Spoken word/stand up

FUCK Valentine's Day.  I'd like to shove it up Hallmark's ass.

If I sound bitter, it's because four months ago I got my heart shattered so badly I'm never gonna get all the pieces back again.

Look, I know we get our hearts broken every day – especially now that orange really IS the new black -- and that's a series I don't wanna watch let alone binge on!

But what I'm talking about is the personal stuff...the only time in my life that I got this devastated was when I fell for a younger man some twenty years ago, and I left my husband of a decade for him...only to find out he would have, in fact, preferred my husband.

So THAT sucked (never mind how much I had) but at least there's never gonna be another woman, right?  Even if now he won't even friend me on facebook!
But hey, at least he introduced me to heroin!
And heroin absolutely cured me of my caffeine habit for good.  I still can't have more than two sips before I hafta put the cup down.

This last guy, though, whom I really thought was the love of my life (he was even straight!) -- we spent every spare minute of seven months together from pretty much the moment we met – this despite the fact that he kept saying he didn't want a girlfriend – right up until he left me for a younger chick.  Not just younger than me, but a lot younger than him, too.

For a while there, I really just wanted to die.  But then I thought, what, I'ma kill myself over some guy?   Not.  Happening.

So now I'm single again at what feels like a most untimely hour...I was whining about this to a sober friend and he told me that's when you just have to be SFG:  Simply Fucking Grateful.
To that end, I want to thank my friends for putting up with me during The Shatter (no mean feat); my parents for a body like a Mack truck, able to handle all and any poisons I've thrown its way; and especially the misery diet – it hasn't always been this reliable -- in the past, it's only drawn either hard drugs or a LOT of carbs, but this case was so bad even fat didn't want anything to do with me!
I haven't weighed so little since I got serious with the heroin diet!  You know, that's the one where you maintain total control?  Yeah.  That one.

For now, let's just say I've worn long sleeves for the last sixteen years, and I thank those crazy Germans for inventing methadone.  Did you know Hitler demanded German chemists invent something to keep their pilots sharp?  Thus, methamphetamines! Because doesn't everyone want a Nazi who's been awake for 36 hours up in the air with access to bombs?  What could go wrong?
They called meth blitz.  Thus, the blitzkrieg:  This alternative fact was approved my ME.

And the nicest thing anyone has said about ME lately is 'you may be white on the outside but you're global within.'  When I repeated this to the non-love of my life, he snorted.
So, he said because you lived in NYC, are you Puerto Rican too?   And because I refused to back down, I said hell yeah – and he cracked up and said the only Puerto Rican thing about you are your fishnets!
Which, okay, yes, have been preserved in cedar since the 90s before they were unpacked again last year for a some highly memorable late-night cameos -- and yes, they are thoroughly shredded, but you show me a man who doesn't want shredded fishnets when the holes are in all the right places, and I'll show you a queen.
(And I should know).

But as my mother -- who like most mothers has that both annoying and reassuring quality of always being right -- tells me, life is full of surprises, and you don't know what's around the corner --so I do want to say if there are any couples in the audience who already have dinner reservations for two on Feb 14th?
GO FUCK YOURSELVES.

And I'm sure you will, all night long.

-Jan 30, 2017

Performed at the Make Out Room in SF on Feb 13, and again at the Octopus Literary Salon in Oakland on Feb 28th, 2017.