The Zaftig Chronicles

So Jan and I decided we needed the cool air of night to satisfy our need to feel drunk in nature. A bottle of Sauza Gold, two perfectly sliced green limes snug in a Ziplock bag, a mini salt shaker, and an mp3 player with one pair of headphones, and we were ready to go outside and get drunk. Before we left, we loaded my iPod with plenty of Nina Simone and made a pact that at midnight we'd each get an earphone and listen to "Feeling Good." And we were feeling oh-so-good. I was cold, but the heat in my chest felt erotic -- thanks to Nina's sultry raw voice in my ear and the host of fine-looking males passing us by. It was all driving me over the edge. "I need to masturbate," I screamed. Jan hushed me and snatched the chewed lime peel from my mouth. I love hanging out with a controlled drinker. No matter how much Jan drinks, he never gets fully drunk. Me? Well...I think kicking off a pair of $250 shoes and telling a cab driver to run them over seems pretty out o...

This afternoon, Diana visited me at work. It was lunch time, so she met me downstairs in the lobby and we proceeded to head to the building's dreaded cafeteria, where Diana produced a bag of "snacks" for us to munch on while she bitched about doing her taxes ("I'm writing off Starbuck's lattes."). I looked at her food offerings and seriously considered trying my luck at the cafeteria assembly line. Snacks to Diana is a tub of plain hummus, baked pita chips, and diet tea. When we spoke on the phone this morning and set up the get-together, all I said was for her to bring snacks. I guess I meant something indulgent like a slice of rich chocolate cheesecake from the bakery we love. But it's Diana . I dipped a few pita chips in the boring hummus and drank a swallow of the very chemical-tasting tea (ack!) before giving up. If I had been entrusted to bring the snacks, I'm pretty certain we would have had a largely different, artery-clogging selectio...

If there is anything to assuage for my favorite picture this year losing out on Best Picture as the (F)OSCARS, then it's a re-creation of pivotal scenes in Legos. A reader of the blog sent me this link , and I felt all warm and fuzzy inside after viewing it. Creativity like this refreshes my faith in humanity. Gracias, Purple.

One day I will sit down and spend five hours editing this blog, tying up bad grammar, lassoing dangling modifiers, deleting double words, fucked up punctuation. It's something I've been wanting to do since the blog started, but getting the entry out was more important. So, expect a HUGE re-edit sometime soon. Not that anything will change in the post, but they will be cleaner, so that when I get old, at least I can come back and read The Zaftig Chronicles and not say, "Damn, I missed all that!" Off to work (and love in some weird way).

Not much to say about that disaster last night known as The Oscars, but Jon Stewart summed it up best: " Crunchy Black and Three-Six Mafia, one Oscar ; Martin Scorsese , none." Goes to show you how much the Academy is full of shit. Crash, Best Picture? Hardly. Brokeback Mountain was robbed big time in so many categories that I'm afraid I'll cry if I have to repeat it here; so I shan't. I'm really through with awards in general. It's all politics and ass-kissing and campaigning and shitty outcomes. Besides, there are more important things in this world to care about, right? Like Nick & Jessica's divorce : Will he or wont' he get that damn jewelry. God, I'm sooo dying to know this critical information. Ack. To hell with it all.

So we'd been seated at a cozy Thai restaurant, and by the time my Nam Tok arrived, I realized sometimes I liked to be slapped. The after burn of flesh against flesh, delivered with such controlled viciousness turned me on. We'd just argued a mere ten minutes before he grabbed by my wrists and told me, "You're going to fuckin' have dinner". After all, it was what we'd gone out to do. We were doing the whole dinner and a movie cliche,a nd I was flipping out over a phone call from his ex-girlfriend. I'd hit him on the back really hard and he'd let me, but when I screamed and hit him on the back of the head, he grabbed my hands and held them, then slapped the shit out of me. I nearly came from the blow. I wanted more. Something in me must have conveyed to him that he could control me for the evening. And so he did. Later, after dinner and expensive drinks, he pulled me into an alleyway and had his way with me. I wanted him to slap me, but I couldn'...

In these times of rough, I turn to memories of home life. Today, I present you with the memory of my mother and her lack of child care whenever she hears a loud crash or thump in her house. Scene: A 12-year-old Zaftig has knocked down several large Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedias reaching for the Es so she could look up England (a place she swears is her former-life home country). Zaftig: (Scream) Mother: What the hell was that? Zaftig: (Silence) Mother: Zaftig, what did you knock down? Zaftig: (Silence as she put the books back.) Mother: Ten minutes later: Are you okay in there? Zaftig: Yes, I'm alive. Scene II: A 25-year-old Zaftig accidentally knocks over a CD tower, causing it to break and several Karen Carpenter CDs to crash to the floor. Zaftig: SHIT! Mother: What the hell was that? Zaftig: Just me dying. Mother: Well, did you break anything? Ah, memories.