My Great-Great Aunt Betty was the world's first lipstick lesbian...

OMG, great-great aunt Betty was a piece of work.  She and her older sister, my great-grandma Emma, were only two years apart in age but worlds apart in personality.  Emma was a farm girl by birth and stayed that way her whole life.  She had a face like a morel mushroom but made the best homemade noodles I have ever tasted.  Betty, on the other hand, got her ass off of that farm as fast as she could.  She was an early suffragette.  With enough attitude to cut through titanium like it was warm butter on a hot day.  Betty took no shit whatsoever.  Her and Emma were night and day.  As I recall, they hated each other.  Rather openly at most encounters as I remember.

Betty put herself through trade school and became a "typewriter".  That's apparently what they called secretary's back then.  She ended up becoming a private secretary to someone in the Illinois state government and made a small fortune in the process.  Betty dressed in designer clothes, wore the most amazing hats I have ever seen and bought herself a new Buick every two years.  She also owned her own home which she "shared" with her "roommate" for decades.  BTW, her roommate's name was Lillian.  Together they traveled extensively, kept at least one beauty shop happily in business for decades, wore acres of silk and managed to send all of a Buick dealers kids through college.  She smelled like an Avon Lady and smoked Lucky Strikes like a fiend, both much to Emma's distain.

I remember the last time I saw Betty.  We were all at great-grandma Emma and great-grandpa Henry's farm for a family reunion one summer.  I was out in the yard throwing apples at the sheep when I watched a truly enormous car turn off of the hard road, come down the gravel road and turn up into Emma and Henry's driveway.  Oh my, Betty had arrived!!!  In her brand new 1959 Buick Invicta convertable.  It was two-tone cobalt and cream with a matching two-tone leather interior.  It was the size of a battleship and had fins on the back that could do some serious damage to any living thing that was stupid enough to get in the way of them.  Betty flowed out of that car like a Mozart sonata.  Awash in matching cobalt and cream with a hat that rivaled the rings of Saturn.  Oh yeah, Betty had definitely arrived!!!  She fired up a cigarette and as she walked past me she asked if I had managed to hit any of Emma's sheep yet.  I told her only two so far.  She said "You keep trying honey, you can only get better with practice."  She was like having my very own personal steel magnolia on tap.  I loved her with all of my heart.

Sadly, a little over a year later Betty was gone.  She died in her sleep while her and Lillian were vacationing in New York City the next summer.  She was 68 and spry and cantankerous to the very end.  She left $100,000 to several of her favorite causes and everything else to Lillian.  The house, the stocks, the bonds, tons of cash and her beloved Buick Invicta.  Needless to say great-grandma Emma was not amused at that.  To say that she had a full blown bat shit crazy melt down would be an understatement by any stretch.  Verbally, she deteriorated into a drunken long shore man.  That was the only time I ever heard Emma cuss.  And boy did she cuss.  She called Betty everything in the book.  And then she called Lillian everything in the second volume.  How dare this, how dare that, how dare she, how dare you,  what the $%*&@(! and on and on.  It was not a pretty funeral I must say.  Quite typical for a funeral in my family though.  But just not a pretty sight in general.  At the grave sight she even called Lillian "a dirty bitch from Hell"!  As a 7-year old I was truly impressed.  Taken back a bit but still truly impressed.  I had no idea Emma had it in her.  And all of this coming out of a 5-foot 2-inch morel.  And solely because Betty didn't have the decency to leave her anything!!!  Yeah, we Colee's are strange. Very, VERY strange.  Think I hate you with all of my heart but your sorry ass better leave me something once you die and you get the picture...

I have never let great-great aunt Betty leave my memory.  She was a force to be reckoned with.  Oh hell, she was a tsunami of lipstick, silk,  heels and hats.  And Buick's.  To this day, every time I see some sheep I want to toss apples at them and start screaming "Hey, these are from Betty!!!".  Trust me, I really do.  Oh fuck 'em, they're just sheep...

I think I may have spent most my life channeling her...  How else could I have become this much of a rancid old queen???  Betty, you taught me well and I thank you more than you can possibly imagine!!!

I Married a Colicy Baby

Yes, that is what my other half (who BTW I love like I love my luggage) has decided to title his memoir after I am either run over by a bus, abducted by aliens or at the very least fatally gored by bulls in Spain.  Or perhaps pummeled into submission by tomatoes in that same country.  I have to hand it to the Spanish, they just love weird spectacles, whether it involves livestock on the loose or produce at high speed in an alley.  Now THAT is my kind of culture!!!

