Also cool…we were late, and this dude was standing outside the Happy Endings Lounge where they do the reading series (which, by the way, is marked with a Chinese restaurant sign – totally confusing)…we started to talk to him, and I realized it was Arthur Nersesian, who wrote The Fuck Up, which is a great book.  He was in the process of editing his new novel down for the reading (using a pencil, so cute). He was down-to-earth and cool, and even gave me a shout-out before he read, which was, of course, completely thrilling to me.

yeah, I'm that big a dork...I asked for a fan pic. what can I say? writers are rockstars to me.

Then there was a surreal moment when we took a picture – Katie, Arthur and me in the middle – and I thought, wow, I’m here with two writers I admire.  Then Katie said, “Now we got a picture of three writers!” and I realized, whoa, I guess they consider me a WRITER too.

Freaky.

I’ve known Gabrielle for years (we went to grad school at the University of Arkansas together).  And if you meet a cool, hilarious, whip-smart writer chick…well, you make sure to keep in touch.  I’ve always loved her writing…her stuff is raw and fearless…her stories burn themselves into your consciousness and stick with you.  So of course I asked if I could have one for my site…’cause, ultimately, having talented friends make me look good!

and PS, she's a sexy bitch too!

Bars of Long Beach

by Gabrielle Idlet

“Ma said three,” I remind Slicker.  “P.m.”

“What she here for anyway?  Little thing.”  The bartender doesn’t say “illegal.”  I’m fourteen but short and flat so I look eleven, people say.  Ugly enough to go without friends (sea urchin freckles splashed on my face, pink paper cut eyes).  But I’m getting muscles, that’s one thing.

Slicker just taps his knuckles for another Coors and bends over the pool table.

“What if she takes off again, Slicker?”

The bartender slides a pink drink under my chin.  “Go head.  Low octane.”

“Give her beer nuts,” Slicker tells him.  It’s so slow in here, smoky fog.  The stringy-haired guy he plays against spits on the floor.

The bartender has a line dug in from his lip to his nose and when he smiles the pink stretches.  He smiles at me.

“We need to go.”

“Stay there, Francy.”  Slicker dips his head and breaks.  The cue ball bounces off the green and hits the thigh of a thick man at the jukebox.  The man jerks around.  Slicker’s hands in the air – “Hey man, my mistake man.”  Like they’re under water, everybody’s swaying.  It always goes like this.

“Don’t swing at him,” the bartender says.  “His daughter’s here.”

“I’m not his daughter,” I slide off the stool and run.

Outside the Low Tide the sun shocks my eyes.  Slicker’s like a dog.  You have to lead him.

Lucky the streets are empty since Slicker never pops out of second in his old pickup.

“Hurry up,” I tell him.

“Listen,” he huffs, foul in my hair.  “Listen you thing . . .” but he doesn’t finish.

Shadows sharp, ocean hissing, Long Beach seems like those black and white movies Slicker likes, the ones with circus music.  They’ve been running double features at the Vista.

“Kiddo,” he says, softer.

“Left here, Slicker!”  He spins the wheel.  We bump over a curb and onto the 405 onramp aiming for LA.

“Shift now.”  Fucker.  If I could reach the pedals.

Ma told Slicker what to do when, too.  When she left six months ago she handed me over to him.  If you asked her, the version would go:  Francine needs to stay in school, Francine came when I was too young, that was before we had a choice.  I can’t change who I am. Something like that.  Thirty seconds with Ma would show you who she is.  Her melted fingertips where she kept her hands in the fire for too long when she was on some drug that makes you not feel burning.  Her no-bra, no-panties body under a dress that’s lacy or has holes.  You would see her bare feet always revved, feet you can’t calm down.  The only way she could relax was by lying naked at the beach in the sun.  She knew the hidden places.

