Ice Cream and Other Terrifying Stories

This Ice Cream is my today's daily calcium intake.
The embryo will be spazztastic!

AND  I am --Batshit Crazy-- about the new Arctic Monkeys album.



And speaking of LOVES of Sweet and Beautiful
and Wacked Out Brilliance, I received a lovely
email from a student I taught when I was
the writer-in-residence at an all-women's
university back in the not so distant day.

Teaching these students was one of the great
joys of my life.  I scared the shit out of these
young women.  They had to enter the class
in silence, sit in a circle, and wait for me to
enter (decked out in dickies and hoodies) at
which point they would rise, we would all
bow to each other, and I would put some music
on the stereo that they for sure did not know
and that would Blow Their Minds.  Heh Heh.
I had a lot of requests for the class soundtrack.

I would then assign them tasks to inform their
art of awareness and we would write, or do
Meisner repetition techniques, or go and
talk to strangers on the campus,  or a whole bunch
of other shit.  They had no idea what to do with
me.  But by the end of the semester we did a
mess of closing rituals, ending with the release
of a huge bouquet of balloons into the southern
sky (I know, I know, the environment) and with
everyone in a heap of tears.

It was one of the most satisfying teaching
experiences of my little life.

It also was a large contributor to the end of my marriage.

While at the university, nesting in a provided
furnished apartment thousands of miles from my
husband, I had the most horrifying experience of
developing a full-on, hard core crush on one of the
students.  NOT one of my students.  Swear on my cat's
head.  But still.  A student.  A person who wasn't my
husband.  And.  A woman.  She was a super hot,
butchie, 19 year old southern girl whom I discovered
in the yearly talent show where she mimed and danced
to " Your Body Is A Wonderland" by what's his face Mayer.

So Tacky.

But the girls went friggin' wild!  I mean, this woman had
serious sexual power.  And there I was, a youngish
professor, from the big city (Chicago), completely smitten
with this person.

Everything about it was terrifying or surprising to me.

I was no cheater, first of all.  I loved my husband.

Also: I had tried it with the ladies earlier in my life, and I just
couldn't get with the whole vagina thing.  I mean, they are
all so different! Nothing like my own!  And so easy to do wrong!

What the f*ck are you supposed to do with them?
Men have it hard, as far as I'm concerned.
Le Penis is such a simple beast, so straightforward. 

Nope: The Vagina, sadly:
Completely not my thing.  Although I love me some lady
friends, and have a blessed number of them.

And of course:  the power position which I was in made
it even more completely horrifying to me.  It was everything
the feminist in me protested against in college, in my
adult life...everything.  The abuse of power by professors
was unforgivable.  Yet, there I was in a situation where
I understood the impetus, regardless of the resistance.

I would see her in the hall in her t-shirts and jeans and
just tremble.  I would have all kinds of hotass dreams
about her.  I would fight everything in me to not talk
to her.  Even though it would have been easy as
I apparently ended up being a popular (if weird)
prof on campus, and it seemed like quite a few of
the girls were crushing on me.

But, Dear Reader:
I made it!  I made it to the end of the semester
without being a complete f*cking dickhead!!!

I did not abuse my power,  and, 
I did not cheat on my husband (although I most
certainly did in my dreams and in my head).

It scared the sh*t out of me.
And it made me aware that despite our deep
friendship, the lack of sexual energy I had with my husband
was, perhaps, a serious problem--seeing that I am a lady
who loves the sex and has had a lot of it in my life.

This was the opening of the door to the end...
even though the end, as completely dramatic as it
turned out to be, was not to come for 2 more years.

And when it did, it involved a 19 year old,
drug-addicted, almost illiterate amazing French man.

Wait.  Did I just write that down?
I did.

I hope you stay with me, peeps.
Life is a long and dirty and hot and beautiful road.