Yes, I was a colicy baby.  So much so that by the time I was 9 months old I had had two surgeries for hernias.  Seems I was one of those lactose intolerant infants that was allergic to milk.  Of any kind.  Cow and breast.  Yes, I was actually allergic to my mother!!!  Which by the way, was a policy that stood for decades.  Grandma had a good solution to that though when she got fed up with me screaming in pain as an infant.  A couple of tablespoons of warm honey, lemon juice and whiskey.  Yep, you actually heard me say that.  My first "dealer" was my beloved grandma Flossie.  Times were so much simpler back then...  Do that kind of shit today and you have Family Services on your front yard with a fleet of M-1 tanks,  grenade launchers and a couple of circling helicopters with search lights that could light up a stadium!!!

Being a colicy baby sent me down my very own private Yellow Brick Road at a young age.   If I got "fussy",  as they called it back then, I got what I wanted.  Medicated.  Very medicated.  Thank you grandma for making me a nine month old lush.  It's a precedent I hold dear to my heart to this day.  And this from a woman who never touched a "drop of drink" in her almost 74 years.  But it did teach me a very valuable lesson:  if I don't get what I want (NOW!!!) I just scream.  Loud.  Really loud.  And for a VERY long time.  You have one of two options available, you either give me what I want (again, NOW) or you medicate me (once again, NOW).  RIGHT FUCKING NOW!!!

My other half has seen me go through melt downs that I swear to god would have rivaled  the end of the last ice age.   He's seen me break things,  he's  dodged  stuff I've thrown and he's actually seen me take out an entire shelf at the grocery store and then lay down in the aisle, kicking and screaming like a three year old.  You know why?  Because I REALLY want those god damned frosted animal crackers!!!  And I better get at least three boxes of those motherfuckers or I'm going down to the end of the aisle and I'm so TOTALLY taking out that end-cap display of canned soup!!!

Once he finally gets this thing published please feel free to come to the autograph signing tour.  I'll be signing at the banquet table next to Sarah Palin's signing.  Did you know that you can see Russia from her table???

Oh, just sit on my FaceBook!!!

You know what I like about France?  It ain't FaceBook!!!  And for those of you out there that know me and my "affection" for France that statement should speak volumes.  When did this unholy, wretched aberration  take over the hearts, minds and souls of most of my friends?  And most of the known world as well?

I don't get emails anymore.  You know why?  Because you posted it on FaceBook.  I don't get phone calls anymore.  You know why?  You're too busy posting crap on FaceBook.  Crazy shit,  like you're doing the laundry.  Or having a bad hair day.  Or having a pickle.  Or mowing the lawn.  I'm curious... just how the bloody hell do you manage to mow the lawn AND put something on FaceBook, for christ's sake???  Do you realize that you're driving and texting at the same time when you do that???  Watch out, you may be about to shred the neighbors cock-a-poo...

Way back in the Dark Ages (the 1960's) we had an earlier version of FaceBook.  It was called a party-line.  And we had the civility to hang the phone up because we didn't want to listen to you talk about all of the dandelions in your front yard.  Or that you were ironing your hair.  Or how good that freaking pickle was!!!  Back then we called it eave's dropping.  NOT "social networking"!!!  To be social don't you really have to be face to face???  Or at least in the same room???  A REAL room, with walls, not one of those virtual "room" things.

Hell, I got fed up with instant messaging about a nano-second after I got my first computer.  What a complete annoyance.  Everyone and their dead mother was sending me those damned things, including that prince from Nigeria and that hot chick that happened to see me at the bar last night.  Sorry, honey,  but I wasn't at a bar last night.  Or at least not a bar that you would have been in.  DELETE!!!  And it's not just FaceBook that has me riled either.  It's that Twitter thing as well.  What the hell is up with that?  Do not text me.  Do not tweet me.  Do not try my patience.  I have purged every electronic device in my apartment of its ability to receive those things.  Including the toaster and the battery charger!!!  I have also wrapped my head in aluminum foil to stop them from getting to me over the cable box!!!  Telephones are for talking on, not typing on.  If you have your cell phone in your hand and want to talk to me, then hit speed dial.  Do not send me a typed message.  If you want to send me a typed message then use the United States Postal Service!!!  They would love to have your business from what I hear.

