POACHED!

Poach vb. Middle English pocchen, from Middle French pocher, from Old French poche: To take what's yours.

Poaching is a way of poking life in the eye and saying "You're going to have to wake up a little bit earlier to pull a fast one on this guy."

I'm a firm believer that we should break the discriminatory practice of reserving the awarding of trophies for athletes and competitive eaters. The former is totally disgusting, and not all of us are that good at the latter. Every time I see somebody running, dropping and rolling and it's not because they're on fire, it makes me want to vomit. But I do wish I had a more flexible esophagus.

If we awarded trophies for real victories, there would be trophies for magnificent poaching of somebody else's parking spot. Finding a parking spot on the weekend is kind of like maintaining a curse in Harry Potter. You lock your eyes on that spot and never break contact, muttering a constant stream of unbroken intention as you hone in. Other drivers see your intensity through the windshield and they are dissuaded, to continue on in search of parking alternatives.

But every now and then, a really bold cat decides that he's had about fucking enough with circling that parking lot, stuck behind a giant cream sedan stopped in the middle of the road as some mother screams instructions at her fleeing middle school-aged daughter, flagrantly disregarding the mounting line of honking cars behind her.

This cat wants to scream, "LADY, OF COURSE SHE'S GOING TO BATH AND BODY WORKS. YOU'RE RIGHT. SHE PROBABLY DOESN'T NEED ANY MORE. SHE'S GOING TO BUY IT ANYWAYS." But he knows that this selfish, values-voting cow with her big car parked right in the middle of the road will probably scream right back at him about how she has a right to parent her children whenever and wherever she feels like it, even if it's the middle of the road. She'll then, still screaming out the window, ask her daughter if there will be any boys.

"YES." Our hero screams.
"GAY ONES. IT'S BATH AND BODY WORKS."

At this point, the lady will go bananas.

She will scream and writhe in her seat belt because someone has said the word "gay" in front of her daughter without tacking on "in hell," and her daughter will now surely go pick up some cherry chapstick at Bath and Body Works and walk around thinking gay people might just be okay. This poor little girl doesn't know it, but for the next six years of her life, any time she is moved to drop the "f" bomb, it will be blamed on liberal influences at the Green Hills Mall.*

*Note: Many of my "f" bombs have been blamed on liberal influences at the Green Hills Mall. In fact, I'm pretty sure that if I were to don a burkha and join a branch of American al-Quaeda, it would be blamed on those fire-brand college educated hippies at the Mall.

The hip cat's eyes dart for a way out, because the parking lot situation has just escalated, and he's feeling a little unsafe. His eyes hit the empty spot. He sees the geriatric man driving that massive tank of an Oldsmobile doing the ritual "It's MINE! It's MINE!" incantation. He doesn't care. He goes for it. He swings his car in as the sedan mommy gives a carnal scream, and the geriatric man slams his weak fists on an ancient leSabre horn, and he takes what's his.

Poached.

I myself just did a slightly less sophisticated poach. I was at the city's most popular Starbucks, when I spied a particularly plushy chair. There was a man in the opposing plushy chair, but I sit first and ask questions later, so I went for it. There was a girl across from me, equidistant from the plushy, plushy chair. She paused to wonder if he had a wife, and while she philosophized, I took what was mine.

In case you were wondering:

• Yes, it really is that comfortable.
• I have a very nice little end table here to myself.
• It has an outlet.
• I'm far from the door, so I don't get any chilly gusts of wind.

It's an awesome chair. Poached.

My Fevered Dreams

This week, I got the flu.

In my fevered delirium, I reached a few fascinating conclusions. Somewhere between normalcy and 104˚ I came to the fervent decision that time travel is real.

I've never really been one for paranoid conspiracy theory. Growing up there were a lot of people in my life who were really into various conspiracies, and I was never really sure who to believe. My dad had a dream that he was abducted by aliens, and rather than probe or kidnap him, they referred him to an excellent chiropractor and fixed his back. He woke up with a dramatic drop in pressure on his lumbar, and went about his life as usual. My dad is the kind of man who, when faced with a potential nocturnal alien abduction, would pass up the trauma and hysteria to sit back and enjoy the cranio-sacral benefits. He shrugged (which didn't hurt), and went about his business. About a week later, he ordered the $69.99 History Channel "American Abductions: TRUTH EXPOSED" DVD boxed set and watched it in his Man Cave.

