That’s what we authors are always working for, that personal connection with the reader. It’s what makes all the unpaid hours, mostly spent blogging for a book deal, worthwhile.

Dear Nancy,

I wanted to write and thank you personally for your kind note. My editor at SPAQ!XY passed your email on to me this morning, and I’m very gratified that “Dry Cleaning Receipt for Zack the Lego Maniac” found such a favorable response with you. That’s what we authors are always working for, that personal connection with the reader. It’s what makes all the unpaid hours, mostly spent blogging for a book deal, worthwhile.

It was so kind of you to take time from your doubtlessly lucrative professional life to let me know how my short piece brightened your day. To many readers, a 850-word piece like “Dry Cleaning Receipt” may seem like something that I’ve simply tossed off effortlessly. In fact, flash fiction is the most demanding of the literary arts, one that requires the author to balance intimacy, immediacy, and a nighttime job at Happy Donut.

You mentioned in your letter that you are a sales representative for a medical supplies firm. That sounds like an interesting profession. Do you know how much I made last year? And I went to Columbia! But then, life is funny. I don’t suppose you are hiring now, what with the bad economy. It’s just something to consider.

In answer to your question, I am currently living in Ohio, though I still love New York. In fact, I’ve been hoping to go back soon and visit some old college friends. Are you living in Manhattan or Brooklyn? Most of my friends are in Manhattan these days, but of course if I had a place to stay in Brooklyn I could just take the subway. I also do pieces on commission.

Thank you again for your thoughtful comments. I’m so gratified to be a regular contributor to SPAQ!XY, a fine journal that more than makes up in prestige for what it doesn’t pay in money. And it’s the support and encouragement of readers like you that I value the most. I hope to hear from you again soon, over email, or in person, or perhaps via PayPal.

Best wishes,

Your favorite author

**

Original art by Ilyse Magy.

***

Please submit your own funny writing to funnywomen AT therumpus dot net. See first: Funny Women Submission Guidelines and/or elissabassist.com.

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I tell myself I will be a “real writer” when I receive $1.00 for my writing. In exchange for time and effort and vulnerability, I want more than self-satisfaction; I want money. I want to stop comparing Walgreens’ brand prices with name brand prices.

In my Interview with Elaine Showalter, I asked her how to be a “real writer”:

Rumpus: In her review of Jury of Her Peers, Sarah Churchwell (who studied with you at Princeton) said you gave her “the single most influential piece of professional advice [she’s] ever received: ‘Write to get paid.’” Writing for money seems inconceivable to me; your advice encourages me, but most magazines and the Internet deflate me. If more writers are writing a) disposable content and b) for free, how can writers find valuable work that pays?

Showalter: “I told Sarah Churchwell (and all my graduate students), ‘Learn to write so well that you can be paid for it, rather than so badly that someone has to be paid to read your work.’ Many graduate students in English deliberately make their writing so obscure and pedantic that it is unreadable. But actually getting paid as a freelance journalist demands hard work and luck, as you know, and these days the market is tighter than ever.”

Money’s not everything; it often forces the creator to compromise with detached, if not stupid, people and make concessions about a piece of work that feels equal to, if not greater than, a child. David Lynch earned a lot of money making Dune, but it wasn’t worth it to him because he didn’t have control of his product. He said of the experience: “I learned I would rather not make a film than make one where I don’t have final cut.”

I am not the first to suggest that the intersection of writing, money, and having final cut is self-publishing. But my hope is to be among the first who ceaselessly and shamelessly promote the trend.

I self-published If Not for Everything Else as an experiment in making money for what I like to do everyday. Also, no one would publish it. Maybe no one thinks it is good. Or maybe some people will connect with it. Either way, I don’t want to live in a world where my writing can’t get out there because no one puts it out there. I will put it out there.

Here’s what I did:

- I bought a domain name on GoDaddy.com. (The thinking here is to give the story its own space; like a book that is a single entity, so is my URL.)

- I paid extra for hosting.

- I purchased a website builder, even though most Macs come with iWeb and sites like WordPress and Tumblr are free.

- I received free editorial services from people who take love over money. I’ll never be able to repay Julie Greicius for what she gave me in hours and skill. Unless I become super famous.

- I took my friend Ilyse Magy, a talented designer, out to sushi and paid her pittance for original illustrations. (I believe text should always have an aesthetic.)

- I put a commanding PayPal button on the front page that says “Donate.”

- I asked people to donate.

- No really, donate.

- I plan to do everything I can to promote the site (like what I’m doing now). While I hope a few people never read it, I hope everyone else does.

This wasn’t my idea. It was Susannah Breslin’s idea, as told to me by Tracy Clark-Flory of Salon.com. After I asked Tracy if this piece could work in any piecemeal form on Salon, she asked, “Why don’t you self-publish?” This was the best rejection/advice ever. The most common response I received from editors was, “I just don’t see where it fits.” For every time an editor says this, my response will be, “Why don’t you self-publish?” Math is not my forte, but I imagine that many unpublished pieces remain unpublished because they don’t fit neatly into the excess of fiction-geared literary journals or reportage-based magazines. If Not for Everything Else is mainly nonfiction, but I changed some names and reordered events and exaggerated a great deal and also lied and at times told the truth in a way I’m sure to regret and plagiarized in a way I hope comes off as “paying homage.” What genre is this? I just don’t see where it fits. And that’s why I self-published.

