the naked lady bar writing group’s sensei austin h. gilkeson has written a wonderful, amazing, incredible, tremendously brilliant story for which there are not enough glittering superlatives in all the world.

you can (and MUST) read it on page 35 HERE…

when i met with yusha this last time, he looked me in the eye and said, she would have liked you. she would have liked that you’re doing this. 

i tabled that in my head. it’s an endorsement that will take time to process. sometimes i don’t even like that i’m doing this. i can’t imagine how jackie could.

i’ve been doing whatever you want to call my whole jackie thing for the last 17 years. that’s not an exaggeration. it’s been that slow of a burn.

after all that time, i’m pretty certain i know what i’m doing and i’m pretty certain i’m right. i’m pretty certain she was a feminist figure who, through her sense of adventure, quietly pushed the limits of what it was acceptable for nice women to do.

but there’s still just enough doubt lingering there to necessitate the word “pretty,” and that little “pretty” goes a long way in rendering all my certainty null.

if the jackie tapes are going to give me anything, it is the confirmation that she was, in fact, the woman i have come to know. the woman i have written about.

caroline kennedy told diane sawyer that the main lesson her mother would have wanted people to draw from her story was that life is an adventure, always. when she said this- thus, giving credence to everything i’ve ever written on a hunch- i felt a wave of the cockiness that must’ve compelled babe ruth to call his shot.

the “pretty” is dead. i know i’m right. someday, even if it’s a day still 17 years away, just you wait. i am going to knock one out of the park.

i’m over at contrary magazine’s blog today waxing on about re-reading beloved books. please do read, re-post, like, love, tweet, tell your friends. xox, o.

i’m over on CheekyChicago today writing about a deliciously naughty book…

(8 june 2011)

there are moments when you expect everything to be crazy easy and then it isn’t. then there are other times where you’re certain you’ll have to make a horrible fuss to get what you want, and then everything falls in your lap.

i worked the lit fest last weekend. a week ago, i wrote the volunteer coordinator asking if i could be assigned to the biography panel. she said, very kindly, that there was absolutely no way.

the assignments were being handed out first come, first serve and were entirely random. the system could not accomodate requests.

i’m standing in a cluster of author escorts at university center when the assignments are handed out. and yet, i know what my random assignment is before i even get it. somehow it’s not even a shock to see the words.

assignment: author escort. hotel blake. 11:15. the art of biography.

(12 april 2007)

that happened three years ago and i’ve not forgot. maybe i never will. maybe because i kind of sort of think it’s true- an admission that is akin to standing amidst the daughters of the confederacy and bursting into a rousing chorus of “while we were marching through georgia.”

maybe this is the curse of the southern immigrant- one must endlessly defend the south while also harboring an extreme awareness of its inadequacies.

i adore memphis. at least i always did and even though i ran from it, i think i kind of still do. it’s my homeland, but not my home. and that’s a really bizarre thing.

i can’t begin to explain this city to people. it’s a politically incorrect, charismatic, strangely generous guy with a raunchy sense of humor and mismatched socks. you want to introduce him to your other friends, but you’re pretty sure the minute he opened his mouth, they’d know he’s bad news. aristotle onassis, but without the business sense or the millions- just the barstools.

that’s not an explanation though. it’s just a string of faulty metaphors.

to me, memphis is the most restless of cities. there’s a rhythm to the streets- as though the current of the river were shaking the bluffs and elvis was just humming along. while i’ve always loved this quality, it’s like dating someone who’s entirely too like you, so you just wind up driving each other mad. memphis and i are too similar. we’re too tightly wound. and that makes me want to run.

and yet there are these moments and there’s that river.

i called a friend once in the middle of a memphis moment, blubbering that i was driving down beale with the river ahead. i probably sounded drunk. because that means nothing to you if you’re not from memphis. if you are from memphis, it means the world.

because in the end, it all comes down to music and muddy water.

(28 august 2006)

placebo is one of my greatest guilty pleasures. they’re huge in europe and teeny tiny in america- aside from a substantial following of velvet goldmine obsessives and people who have dated me and thus been exposed.

they’re a pleasure because no one can rock the role of whiney voiced male lead quite like the beglittered, beautiful mr. molko. guilty because they’ve put out five albums with about one album’s worth of really awesome songs. so the ratio of awesome to dud is upsettingly high.

since the fall of 1999, i’ve been desperate to see them live. since then, i’ve missed seeing them live no less than ten times. in the spring of 2001, they were in new orleans two days after i left mississippi. in the fall of 2003, they were in chicago the week before i moved to town.

most infuriatingly, during the summer of 2003, they swept through europe, hitting london, paris, rome, florence, innsbruck, venice, koln, and amsterdam exactly 24 hours ahead of me, leaving in their wake a trail of promo posters. in venice, in frustration, i thieved one off the wall of a church, the irony in that somewhat lessening my annoyance.

but then, finally, at very long last, things fall into place: me. placebo. chicago. the riv. and oh the eyeliner!