Yes, I am old and stuck in the past.  I want my cell phone to have those REALLY big number buttons on it that only old people need.  With no keyboards or cameras included.  Hell, I'd be ecstatic  if I could find one with a rotary dial on it.  And a cord!!!  I'll be honest, I barely made it through the era of CD's.  I just couldn't figure out how to make the needle stay on the damned thing after I put it on the turntable...  Maybe this is why I use my iPod as a paper weight.  Much like Julia Sugarbaker I long for the days when people actually wrote letters, on stationary, with a real pen.  In their own handwriting.  It was a process that involved  envelopes and postage stamps as I recall.   In my day you actually had to lick the stamp to make it stick to the envelope.  Hell, if you do that today you get infected with something from the Third World and your freaking tongue falls off!!!  Or at the very least you get pink eye...

OMG!!!  I have become great-grandma Emma!!!  Minus the blue hair.  She had more to tint than I do now as I recall...

So, dude, you got any 'Ludes???

Ahh, the early '70's.  My college years as I recall.  Vaguely...

My drugs of choice were pot, any and all hallucinogens (I loved acid until I discovered psilocybin.  Things changed wonderfully weirdly after that...) and Quaaludes.  Oh lord, did I love Quaaludes!!!  They were initially billed as a safe, non addictive alternative to barbiturates and  narcotics  (Safe and non addictive???  Are you out of your bloody mind???)  They were good for insomnia and a muscle relaxant.  NO FUCKING SHIT???  You lost feeling in your extremities (as well as your frontal lobes)  on these things and were prone to regain consciousness  in a foreign country.  Sometimes still wearing your own clothes.  If any clothes at all...  I kind of remember (not really) a vacation in Jamaica, a public fountain, me covered in vomit and the locals throwing spoiled food at me but that's a whole other post...

I sort of remember the weekend in the dorms when I was foolish enough (lucky enough???) to mix some 'Ludes with some 'Shrooms just to see what would happen.  Lord, I was so much younger and braver back then. I can't recall what happened.  I'm sure I would have kicked both Marlin Perkins' ass as well as Mutual of Omaha's (maybe even that damned rhino he kept relentlessly darting) if I could only have found my extremities.  Or my frontal lobes....  The colors were lovely.  I think I named one of them "Susan".  Or was it "Donovan"?

Yes, I have treated my body like an amusement park ride.  I'm just not the type to treat it like a temple.  Hand me a ticket for the Tilt-A-Whirl or the Octopus and my skinny little white ass is out looking for some of the brown acid, just letting it kick in while I'm waiting in line.  Yeah, I was the one starting to giggle behind you in line.  Hell, I was once up to my tits on peyote on the Tea Cups at Disney World.  That was a fun 3 minutes.  Right up until I blew lunch all over that nice young family sharing the cup with me.  However, a couple of minutes later things did start to get WAY more colorful.  At least for me.   I came to later the next morning in a shatteringly tacky Disney World hotel room with my Mouseketeer hat missing an ear, the honor bar totally drained and me sporting a black eye.  Oh, well, I guess a good time was had by all...  Sure wish I could remember it though.

My motto has always been "We're not here for a long time, just a good time".  It has served me well over the years, sometimes even served me too well as I can almost remember.  Sort of...  Give me a handful of nickels and I'm buying candy.  Give me a fist full of singles and I'm stuffing those suckers in somebody's g-string.   Give me a timer that counts down my lifetime in less fingers than I have on both hands and I'm setting the cruise control to 110.  Maybe even 130 if I have enough cylinders at my disposal!!!

Life is too short for coach class, too long for youth and WAY too important to ever be taken seriously.  Learn to ride a unicycle.  In a dress.  Dressed as a penguin.  Show the person next to you on the bus the toothbrush you found in the gutter.  And tell them how lucky you feel. Repeatedly.  Pick up that single shoe you found on the side of road.  And wear it.  As a hat.  Give that awful street musician a penny.  And then ask for change.  Kick the bloody hell out of any one under the age of 45 wearing a tie dyed anything.  You're supposed to make those damned things, you idiot, NOT buy them at ShopKo!!!  And for god's sake, let me know if you have any Ludes!!!

I've known more drag queens that you can shake a tiara at!!!