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I never thought I’d get over him. I was sure we’d marry, have vision-impaired children, and one day, I hoped, stop hurting each other.

After promising never to speak to each other again (no, but really this time), I contacted him for this interview.

***

Dan: You know, we did a decent job of not talking for a long time, so I hope this doesn’t ruin our record.

Elissa: This doesn’t count. Shall we begin? I have lots of questions stored up for you.

Dan: Yes, but I am nervous. To be honest, I am a little worried that I won’t be able to perform to your expectations…

Elissa: Dan, you fail to perform to my expectations every time. So, take comfort that it’ll be my expectation.

Dan: That reminds me…I left my phone out on the table at one point at some party, or someone was looking through the pictures I have stored on it, and they held it out to me, “Hey, you just got a text message from someone named…Garbage.”

“Oh, that’s just Elissa. What did it say?”

Elissa: I guess this interview has started. One thing I’d like to say is that I hate you the most for corrupting my grammar. You know about our inside joke of making fun of people who don’t know the difference between “your” and “you’re” by intentionally misusing them? Now, because of you, I mix them up unintentionally. It’s made me a nicer person though. And my pool for dating has widened.

Dan: So you’re settling?

Elissa: Or having different priorities.

Dan: [I’m editing a paper and this kid], in the same sentence, confused tactical with tactful. And intimidate with intimate…

Elissa: Same in my book.

Elissa: Ha! Since I turned 22, I’ve become less of a virgin.

Dan: Oh. Well. I fucked up fewer/less the other day.

Elissa: I sent a professional email saying “their” instead of “they’re.”

Dan: NO. Really?

Elissa: Yes. Yes! I swore never to tell you.

Dan: I am glad that you swore to never tell me. Historically, any promise made between us is a sure failure.

Elissa: Dan, I promise we’ll never not love each other again. Oh wait, you never loved me in the first place…which is something I would like to address.

Dan: I don’t know why I didn’t love you. I just…didn’t.

Elissa: Is this why we never had sex? Or was that because I was crazy?

Dan: I mean…

Elissa: You made me that way? Correct.

Dan: We didn’t have sex because it was clearly a trap. When you were a virgin, it was a mega-trap.

Elissa: Not if you actually cared about me, but your logic is your logic.

Dan: And you might be thinking, “The second mouse gets the cheese.”

Elissa: Definitely not thinking that.

Dan: This is all related to the love thing. Despite everything that I have put you through, it was just not ok to have sex without actually caring for you, caring about you, and loving you in the way that I should have. It seems like a double standard, to sleep with some idiot chick, and then refuse to sleep with someone who’s actually a real and great person, where there is a lot of chemistry and feeling. But viewed through my eyes, there was too much on the table with you. The stakes going into the bedroom were too high.

Elissa: So why not make it all easier by just being in love with me?

Dan: Some of it might have to do with the circumstances surrounding the first time we hung out, specifically that crazy bitch who came up and started yelling [Ed. note: on our first “date,” a hurt young woman interrupted what would be our first kiss by yelling, “Fuck you, Dan! Fuck you for fucking me and never calling!”].

Elissa: I think that’s a copout.

Dan: Regardless, things didn’t really get started on the right foot. The embodiment of our relationship would have been a horrible dancer, with two left feet. Anyway, I really don’t know why I never loved you. I think you pissed me off too much. For example, when I first met you, you prided yourself on being really good at flirting. Only…you weren’t good at it. That’s annoying.

Elissa: No way! I am super good at it!

Dan: What you considered flirting seemed to be confused with touching and overt(ly naïve) innuendo. Although, your flirting provided a nice counterbalance to your attractive traits.

Elissa: This clarifies a lot about my life in general. What if maybe you never loved me because we never lived in the same city for more than three months? Because that’s something I like to tell myself.

Dan: That could also have to do with it. I also think that flirting with you sometimes felt like playing with a puppy. Lots of energy without any particular direction, light wrestling, and you’d have no idea what to do with the stick if I threw it for you.

Elissa: I’d know what to do with the stick—

Dan: No, you wouldn’t. I felt old around you. I felt like I did drugs. I felt like a person who got drunk. I felt like an Adult. The problem was that I said shit like, “I won’t sleep with you.” This is maybe important because right then, you are freely allowed to compare yourself with other girls that I HAD slept with.

Elissa: I will forever hate those women. Also, this only explains the first few months of knowing each other.

Dan: Yeah, but every time after that, it was the same conversation over and over, only with another story added to the shoddy foundation. Not being in the same state sucked. Not being in the same grade sucked.

Elissa: Here’s where I am/was coming from: everything you’re saying revolves around your thoughts. According to Zen philosophy and my many years of therapy, thoughts aren’t “real.” All this information is new to me. Maybe not the first time you dumped me or the second or the third, but maybe before the fifth, I thought we could get over the past and be in a relationship based on the facts: chemistry, sexual tension, and Judaism. On paper, we were perfect for each other. And you’re only six months older than I am in real life.

Dan: I think you need to include grammar among the “facts.”

