Sleeping with drag queens

If my calculations are correct, W and I have been sleeping in the same bed for about seven years. Not continuously like we are in the movie Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Although that idea always seemed appealing when I was younger and depressed.

On Friday, the kid will have been in the hospital for three weeks, save the three days he spent at home. W has stayed with him every night, which means our bed is empty when I turn in.

I pile clean laundry and things to take to the hospital on W’s side of the bed to keep it from seeming so empty.

I look at our pillowcases that say “Big Spoon” and “Little Spoon” and wonder when the Big Spoon will be coming home. Yes, folks, I’m butch enough to admit that I’m usually the little spoon.

One of our cats is so distraught over W’s absence that he cries and deposits random items in a pile in the middle of the bed — socks, a cloth to polish shoes, cat toys. I’m not sure where he’s finding these items. I’m pretty sure some of them aren’t even ours.

At night, I stay up way too late and watch mindless TV shows — Shark Tank, Teen Mom 2, Bar Rescue, Catfish — until I am so tired I pass out.

For some strange reason, I find RuPaul’s Drag Race especially soothing and often find myself falling asleep to “I’m Every Woman” or some other disco tune and instructions to “sashay away.” Because drag queens always make me feel better. The are like a Band-Aid — a sequined Band-Aid with rhinestones and wigs and high heels.

This new habit has made for some very weird dreams.

When I was a kid and my grandmother visited, she always slept in my double bed with me.

This was weird and annoying for a variety of reasons but mostly because my grandmother slept with a transistor radio that she kept on until she fell asleep.

It was an old radio, one of my grandfather’s, and seemed unable to broadcast anything but static.

My grandmother loved music but always listened to the news on her handheld radio.

I used to think she was an old lady way too interested in what was happening in the world.

But when I got older, I realized she missed my grandfather, who had passed away years before, and it was impossible for her to fall asleep without some kind of distraction.

I wonder what it was about the sound of the radio that soothed her. If the buzz reminded her of his rhythmic breathing or snoring or if she just needed noise, any noise, to fill the void he had left behind.

So with that, I’m going to sashay to bed. Just me and the cats and a gaggle of drag queens. That’s what you call a group of drag queens, right?

* * *

What about you? How do you sleep when your significant other is away?

 

Teen Mom and lesbian lovers behind bars!

I have a fascination with Teen Mom.

The MTV reality show.  Not actual teen moms.  That would be creepy.

I’m not sure why I like Teen Mom so much.  I’m about 30 years removed from 16 and pregnant. But it’s one of the few shows that I watch with any regularity.

On Teen Mom nights, I usually text W around lunch time.  “Teen Mom tonight!”  The exclamation point means I’m really excited.  In general, I am anti-exclamation point.  So, on those rare occasions when I use one, it conveys the appropriate amount of enthusiasm.

It’s like the boy who cried wolf.  This is a punctuation mark that you must use sparingly if you want to express the proper amount of excitement.

Thanks to me, W is hooked on Teen Mom.  “I hate you,” she tells me after each episode.

Every Tuesday during Teen Mom season, I’ll check Teen Mom News for the latest updates on the moms.

Here are some recent headlines:

“Jenelle and Kiefer break up again!” (Exclamation point in original.)

“Jenelle and Kiefer get back together again.”

“Farrah CONFIRMS she’s landed her own spin-off show!” (Caps and exclamation point in original.)

“Amber Portwood being protected by a woman named Sugarfoot in prison! (Exclamation point in original.)

Well played punctuation, Teen Mom News writer.  This last headline grabs my attention, even without the exclamation point.

According to Teen Mom News, Amber befriended a woman nicknamed Sugarfoot, who serves as her jailhouse “protector.”  Sugarfoot is apparently so smitten with Amber that she has gotten the young mom’s initials tattooed on her neck, TMN says.

I am fascinated with this mystery woman named Sugarfoot.   Questions abound.

What does she look like?   What does the nickname Sugarfoot signify?   Does she have a foot fetish?   Or maybe diabetes?  Gout?  How do you get a tattoo in prison?   Is there anything more ghetto than a neck tattoo?

Amber Portwood

I always joke with W that prison would be a vacation.  I could read all day long and work on my novel.  I would be buff after endless rounds of push-ups in my cell and weightlifting sessions in the yard.  Plus, you get three square meals a day and you don’t have to cook.  Sweet.

I tell W that I’ll need to take a lover in the joint to tide me over in between the conjugal visits.

I’ve watched The L Word.  I know all about prison sex.

