Wild Cats, Lady Beats

Everything in the world is hilarious. It's like a cosmic 'your mom' joke.

That's Janx for you. She spits this gem of acerbic wisdom with a slanted grin as we fly down a California highway at 90 mph, her bare foot on the dash as she fingers a gem she wrapped in copper wire the night before. We had a meeting, a caucus of lady hens in Santa Barbara where we gathered our supplies -- cheap red wine, crystals, gems, bright wire, cotton thread in every color of the rainbow, weed, tobacco, instruments, and stories -- we took a big sit with all these things and we rapped. No topic was off limits, no limit was off topic.

The thing about masturbation that really frustrates me is that I think: I am way too cute to be doing this for myself.

A pause in conversation as we all focus on our projects in a haze. Thin paper crinkles as a joint is passed, soft glugging as a glass is re-filled. Somewhere in the room, a bulldog farts and sighs.

I hate those fuckin' fox tails people are wearing these days.

Why? 

They have to kill the whole fucking animal just to parade around looking like an ass-pirate's bitch -- it's disgusting, murderous, and wasteful.

Hey, do you still have your old dreadlocks that you cut off?

Yeah? 

You should die them and make a tail out of that.  

What makes you think I want to look like an ass-pirate's bitch? 

The thing about these ladies is that we aren't your typical ladies, we're cowboys. We will fuck you up from the inside out and laugh while we do it. Rough, a little hard, and gone with the wind, we out west are more like tumble weeds and hardly "the fairer sex." We also represent the modern beats -- just like The Dharma Bums, we're only romantic enough to be pathetic, only revolutionary enough to be self-indulgent. We are vain, and not without sensitivity or desire -- what kind of poets would we be otherwise?

Each us of us are in constant conflict with ourselves; that is part and parcel of our self-indulgent vanity. We each contain a tarot card-like persona against whom we struggle, but it's these struggles that come to define us. Janx's impossibly long, thick dreadlocks in every color of the rainbow are a whimsical touch that attempt to disguise the fact that she is at heart the existential realist. Our mate and occasional ward, who is a brilliant crafter and dedicated boozer often prancing around as a middle eastern unicorn, is the drunken idealist. Sparky, who is here with us in spirit with her magenta hair and her wild eyes, is the emphatic. I, ever searching for sincerity in all the wrong places, am the romantic hedonist. We are each of us flesh hungry wild cats.

On this road trip plummeting back up California's coast, it's Janx's hilarity I'm exposed to at full volume. A realist she is, but humor is the spoonful of sugar with which she shoves medicinal observation deep past one's esophagus.

So I've been questioning my relationship with Man a lot recently, as you know, as I'm sure you are sick of hearing about, and so I've devised a new test, a relationship test. Here it is: if you have a baby and it turned out to be exactly like your partner, and I mean in every way, would you be proud of him or her? Think about it... would you?

Yeesh, I don't know. 

Yeah, well, think about it. That's what's going to happen. So thinking about this actually led me to come up with something else, which I like to call: The Dead Baby Method. I came up with this tactic because I don't use birth control or condoms. When my body starts to feel a little... different or when I sense my uterus go a-flutter, I simply meditate on dead babies. I say to it: Uterus, don't do it. If you make a baby, I'm going to kill it. These are all the ways in which I would kill it. Don't fucking do it. I figure, you know, you hear of those girls who convince themselves they are pregnant so much they start to blow up? Well, if they can convince themselves they are pregnant, I can convince myself I'm not. 

Brilliant.

I know... but sometimes I worry about my mental health.  

Yes, well. Her countering poignant depravity with questions of her sanity is why I can justify calling her a "realist" in my mind.