Slicker and Ma didn’t date.  I figure they met in one of the East Hollywood bars, The Rustic or the Drawing Room or maybe the Dresden if it was the first or fifteenth when her Museum Shop check was fresh.  Slicker started coming around to our house to fix the porch light, rig the garage door with a clicker, put up a new mailbox where the old one got smashed in Ma’s blind spot.  When Slicker was there, Ma gave me things to do that would take an hour, like Mow and weed (both) or Clean the kitchen and I mean mop too, and they closed the door to her room.  He didn’t always leave, either.

Ma had stopped wearing jewelry after she gave up trying to be an actress.  She said decoration was for sluts.  When she said sluts her s’s sprayed on me.  She kept her figure the same by picking at food.  She smoked and didn’t brush her hair and wore stained jeans and the same hiking boots she had in the sixties when she used to live outdoors, and men never stopped falling in love with her.  Natural beauty. That’s what Slicker said.

Ma left after our big fake Christmas.  She put Slicker in an elf costume from the Salvation Army, and he let her.  You could see his greasy work pants hanging under the green smock.  Ma crawled to the radio, turned up the tinny song.  “Deck those halls, I said deck ‘em!”  One speaker was out and it screeched along with her.  Slicker down on his knees, putting fingers on her face.  When Ma slapped him, he held on.

Soon enough she was staying away for half-weeks, guessing Slicker would watch me.  She stepped out of a black Town Car once, tinted windows. She was in a long sleeveless Asian dress with one of those high collars, satin the blue the sky should have been.  You could see a man’s hand not wanting to let go of hers.  Slicker and I watched out the window and looked at each other like dopes in a sit-com.

“We’re on time, anyway,” Slicker cuts into my thoughts.  He’s booming now, coming to.  “Three thirty.”

“Three,” I say, and we’re pulling off the Hollywood Freeway, moms in aprons fanning themselves, men with beers in paper bags, ducks, a swan. “Pull over.”

“Don’t boss me.  Shut up.”

“Here.”

I have Ma’s thin lips and the hair she calls auburn, the very same.  I am wearing a gray silk blouse she left behind.  It doesn’t matter.  At the end of Echo Park Lake where the lotuses are starting to leaf and geese poke their bills for people to feed them, under the palm tree, on the bench facing the water, she isn’t waiting.

“She wasn’t here to start,” he says.

“It’s your fault.”  My shouting rings.  “It’s you.”

He lifts his hand.  “Spoiled –”  He gives up.

“You drunk ass!”  I jump out, but he grabs my collar and wrestles me across the grass to a tree.  Sun behind his head makes a greasy silhouette.  He smells like a stray.

“Brat, blamer, lucky anybody gives a shit.”  His k’s and t’s spray.  A streamer from a finished party kicks around until a breeze drags it into the water.  When a police cruiser rolls by Slicker steps back, smoothes his hair.

“She was here,” I say, following him.

On summer weekdays while Slicker handymans at his apartment jobs, I watch reruns on the black-and-white in what used to be Ma’s bedroom.  When she left she just took money and clothes, so all her furniture’s still there but Slicker’s rearranged things.  On the vanity where she used to keep art books and lotions, Slicker puts his ace bandages, sandbag ashtray, super-flashlight, jar of change, pull-tops from cans of whatever beer’s on sale at Safeway.  I angle the fan on me and turn up the sound so the room crackles with “Put ‘em up”s and “Freeze”s.  I pinch myself, rows of pink up my arm.

She calls once in a while.

“Hello.”

“Honey . . .”

“Oh Ma, Mama, hi, hi Mom!  Please come I miss you I’m here I’ll make sandwiches please.”  I am easy.  Sluts?  That’s me as a daughter.

Three times she’s arranged to meet me, and three times she hasn’t shown.

“We said two not three.”

“You had the wrong day.  I’m so sorry you had the wrong day.”

“I was sick.  Every time I called the phone was busy.”

This time, who knows?

Summer evenings when Slicker gets home he does pull-ups.  He bolted a bar into the kitchen doorway.  He lifts me so I can do sets with him.  I’m at ten, up from zero.  He squeezes my flex and admires.  To clear his head Slicker uses gravity boots, and I watch his swaying face until the upside-down mouth doesn’t make any sense.