Elissa: I’m continually perplexed as to why you kept talking to me, for what turns out to be nearly five years. That fact alone made me think you loved me, or could love me, circumstances permitting. I wish you’d just cut me off the first time. Because I spent years, actual years, crying tears, actual tears, over you. Like the innocent girl you thought I was, I loved you innocently and deeply and fantastically. You knew this. And you knew how much pain I was in. And you let it go on. I thought that was you loving me. I was always begging you to let me give you a blow job because I was sure you’d love me soon enough.

Dan: And eventually, I came to love the blow job you gave me.

Elissa: As a feminist, this is all the stuff I’m against, how I turned against myself. There’s the idea that being in love makes you a better person; then there’s “I want you to be a better person, and then I’ll love you”; or, worse, thinking “I need to be a better person so then you’ll love me.” You helped me destroy me.

Dan: No, see, I disagree. No one you care about was strong from the start. No one made it through life without learning along the way. Do you think there is any room for a reinterpretation of destroy as galvanize?

Elissa: You can’t honestly think letting me give you a blow job and then handing me my coat two hours later, WITHOUT CUDDLING, is just you throwing me some hard knocks to be a better person.

Dan: Hey, you’re not the only one with regrets.

Elissa: Oh.

Dan: Also, you consistently freaked me out. And trying to gauge whether or not I was freaked out also freaked me out, in a really solid cycle.

Elissa: Oh.

Dan: Here is the thing: Everything that I have ever said or written to you about our past, and why we never fell into our destined love was, and will continue to be, speculation and theorizing. But I think the hurtful part of it is that I have never consciously been searching for an explanation that satisfies me. I have been rolling these ideas around and around through so many painstaking iterations with you to see if there is one that will ever satisfy you. Human behavior — you and I are no exceptions here — is too obnoxiously complicated to explain with simple energetic conservation equations or a set of rules of conduct. So I don’t know why I never loved you. I know why I never slept with you: it was a bad idea. And I know I always liked you. Even when I hated you, I liked you, and I still do. What’s there not to like? Seriously, what is there not to like? So chalk our failure up to timing, distance, me, my penis, you, your hymen, our history, or anything else. I think it’s probably all those things and none of them, which is SO FUCKING ANNOYING to write and actually mean.

Elissa: This is the first time you’ve moved me to tears without “I hate you and your stupid vagina” running between the lines.

Dan: That was some sort of horrifying catharsis for me, and I am sorry.

Elissa: What if we’ve had two separate relationships, and in the relationship I thought we had, I thought you needed to apologize, and I needed to forgive you and feel genuine release and understanding and transcendence? What if in my version of the relationship, all that just happened? I think we both know I constructed an elaborate fantasy love with you, á la Gatsby. You are Daisy. I fed our “love” all the time, decking it out with every feather you floated my way. So when you say you didn’t love me, I understand that on many levels. Because as much as I thought I loved you, I didn’t. Couldn’t. Because it wouldn’t be loving “you” but a made-up you. And sometimes we played equal parts in the fantasy, and you just balked when it got real. While you saw yourself as an Adult, I saw you as an Ideal. I often think I’ll never feel the way about anyone like I felt about you. And that’s probably true because you existed in my head. But it’s also probably true because it’s true.

Dan: Do you think we ever came close to understanding each other?

Elissa: Not even close until now, years later. This is something I suggest all people do with their exes: conduct a professional interview about why it all fell apart.

Dan: There are a lot of things that I learned from you.

Elissa: “Don’t date crazies.”

Dan: More like, the hubris to really truly believe that you will change the world in the way that you dream (also, having those ambitions in the first place) is a very, very important quality. Have we hit 650 words yet, by the way? [Ed. note: our original interview is over 6,000 words.]

Elissa: I have one final interview question for you. It’s two parts. 1) Why did you shower with my best friend? and 2) How could you not anticipate at the time of said shower that she and I would become best friends one year later and that you and I would date in the future and that I would be the type of person who would obsess over the whole situation for years to come?

Dan: I decline this question on the grounds that it is too hilarious.

Elissa: Fine. Do you think now maybe we can be normal to each other? Or is that too much to hope?

Dan: That is maybe the funniest thing you have said all night. It’s not too much to hope, but let’s not be too ambitious.

**

Original art by Ilyse Magy.

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You may think I am here to complain about living practically next door to a paparazzi favorite, but I have no beef with her. She keeps her trees trimmed, and the trash is always tied up neatly on Wednesday mornings. All she ever seems to throw out are Venti Starbucks cups, anyway—not, say, crack pipes or gently worn sable coats. You don’t read about her running over seniors with her SUV, or going to wild sex parties featuring DJs and cupcakes. In fact, she seems like a quiet lady. She and her entourage come in and go out of her triple locked steel gates with nary a crash. When the lights are dimmed, there’s nothing more to see, no matter how high-powered your binoculars are. Really, I am so used to residing 8.5 lots down from her that I’ve almost forgotten that she’s famous.

But there’s something I do have to say based on my experience of living 547 feet and 3 inches away someone whose face you may have seen on the cover of Star and Cable Guide: she’s real people. Except for the camera crews filming her every move, and the fact that she carries a puppy with her to places where I wouldn’t think to bring a dog, such as the Partially Burned Children Celebrity Roast and the United Nations General Assembly, she is gracious and down to earth—at least that’s what I can tell from the interview on ET in which she invited Mary Hart into her kitchen to make cheese enchiladas.

