NOW, MORE THAN EVER,
NOT THE NEW ANYONE

The school year of 1991-92 Wendy and I lived together in a sterile apartment building in Iowa City. It had three bedrooms, but our dumbfuck friend backed out on us at the last minute so we had to find a new roomate. We placed an ad. Lots of perfectly nice college students responded to the ad. We even interviewed some of these people in person. But, in the end, we decided that the best person to be our new roomate was this 45-year-old schizophrenic bitch named Tamara.

Tamara seemed strangely compelling, because she was, you know, old. Also, she said she hoped to one day get into the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Wendy and I had that same exact aspiration. How could we not get along?

Within a few days Tamara made it clear that she was the main character from I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. Or, when she wasn’t the main character from that book, she would surprise us with her convincing rendition of Sybil.

Once, she left a note on the fridge that read:

DO NOT LEAV TOILET SEET UP!

I wondered, Why is this note not on the toilet? How am I supposed to remember to not leave the toilet seat up if the note is all the way over here on the fridge?

Another time she left one of those play voodoo dolls out on the kitchen table with pins in certain areas and charming notes, such as one left next to the groin area: MIKE I HOPE YOUR PENIS FALLS OFF!

And yet another time she wrote a note to Wendy calling her fat and deranged. (But which personality was writing this note?)

The most annoying part about Tamara, though, was that she would cook these monstrously huge batches of chili every weekend and stink up the entire apartment. This lady fucking lived on goddamned chili.

One day Wendy and I were home alone and Tamara’s chili was simmering on the stove. And that’s when I got the idea.

Hey Wendy, let’s pull out our pubic hair and put it in Tamara’s chili!

OK!

And that, my friends, is the story of How Tamara’s Chili Got Very Hairy. Tamara moved out about five days later and didn’t pay any of her bills, but it was all so worth it. Mmmmm, yes.

So, would I sound like a dirty old pervert if I confessed that I, at 33 years old, have a crush on Rupert Grint, the kid who plays Ron Weasley in Harry Potter? Because I do. And I know that it’s wrong to have lustful thoughts after a 16 year old. I KNOW it’s creepy to want a boy who was BORN the year I graduated from HS, but have you SEEN him lately? With that shaggy red hair and big old blue eyes? Mm-MMM. If loving him is wrong (and/or illegal) well, throw me in jail because I’d enjoy doing some truly foul things with him. And by foul I mean SEXUAL INTERCOURSE.

What? He’ll be 18 soon.

Next time I get cocky about remembering something that a 2nd grader would be able to remember, I might check to make sure the font is all the same size. I can not even fathom how I fucked THAT up.

I know you all came looking for Wendy, but she’s gone and I’m here so you’re stuck with me. Of course, you aren’t really stuck with me. You’re allowed to just walk away from Wendy’s business until she returns in two weeks, all aglow with the recent thrill of being amongst WRITERS as opposed to fools like me. Also, I’m pretty sure the other people she asked to guest blog (this is my first time BLOGGING, even! I journal! There’s a difference! The difference of course is that I was way too dumb to set up blogger) are smarter, funnier and hotter. You might just want to stop back another time. I’m like the maid discovering the computer in the house and going all batshit on it because I’ve never been allowed to touch one before.

Really, the main reason I’m posting this post about nothing is that I wanted to be first. And so I am! I don’t even have a topic yet. In two weeks, I bet I can cook something up other than Nigerian scam artists, how much work pisses me off, middle aged women in cartoon themed clothes or how much I love my car. Maybe.

Anyhow, here’s my first guest blog post and welcome to me.

Please note: I’m all proud of myself because I remembered how to do a paragraph break in html. I have skills.

Leaving now. Yep. In just a minute. Turning off the computer at work. That’s right. Any moment now.