“Why don’t you play with anybody, have a friend over?”  Slicker pops a beer and hands me a grape soda.

“Don’t want to talk about it.”

“Just saying.”  Slicker crosses his legs like a professor.  “I feel like I should say something.”

While he snores to Johnny Carson I pretend my pillow is a body and I kill it.

“Zampano, you take care of my daughter!”  That’s what I yell out of the truck window after the movie.  We’re driving to Long Beach but first we have to see Slicker’s mother.  Slicker’s already loaded from the flask he brought into the theater.

“Sure, I even teach dogs,” he says, which is what Zampano says.  He mugs the strongman from La Strada, puffs his shoulders.

“You know Anthony Quinn’s act, Zampano’s act, he’s playing that guy, Promefeus,” Slicker can’t stop.  It’s like he’s trying to talk while he tumbles down a flight of stairs.  “Zeus that rat bastard chained him to a rock, sent an eagle round to peck out his liffer.  Every night, Prometheus had to re-grow the thing, re-grow his own liver like a baby, and the next day the whole thing would happen again.”

“Why?” I say.

“Who knows.”

I fit his beat-up sunglasses over my ears.  Supposedly Roy Orbison used to own this pair.  Slicker’s dad got them off the side of the stage at a dancehall concert in Downey.  His dad gave them to Slicker when he left to bomb Korea.  “Now you’re side by side with them free Orientals in school,” Slicker points out.  “Little kids last name Kim.  Thank Pops.”

“My father wore aviator glasses,” I tell Slicker.

“Yeah.”

“Man’s sunglasses.”

“Yeah, where’s the man now?” Slicker blurts, then squints like his sentence hurt him.  I see my father on the curb with a falling sun outline, thumbs in his belt loops, brown lenses covering tired-of-us eyes.

“I was alright . . . for a while . . .” I belt out.

Slicker sings he could smile for a while.  When he hits the high notes his purple gums show.  Recently he has been teaching me how to harmonize.  We twist our highs and lows around each other.

His mother has no teeth or hair.  “Hair and nails are dead,” Slicker tells me when we pull into the dark garage of her seniors’ complex.  “Teeth aren’t, but they can die.  That’s when you carve them out with a Leatherman.”

“Puke.”

“When you’re my age, you’ll be grateful for the gas.”  He makes a jack-o-lantern face so I can see the empty spaces.  Most of his front teeth are still there.  “Hers are in a tumbler.”  He taps half a container of Tic-Tacs into his mouth.

We wait a long time at her door and when the knob turns he moves in front of me.  Tiny, wrinkled fists go around him, wadded tissue in each one.  When we step in, she stares.

“Daughter of a friend of mine.”  Slicker waves over my head like we don’t live together.

The old woman gets close, stinking of concentrated band-aids.  “Is something wrong with her skin?” Slicker’s mother asks.

“Freckles,” he says, and he rolls his eyes at me.

They talk, Slicker popping mints.  She wants too much, you can tell from her rotted-apple mouth as it opens and closes.  Then she has to go to the bathroom and I’m the one.  Slicker steps onto the balcony over an ocean of pastel apartment houses.  As he slides the glass door shut I can’t tell whether he’s sighing or it’s just freeway gusts.  He shakes out a Pall Mall.

“Ronald said he was on the wagon,” she whispers.

“Ronald?”

“Bad knees, rejected.  But he built airplane parts in San Pedro for the men like his father who was fighting.”

“He told me.”

“His wife made pastries at a four-star restaurant.”

She makes toilet noises she doesn’t seem to hear.

“Took his boys east.”

In the truck Slicker pulls the tab off a Bud.

“You were married before?”

He doesn’t say anything.

“Ronald?”

“Leave it.”

His hand shakes, and I open and close my brain on the thought of him dying.

“I feel so bad, I got a worried mind,” I hum.  He stays quiet.