I took the kids trick-or-treating to her place once or twice last year. She left a bowl out with a bodyguard to make sure that children only took one or two mini KitKats at a time. She mixed in some Mounds. Lorca and Lemon agreed that it was good candy from a great star and classy lady.

But most of the time, I’m completely indifferent to her. We haven’t had the opportunity to become friends, obviously. We keep very different hours, and who among us really gets to know their neighbors? She may be starting to be acquainted with me, though. The other day, I think I saw a gleam of recognition from behind her Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses and she made a grunt that sounded something like, “Why hello, aren’t you the woman whose I Used to Be a Volvo Seat Cover grocery bag I admire so much?” And then her bodyguard ushered me out of the way.

I don’t think we could really be pals, not in the long run. We’re at such different stages in life. I have children and she has her career. I just know that if I brought her to my book club, everyone would fawn over her. They aren’t used to being in such close proximity to celebrity, the way I am, in my everyday life. Janet, in particular, would probably look at her and say, “You’re on that show with the dolphin, aren’t you? Have some maple fudge.”

Janet is always trying to push that maple fudge on everyone. Some of us are on the Master Cleanse here.

If my celebrity neighbor did want to become friends with me, though, I wouldn’t mind. She’s probably used to having yes men around all the time, but I’d treat her just like I’ve always treated her: like she’s a regular, normal human being who lives on a normal street and in a normal oversized house. We’d sit around drinking Venti Lattes and having our nails done by foreigners. I’d even tell her that I think she should dump that actor/rapper boyfriend of hers (the rumors about him and the hamster were probably not true, but I have it on excellent authority that the stories about the trumpeter swans are on completely solid ground). She probably wouldn’t like everything I had to say, but when you’re besties, you should be able to tell each other the truth. Even if one of you is stupendously famous. And the other is in a women’s correctional facility.

**

Original art by Ilyse Magy.

***

Please submit your own funny writing to funnywomen AT therumpus dot net. See first: Funny Women Submission Guidelines and/or elissabassist.com.

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I am in graduate school. Because I have nothing better to do, I wanted to prove my thesis. As research I observed some people and asked some questions about drinking and drugs and art. All of the people who appear in this study are of legal drinking age. Also I have changed their names. Also everything below is made up.

I began by reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It was hard, difficult, and took me a couple hours. And then, to confirm my data, I watched the movie. Then I watched Pineapple Express because it’s hilarious and also about drugs.

But let’s start with Hemingway. People take you more seriously if you open with Hemingway. Professors love Hemingway. Throughout my life, I have heard Hemingway referred to as an “alcoholic,” which qualifies him as a “tortured artist.” I should admit that I know more about alcoholism than I do about Hemingway.

Alcoholism is “bad.” Hemingway is “good.” The ability to hold two conflicting thoughts in one’s head is a sign of intelligence.

One theory says that Hemingway would not have been Hemingway without alcohol. The Hemingway we know is so thoroughly dripping with ethanol that it’s hard to imagine he wasn’t wrung out and poured into a frat boy’s red Solo cup when he died. On the other hand, we don’t know. What if Hemingway could have written more and better without alcohol? Maybe he would have written even more books, better books. Maybe he would have become the first woman President. Who knows.

And who, exactly, would want to read Hunter S. Thompson stripped of drugs? Actually, what would be left of Hunter S. Thompson if he were stripped of drugs? Maybe he would be a house-husband with a collection of novelty ties from his children and nothing interesting to say.

When I started applying for my MFA, I started asking questions about being a tortured artist. I grew up in a nice house with loving, understanding parents and a consistently kind older sister. I’ve only been on morphine once in my life, and I threw up. (That’s maybe a short story but not a novel.) I get migraines from loud music. I have allergies. I had whooping cough. In short, I am never going to be Hemingway or Hunter S. Thompson. My soul is tortured by nothing worse than congested sinuses. So either I can’t be a writer or I have to believe that one can do without the drugs. But let’s be honest. I bolster my confidence by asking myself questions like, “If in order to write anything worth reading, you have to become a depraved human being—should you really be a writer?”

You don’t have to answer. I know it’s a personal question.

The answer is yes.

And just to prove it, I researched a typical graduate student party:

“But I just find Carolyn Kizer to be so much more political than Carolyn Forché. Forché is, essentially, concerned with the private sphere of domesticity.” –John

“I really think if their poetry fornicated you would have a perfect word-baby of the political and the personal.” –Andrew

“Andrew! DRINK DRINK DRINK FLIP YOUR CUP FLIP YOUR CUP!” –Susie

Andrew chugs a beer and flips his cup in 7.9 seconds, winning the boat race for…

“TEAM AWESOME! …so as I was saying, I find that both Kizer and Forché transgress geopolitical boundaries…pass the lighter?” –Andrew

Hours later, like all good writers and graduate students, John takes notes of his social interactions.

“eating marmosets is like having sex with fruit

I need new shoelaces white no.39

the anemones the sea anemones

having fruit is like sexing marmosets”

John has passed out.

“I’m feeling inspired tonight.” –Andrew

“But we’re going dancing! Are you still coming dancing!?” –Susie

“Yeah. I’ll just drink a little bit but not get too wasted and then go home and write when I’m buzzed. I write really well when I’m buzzed.”—Andrew

After a few more drinks at the bar:

“Andrew! I LOVE THIS SONG!”

“Hang on. I’m texting myself a poem.”

