only the jodi

A search for simplicity, sobriety, compassion, & the right man. Or at least not another wrong man.
September 16th, 2010

spooning mr. pants

jodi sh doff  : onlythejodi : spooning : mr pants Midnight. Spooning with Mr. Crazy Pants.  My back to the window where a gentle early fall breeze blows in. His body curled into me like a furry comma between my breasts, soft as a chinchilla; my chin resting comfortably on his head, pointy ears on either side of my jaw bone. He purrs. Quietly and constantly. It vibrates in my breastbone.

X

jodi sh doff  : onlythejodi : spooning : mr pants close up1am. Still awake. Pants, still comfortably numb beneath my chin, breathes steadily. I try to tune into his rhythms. I toss. I turn. I toss again. Pants waits, and when he thinks I am done spinning in my bed, he walks across my shoulder, steps on my face and curls into my chest, again. We face the window.  And the lighted alarm clock. Which is set for 5am. I think briefly of the cocaine nights I would lay wired, trying to will myself to sleep. Curling around Mr. Crazy Pants, I’m grateful those are over and done.

2am. Actually, it’s kinda chilly.

2:15am. Maybe not. Maybe I should turn the fan on.

2:17am. No, chilly. Definitely freaking chilly. Pull up extra blanket.

jodi sh doff  : onlythejodi : spooning : mr crazy pants3am. Changed pillows. Tossed, turned. Tossed off extra blanket. Dragging Pants with me when I flip over to prevent him from stepping on my face as he repositions himself. Cause, really, ten pounds of cat standing on my face is NOT restful.

X


jodi sh doff  : onlythejodi : spooning : the dowager queen3:27am. Yet another party heard from. The feral cat has joined the party, sitting heavily on the foot of the bed. Staring. With that annoyed expression. I feel her disapproval, even in the dark.  Cranky, but chicken, she will run and hide if my feets get too close. I pull myself very small, curled around Pants, so as not to disturb the Dowager Queen. One hour and 33 minutes. That should be enough, assuming I can fall asleep. Now.  Or Now.  Or Now….Soon.

4am. Awake.
4:15am.
Awake.
4:17am.
Still awake

4 fucking 30 in the morning. Mr. Crazy Pants, tired of this nocturnal tumult, has decided to be the outside of this nights spooning couple. Draped over my head on the pillow, front feets dangle in my face, back paws stretch along my neck, I wear him like a party hat. Or a faux-hawk. Or a kitty-hawk.

4:45am. Pants isn’t moving, he’s over it. Stick a fork in him, he’s done. I turn. He stays. And my face is buried in his belly. He purrs on, sleeps undisturbed. One eye open, I watch the lighted clock. 4:46. 14 minutes left to sleep.

jodi sh doff  : onlythejodi : spooning : moonbeam clock small4:50am. The clock starts to pulse with light – a gentle way of waking. The back of one eyelid throbs red with the pulsating light. The other is buried in belly fur. Along with my nose. Which is stuffed, because, despite living with cats my entire life and living with denial slightly longer than that, I am, Allergic. To. Cats.

XX

XX

jodi sh doff  : onlythejodi : spooning : moonbeam clock med5am. Snooze. Flip. Cuddle. Just fifteen more minutes. If I could get just fifteen minutes of sleep I would be okay. The Dowager Queen is back. She stares daggers at me from the foot of the bed and then leaves. I feel her judgment. It is, after all, time for her breakfast, and I am obviously a lazy slacker. I will be punished.


5:15am. Snooze. If she is the Queen, Pants is the court jester. And the court jester is awake. The morning ritual begins. He digs under my head with his own triangular fur-covered bone head. Pushing my head off the pillow, burrowing underneath me, demanding a lap, a hand, a canoodle, to be cuddled, petted, played with, fed.

jodi sh doff  : onlythejodi : spooning : moonbeam clock lg

X

X

5:30am. I give up. Resistance is futile. And so, our day begins. No sleep for the sleepy.