He refuels at the Breakers, and we go to the Pier.  I just stare at the stripe of gray ocean, the Ferris wheel rolling over with no one riding.  After he’s had coffee no creamer, we don’t head for the freeway.  We roll through a neighborhood with ragged lawns and black kids playing on the sidewalks.

“Used to be only Dustbowl transplants lived around here.”  He idles across the street from a white bungalow.  Small brown oranges hang off tree limbs.  A boy runs sideways into the beak of a bird of paradise and wails.

“Used to be a palm tree thin as you and three stories high where that kid is crying.”

He drives us to a street I haven’t seen before, and the sun cuts through, and it’s like we’re in an empty foreign country.  A long wall of arches stretches along one side.  No cars.  When we shut the truck doors, our shadows are sharp.  The street could be beautiful, except it is abandoned.

Slicker cups his hands to look through the window of a closed bakery, and I look, too.  All kinds of cakes topped with fantasy scenes are displayed on glass racks.  It’s like a museum of tiny worlds.  Slicker points at a white mountain with a bunch of snow-topped pine trees.  Plastic poles the size of pencils hold up the chair lift, and a couple of eraser-size skiers look like they got frozen while zooming.

Another one looks like Echo Park Lake, if it was transported to a land without freeways.  Water swirls blue-green around sparkling fish and floating lotuses.  Around the edges there’s sand.  Slicker says they toast sugar to get that effect.

In the corner there’s a Beatles cake.  They got in trouble for claiming to be bigger than Jesus, Slicker says.  “Unfortunately there’s a lot of things bigger than Jesus. Try to find something that isn’t.”

A cake on a low shelf is round and very smooth and glows the strong blue the sky becomes right before it goes black.  You can almost see light through it, but mostly you want to dive into it.

Realistic stars are sprinkled through the middle like a Milky Way, and on the edge there’s a disk that looks like a real moon, marbled and with no cute face.  There’s even a pale circle around the moon, which happens in real life once in a while.

“Space,” I say.

“They got it right with the icing,” Slicker says.

“That blue.”

“It’s the most beautiful color,” Slicker agrees.  “You can’t deny it.”

When we get home he boils split pea soup and drinks while I eat.  I am wondering what my original dad would have served me.

“This is good how you make it,” I tell Slicker.

“I open a can.”

He walks into Ma’s old room and unlaces his boots to lie down.

“Sweetheart, I wanted to –”

“Oh Ma, Mama, it was Slicker.  Otherwise we would have been on time!”

“Honey.”  There’s honking in the background.

“Mama, where are you, Ma?”

Go ahead take me, I might as well say.  Anywhere.

“My little girl . . .”

“I’m so tired,” Ma says.  Her voice is ragged and mostly made out of breath.

“I am so tired, too.  Me, too.”

“Francy, I’m not –”  But she doesn’t say what she’s not.

I listen to the traffic around her.  There’s another sound, too.  Gulls.

“Where are you?”

Slicker’s been watching.  He pulls the phone away and takes it into the bedroom for six minutes on the clock-radio by the TV.

“What did she say?” I am at his door when he opens it.

“The hell with her,” he says.  “But get dressed.”

“No.”

“She wants to see you.  North side of the lake on the bench, on the usual bench.”  He glances at the time.  “Twenty minutes.  That’s six thirty.”

“Does she want to see you, too?”  I’m asking for it.

“You have five minutes.  Then I will drag you by your hair.”

I have on the dress he made me wear, a yellow fucking sundress Ma bought in the spring.  It cuts under my arms.  Slicker’s cleaned up in a tucked-in midnight blue shirt and black slacks, no stains, no cigarette holes.  He drops me at the corner of the park by the lotuses.  “Good luck,” he says, but he doesn’t look at me.  His dented bumper bounces into traffic.

This is the corner of the park next to Amy’s Temple.  That white dome gets written over with graffiti all the time and guys with buckets come out and slap fresh paint over the spray-painted names and streets.  An old man in white coveralls is on his knees getting ready to paint over a word that looks like Loser.  When I focus my eyes, though, the word is Closer.  Like he’s obeying, the old man has to lean close to cover up the word.  But then Closer could also mean a person who closes.  Closer of doors.

