.  Then looked at it like hhhhmmm maybe this is alright even though it’s not “that”.   She held it up to me and said “this” in her clear little voice—“this” like acceptance of it’s not what I wanted but it’s what you gave me and it’s ok.
And then she really spooked me. She said “thank you”.

Tito, GoGo, and Jermaine

This is one of my favorite Christmas photos from a kids’ Christmas party many years ago. The little brothas in the photo are the two kidlets that I mentored from under-funded schools in “bad” neighborhoods. Schools that cranked out not one iota of hope but lots of gangstas, pimps, and drug-dealers ..by the time they were just a few years older than my Crew of 2.
My guys were just ten and nine at the time and I was in a program that matched business people with high-risk kids to try to give them some chance at some kind of better future. The little fuckers were a handful, I won’t spin any Hallmark movie of the week bullshit, but they did ok with a lot of help and a little bit of tough love. The tough love wasn’t that tough, don’t worry—AdventureGirl has always had a soft spot for the kiddos and wouldn’t ever be mean to them. I know firsthand how meanness just grinds a kid into a pitiful pulp; meanness ain’t never going to lift anybody up.
So let me begin at the beginning. They loved Michael Jackson and loved to listen to my old albums and dance--this was back in the day when Michael was still a marvel of a dancing machine not a marvel of incredible fucking weirdness. (Hell, even Fred Astaire said MJ was the best natural born dancer he’d ever seen.) And I was all about the dancing, too, being  just fresh out of college at a party school where dancing beat out studying all the time. 
My Crew of 2 thought I was mighty fly. So as a reward when they paid attention and studied hard we’d bust a move to Michael.  They’d say “look at me I’m Michael!” And I’d say “ nah, I think I’m Michael -- you’re more like ..Jermaine ..and you—you’re like Tito."  They knew it was just fun and they’d scream at me “girl, why you so crazy!”. Thus they were nicknamed Tito and Jermaine.
But when they were little shits I’d threaten to put on my old GoGo’s album instead of Michael ..and when they continued to be little shits I’d put the album on and start singing “can you hear them they talk about us..” and dance like a Young Republican at her debutante ball. Ergo, Tito and Jermaine nicknamed me GoGo.
Tito, Jermaine, and GoGo were some kind of trio. I even climbed a infinitesimally high utility pole for those little goober-heads.  I noticed that I never did see a playground at their school and they said they didn’t have one. I was in the telecommunication industry at the time so I got the big idea that our construction boys could probably build a kick-ass playground and threw down the notion to them to volunteer a weekend to do it. 
They said they’d do it if I’d do a cable splicing job with them. This job required me to climb to the top of that pole and then hang in a “swing” to do the splice. Of course, I said bring it on boys.
On the day in question every telecommunications crew in the greater Dallas metroplex just happened to take their break beneath that fucking pole. It was killer scary but I did it ..to more applause than I ever got in all the brainiac presentations I’ve ever done in my whole career. The construction crew nicknamed me "Killer".
And Tito and Jermaine got a playground that very weekend.
Merry Christmas, my now-grown-up little brothas. I hope you got that better life. I would love to know.   

Smells Nothing Like Teen Spirit

Today, my ace assistant Monkeygirl sent me an email asking me if it was possible to put real human pheromones in body lotion. No preface, no context, no why she’s wondering about such a random thing--just a one question email about something unrelated to anything.
It’s so very Monkeygirl. I adore her beyond description.
After some back and forth on email she came into my office waving the body lotion in question. Body lotion with alleged real human pheromones that someone gave her as a gift. (What's up with that? I wondered but Monkeygirl was too hell-bent on resolving the whole human pheromone in lotion question to be bothered with an explanation)
When I explained to Monkeygirl where real pheromones come from and how nasty and probably downright impossible it would be to put that in body lotion we screamed eeeewww! and I pretend-vomited and then I started googling “pheromone plus lotion”.
Then I read all the truly creepy pheromone-concoction advertisements to Monkeygirl in a combination of my best Mr. Science and phone sex operator imitations.  For the loosely-based-on-fact “facts” I would be in Mr. Science mode. For the smarmy satisfied customer testimonials I tried to be all deep-throaty. We laughed and laughed.
Then Monkeygirl threw the lotion at me and demanded I smell it, which was about the last thing I wanted to do, which comes as no surprise I’m sure. But anything for Monkeygirl.
So, I smelled it and told her it smelled like Old Lady. Monkeygirl looked at me like WTF so then I said you know that kind of talcum-powdery fragrance that only old ladies wear. Then I suggested that perhaps this lotion was indeed for old ladies. Like maybe they rubbed it on before they hit Safeway to get the old dudes’ attention.
Then Monkeygirl had to sniff it too and declared that it was definitely Old Lady. The she suggested that she was going to get rid of it by giving it to somebody else. I said "Monkeygirl! You cannot re-gift Old Lady pheromone lotion for fuck’s sake!"
Monkeygirl put on her innocent face and said she wasn’t going to re-gift it, she was just going to give it away. I told her I say to-may-to, you say to-mah-to and you better call this whole thing off because who the hell wants Old Lady pheromone lotion-- re-gift or sly “giveaway”.
Then Monkeygirl decided she would leave it in the bathroom so somebody could just take it if they wanted it. I reminded her that if one of our (olfactory-impaired) co-workers did actully take it then we would have to smell that shit all day long.
I’m happy to report that no one is getting the Old Lady pheromone lotion ..unless the janitor snags it out of the trash and gives it to his unfortunate wife, who will be so insulted that she will probably divorce him within the week.