Then there was the cab driver I had one time who took advantage of the fact that he had an unbroken, captive audience for 74 minutes to share his thoughts on the "Philadelphia Experiment." Wikipedia says that this refers to government testing on invisibility. My cab driver explained that this experiment was on government time travel, and that it worked, and that we were all surrounded by inter-space time agents. When asked me if they had taught me anything at Wellesley about secret government conspiracies (presumably because Secretary Clinton is training the class of 2011 in inter-galactic defense) I replied "Uh, sure..." and then blended together about six episodes of Doctor Who with "Introduction to the Ancient World: Classical Studies 102."

Every single teenage boy I've ever know has been utterly enthralled with anti-government conspiracy. There seems to be some cognitive dissonance on the fact that it takes about six hours at the DMV to get your license renewed, and that the only way you can fail that test in rural Tennessee is to have live, writhing fish for arms.


My theory on time travel, as concocted at 3 AM on Tuesday night is as follows:

Surely at some point in the future, time travel has been discovered. I mean, by this point they've pretty much had all of eternity to work on it. So where are the secret time-travelers hiding?

FOREIGN EXCHANGE STUDENTS.

Most Americans pride themselves on a complete and total, unabashed distaste and lack of knowledge of foreign culture. You could be a radiant space creature from the year 3000 come to spread a message of love and peace using the English of the future, but if you pulled that crap in Arizona, they'd have you dumped across the border in one hot desert minute.

We've pretty much chalked it up to fact that Asian cell phones were curing cancer while we were still beating rocks together to make fire, so I totally believe that these future humans could use their mind-bogglingly advanced technology in front of us with no adverse affect. I have a feeling that the time-travel book of guidelines probably says something like:

"LIMIT TELEPORTATION. LOOKS FLASHY. IF DEVICE OF TIME-INAPPROPRIATE COMPLEXITY REQUIRED, DON'T SWEAT IT TOO HARD."

Keep My Day Job

I've never really gotten the swing of days off. The beneficent soul who dates me was on a business trip this week, so when I found myself with the rare day off, I didn't know what to do, but I made a go of it.

First, I sat in a giant stack of dirty laundry on my bed. I squashed it into roughly the shape of a Roman reclining bench, and read Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" for about ten minutes. I felt very sophisticated about it. The New York Times said it was a masterful work of literary genius, and more importantly, there were grapes on the cover.

I stopped after ten minutes, because there were way too many Latin words in there. If I wanted to read Latin, I probably wouldn't have failed it on two continents.

While reading a book with grapes and fine cheese on the cover made me look very educated, sitting nestled amongst old socks and jeans felt a little fraternal, so I decided that the sophisticated next move would be to take a shower.

My parents always tell me they're surprised I never electrocuted myself or fell down stairs as a child. Once in my youth, as we were gazing at a painting of a large 19th century family at a museum, my mother told me that the women had so many children because most of them died during childhood. She gave me a meaningful look. I mention this because this afternoon, I thought I'd try to dry my hair using the electric space heater in our room.

Death Omens

I knew I was totally screwed when I woke up Monday morning to the following hallucination:

It was worse than a Grim at the bottom of my tea cup.

When I hallucinate brownies, it's a harbinger signifying that:

a) I'm going to initiate some sort of totally unproductive PMS-rooted feelings talk in which I cry into a roll of toilet paper. Crying about feelings at Wellesley was the worst because we only had one-ply toilet paper, so both your ass and your eyes would get chapped.

b) I'm going to find a restaurant and order three desserts off the menu. Some women joke about this like "Ha, ha! I love chocolate so much I should marry it!" I am not joking, this is not a game, and I don't want to marry it. I want to smear it in my face and ingest it as a substitute for human interaction.

c) It's going to be a long week of ironic tragedies. The last time this happened, I got crapped on by three pigeons in one day. It was insanity. By the time I could get a change of clothing, I looked like a Jackson Pollock.

As it happened, the week was filled with not one, but all three of the afore mentioned scenarios. I sit here before you all in my bathrobe nursing a sinus infection and sorting through a box containing seven pounds of face soap.

I left my house on Monday to go to Diesel, which is the place lesbians go when they want to get away from it all by going to the one place they're basically guaranteed to run into each other at.

Diesel Cafe claims it's not a lesbian restaurant. This is an enormous joke. Diesel Cafe is not a lesbian restaurant in the same way that a bar called "The Assless Chap" discriminates against homosexuals.

Once at Diesel, overcome by feelings and haunted by the image revealed to me at Breakfast, I ordered one of each pastry on the menu and juggled them to a table in the back. I ate half of the load and was feeling sick when I looked up and was quite shocked to see a bunch of gays!

As every gay knows every other gay, I'll leave you in suspense as to the events that transpired over the next five hours, but suffice to say I left Diesel in a dark mood, the brownie omen never far from my mind.