A toddler that can barely walk is racing to the water with a stick.  No one stops him.  I almost go after him but I won’t leave the bench.  I yell hey, and he throws the stick in and stares.

“Hey,” I say.  “Don’t fall in.”

His mother yells something at him in Spanish.  He runs back to her knees and holds on.

Junker cars shriek down the boulevard from the Hollywood Freeway to the 5.  The sun is ready to drop, but I can’t see it.  Clouds closer to the ocean cluster thick, gold outlines, gray centers. Our weather comes from the west, Slicker says.

No gulls glide over the lake.

A dark-skinned woman with bleached hair pushes a stroller on the cement path around the lake.  The wind picks up the layers around her face and gives her head the look of an undersea creature, a ray or something.

After the woman has passed four times and climbs the slope across the park and disappears toward Sunset, I’m still waiting.  When I throw part of a thrown-away hamburger bun at a duck ten of them rush me so I have to jump up on the bench to keep their bills from stabbing me.  “Leave me alone,” I tell them, like they can understand reasoning.  “Get away from me.  You are worthless.  Get lost.”

There’s no one left on this side of the park, but I’m not leaving.  Instead, I dig a nail into my wrist to cut through.

“Francy, Francy,” high and far away comes the call.  “Francine!”  My head snaps around and displays my hope and then I am a broken egg spilling because it’s Slicker running between the swing-set and the slide yelling my name.  His arms are open and he’s not weaving, he’s running straight toward me.  I stand up and he grabs my shoulders and he catches my face in the center of his blue shirt and his pulse knocks against my ear and the things he has to say rumble from under his ribcage.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Slicker says.  He says it hot into the top of my head, the part that a long time ago was soft.

“I know,” I say.

Click Here

My beloved Katie’s new book comes out on May 13th!  I’ve read it, and you gotta read it too…she’s pretty damn fearless, and will write the stuff no one else has the guts to write.

Here’s her new book trailer!

Click here to view the embedded video.

read an excerpt

Steve Sanders:

My good friend Steve Sanders (I’ve known him since middle school) will be attending the PHD program in Creative Writing at the University of Texas in Houston…there aren’t very many of these programs, and they are really competitive, but I’m not surprised at all…he’s an amazing writer…I feel lucky to call him my friend!

I’m proud of you, Steve!

PS  Oh, yeah, and he’s an Okie!!!!  Don’t worry, even in Texas you’ll still be a Sooner, Steve!

Here’s an excerpt of his writing (don’t be mad, Steve, I can’t help it…and I love this story!)…more to follow when he gets his damn website finished!

The Trigger Finger

We’re ready to roll when we steal the liquor from my mother’s house.  My step-father is an alcoholic and mom has chronic fatigue syndrome so it’ll be Tuesday before she notices and by then Mark will assume he drank it all.  In the car, there is me, that is Tim, and my girlfriend Nicole.  She and I, we’ve been together almost a year, since the week before two-a-days.  In August, she intends to leave for Emory, and I intend for that not to happen.  But at this moment that’s not my concern.  Tonight my focus is Will and giving him the proper sendoff since tomorrow Will leaves for Parris Island.  He’s headed for harsh places and, let us accept the possibility, a harsh fate.

In the backseat are Ritesh Gandhi and a girl named Renee.  I’ve asked Gandhi to find a girl, any girl, for Will to have a shot at tonight.  He’s the son of a surgeon and he gets more pussy than Derek Jeter.  He’s my oldest friend and I wouldn’t trust him with so much as my laundry, but he’s good for coming through on things like this.

Sy Hoahwah:

My kickass Comanche friend (and, if you count a three day relationship, my former boyfriend…well, it was pretty clear within three days that we were better as friends), the gifted poet Sy Hoahwah, has a book out from West End Press…I, for one, am not surprised in the slightest.  His poetry always blew my mind.  Raw, real…and he tells the truth…  it isn’t always a truth that is comfortable to hear, his stuff is riveting and beautiful.