Technically, I am one felony removed from Sugarfoot.

Recently, I stole a hotel butter knife to cut fudge that we bought on vacation.  I am crazy like that.  Like a fox.  And a crazy person.

I’ll need a better prison moniker, though.  Maybe Sugarlips or Sugarbear or Sugardyke.  Sugartop or Sugarpants.

Or something like Spike, Nailz, Raisin’ Pain or B-Butch.  Stevia.

Or, The Knife.

Why I have a crush on Dr. Robin Zasio from Hoarders

Dr. Robin Zasio

Tonight, W and I will be huddled around our TV watching the season premiere of A&E’s Hoarders.

Hoarders is a TV favorite of mine.

I started out with Clean House a few years back and soon moved up to the more heavy hitting Hoarders.  It’s like starting out drinking Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers and transitioning to Mad Dog 20/20 straight from the bottle.  Hoarders is Clean House on crack.  Sorry, Niecy Nash.

I find it inspiring watching real-life people turn their lives around.  If someone can clean up a doublewide loaded down with used Depends and petrified rat droppings in three days, why can’t I lose 30 pounds or write a short story or clean out my car?

Plus, it’s absolutely fascinating to see how some kind of trauma — a fire, a death, abuse — can cause someone to start collecting things like Chihuahuas or troll dolls.  The human brain is a strange place.

I also like Hoarders because the show features Dr. Robin Zasio, who is an angel of sorts much like Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman.

Every episode of Hoarders features two hoarding situations.  There’s always the basic hoarder, or level A hoarder, who maintains a house that is over-cluttered with run-of-the-mill things like paperwork, books, dishes, clothing.  These are incompetent hoarders who really aren’t all that great at hoarding.

At the other end of the spectrum are the hardcore hoarders, or level F hoarders.

(Note: This is my personal gradient hoarding scale based on U.S. bra cup sizes.  Small cup = small hoarding problem.  Larger cup = larger hoarding problem.  Scale can be adapted for almost every situation involving degrees or levels.)

Anyway, the hardcore hoarder might collect his own urine in Mountain Dew bottles or kitten carcasses or orphans from Vietnam.  Extreme hoarders typically have homes crawling with insects and rodents and riddled with toxic mold and bacteria.  Feces — fresh or petrified — is always involved in some capacity. You usually have to enter their residences by crawling through some type of primitive Chunnel system that might have been dug out by pet prairie dogs or Cambodian tunneling monkeys. These hoarders often face dire situations such as homelessness, institutionalization, illness.

Enter Dr. Robin Zasio.

Dr. Zasio tells viewers she specializes in “extreme” hoarding cases

In her voice over, Dr. Zasio informs the viewer that she is an expert in extreme hoarding.

The basic hoarders — or ineffectual hoarders — are assigned experts who are “extreme cleaners” or “professional organizers.”

Not so in extreme cases.  A&E calls on Dr. Zasio when a hoarder’s very life is at stake.

Dr. Zasio is just like the Avengers, but there is only one of her.

I find myself instantly calmed when Dr. Zasio appears on the screen.  She is gentle and soothing in voice and manner.  She can walk into a home filled with overflowing buckets of cow semen and vampire blood and not be phased.  “What do we have going on over here, Chester?” she might ask.

Certainly, Dr. Zasio with her long blonde locks and broad smile is easy on the eyes.  Not really my type though, as I prefer a fuller-figured woman with darker hair.  But I’m certain Dr. Zasio has a pleasant bedside manner.  And, I have to admit that the thought of sleeping with a psychologist is a bit thrilling.  You get free therapy.  Sweet.  And, she would be specially trained to use reverse psychology in bed.  Which is kind of hot.  “You don’t want me to do what?”

W thinks I am obsessed with Dr. Zasio because I find her comforting.  She knows that every little thing stresses me out, like when the kids leave wrappers on the floor in the TV room or the cat poops outside the litter box or I have to fold fitted sheets.

Mostly, I love Dr. Zasio because she is nonjudgmental.  She doesn’t think less of people because they use empty oatmeal cylinders for toilets or store dead cats in a freezer.

I don’t think Dr. Zasio would care that I need to lose a few pounds, dust the house or paint the front porch.  She wouldn’t laugh if I told her that I started a diet this morning but ate a box of Suzy Qs at 10 a.m. or that I have a fear of produce stands and people on stilts.

The world could use a whole lot more of Dr. Robin Zasio, if you ask me.

If you think about it, we’re really all just one tragedy away from hoarding our urine in two-liter plastic soda bottles.