As I rode the subway home, I felt a familiar warmth trickle through me. It wasn't love. It wasn't fulfillment. I looked down at my hands and shirt, and I was covered in blood. The other people on the subway scooted to the far edges of their tiny seats, and a young boy stared. My nose was shooting blood, and I was two stories underground and wearing a totally awesome outfit that was totally getting wrecked by my nose. I thought about getting off the train at Harvard.

"No," I whispered poetically, even dramatically to myself. "Let it bleed. Like happiness, it's source will dry quickly." So I let the doors close, and about two seconds later realized that blood, unlike happiness, has a repository of about 6 quarts, and at 3 tsp/minute, 192 tsp/quart, I needed to get off the fucking train and stop bleeding on myself.

I ran up the escalator at Central holding an ancient napkin against my nose, crossed the street to my favorite (non-lesbian) cafe, where the woman holding the bathroom key grimaced and handed it to me, the metal chain hanging from her pinky finger, which I'm assuming she later boiled.

In my head I had been imagining I looked like this:

In actuality, I looked more like this:

I had blood smeared all over my cheeks and my forehead with blood running down both of my arms. I looked like William Wallace if he had, following battle, eaten his enemies. I was wearing head-to-toe Kate Spade, whose motto for 2011 is "LIVE COLORFULLY." Done and done.

I got home, got a sinus infection, and spent the next three days in bed. Today is my first day back in the world, so I'm very excited to be back on LGN, and am eagerly anticipating no more freak accidents.

Beck's In The City Part 1: Bagpipes

I spent the last three days at APEC in New York City, which is a giant music showcase for musicians trying to book gigs.

There are a truly staggering number of bagpipers out there looking for work. It makes me want to throw a giant ceilidh and hire all of them. I wish that a visionary like FDR would make a New Deal-esque program for these vocationless pipers and put them to work. How spectacular would it be if the opening of every new Starbucks was heralded by twenty bagpipers playing Amazing Grace?

I used to live in this pretty posh area of Nashville where the houses are old, the money is older, and nude joggers are swiftly brought to justice. One family decided that they needed to leave a tangible mark on the city of Belle Meade.

One day, all the neighbors were called out to the main boulevard, where a line of fifty bagpipers and Scottish dancers in full regalia were leaping down the closed-off boulevard towards a grassy bank that was covered in pristine white tarps. The great thing about the City of Belle Meade is that you can get arrested for driving an economy car one mile over the speed limit, but if you want to put up homemade signs and close the main thorough-way for a giant Scottish processional in the middle of the work day... Danny boy, play on.

There were white-tuxedo caterers standing in people's front lawns carrying bacon mini-quiches on trays. Back before Nashville got a Macy's, when Sam's Club was considered a legitimate caterer, mini-quiches were considered to be the height of culture. The family we're discussing has boasted that Bill Clinton and six heads of state have been guests at their home. I'm sure they were served mini-quiche. Bon appetit, Sarcozy.

The procession slowed, the drummers hummed on their goat-skin drums, and the neighbors whispered and consumed their tiny quiche, titillated. In 1990, Nashville was a little less "The City that Almost Got the Olympics," a little more fur-trapping outpost, so a grand processional of bagpipers was a pretty big fucking deal. At last, the mayor of Belle Meade gave a speech and the tarps were whipped off with a grand flourish to display a magnificent, lasting tribute to that noble symbol of Tennessee local fauna:

The random raccoon.

In case you were wondering, the one that appears to be burrowing into the wall is, in fact, just a butt. There's no head on the other side.

The world needs more random raccoons. The ones on Belle Meade Boulevard are a sad relic of a better age... I remember back before the recession when blowing $20,000 erecting solid bronze rodents on a public road was a meaningful service to the public. I took it for granted that the Cheek family was not only providing a beautiful, if obtuse display of lasting art, but they were providing gainful employment of dozens of Appalachian bagpipers.

I've decided that when I become wealthy and my trash is no longer quite so white, I will erect a statue in Green Hills and have a processional. There will be quiche.

Out-Queering The Bus Queers

Today, I got on the 39, which is the Club Med of MBTA bus lines. It's basically the Gay Shuttle. The Gay Shuttle runs from the organic cooperative grocery store along the boutiques of artisan jewelry to the vegan gluten-free cupcake bakery, through the gayborhood, past the lesbian H&M ads, which are oddly posted smack dab in the middle of the VA Hospital parking lot between two "VOTE REPUBLICAN" trucks that sit in defiance of "global warming" to conclude at the subway station.

I take the Gay Shuttle to one of my jobs... I can't name names, but it's the one where I wear fanciful shoes and lacquered bangles and fantastical headbands.

I take my seat. Never a window seat, because I have this irrational fear of people riding the bus, falling asleep leaning against the window and peeing themselves, thereby contaminating the seat. I don't know why this doesn't apply to aisle seats.

