zaziel
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I'tr�m breit vula�oz�o ye spalla ei�tlin nel�ffnes pieqi aummit su berwegr'ra'ao.

Vanity Shrugs

Sunday, Oct. 12, 2003 -
Ap�sl�min ida corbalanyrtne 'ls�o rohl'daathi�m v� nen�a iroyss�rd.

The Revolving Joseph Cornell is back. It took me a while, but I've finally put my computer back together.

I've signed up for another mad month of Nanowrimo, so you'll see new stuff posted to Tindemoss in November.

And Jer's home for the weekend. Yeah. I'll be writing something about that later. Something turgid.

~

Fleur, my niece, has seized upon the notion that I can make heaps of money as a model.*

On a previous Saturday afternoon, not yesterday�:

"That could've been you," Fleur sez as she eyes the torso of the deliciously meaty yet sleek gentleman selling "broken-in" jeans in a Gap commercial�we're watching "I Love the 70's" on VH1. "And you�ve got better hair,� she added.

"They probably would ask me to cut it off. Ask in the sense of a demand," said I, defiantly tossing back my unruly (and lengthy�) mane. My vanity is absurdly flattered. We're waiting for Fleur's siblings to get home from their soccer games (Fleur decided this year that tennis, ballet, Frisbee golf and mall-crawling would provide sufficient exercise for her physical health). We hope to adjourn to our favorite coffeehouse for a meeting of the the Mad Alchemists Club, aka the Abbie Normal Club (or more formally, the Abbie Normal Rockhounding And Cow-Watching Association). We're also the Unexpected Poets Society, the Sen-Sen Sisterhood, the Frito Banditos, the Tamarindo Puppy Club, the Outside Artists for Outdoor Art, and the Shrubbers Guild. And/or whatever we decide to call it this month. We change the name of this less-than-organized organization according to our whims. We try to meet every second or third Sunday morning of every month, but failing that, we meet every first or fourth Friday afternoon. Failing that, we meet whenever we can. The membership consists of my sister, her four children, the mater, and me. Guests, such as husbands and boyfriends, are welcome to attend meetings, but usually it's just Our Gang Of Seven.

(Two of Maritilde's children are her own, inasmuch as she birthed them herself, but Fleur is the progeny of my oldest sister, Lolly, who is feckless, and can't be trusted with the care of any living thing more tender than a cactus. And even her cacti suffer.)

"I wasn't talking about your hair," continues Fleur with a persistence inherited from both her mothers. "I was talking about..." she pauses, mischievous, innocent and aghast as only a fourteen-year-old can be. "...your chest hair." Delight and embarrassment at her own temerity, sotto voce.

I look at her askance, wondering when she had been studying my chest hair, because at the moment, my cleavage is modestly covered. I am unadventurously dressed in jeans, t-shirt and pull-over, the international uniform for the young male of the species. "Um, they�d probably ask me to shave my chest too," I opine. (They being the ubiquitous powers-that-be who guard and uphold the standards that are the bulwark of Western civilization.) "Where did this sudden hair fetish come from? I thought your generation preferred male pectorals to be baby-ass smooth."

(Do heterosexual uncles talk about hair-removal with their nieces? Even though she has nothing to shave, Fleur has been shaving her legs since she was twelve, and we have discussed the various methods for denuding ourselves. We have differing views on waxing and shaving, but we both agree that sugaring is no improvement over waxing and is just as painful. We absolutely concur that cremes are vile, and I have forbidden her to pluck her eyebrows�their natural shape is perfect. Mine are less so and Fleur has had a hand in their ultimate design. But I have never asked for her opinion of my chest. I mean, after all, she�s a fourteen-year-old female. Not my target audience.)

"I do not have a hair fetish!" insists Fleur. "What ya talkin' about, my generation? You've shaved your chest lotsa times."

"But that�s because I'm a fag, darlin'."

"'Zaziel!" shouts my sister from the dining room. "We don't say that word in this house, and not outside this house either."

"What?! We can't call each other darlin'? What kind of fascist Draconian household are you running here?"

