Near Death Experience

Being married and having a baby has made it impossible for me to be a writer anymore. I used to draw from my experiences, sordid sexual humiliations, desperate attempts at finding love that were hilarious and relatable and mortifying, crazy and complex friendships, a little work, a little alcohol, a little travel. Today I just found myself almost writing a scene that takes place in Ikea for my new novel. Ikea. Swedish meatballs and big boy beds and plastic bins. The conflict: the big plastic bins come in blue, the medium in red, and the little ones in white, and while I want two big, two medium, and two little, I don’t want a patriotic theme for my son’s room. The conflict: I have no life anymore and these bins have become the most important thing in the world to me. I have never even said or written the word “bin” one time in my life until now. In the past, filmmakers have called my books cinematic, my imagery and great locations. Now I am through.

At first I thought it was going to Ikea itself and not being married that ended it for me as a writer. Clearly it’s dangerous for a writer, or anyone really, to walk into a place like Ikea. But now I remember that I had been to Ikea one other time in my life and came out unscathed. Years ago, I went in someone’s van with my then-friend Sandra and some beautiful Italian men who had just moved in next door to her and we laughed and made out on the beds and bought nothing, vowing obviously never to go back. I went on to write three novels and never once did Ikea creep into the margins. So I can only reason that it’s marriage that’s ruined me. Or, it is possible that a person can survive Ikea once, but not twice.

When we got home from Ikea, my exhausted two year old son sat crying on the stairs in my apartment. He pounded the top step over and over again and screamed, “Damnit, damnit, damnit, damnit, damnit.” And I thought, look what I've done to us.

Crack Whore

Last night I dreamt that my husband was seeing a young, beautiful black crack whore. We were having dinner in a restaurant and she approached our table and he looked caught and started to walk away. She gave me a stack of Hallmark cards he had written to her as proof of their affair. I gave her $50 for crack because I felt guilty that I was thinking how much this would help the new book I was planning to write – I could add a character of a crack whore and the Hallmark cards. I felt bad when I saw her notice I had a lot of hundred dollar bills in my purse.
This morning when I was getting dressed I found my Woody Allen socks and I flashed on the dream. I realized I’d had it because I was angry at my husband for taking the socks last week and wearing them – my favorite Woody Allen socks – that he had given me. The socks are black and the crack whore in my dream was black. And when you’re married, so little is just yours, and your husband wearing your favorite socks is as much a betrayal as any other.
So this is probably what my blog is going to be like…