I remove my book from my totally awesome handbag. Beginning next week, it will be gold sparkles. This week, it's cream pebbled leather with mahogany trim, but it's still a serious bag.

This week, my book is Glenn Beck's "The Christmas Sweater." I'm not ashamed. The cover is iridescent. I don't have to be reading "War and Peace" to prove how smart I am to the other bus riders. I know I'm literate.*

*This quality is not strictly required for the appreciation of "The Christmas Sweater," as there are many pictures, presumably for the benefit of his regular listeners.

So I sat on the Gay Shuttle on my way into work on Thursday, shimmering pleated Kate Spade skirt, bright red tights, pearl earrings and fluffy blouse donned reading Glenn Beck's "A Christmas Story," when the Bus Queers started to board.

Bus Queers always board alone. If a Bus Queer is, through some anomaly, sporting a new pair of chucks that doesn't look like it's been backed over by the hybrid that they took white-water rafting, you'd better fucking believe that there's a Ginsberg quote scribbled in ball-point pen on the instep. Bus Queers do not wear crisp white anything. They eschew it as a color.

They sit down and scan the bus. Bus Queer, I see you. I sniffed you out the minute you got on the bus. I don't need to mention the Bieber hair, the square glasses, the black denim jacket, or the pants with pockets that could hold every camel, bushel, and chaff of the twelve tribes of Israel. I got your number, and such easy lesbian jokes are for amateurs.*

*See this blog, seven months ago.

I see you see me reading Glenn Beck's "The Christmas Sweater."

I see you see my powder puff hat.

I see you.

Your lip curls a little. I see that. You slouch back into the chair, reach into your book bag, and pull out Jessica Valenti's "The Purity Myth," rather pointedly. You aim its cover so that it squarely faces my book's cover, which is still Glenn Beck's "The Christmas Sweater." Perhaps you are hoping that by facing "The Purity Myth" towards "The Christmas Sweater," our book's raw energies will come to life and duel, hot manna crackling, like Harry and Lord Voldemort's respective wands in "The Goblet of Fire."

Well guess what, Bus Queer? You're going to have to wake up a little earlier to pull the feminist moral superiority card on this guy. I've already read "The Purity Myth." I made sure my nieces obtained copies of "And Tango Makes Three," and I read "Feministing," "Joe My God," and "Pam's House Blend" before breakfast every day.*

*For breakfast, I often feel the compulsion to mix my cereal with tequila. I'm sure this is unrelated.

I know that you think I'm a heterosexual that only cares about shopping. I become slightly concerned that you might be disembarking the bus after me, because I am, in fact, getting off at the Prudential Center Mall. You will think you are right. This bothers me.

The Museum of Fine Arts approaches. You don't get off. I don't get off. If I really was the Kate Spade Girl, I'd be getting off at the Museum of Fine Arts to spend the day Exploring the Modern Art Section, then Riding a Trolley, Letting Go of a Balloon, Jumping in a Puddle, or Something Else That's Truly Wonderful. I am not the Kate Spade Girl, so I'm spending the day Working.

You, being a Bus Queer, are oblivious to the ramifications of this bus stop. We go on, and the stakes are raised.

Northeastern University passes. You are still on the bus. This concerns me. If you had gotten off the bus at Northeastern University, I could have jumped up on my seat and shouted:

"HA! YOU GO TO A SCHOOL THAT CARES ABOUT FOOTBALL! TAKE THAT, BUS QUEER!"

But now there is only one more stop before the mall, and I have to face your smug, righteous, Bus Queer gaze if you don't get off at Symphony. Nobody gets off at Symphony. Symphony is for sad people who want to die crossing Massachusetts Avenue; those who desire that their only corporeal legacy be a smear on the bottom of an Independent Taxi.

Of course you don't disembark at Symphony. I didn't think you would.

I begin to place Glenn back in my totally awesome bag. I see you look up across the top of "The Purity Myth." You think you're being subtle. You probably think that I suspect that you're gay, but that as a heterosexual, I have placed you somewhere between Ellen and Rosie on my Scale for Obvious Dyke Identification.

Girl, you couldn't be more wrong. I take toasters like Goodwill. I have an excellent manicure on my very short fingernails. I have just out-queered you. If you went 180 degrees from what a feminine woman should look like, I went 360. If the gender spectrum were a race track, I lapped you, son.

I'm the one getting up to shop in the powder puff hat.

And you just got out-queered.

Fill In the Blank

Jared Leto looks __________-er than a:

a) Jamaica Plain bike lane

b) West Hollywood brunch spot

c) Open mike night with six kinds of artisanal beers in the heart of the Castro.