pieces of me

Tuesday, nov. 17, 2009   |   0 comments

Happy Kirtsy Takes a Bow publishing release day, everybody! Can I tell you how happy-making it is to have some of my very own thinks nestled alongside the wonder words and photographs of so many talented lady internetsters? It appears I just did.

One hundred American thank yous to editor and friend Laura Mayes for pulling together such a smart and beautiful must-read, and for taking care of business oh so flashily, Elvis style. You sure did it!

Meanwhile, fine Mike from Red Choo Choo has wondered up a sleep position tee using Amelia Bauer‘s glorious illustrations from the good old Sleep book.

Here how good it looks like in action:

Read it, wear it, live it, my lovely manatees!

what not to wear, the reunion episode

Monday, aug. 4, 2008   |   4 comments

In just over three weeks, I will be attending my 20th high school reunion, an event that fills me with a yucky hot-stomach feeling that I’m guessing (though can’t really be sure…it’s so dark in there) is part social anxiety, part career uncertainty, and part wrinkle sadness, stirred with an unhealthy splash of “oh my god, my life is half over.”

Like a birthday or New Years Eve, a reunion is the kind of milestone that invites painful reflection and personal meter-reading. Blowing out the candles, counting down those last ten seconds of the year, these are times when the small, regret-weakened voice inside really likes to pity-party, fixating on the failures, belittling the achievements, and generally taking dim stock of the previous year. And a high school reunion is all those things, only ten times worse, what with the event rearing its ugly head only once a decade, meaning there’s ten times the annual should-haves and could-haves to look back on. Hurray!

Who should I be for my 20-year reunion: The Mead-Soaked PTA Mom?

So August 30th would be a hard day for me even if it weren’t for the fact that the last time I saw everyone was at my profoundly regrettable ten-year reunion, an event at which I accidentally got myself very, very drunk. As in red wine splashed across the chest of my shirt, mascara down to my chin, holding for dear life onto the railings in the handicap stall, confrontational “Hey! What are you doing here? I thought you’d for sure be serving time by now what with you being such a sick fuck!” and “Remember in eighth grade when you touched my nipples?” drunk.

The Demure Tea Partier?

I’m convinced that the reason I got so heinously plastered that fateful night, apart from the buckets of vodka I mean, was my outfit. It just was not right! For me, the wrong outfit makes me feel tongue-tied and boring and misunderstood, while the right outfit makes me feel attractive and smart and comfortable with the person I turned out to be. And on the night of my tenth high school reunion, I was wearing the wrong outfit.

The Bendable, Posable Cha-Cha-Charming Action Figure?

I had spent the afternoon trying on shirts after pants after skirts after dresses in a terrible fit of outfit indecision. When it came time to head over to my friend Megan’s house—where our circle of still-friends had planned to gather beforehand for drinks—I still wasn’t dressed. So I threw on sweats and grabbed pretty much all the clothes I owned and took them with me, and while we sipped pre-reunion libations, I modeled outfit after outfit, trying to find the perfect combination of fabric and color and texture and not-too-snugness to forge the protective coating of confidence and body-comfort I needed to face the next four hours. But before I could find the Right Outfit, we were late and everyone was yelling at me to Come on! And Let’s go! So I just went out the door in what I was wearing at that moment: a weird cropped neon green shirt, a black-and-white stripped belly-gripping angle-length skirt, and towering maroon platforms. It was a very late-90s look, which was okay since it was 1998. The problem was, it just did not capture my me of that moment. For not only does the right outfit have to look cute, but it also has to make me feel like my outsides match my insides. And clearly, on that night of nights, my insides were begging for vintage postal pants, black webbed belt with metal “E” slider buckle, Rebel sneakers, and a black tee with heart-shaped neckline. Which I firmly believe is why, when we arrived at the reunion, I started pouring myself one bad idea after another. I think I was just trying to drink my insides into matching my outsides!

The Dry Wine-Whitened Gallery Sophisticate?

But this time, it’s going to be different. For my 20th reunion, I’m going to make sure I’m wearing the right outfit. Because you’re going to help me, maybe! Here’s what I’m hoping you’ll do: Take a look at the survey of all my outfits, and if you see one that you think makes me look ultra pinchable (important!) but also embodies the Essence of Evany (absolutely key!), then add a comment for that photo that says, “I totally think you should wear this to reunion!” A reunion, by the way, that will be staged here in the Bay Area (i.e., too cold for short-shorts), in the evening-time (so no brunch-style clam diggers), and we’ll be charmed by the musical stylings of the very same high school band that played at Prom (i.e., actually sweatpants would probably be just fine).

The Cheerfully Swedish Exchange Student? Or some other me entirely? Type your vote at me today!

With your wisdom to guide me into the Right Outfit, clearly there’s no way I can fail! Now the only remaining question is: Do I stay sober to demonstrate how most improved I am? Or do I keep with tradition and get even more loaded and tell all those pieces of dried and tanned fruit leather what I really think…again?

Or maybe this dark night calls something in between…a toast! To temperance!

the international language of sleep!