**

Original art by Ilyse Magy.

***

Please submit your own funny writing to funnywomen AT therumpus dot net. See first: Funny Women Submission Guidelines and/or elissabassist.com.

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After the 2770 Rebellion of the Virginias, all of America (including American Swaziland) is controlled by the reanimated head of Senator Robert C. Byrd. Felicity thinks this is wrong, but how can she maintain her convictions when her grandpa, a political crony of Byrd’s, and her white supremacist friend Emily think differently? It’s up to Felicity to find a way to hold both love and loyalty in her heart–to do this, she’ll need a crossbow with a cyanide tip.

Felicity Starter Package: Felicity Doll, Robert C. Byrd head (container sold separately), Felicity’s Pet Ape, Brokaw….$69.95

Accessories: Felicity’s Crossbow, Boots, Gamma Ray-Resistant Helmet….$39.95

***

Meet Kirsten!

It’s 3000, and everyone is scrambling to live on the last part of the North American continent that’s not submerged underwater: New York State. Kirsten and her family are at the head of the pioneer trail, but they’ve got a lot of obstacles to endure along the way: Guatemalan pirates who, having lost all semblance of humanity after their food supply ran out, now resort to devouring all but the eyes and teeth of the men in any traveling party while leaving the women and children to die in the climatologically bizarre SuperCold; a rabid wolf whose disturbing image mysteriously travels the world, haunting the remaining members of the human race by reminding them of their hubris; a motorcycle gang of inveterate rapists who try to seduce Kirsten’s mother and then encourage Kirsten’s whole family to live on their “famine-resistant” commune; and Kirsten’s emaciated and raving grandfather, whom the family took for dead 25 years ago. It’s up to Kirsten to be brave and discover the true meaning of home while avoiding the deadly strain of a rapidly spreading virus.

Kirsten Starter Package: Kirsten Doll, Blind Junky-Prophet Who Foretells Planetary Rebirth Doll, Rusted Family Chevy…$79.95

Accessories: Kirsten’s Heat Vision Goggles, Kirsten’s Global Climate Change Emergency Raft….$49.95

***

Meet Addy, Josefina, and Kaya!

In 3300, all of the Learn-and-Share-and-Grow Ethnic Minority American Girl Dolls™ are packaged together to streamline liberal guilt on behalf of American Girl’s largely white consumer populace. Learn-and-Share-and-Grow Ethnic Minority American Girl Dolls™ can only be purchased all at once and must be played with all at once. Recommended rôles of play:

Scenario 1:

Addy: Doctor.
Josefina: Doctor.
Kaya: Doctor.

Addy is curing Josefina of a disease she contracted while fighting for Kaya’s employment rights–including a higher salary and the right to invoke Ancient Native American Spirits® in the workplace–at an Equality Now™ rally in New-New York.

Scenario 2:

Addy: Successful and Visionary Painter.
Josefina: World-Renowned Geneticist.
Kaya: Stay-at-Home Mother.

Kaya has elected to abandon her dual careers of Hyper-Botanist and iPhone Touch-Screen Developer to stay home with her Mixed-Race Child®. When Kaya realizes her Mixed-Race Child® has the mumps, she consults Josefina, who ethically engineers a disease-free embryo and implants it in Kaya. When the disease-free child is born, the Mixed-Race Child® has a new and healthy friend, which inspires the Mixed-Race Child® to get healthy herself. The New-New York Times publishes an article on the whole thing, and Addy paints what she feels about it. Addy gets a $10,000,000 commission from a wealthy Sotheby’s patron to paint more.

Scenario 3:

Addy: Open-Minded Coed.
Josefina: Kaya’s Lesbian Lover.
Kaya: Josefina’s Lesbian Lover.

Kaya and Josefina, an Aged Lesbian Couple™, teach Addy how to be a militant feminist.

Addy, Josefina, and Kaya Starter Package: Addy Doll, Josefina Doll, Kaya Doll, Changes of Clothes….$69.95

***

Meet Kat!

Kat is a modern American Girl doll! She’s designed to be just like you: your hair color, your eye color, your face shape, your interests, your insecurities, your girlish tendency to fantasize about a different world, your unrequited crushes, your sensitivities, your oft-repressed talents, the strange noises you make while you’re asleep! Send us your address and we will know just how to customize Kat!

Kat Starter Package: Kat Doll…$450.00

Accessories: Kat’s hairbrush….$12.00

**

Original art by Ilyse Magy.

***

Please submit your own funny writing to funnywomen AT therumpus dot net. See first: Funny Women Submission Guidelines and/or elissabassist.com.

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– Marina Abramovic

“In every ancient culture there are rituals to mortify the body as a way of understanding that the energy of the soul is indestructible. The more I think about energy, the simpler my art becomes, because it is just about pure presence.” – Marina Abramovic

“What makes it art? Context and intention.” – Judith Thurman

“The sense of purpose I feel to do something heroic, legendary, and transformative to elevate viewers’ spirits and give them courage. If I can go through the door of pain to embrace life on the other side, they can, too.” – Marina Abramovic

From “Walking Through Walls,” a profile of Marina Abramovic and her performance art by Judith Thurman, The New Yorker, March 8, 2010

***

I have a lot of respect for Marina. You might call her my muse. But, as you can see, I have taken the art of performance to another level. In order to elevate and inspire my audience, I have actually incorporated my art into my everyday life. This is something that not even Abramovic could do.