Sy’s Website

Ouija Board Blues

Nazy was a member of our family.  Not by blood, but it didn’t matter…she was part of us.  She posed in family portraits, she was there on every occasion that mattered.  When people learned that she was sick, they’re response was always shock.  “But she’s so young…she looks so healthy.”  And honestly, that was a choice on her part.  I’ve never seen someone fight so hard against a disease.  Nazy never gave up.  She was funny, sweet, cheerful, loving until the very end.  This is her final Facebook post, less than a week before she passed:

Nazy Baskin what can I say, life is always a challenge!

Right before she died, my brother asked Thomas to draw her a picture.  My brother builds motorcycles, and Nazy loved them too…she also loved elephants.  Greg wanted a picture to put on his motorcycle…something cool and funny that would make her laugh.  “A memorial,” he told me.   “I want to show it to her.  It will make her happy.”

I was shocked.  “A memorial?  But she’s not dead!” I said.

“She will be soon.  You have to face that.  I have.  So has she.  She’s happy now.  She’s happy the struggle will finally be over.”

It was just hard to imagine Nazy actually dying…until the end, she chose to go through life seeing the goodness around her.  Even when she was dying, she chose to be alive.

When I think of Nazy, I will always come back to this word:  grace.  She was one of those rare women who were born with it.  Grace, beauty, style, eloquence in everything she did – in the way she smiled at you, in her laugh, in her approach to the world. I’ve been told, even in the end, despite the pain, she was still the Nazy we all loved – warm, hopeful, kind.  She went out this world like she lived in it.

I will really, really miss her.

Julianna’s Website

ZACK KARABASHLIEV

http://www.24chasa.bg/Article.asp?ArticleId=331188

My Burn Brother, and member of my Bulgarian family, not only won the biggest book prize in Bulgaria…he won the second biggest as well! He is such a rockstar.  And for those of you who voted for him on my website, I’m still gonna get you that drink….now I just gotta find a way to get him published in the US (any ideas?)

MATT GOLDBERG

Matt Goldberg, a great friend, kickass writer, and one of the coolest people I know (and not only because he shares a name with a famous Jewish wrestler from Oklahoma) got a story bought by the Atlantic!!!!!!  For those of you not into the whole literature thing…that is a huge, huge deal.

Matt, this is for you:

BROOKE CHESHIER

http://www.amazon.com/Wine-Lovers-Page-Day-Calendar/dp/B002IE1FV4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=office-products&qid=1262383776&sr=8-2

Another great writer and good friend, the lovely and charming Brooke Cheshier, originally from Arkansas and now relocated to Napa Valley, has not only had her food and wine blog listed as one of the top 100…but a wine calendar she co-wrote is available on Amazon…

EMILY TOBY-ROSE JOHNSON

Emily Johnson, of Emo Goes Postal fame, has gotten a residency from the Vermont Studio Center, which is a really huge deal!

I’m proud of ya’ll!!!!!!

One of my last blog entries has a photo of him during Second Thanksgiving.  While everyone mingled and drank, he was disco dancing in the background.

And that was him.  The first time I ever met him,  he had been to the Farmers Market that day (he was an amazing cook), and within four seconds he was accosting me with a cucumber, holding it up to my mouth like a microphone.  “Who are you?  What are you doing here?”  He had a big wicked grin the whole time, ’cause that was him too.

He was one of those people who drew you in immediately.  I mean the guy literally warmed up a room.  I had only known him a short time – three and a half months – but I took it for granted I’d know him forever.

My last memory of William: in his apartment at the Chelsea, drinking shots of whiskey…Jefferson, Thomas and I introduced him to YouTube (what decade were you living in, Willem?)…and, just like that, he was hooked…suddenly he was ecstatic, pulling up songs and videos from the 60’s and 70’s, stuff he hadn’t seen in years…really hilarious stuff….a Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazlewood video complete with artistically blurred shots of her on the beach…and we were all watching and laughing hysterically.  Then we put on the BeeGee’s and Willem and I danced… Jefferson and Thomas watching from the couch and rolling their eyes at our awful choice of music.  But Willem didn’t give a damn.  He’d do anything he wanted to do… he’d say anything he felt like saying, and it was impossible to be offended by him.