"'Zaziel..." warns my sister in that foreboding voice that can only be achieved by females who have carried a fetus to full term. Fleur is giggling. "Breeders," I mutter for her amusement, rolling my eyes in the fake but righteous indignation of a happily childless queer manchild.

"I heard that," sez my sister, walking in on us. It's immediately clear she is not entertained. I have this theory that during pregnancy a large part of the female's sense of humor is transferred to the placenta and is lost after the birth of the child. The more children, the more serious mother. Maritilde has whelped only two of her four, but she can effortlessly achieve a four-child degree of gravity.

"Fleur saw your photos. The ones the mater took." Spoken by my sister as a pronouncement of doom.

I cannot think of anything to say except something that probably sounds like "Awgk." I am�to say the least�nonplussed.

A few years ago, the mater took a photography class, but not to learn the basics. The mater, who had a semi-professional career as a photographer in the seventies, knows how to take a picture. This was a class for advanced students and professionals who wanted to build a kick-ass portfolio. It was not a course for dilettantes. I think the mater�who had let her career gracefully collapse under the weight of other passions, like yoga and printmaking (mostly woodcuts)�took the class to see if she could still make the grade. She could, she got her A.

One of the requirements of the portfolio was the inclusion of a male nude. In my defense, I will say I did not volunteer to be the subject, in fact, my first reaction when asked was "God, no." And before you start getting kinky ideas, the reason my mother asked me to pose nude was because I had done it before, for other people. Not naughty stuff, get your mind out of the gutter. I picked up a few extra bucks (very few) as a model for life-drawing classes at one of the local universities, and I did some innocuous nudes for a photographer who later went on to bigger if not better things in the porn industry.

Since I had posed for strangers, one of whom went on to become a smut-monger, it was impossible to claim modesty as my reason for not posing for the mater. I had to rely on the feeble protest that I felt "oogie" about standing as a grown and naked man in front of my mother. The mater gave that excuse the succinct shrift it deserved, and not too many days later I found myself in front of her lens, totally unclad.

So when my sister tells me my niece saw the photos the mater took, and does not elaborate further, I know exactly which photos she's talking about and they ain't the ones of me as a three-year-old with a turkey carcass on my head.

~

* I wonder if our friend Clyde must bear the responsibility for that idea. Clyde is a family friend, a son of one of the mater's cronies. We've seen a lot of Clyde lately, on the shopping carts at one of the local supermarkets. Of course, it's pictures of Clyde we're looking at, in those little billboards that hang on the upper basket of the cart, the part that folds up when you want to fill your cart with large items like lawn chairs or 25-lb. bags of dog food. While we're wheeling our way down the aisles, there's Clyde looking good in a dove-gray sweater, his hair is perfect, his smile is natural, and he has a giant doughnut wrapped around his hips. A doughnut with pink icing. If you get a cart that�s been left out in the sun, the pink has faded to a pale periwinkle. It's an advertisement for a nutritious snackbar, urging you to respect yourself. Apparently, if you eat this snackbar you're respecting yourself and your hips won't look like a giant pink-iced doughnut. Or a giant periwinkle-iced doughnut.

� Yesterday was spent in bed. Yeah. Turgid, I tell ya. But later. I'm still savoring the afterglow.

� Heck, I myself would probably cut it if I wasn't growing it as an act of love. The Fiend loves it and he loves playing with it and I love it when he plays with any part of my anatomy.

<~>
Ap�sl�min ida corbalan� 'lse nesgla ugar�-cham sa cru ogrulho bat�oltha al�mv�sde.

last eleven:

Resurrection - Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Arts and Letters -
Friday, June 17, 2005
Domestic Obsessions -
Tuesday, April 5, 2005
The Kindness of Strangers -
Tuesday, April 5, 2005
Gone -
Saturday, April 2, 2005
Coming Back, Little By Little -
Saturday, April 2, 2005
Effing Around -
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Explicably Yours -
Wednesday, February 9, 2005
Things Too Innumerable To Mention -
Sunday, January 30, 2005
Mr. Armstrong -
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
The Pope in Our Kitchen -
Saturday, October 2, 2004



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Sa r'ji�o oss�vel meninonceiv �o poshik m�'�nch uscantebatahla o�r musiu o�r muiko.
Copyright � 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 by gcs

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