So, in welcoming you to this exhibition: a retrospective of My Life as Performance Art, I invite you to view each installation as a way for you to overcome your own insecurities and insufficiencies of spirit.

Installation #1: I call customer service on the phone. You cannot imagine, or perhaps you can, the pain of sitting immobile for hours at a time. Especially when you have to listen to a recording of a woman, her voice dripping with misplaced (and somewhat patronizing) orgasmic enthusiasm, and over what? Over the fact that you have telephoned the bank to resolve a problem with your monthly account statement. In this installation, Jillian sits at a desk, representing me at a time when I had to make just such a call to customer service. You may not know it, but Jillian has to go to the bathroom. And she really wants to check her Facebook page. This is part of the ordeal. She has to sit there listening to the customer service voice recording ad infinitum. It’s practically unbearable, no?

Installation #2: This installation represents an excruciating incident when my bathing suit top sprung off in front of a boy when I was sixteen. Here you will see Britney standing, partially nude, on a sunny day in July. A boy is there, pretending not to look at her exposed breasts. The humiliation is palpable.

Installation #3: The agony of our corporeal selves: I fart in front of my fourth-grade class. Young, vulnerable, pure, etc. – my innocence is destroyed when I accidentally let gas loose during class. Rather than stealthily providing relief, the gas announces itself to everyone present, rendering me an object of hilarity and derision. Here young Tiffany stands in for me, suffering the embarrassment over and over again so we can all overcome our cowardice.

Installation #4: The agony of our corporeal selves, cont’d: In which I am constipated while pregnant. How do we reconcile our immortal souls with our shitting, pissing, farting, bloating bodies? This is a question I address in this installation. Until I was pregnant, I was ignorant of the agonies of constipation. Here, Yuniqua, my doppelgänger, sits on a toilet trying to pass a stool the size of a baseball. The stool is also hard as a rock. She is nine months pregnant. She screams to her husband, who stands helplessly outside the door.

Installation #5: I stub my toe on my brother’s foot while playing tag. There is little in life that can compare to the pain of a stubbed toe. The indignity of receiving such an injury by impact with a big brother’s foot while playing tag – it’s almost unendurable. Ashley, representing me, will limp for the rest of the week.

Installation #6: I stub my toe by kicking my boyfriend’s motorcycle. This installation illustrates the fact that, although we think we are progressing forward, we really do not learn anything. So I stub my toe over and over again, suffering exquisite tortures. This time I, represented by Isabel, am in college and angry at my boyfriend. The motorcycle is not a forgiving object to kick. Isabel’s toenail will turn black and fall off. What have we learned from this?

Installation #7: I get my period again and again and again. A bloody painful mess every month, this ordeal must be suffered for decades, until it suddenly stops. But somehow, one misses the pain and mess. What does that say about us? Here, Patty sprays Shout^® on the soiled sheets and underpants and scrubs them in cold water. Very cold water.

Installation #8: I drive my car. Something I had yearned for as a child – driving then represented for me freedom and joy. Yet now I sit in traffic and there’s nothing good on the radio. I am terrorized by drivers who tailgate me and then cut me off. Representing me in this installation is Shawna. Her heart races; her blood pressure rises. We will be lucky if she makes it through the exhibition.

Installation #9: I pay my bills. This is the ordeal of the Sisyphean task. One pays and pays and yet the bills reappear the next month. And what does one get for all of this torturous effort? New shoes? A trip to the Caribbean? No, it’s all ephemeral things like liability insurance and heating oil. Here Tanya sits at a computer with pen and paper, struggling to make a dent in the infinite.

Installation #10: A trip to the dentist. Barbara sits in the dental chair, her mouth wide open, various instruments dangling out, while the dentist pokes and scrapes and inserts nasty-tasting chemicals. Barbara gags on her own spittle. She grunts amenably when the dentist asks her inane questions about her life. And, whoops, a cavity needs to be re-filled.

Installation #11: A trip to the gynecologist: The annual exam, a humiliating torment that we women submit to each year, and why? Because we are frightened. Frightened of cancer and venereal disease and all of the other horrors that the media and doctors confront you with to subdue you. Here Candice sits clad only in a paper gown, opening to the front, with her feet in medieval “stirrups,” and her doctor ready to insert a speculum which will open her vagina to ten times its natural size. The doctor will peer in and then stab Candice’s cervix with a stabbing tool. The Spanish Inquisition would pale in comparison.

Installation #12: Fear of mice. Belinda, representing me, will be stuffed in a small square room with a bowl of Cheerios. The Cheerios have suspicious brown pellets in them – mouse turd. Belinda will have to set mousetraps with peanut butter and SNAP – she will catch one. Now she has a mouse corpse: crushed, with obscenely bulging eyes and stiffly extended legs. The capper is the rodent tail, sticking out in vulgar defiance. It’s beginning to smell – what to do with it? Belinda must overcome fear and disgust over and over again in this, our final installation.

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Original art by Ilyse Magy.

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Please submit your own funny writing to funnywomen AT therumpus dot net. See first: Funny Women Submission Guidelines and/or elissabassist.com.

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I feel like I should let that be known before any more magicians try to pick me up in my favorite coffee place. Do I believe in magic? No. I do not.