Wednesday, mar. 19, 2008   |   0 comments

This is exciting and also some kind of weird: My Secret Language of Sleep is now available in Russian! And it seems to be considerably sexier in translation:

The cover photo reminds me of one of those personal lubricant commercials, the one with the clock in the corner indicating that the couple's been actively at each other for like seventy-two hours solid, without breaks for snacks or reflection, just non-stop candles and mussled sheets and steamy, cramped bath sex? I don't know, to me that kind of endless-remix-extendo-play seems less like pleasure and more on the "pain"/"torture"/"get that thing away from me" end of the spectrum, regardless of how much K-Y a person has lined her larder with. And just think of the beard burn! Though I suppose I could be talked into it, if I were sufficiently incentivized with regular infusions of pie, and we turned on the television?

The Russian version also features some unexpected changes in the Legend section of the book, for instance the icon second down on the right seems to be the international symbol for gay men's right to adopt? Which I'm all for, unlike the wretched smiley face (not my favorite). And what's the symbol in the lower-left? Is that...your anus? Oh. Well then. Pleasure to make your a-taintance!

And I wonder if I ever did show you the little Italian version of the book, the ones printed especially for the reading pleasure of Italian people?

There they all are, just three Sleeps in a pod. So exciting! So weird! So profoundly cute on that amazing mushroom shelf from the Curiosity Shoppe!

cupcakes, champagnes, sleep readings

Tuesday, feb. 6, 2007   |   0 comments

I’m going to be signing books and doing Sleep pose readings this coming Thursday (February 8), from 6 to 9pm, at everyone’s favorite Minnie Wilde on 21st at Valencia! It would be so lovely to have you there, patting my pattables — this being my first solo appearance, I’m now suddenly nervous in an entirely new, solo way. And if the idea of me, jittering and babbling and almost surely awash in one drink too many, isn’t enough get you to let those dogs out, there will also be cupcakes and champagne and a 39% discount on all of Minnie Wilde’s Fall things. It’s what Thursdays evenings were made for!

Also: Maybe it’s just me, but it sure seems like a SIGNED copy of The Secret Language of Sleep: A Couple’s Guide to the Thirty-Nine Positions would make a stirring Valentine’s Day gift, right?

having a ball

Thursday, dec. 7, 2006   |   0 comments

The reading was so fun! Fancy cheeses, god-made cookies, fresh margaritas, pomegranate champagnes, and the oldest dog that ever was — it was out of control! And so many pals were there: Angela, Jordan, Eli, Chris, Andrew, Barb, Anna, Trevor, Heidi Meredith, Heidi Pollock, Liz, Michele, Matty, Adrienne, Lori, Laura, Scout, Megan, Julia, Addison, Rebekah, Stephen, Jessica, whew, plus a bunch of new friends, including the amazing Stephen Elliott and Daniel Handler, wow, as well as one incredibly nice and pretty Jennie, who came to the reading simply because she read about it on these very pages — I so love it when that happens. Hurrah for new friends! I drank many delicious drinks and ate grapes and signed lots of books, and it was a truly great time. They really put on a classy act at the Candystore, and I am one very lucky thing to have such lovely opportunities and such present (and so very presentable) friends. Happy, happy! Lucky, lucky!

And then cut to me, at 5am this morning, wide awake and awash in shame, panic, and regret because…because…I hadn’t publicly thanked the Candystore at the end of my reading? Because what if my slideshow didn’t make any sense? Because sometimes drinking drinks just makes you wake up at 5am awash in shame and panic and regret? Whatever the reason, I definitely woke up on the wrong, bad, crab-apple cove side of the bed this morning. So I went off to this AM meeting I had scheduled in downtown Berkeley, and then I decided to walk off my disgrunts and worries. At first I was going to simply tool around Berkeley for awhile, but after I got going, it felt so good, I just went whee-whee-whee all the way home, all six-point-however many miles.

My “march back to sanity” march took me the full length of College Avenue. And let me tell you, they really went all-out on the Holiday decorations this year:

I’m not quite sure you can see it in these strange, strained photos that my cell phone can’t help but take, but each tree in Rockridge has been festooned with one, solitary red ball. Marco and I actually saw the guy putting these up a few weeks ago, and at the time, I thought that he was just doing one color at a time. Surely someone would be by later with the green balls, followed by the gold balls, and then the silver? But no, that was it. Just…one ball for each tree. Did they run out of funding or something? If so, maybe a better plan would be to fully decorate each fifth tree and leave the others blank. That would be better, right? Instead of this row of sad, sad Charlie Brown goose-egg trees? Though, like so many things I complain about, I’m beginning to wonder mid-fume if maybe the approach that so riles me is actually way more awesomer. Yeah actually, I think I’m going to withdraw this complaint, and instead offer my congratulations: hats off to you, Rockridge, for having the balls to go uniball this year! And hats off too to my marathon stroll, for stomping the irrational regrets right out of me.

Now Marco and I are off to another champagne-pumped event. The non-stop train of holiday woo has officially chugged into gear!