This bitch is resourceful. Give Janx some powerful hallucinogens and 15 minutes alone and she will return to you having solved all your problems. She will deliver you unto the sweet warbling voice of Jesus Christ and bring you handsome gentlemen cowboys who will play country music, provide you refreshing beverages, and keep you warm when the night turns cold. They will say things like "See that ther' coffee stan' over yonder? Built it. Take mah jakit, lil' lady. Kilt a buffalo in that thing. Hey, Woodrow! Come meet mah new girlfrien'!" and you will never stop giggling... Janx will get on stage and play a stranger's banjo, leading a crowd in a chorus of meowing until the sun rises, and she will purr like a hooker until she gets bored. She will lead you on powerful journeys and quests as an impromptu shaman, a spirit animal even, and she will blow your freakin' mind.

Full disclosure: I hated The Dharma Bums. Even so, in moments I find myself happy to be living it out less piously, and Janx is the Japhy to my Ray Smith.
Was that sappy? Well, you can go fuck yourself. 

Gypsy Love Curse

Istanbul: A persistently lonely and desperate feline screech sneaks beyond the feeble barrier of my window pane. It disturbs my slumber and I groan, turn over. It's 6:30 PM and still I can't pull myself out of bed. I get so disappointed at moments like these, but on the bright side, I tell myself, when I move back to the other side of the world maybe I'll be a naturally early riser. Maybe I'll exercise more, I certainly could use the endorphin kick... thinking this, I hear myself grunt at the preposterous notion of running through these torn and crumbling streets.
Three months is a long time.

My whole house is on an insanely erratic yet surprisingly synchronized schedule. One day we'll wake at 9:30 PM, groaning our morning greetings, the next we'll be up at the the crack of dawn mopping the floors cheerfully. We call it "social jet lag". It's been a couple weeks since I've moved out of Sweetie's apartment and into a ground level flat in the slums, populated by outcasts, freaks, and all of Istanbul's cats moaning in heat, right where I belong.

I like this place. It's got all the decadent charm of the ghetto. I like my house mates. They are a Turkish electronic musician who aspires to be the next Hot Chip and his moody Polish girlfriend. We're all completely broke, just managing, subsisting mostly on the nutrition of beer and Cha Cha -- a fire water moonshine from Georgia, the country, that will disinfect your intestines as it burns a hole right through them. Our neighbors are two ladies who have become good friends of mine, a Turkish visual artist who goes by Sparky and a sharp-witted Jewish pansexual writer from San Francisco. Our neighborhood, despite being as terrifying as it is with dog fights, drug dealers, and open crime, it's home, and whether or not I should, I feel comfortable. All in all, I'm happy that I moved out of Sweetie's.

One night a bunch of guys were sitting around, drinking beer, asking of each other the greater questions in life.
"So, when you use the bidet, do you ever, you know... finger your asshole a little?"
"I dunno man, sometimes it just slips in there."
"Yeah, I mean... It's good to be extra clean. In that area especially."

Sweetie came over to check on me in my new surroundings and was hardly amused.
"What the fuck are these guys?"
"Chello, I am here too, don't forget," said Moody Poland. Her tiny arms were crossed over her chest  as she stared at him disapprovingly. She usually has a focused, intense, crazed look about her that makes me wonder if they cannibalize where she comes from (my experience of Eastern Europeans is that they are insane), and this moment was no exception.

As a dark skinned man and a business owner in a country quickly developing beyond its means, Sweetie is no stranger to hostile energy and so he chose to ignore her. Though there is a side of him comfortable with dealing with aggressors, incurring violence, and making death threats, he put on his syrupy sweet voice for me: "Tatlim, come home with me and drink tea and let me sleep on your knees..."

Given the way we had broken up, I didn't feel that I owed him anything. "I'm happy here. Why don't you stay and have some Cha Cha?"
He reluctantly accepted the shot Hot Chip's forceful hospitality pressured him into then left without saying a word.
After the slam of the door, Moody Poland tsk'd three times. "Such dramatic. You're better without it, honestly."

All the same, I was sad to see him go like that. His smell and the kiss lingering on my neck were a heady perfume and a burning souvenir. A few shots of Cha Cha, however, and my senses faded.