I was waiting in line at Everyman coffee when this guy tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, “Do you like magic?”

I shook my head and stared at the chocolate croissant in front of me.

“Everybody likes magic,” he assured me and started doing a coin trick. He touched my hand a lot. The coin “thing” (hoax, sham, hornswoggle?) was followed by two or three card tricks. I can’t quite remember what happened next; I was a bit woozy and looking around for the nearest exit. Finally, “Magic Pete” tried to close the deal by pulling out a stack of blank business cards.

“I want to give you my number,” he said, “but . . . ” I stopped myself just short of saying, “. . . you can read my mind?” He smiled. It was that creepy “get ready for this, it’s going to blow you away!” smile that never fails to make me uncomfortable because whatever it is that is about to happen will most assuredly not blow me away.

“Uh-oh,” he said. Apparently, he had mistaken my look of discomfort for concern or interest. “There doesn’t seem to be any writing on this card!”

This is one of my biggest problems with magicians, clowns, and comedians. What are you supposed to do at that moment? Widen your eyes? Open your mouth into a cartoon “O” and look worried/turned on/constipated? Punch the guy in the stomach and make a break for it?

“But wait, don’t worry,” he said, raising his eyebrows. He took one of the blank cards and slid it through his hand. Then he made typing sounds. I think there was some whirring involved. He then repeated this act, seeming surprised that it “wasn’t working.”

This is my second biggest problem with magicians. They are crappy actors. Their acting is patronizing, insulting even. They shake their heads, wrinkle their foreheads, and say, “Are you sure that’s not your card?” They usually repeat this three times. After an exhausting expanse of seconds, their astonishment turns out to be a big set-up for the fact that the trick does work out, but not in the way you expected.

“This may not be your card, but look, your card is in your pocket!!!” They pull the card you chose out of your pocket and then look at you like they’ve just opened your wardrobe and showed you the snow falling in Narnia. And, now that I mention it, what the hell are they doing in your pocket? That’s the suburbs of Vaginatown. If they were able to insert a card into the suburbs without you even noticing, you can only imagine what might suddenly materialize in your downtown metropolis.

The whole thing makes me feel dirty. I know I’m supposed to be amazed and astounded, but I cannot help being older than six years old. And six-year-olds aren’t in their sexual prime.

The enchanted pick-up artist stared at me as I flashed back on the horrors on the Harry Blackstones of my youth. Finally, the whirring stopped and the card popped out of his hand. And what do you know? This guy’s name and number was on it! HOLY CRAP! I never would have expected that! Magic!??! And, what a turn on!

And what about that? Would he always be doing magic? Even in the bedroom? My mind reels over the creepy smiles and befuddled questioning that might go on while I was naked. Befuddled is not a reaction that I am looking for when my pants are off.

“Are you sure that’s not your orgasm? Are you sure? Are you really sure?” And then when it turned out “magically” to be my orgasm after all (it was behind my ear!), should I clap? Instead of smoking cigarettes, would we make balloon animals? What about the classic “Cups and Balls” trick for an encore?

This all seems rather unfair. I am sure that there are some very nice magicians out there.

But, my advice to Harry Houpenie, and all his rabbit-carrying friends, is to keep the magic tricks in your pocket when trying to date a lady. A little mystery is a good thing. A lot of mystery is a great thing. You disappearing altogether is better. And, most important, please don’t make typing sounds before giving me your number, or I’ll show you a trick that I’ve been working on called, “THE MAGICAL TRASHCAN.” The secret? It’s a dick (you) in a box (trashcan). Okay, I’m a jerk. But I don’t carry around props to prove it.

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Original art by Ilyse Magy.

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Please submit your own funny writing to funnywomen AT therumpus dot net. See first: Funny Women Submission Guidelines and/or elissabassist.com.

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Since she is a self-proclaimed Communist, your grandmother will have a housekeeper, whom she will degradingly call “The Domestic.” She will treat “The Domestic” only marginally better than Stalin treated peasants. Your grandmother will have spent much of her life as a poor immigrant worker, and therefore have total contempt for them. She will order “The Domestic” to mix you both gin and tonics while she talks glowingly of Trotsky and you dunk hard-boiled eggs into the lurid, vinegary Easter-egg dyes from one of those cardboard decorating kits they sell at Waldbaum’s. When your grandfather remarks that it’s inappropriate to serve gin to a nine-year-old child, your grandmother will snap, “So what good is being liberated from slavery in Egypt if you can’t make your own goddamn granddaughter a cocktail?”

Later, after you have finished decorating the Seder plate with your homemade electric green, purple, and magenta Easter eggs, you will sit down to a meal that marks the only time in the entire year when your grandfather will be allowed to get a word in edgewise. To help prepare him for such a momentous occasion, he will have a special book. The book will be covered in Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil to simulate silver-plating. It is a reform Haggadah–the official book telling the story of Passover–but you and your cousins will be under the impression that it is a thesaurus designed to help reacquaint your hen-pecked grandfather with the English language. He will read from the book and begin to tell the story of the exodus of the Jews. He will do this for approximately three minutes before your grandmother starts interrupting and correcting him.

By the time he reaches the part about Moses dividing the Red Sea, the meal will have deteriorated into an argument about Socialism. Your grandmother will insist that Exodus is a metaphor: the Jews represent today’s proletarians and the Egyptians the bourgeoisie. “It’s all about controlling the means of production,” she says. “About overthrowing the pharaohs of capitalist oppression.”