Oh yeah, this goes back for decades.  Actually, for the better part of my life.  All the way back to the '70's on Castro Street in San Francisco.  Remember Sylvester?  I do.  She was at least 6 foot tall without hair and heels and just ruled the Elephant Walk bar.  She went on to several top ten singles as I recall.  She sang in her own voice, had hair the size of the Atstodome and could dance her fake tits off.  Holy shit, that was theater if I ever saw it!!!

Minneapolis gave me the Waters' sisters, Misty, Stormy and  Skybloo.  Swear to god, Skybloo.  And I can't forget the truly scary Miss Chi Chi Larue.  Big as a barn and could have probably taken Divine in a fight.  She's now an incredibly successful gay porn producer in L.A. with her own studio.  And the unforgettable Trinket, the coat check girl at the Gay 90's.  Think Ving Rhames in a 1970's prom dress and you get the picture...

Then there was Portland, Oregon.  First there was Candi Jarr.  Then there was Belle Jarr.  Then there was Cookie Jarr.  We all hoped it was it was over after that but then along came Dora Jarr.  I have to admit, I was truly impressed with that name.  Hell, what other option did she have left, Specimen Jarr???  Oops, can't forget the lovely Miss Lady Elaine Peacock.  Talented as hell, size zero and had more sequins that Carol Channing's burial shroud.  And enough mousse in her wig to build a Bullwinkle!!!


Australia introduced me to Cinderella Rockafella and the ever present Dame Edna Leverage.  Oh my god, those two were insane!!!  They hosted an annual competition between Sydney and Melbourne called "Search For A Tragedy" that was a hunt for the worst drag queens on the continent.  And they found them too.  By the fucking boat load.  I witnessed some of the most frightening displays imaginable.  My favorite was Missy Thing.  Yep, Missy Thing.  Think Onslo from "Keeping Up Appearances".  In green spandex.  Doing "Crocodile Rock".  Oh my god, I need to go put my brain in the dishwasher again!!!


Madison.  Hmmm, Madison...  This place has the most sorry assed herd of drag queens I've ever seen.  Girls, are there no mirrors in any of your single wides???  Trust me, you aren't fooling any one!!!  The real high point was Tina.  Ahh, Tina...  We all called her "Tina From the Country".  She was so sad you just wanted to pick her up and pet her like a lost puppy.  And then dump her off at the Humane Society for euthanasia.  Tina was a very closeted married man in his late 30's who was the assistant manager at a McDonald's.  Like I said, sad...  I swear she bought her wigs at Dollar Tree and got most of her "gowns" off of the side of the road somewhere near Boscobel.  I hear she was abducted by aliens who for some reason decided to keep her.  They must have very strange zoos on Mars...


But Mexico is a different story.  I gotta tell you, those girls just rock down there.  Ida Slaptor,  Mama Dolores, Miss Jalapena, Windy Mills, Candi Dahhhling, Velveeta Cheeze and a group of nameless individuals known collectively as "The Dirty Bitches".  A few years back I gave one of the "Bitches" a black leather mini-skirt I no longer had use for (don't even ask) and I got a proposal of marriage!!!  I was tempted at first but later decided to decline her gracious offer when I found out that it would entail moving in with her parents in El Pitillal and sleeping over the chicken coop with her aunt and uncle.  Don't get me wrong, her aunt and  uncle were very nice people, as were the chickens but it just didn't seem right for me.

I love a man in a dress.  I love a man out of a dress.  Hell, I love a man when I'M in a dress!!!  But when you put a man in hair and heels and put him on stage I'm right there in the front row with a fist full of singles and a smile on my face.  Spectacle, theater of the absurd, illusion and Cirque on the brown acid fuel my fire.  BIG TIME!!!  Especially when I get my thigh personally autographed and a group picture that I can put on the Christmas cards to scare the bloody shit out of the relatives!!!

My kitchen is the Eighth Gate of Hell!!!

OK, by now you must realize that I'm a cook.  I grew up in my parents restaurants and my grandma's kitchen.  I've been doing this since I was in third grade.  It's my nature, my calling....  oh hell, it's my sole legal addiction when I think about it.