XX

XX

X
X

x


jodi sh doff  : onlythejodi : spooning : pants relaxed8:39am. Exhausted from a morning of burrowing, eating and a long night of sleeping, Pants lays next to me, asleep, peacefully. The Dowager Queen has gone back into hiding, sleeping inside the box spring of my bed.

Were that I were a cat, and could drop wherever I find myself, simply stop, drop and sleep.

August 31st, 2010

funny, you don’t look jewess

jodi sh doff  : onlythejodi : jewess : trucker cap

I keep getting confused between Rachel Shukert and Jillian Lauren.

Both of them have hot books out now.

Both books employ colons : in their titles.

Both of them are pretty. Really pretty. Really pretty rock n’ roll girls who are now happily married hot moms. With hit books.

Both are dark-haired Jewesses who wrote memoirs about going overseas and having sex with foreigners.

I’m reading Shukert‘s book, Everything is Going Great : An Underfunded and Overexposed European Grand Tour. I heard all about her hilarious Amsterdammed sexcapades while I was there recently, having my own less-than-hilarious depresscapades. Then, I heard her read an excerpt at a recent Literary Death Match . Which, by the way, I helped her win, even though I’d actually gone to support another writer. (Apologies to Melissa Petro . I can’t help it, I’m really competitive and the team assignments were random. You were Wonderful. But, not Jewish. Or brunette. So, more about you some other time). The New York Times loves Shukert.

I have Jillian Lauren’s book, Some Girls: My Life in a Harem, on the top of the pile called “Next”. I saw her read at a Sex Worker Literati event this past May. Wait, that’s a lie. I left before she read, but that is where I bought the book. And this morning I listened to a Rumpus Radio podcast interview with her where Stephen Elliott spends the first five or ten minutes talking about how smoking hot she is. She hadn’t even gotten to the studio yet. She is, apparently, so hot that her hotness precedes her like an entourage, announcing her imminent arrival. Impressive. And apparently a little intimidating to the ladies of the View.

By the time I got home today my brain had mashed up Rachel Shukert and Jillian Lauren to one over-the-top gorgeous, literary, funny, sexy Jewess.

Rather than figure out which I was reading and which I was about to read, which one was funny & hot and which one was hot & funny, I took the easy way out. I Netflixed Yentl. One more Jewess, yes, but after all, it is almost Rosh Hashanah. And I never confuse Streisand with anyone else. Well, almost never.

March 18th, 2010

selective memories

jodi sh doff  : onlythejodi : selective memories : vogue model

I've fallen & I can't get up

I have a bum leg. Actually, it’s a bum foot.

A motorcycle accident in  ’79 banged up my right side pretty good. 1979 was not a year of a lot of doctors or self care for the jodi. It got better, but now and then it still acts up. My foot swells, or I can’t feel it at all, or I stop being able to anticipate where the ground is going to be on that side when I walk.

It was a bad week, the week of that accident. My husband tried to kill me, I got fired, I was locked in a roadside motel by a pimp, there was a fire, my apartment was infested with roaches, overnight. All that happened the week of the motorcycle accident. Thirty years later, when it acts up, you’d expect me to think about the accident. Or even one of the crazy things that led to it.  (Click on any one of those links if you want the gory details). Thing is, I don’t. I never do.

I think of the boy who walked into my life three years later, and how every time my foot went wonky he’d take care of me. I’d sit in the comfortable chair and he’d sit on the floor with a bucket, turning my foot in the warm solution, massaging it, drying it off and wrapping it — same way he’d treated the horses he used to train. Gently. Patiently.

When my foot goes wonky today, I think of how he took care of me then. How he took care of me every time, but especially when I was hurt.

It’s a precious memory, that feeling of being taken care of. While I love the warm feeling that still gives me, I can’t help but wonder, if my brain could have just managed to remember the disasterous choices that preceded so many of my aches, breaks & pains (physical, emotional & spiritual), maybe I could have gotten by with less of them.