Dining with a Cursed Bloodline

“Hold on, there’s something you should hear. It isn’t much, but it took all year,” — Jonathan Larson, RENT. March 2020. A mysterious illness flattens me. Never diagnosed. I don’t…

July 2020. Before dawn. I start a pot of hot black coffee. Wait for my divorce from Jasper to go through. Spill coffee on the tiny black tile of the…

A Monster Energy Drink chugged. Chocolate and Sea Salt RxBars. Tortilla chips. All I’ve eaten in recent memory. I don’t remember things the same way that I used to. It’s…

“Here where I stand at the turning of the years,” Les Misérables wails from bedside Echo Dot. New Years morning. 2020. I stare at the brightening ceiling for hours. Mind…

The Sunday of Valentine’s wake I wake up a-flutter. My ride or die wife by my side. She snores as AHS: Hotel screams from the TV at the foot of…

“It’ll be a Blue Christmas without you,” sings Elvis on the TicTok I make of my synthetic Christmas tree. The iPhone camera swirls around glittering orbs. Settles on a commemorative…

I jolt awake sharply at dawn. Afraid. Turmoil in my stomach and brainstem from too much day-old cold coffee. A marijuana vape I sucked down yesterday in a bid for…

“Don’t call it a comeback,” raps LL Cool J. This summer the “Dining with a Cursed Bloodline,” column ended like a Disney Classic Movie. Marriage. Happily Ever After. Roll credits.…

Lana del Rey’s new single “Looking for America,” brings me to tears on first listen. Like her, the America I once naively believed in was only a myth. Patriotism shattered…

I had one great love now gone. Who I thought would forever haunt me. This intensity of my love for Jasper waxes almost to eclipse her. Allows me compartmentalize. Block…

The moon waxes in Libra to full Strawberry moon. High summer. I remember vividly the 2016 Strawberry moon. Los Angeles. My boyfriend and I gobbled succulent Barbacoa quesadillas. I stayed…

“Fast away the New Year passes.” I hear sifting through profiles. Swiping my phone with sweaty hands. Interviewing every queer in Reno not frightened of me. It’s on like Donkey…

I am furious. I am ferocious. My rage could devour the world. It is not appropriate to express. Other than to my therapist. For one hour. Once a week. Perhaps…

1976: This cursed bloodline begat me. Cries at cold air. The beginnings of pain. 1979: Health freak mother teaches me that soda pop and the red cherries on top of…