I am a self admitted slave to single use kitchen appliances.  The more the merrier.  I have three different sized citrus squeezers (limes, lemons and  oranges), two different food processors (three if you count the broken one I haven't thrown away yet but just keep around for interchangeable parts), a Rubbermaid storage container with so many "formal" sets of chopsticks I could host a diplomatic summit in Beijing, three woks (one meat, one veggie and one just to cook rice in) and a really spendy asparagus steamer I use about three times a year.  Don't even ask me about the cutting boards... I could do a parquet floor that would rival the Grand Ballroom at Versailles (some for "face", some for "non-face".  Meat vs veggies).  Yeah, I really am that anal!

I am surprised that my cabinets have not literally ripped loose from the walls.  At last count I had a collection of more that 197 pieces of Fiesta Ware (place setting for 8 and WAY too many damned completer pieces), a set of cookware that is now up to more than 40 pieces (not counting the Corning French White that is about the same number), flatware for 12 (again, way too many completer pieces to count), enough Mexican linens to open a cocina that could cater a wedding and a funeral at the same time and enough spices to weigh down a Manila Galleon!!!  Would you believe that only two of us live in this apartment???  And that this kitchen is about the size of a phone booth???  In my time I have had kitchens that were bigger than my living room is now.  Kitchens you could hold parties in.  Kitchens so big you could have a crowd in it, everyone cooking their asses off and no one getting accidently stabbed, scalded or set on fire. Hell, kitchens so big you could hold keggers in and invite the entire building!!!   Ahh, I remember those days...

If I can't hold a 10 inch French knife in each hand, stretch out my arms, whirl like a drunken Dirvish and not slice someones ear off it just ain't a kitchen to me.  I want cabinet space large enough to hold the treasures of pharaoh, enough counter space to do multiple autopsy's on and enough gas burners to get me accused of worshipping false idols with.  If I can't wrap a whole pig in banana leaves and toss it onto flames inside my house then I am being cheated out of my destiny.  If four burners is normal, then six is even better but eight is right up my alley.  Can you really have too many ovens at your disposal???  Hell NO!!!

I would truly sell what's left of my soul for an acre or two of Viking, Wolfe and Sub-Zero toys.  I want warming ovens, holding ovens, under counter prep refrigerators and a freezer the size of Texas!!!  Is it an obsession?  Yes.  Is it a disease?  HELL, YES!!!  I prefer disease....  You know why?  Obsession just gets you arrested but disease get you medicated.   I've always liked medicated better....

Karaoke Night at the nursing home...

OK, here's a scary thought that is just starting to piss the bloody hell out of me.  Over the next decade nursing homes are going to start filling up with worn out, tattered Baby Boomers.  That would be me.  Stop your damned laughing, that clock is ticking WAY to fast for my taste!!!  Even imagining that scenario chills me all the way down to my new hip.

Can you see me in a nursing home?  I just know it's going to be some hell hole called "Shitty Pines" that smells like patchouli and has a staff that carries rhino dart guns just to keep up in line.  Which when I think about it, that may not be so bad.  After all as Boomer I've always enjoyed a good buzz...

I picture the gowns being tie-dyed (I'll be wearing mine backwards just for effect), being herded down to the therapy room for Arts & Crap sessions  (I'll be making a paper mache bong), Jazzersize physical therapy sessions (I've always preferred Sleepersize sessions myself) and then those heinous Friday night karaoke things they love to subject you to.  If I have to do karaoke I swear to god I'm gonna snap!!!  Just like my hip did.  I'm turning "I'm Your Boogie Man" into "Here's My Booger, Man",  "Hot Stuff" into "Hot Soup" and "Get Up And Boogie" into "Come Here And Wipe Me"!!!  I'm gonna get darted, I just know it...

I'll orchestrate break-outs (OK, more like shuffle-outs probably) and I'll organize acts of  civil disobedience (I'm thinking of everyone filling their Depends simultaneously).   Hell, better yet, I'll start a mass movement even bigger than the Depends thing!  I'm gonna call it "Geezer Power".  And anyone who can get around in a wheelchair under their own power and still swallow at the same time is qualified to join.  We'll gather down in the lunch room and then wheel ourselves up to the nurses station, all chanting in unison:  "WE'RE OLD!!!  WE'RE CRANKY!!!  WHERE'S OUR FUCKING OATMEAL!!!  WE'RE OLD!!!  WE'RE CRANKY!!!  WHERE'S OUR FUCKING OATMEAL!!!"  And if our demands are not met THEN we do the Depends thing!!!  I'm sure Ghandi would approve.

As god is my witness, I will not take this sitting down!!!  Unless, of course, my other hip decides to take a shit on me...