“Show me some moves, Willem!”  I told him.  So he did.  We taught me the correct way to do the twist and the mashed potato, all with a cigarette in his mouth and a glass of whiskey in his hand.  And the dude had moves. He talked about the Beatles when they were young and Amsterdam when he was growing up.  He talked about the boat he was building (his baby). Later he read us all Bob Dylan lyrics in his best gravelly Bob voice…then Dylan Thomas poems…and honestly, that man could read poetry (and it wasn’t just the sexy accent either).   He had passion. He was hilarious and silly -  but honest and kindhearted.  He could ask a poignant question – one that, had anyone else asked, you might get offended – and you’d answer him honestly.  You knew he wanted the best for you, and it came from a place of love.

Willem: always the center of attention

Memory of Willem –  He knows some famous, hardcore experimental filmmaker, a lesbian who does really edgy, raunchy sex stuff… he is asked to audition for the lead in her new S & M film…he’s never acted before in his life, but he doesn’t let that stop him –  he gives it everything, despite the fact that he’s a straight guy playing an abusive leather daddy with lines like “You’re my bitch, bitch!”…and he practices his  for us, really getting into it, making me laugh till I cry. “I’m gonna be a star!” he tells us.  ”I need an agent!”

Memory of  Willem – taking me aside the last time I saw him…his voice low and his eyes kind…to tell me that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself.

Willem – telling us his cat is really a “Can-Can Girl” … then petting her back to which she instantly responds by raising her butt.  ”See!  She’s a Can-Can Girl!”

I had thanked Willem in the acknowledgements for my book.  Even though I’d only known him a short time at that point, not even a month, I’d wanted him in there.  It had been a crazy time in my life, and he’d given me kindness and comfort when nothing felt stable.  He made me feel stable, which is incredibly ironic since he’s spent so many years living in the Chelsea Hotel of all places…the least stable place in the world.

The last thing he told me, the last time I saw him, right before I left his apartment…make sure to get his last name right in the acknowledgments.  Well, not the very last thing.  The very last thing was him with a big smile, tapping his feet and singing “These Boots Were Made For Walking” as we headed to the elevator at 2 am…

I’ll miss you, Willem Van Es.

This is for you:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Best. Thanksgiving. Ever.

My cousin Vivian made an amazing meal and let all these orphans crash it!

In case you wondered where I got THIS from:

It runs in the family (my dad after dinner):

I know you can’t tell from this picture, but my dad is a genius.  He’s one of the world’s leading experts in International Terrorism.  He’s written fourteen books…and I swear, one day I’ll actually read one (they are pretty intense):

for some reason, she always makes me think of wildflowers

But this time it isn’t that easy.  We have a friend there.  It isn’t just another story on NPR.  I can’t just click my tongue and say how sad and try to push it away with thoughts of my own meaningless daily routines.  This is someone we know, and that makes it real…and this same friend was there during the OKC bombing.  And she is one of the sweetest, kindest, most loving and wonderful people you’ve ever met.  She is one of those rare women who have a genuinely good heart…and it seems so wrong and unfair that someone who makes the world a better place, sees the best in people, is always there for her friends, is such a good mother and wife…that someone who is such a gift to this world must face two terrifying disasters in her lifetime.

But she survived them both.  And she did it how she always does things – with class.  If she reads this, I want her to know I think she is incredibly brave and strong…and I want her to know that there will be only be good things in your future – warmth and light and a family you adore. You are the one who is there for everyone else when they need a friend, and know we are all thinking about you.  I’m so glad you are okay, and I know you will take this pain and turn it into something good for the world…because that is just the kind of woman you are.

We love you lots and lots.