There may be posts from a couple of guest bloggers. I say “may” because a couple of them have never used Blogger before, and well, who knows what is going to happen. I think you’ll be hearing from Michael, my bestest friend from college and of all time, Dana, sex goddess to Nigerian scam artists, and maybe Doug, if he’s not too busy moving and playing with his Shakira doll. Maybe others. Maybe not. I have no idea what anyone will say.

I will miss you little punks. I know it’s only two weeks, but still.

This week when I’ve been telling people I’m going on a retreat it seems their first question is “what kind of retreat?” And, dull thing that I am, I tell them truthfully: a writer’s retreat. Really, though, I am totally missing a swell opportunity to freak people out and say it’s Est training, or extreme regression therapy, or that I’ll be spending several hours a day floating in sensory-deprivation tanks filled with green tea, or that I’m “cleaning out my system.” I could say, “I’ve heard that by Day Five you really get used to wearing the diaper,” or “when I get back I must ask you to please call me by my new name.” Damn. I’ll lie next time.

It’s true that I’ll have only very limited access to email and the internet, so you probably shouldn’t email me for awhile unless you absolutely have to (and if you do, you better not put the word “message” in the subject line, since I have that set up as a “delete” rule in one of the dozens of spam filters I’ve set up to try and keep the webmail from getting too out of hand). But hell, if you want to send a postcard I believe you can send it to: Wendy McClure c/o Ragdale, 1230 North Green Bay Road, Lake Forest IL, 60045 and if it arrives before the 30th it just might reach me…

So I’m going to Ragdale. I leave in a couple of days and I’ll be gone for two weeks. I never go anywhere for more than a week, and while technically this place isn’t anywhere far–it’s only an hour or so away–the whole point is to get away from the rest of my life: from work, and obligations, and the internet, and buying groceries, and having to talk to people who have the nerve to live actual real lives that don’t involve trying to finish a book, because did I mention I am trying to finish a book? I think I mentioned that I am trying to finish a book. From what I can tell, Ragdale is sort of an asylum for people like me.

These Ragdale people, whoever they are, will give me a room, and a place to work, and meals. They’ll make the meals. This is a very good idea. One time last month I had just macadamia nuts and hamburger buns for dinner because writing made me stupid. I do my best to function like a normal person most of the time but I think I probably need this.

Every year, the start of summer is sort of hard for me in a way I can’t really explain. There’s always at least one or two days that seem to shake my conviction that I’m a part of the rest of the world, where suddenly everyone is sitting outside at the sidewalk tables at restaurants I hadn’t even known had opened in my neighborhood, wearing clothes that I had no idea were in style (seriously, what’s with those knitted poncho thingies?), drinking Mojitos or some damn thing. But now I guess I have a place where I can go, with a prairie preserve and all the trees that Mr. T. never got around to cutting down.

There will be some other writers and artists there. I hope they’re nice.

Today you can find Fat Fiction by me at Zulkey.com. It was a brilliant assignment and there are all kinds of nasty fat stereotypes for your downloading pleasure. I was tempted to submit verbatim passages from Jemima J. I mean, I know plagiarism is wrong, but I am fat and lazy.

I must be the last person in the blog universe to post about Book Expo America. I went, all right. The muscles in my feet still seize up when I look at this picture.

I’ve gone to BEA before, but this is the first time I’ve read so many blogged accounts by other people who attended, so now I can know specifically which free books I missed picking up and which celebrities I didn’t get to spot. I’ll have you know I walked away with a fine collection of vampire erotica, mostly because I was too shy to hand it back to the person who offered it to me. And I did see Toilet Seat Guy, though I didn’t get to my camera fast enough.

I was glad I made it to the blogger panel where Jessa at Bookslut and other distinguished folks had some very bright things to say about this whole, you know, cyber craze. And then when the panel session ended, a guy whose badge identified him as Ron Hogan of Beatrice came over and said, “Hey! You were on TV!” Ha! That made me slightly dizzy.

And see that book cover poster in the right corner?

Here is a closer view.

And then closer still.

I like blogging as much as anyone else, but being on a book cover is kind of a kick, too.