Your father will no longer be able to contain himself. “Oh give me a break,” he’ll groan. But he will not say it exactly like this. He will also include an adjective derived from a colloquial term concerning human reproduction, he’ll explain later. It will be the highlight of the holiday for you. In fact, you and your brother will talk about it for several years to come: that time when dad said “fuck” to your Communist grandmother at Passover.

Your father and two uncles are now fighting with your grandmother. For one thing, Communists don’t have summer houses.  Communists don’t play the stock market.  Communists don’t regularly abuse the waiters at Barney Greengrass: The Sturgeon King. What’s more, they’ll point out, your grandmother hates authority. She hates manual labor. She hates anyone telling her what to do. And besides, if she really wants to talk about oppressed people, your Uncle Peter will add, “What about the Palestinians?”

At the mention of Palestine, all bedlam will break lose.  Your father, uncles, and grandmother will begin shouting at once. One uncle will call another “a gutless self-hating Jew,” while the other will accuse him of “Zionist fascist hypocrisy.” Your grandfather will sigh, put down the tinfoil-covered Haggadah, and begin eating his gefilte fish. Your mothers eye each other miserably. They have all married into this family and are now wondering why. Your aunt Sharon in particular, you notice, cannot stop staring at the Easter eggs.

Eventually, when order is restored, and the question finally gets asked “Why is this night different from all others?” you will look around the table. You will think that it really isn’t.

***

Happy Passover, everyone!

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Original art by Ilyse Magy.

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Please submit your own funny writing to funnywomen AT therumpus dot net. See first: Funny Women Submission Guidelines and/or elissabassist.com.

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“He had a lot of cool toys, and I really liked the toys.”

Well, I was born, and Mommy took me over to his house to make some friends, and me and Lukey wanted to play with each other every day, and we gotted to do it. And that’s how we got along.

I’m just in kindergarten. I knew him since preschool. Actually, I met him before preschool. I woke up and I got dressed for preschool and then I went to preschool and he’s like, umm—he said this funny thing, I can’t remember. He’s like, “A- busha!” He was really funny.

He had a lot of cool toys, and I really liked the toys when I was little and he had all of the little working things. He really had great hair and he really had a fish on his clothes ’cause he liked to go fishing with his grandfather. And I had a princess on mine, because I liked princesses.

I felt happy that I made a friend, and me and him kept, like “UHH NNNN MMM NNN! I want that toy!” And we kept pulling the toy!

He was very nice to me and when I was born he let me drive in his little thing and that made me get along and like him. And he said nice things, like “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

We played pirates, and we went on a treasure hunt. We went past some houses, we found this little statue of a lion, and we were pretending that the owner had a bunch of animals that were mean to people except the owners. We were both doing it. We went really far, we went to the street, we tried to walk to the mailbox to see if there was any gold inside.

He took the map. I was the captain. And he said the captain doesn’t always hold the map. But the captain always holds the map!

He knew the way back to the house and he left me, and I’m like, “Luke, where did you go? I gotta find him!” And I was like, “Luke! Luke!” I kept on screaming “Luke!”

He used to have good table manners. He ate with his fork and spoon. Now he has bad table manners. ’Cause when I was four I came over for a playdate to have dinner and we had macaroni and cheese and I ate with my spoon and he ate with his hands. And his hands got all cheesy. And then like, “Okay, you’re not having good table manners in front of girls.” And—
his dad—and he got in trouble. He had to go sit in the bathroom.

He’s a little bit mean and a little bit nice. When I went to his playdate, he didn’t let me drive his little red golf cart, and it really used to have a lot of High School Musical songs on it.

He lied to me. He said he could hold his breath for three days and three nights. And he really didn’t do it. That’s impossible.

And he said he could—he said he could go like this (crosses eyes) for two nights and two days. But if you do that for two nights and two days, your eyes will stay like that.

He lied about um . . . I was being mean every day, but I really wasn’t. I mean bossy every day. But I wasn’t. I used to, but now I’m not. And he said that on Monday. But I wasn’t on Monday. When the school year started is when I stopped.

I felt sad that he lied to me—he was the first friend I knew.

I like talking! (laughs)

One time he tried to read a book, and he went like, “A- busha- shesha- yeah- a- sheeshay- sheeshay- shyah!” He was reading this book that Ms. Bennett read! (laughs) And I’m like, “What in the heck did you just say?” Ow! I just bit my tongue!! Um, yeah. You should have seen Lukey when he was reading! “A- busha- shesha- yeah- a- sheeshay- sheeshay- shyah!” (laughs)

I’m turning six on April 3! Can you believe that?

Love means that you’re in love with somebody and you think he’s cute or she’s cute. That feeling of love is um . . . that you really love them. It’s in your heart. God puts it there. God is actually inside of our heart so he put the love inside when he was inside. You can create it by . . . umm . . . thinking someone is cute.

No more questions!

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Excerpted from US: Americans Talk About Love edited by John Bowe, published in February by Faber & Faber, Inc., an affiliate of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 2010 by John Bowe. All rights reserved. Click here to purchase.

Read “An Oral History of Love in Contemporary America: Selections from Us #1.”

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Rumpus original art by Ilyse Magy.

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