Run Away Disney Princess

Things have not been going well.

As I'm sure that you can tell, I've been pretty unhappy. It's a struggle to write or be creative at all. Sometime, everyday things are hard too. So I've been trying really hard to fix all of that in the last 6 months. I've been working on my positive attitude and trying to be grateful for everyday.  I'm on a healthy and reasonable diet to help my body work and feel better. And I've been exercising. I'm at the gym 5-6 days a week for 2 hours each visit. I don't really enjoy it but I know it's good for me and that it could make me feel better. That said, I still can't sleep and find myself sad a lot.

I may be sad but I WILL have arms like these...

To snap myself out of those daily little clouds, I've found a temporary fix. A little sunshine. Yeah, you're gonna laugh. I know it's kinda hokey and you can shake your fist at me while you shout about corporate evil. I don't care. Disneyland helps.

I've found myself daydreaming about sunny California, to a place where everything is a little bit more colorful and the music is happy.  People are glad to see me. There are new adventures, fun food and roller coasters! Some place I can be like a kid again; I can be myself. The daydream does help, even if it's just for a minute. 

And it's not just Disneyland, it's Disney in general. I can have a bad day and come home and I know that Lilo and Stitch will be there for me. Mickey will make me laugh. Aladdin, Capt. Jack and Flyn Rider will be wooing me. Mulan will sing about wanting people to know who she really is and not pretending to be. Belle will read her favorite books and find her happily ever after. It makes everything a little easier to take.

There is a lot of things you can do to be happy. They say having goals is important. So I've set a goal for myself. I'm going to run. 

I hate running. It hurts. My knees, hips, and mostly my chest. The years of dance destroyed my feet and my knees/hips also pay the price. The asthma is the worst, aggravated by a bout of walking pneumonia I got at age 20 that went undiagnosed (with no health insurance) for 3 months, scarred my lungs. Breathing can be challenging. So all those things are not conducive to running outside on hard pavement.

 image: espnwwos.disney.go.com/events/rundisney/disneyland-half-marathon

But I'm going to Disneyland next year to run in a race. Again, get ready to laugh. A 5K. Yeah, it's a little kid race. Yeah, my great-grandma could do this race easy... and she's been dead for 30 years. But this is big for me. It's something I thought I'd never do. Honestly, I never really wanted to do it. But it's nice to have a goal and if that goal gets you to Disneyland AND you get to dress up like a princess, why not?

So I'll keep you guys in the loop here. Any suggestions on what character I should dress up as? I was thinking Ariel but I think hopping around in that shiny green tail would be too tough. Suggestions?

Sex, Death and Eyeliner

I was up late watching porn last night.

Or not really porn but a documentary about porn called Inside Deep Throat. In short (sort of), Linda Lovelace (Boreman), then 22 years old, starred in a low budget, silly and wildly successful adult film. With it's success came public scrutiny, not only of the film but of the stars themselves. Linda found herself in the middle and through out her life went back and forth between allegations that she was not a willing participant (she stated matter-of-fact that Deep Throat was recorded evidence of rape) to publishing "pro-porn" books back to anti-porn campaigns then back to nude pictorials for the magazine "Leg Show". I don't assume to know what really happened. I do know that things ended badly. She was plagued with problems, from growing up in a less than stable home, getting involved with abusive boyfriends and a seemingly constant money issue (haven't we all been there?), her life at times seemed like an uphill battle. She contracted Hepatitis then was involved in a fatal car accident in 2002. She had one hell of a difficult life. And the more I think about it, the more that it makes me wonder: Is doing porn like a barrel of monkeys or a can of worms?

It's true that certain occupations have statistically higher instances of suicide, murder or both.  (see the link to the national database below) Funeral directors, doctors and dentists are all up there. But I've noticed another trend, perhaps not at such a ratio to compare to lawyers and wall street workers, but significant none-the-less.

With the horrifying ex-porn star Luka Magnotta in the news as of late, a man who streamed images onto the internet that will never cease to be, the gruesome death of a young man forever at anyone's fingertips, I see more sensational news about his dabbling in porn at the forefront, before his own abuse or psychopathy. The public seems to feel that porn is the gateway drug at times. So I started reading and asking myself: Does being a porn star ruin your life and/or shorten your lifespan?

Porn stars seem to be dropping like flies and tragically so. I started my foray into the seedy science of pornography by reading Jenna Jameson's How to Make Love Like a Porn Star. Talk about a sad story. In the book, she talked about her favorite star from the years before, Savannah. Yet another sad story. And the more people's bios I started reading, the more I noticed this trend. Here's a few.

Savannah-

Her real name was Shannon Wilsey. Best known for her platnum blonde hair, sweet girl-next-door face, giant fake tits and that X factor. (pun intended) She grew up with divorced parents, bouncing from home to home and was sexually abused along the way. She quickly rose to fame in the porn industry and just as quickly became involved in heavy drugs (coke and heroin) and heavy shopping habits.
She dated rock stars like Axl Rose and Billy Idol (famously stating that Axl was a 2 pump chump which I totally believe). Like many abused and deeply sad women of porn, she found love with another women. She claimed to be deeply in love with Jeanna Fine, another porn star. July 11, 2004 she was driving home wasted and crashed her white Corvette. She survived with a broken nose and face lacerations. She called her manager, somewhat incoherent, saying she needed plastic surgery, that her face was a mess. Maybe it was the drugs, the head injury or the fact that her beautiful face was never going to be the same again. She took a .40 Barretta and shot herself in her garage. She stayed in a coma until her family took her off life support and she died. She was 23.

Dorothy Stratten-
Her real name was Dorothy Hoogstraten. (I can see why she had a stage name...) This was a gorgeous girl in a very 80's kind of way. The hair, the smile and the generic good looks of a Benetton ad. Except, she was naked and creepy guys were taking pictures of her. Yet, I digress. She met Paul Snider when she was under 18 (ew) and they married when she was 20 (he was 29) and it was hell for poor Dorothy. He was controlling and psychotic; she suspected that he poisened her dog because he was jealous of the love she gave the little pooch. They seperated after a year. She moved on, he did not. Stalker McStalk-y was everywhere, even creeping up to her new boyfriend's house, Peter Bogdonovich. (director of Paper Moon, The Last Picture Show, etc) Paul called Dorothy, asking for money. She arrived at his house to give him $1000 to get him off her back for good. She sadly wouldn't make it out alive. Snider put a shotgun to the side of her face and ended her life. Then he did some other very bad things that I won't mention. Then he shot himself. Bogdonovich was said to be devastated. He married her 20 year old little sister a short time later. Hm. The film Star 80 is based on her life and death.

Lolo Ferrari -
Lolo had the largest breasts in the world. You notice I said 'had'? Things don't end well, obviously. Her real name was Eve Valois. She was born in France and reportedly had a sad childhood. No father, a mother who disliked her and at 25 married Eric Vigne, an ex-con drug dealer 15 years her senior. He was her "manager" although the cops saw it more as prostitution when they arrested the pair. Lolo had some amazingly low self esteem. It was said that her husband didn't help this problem. He pressured her into numerous plastic surgeries and in the end, she had a 71 inch bust, several new noses, giant lips and who knows what else. None of which made her happy. Her official cause of death was an overdose of antidepressants and tranquilizers. Some think her husband had something to do with it. We'll never know.
Oh, and she was a recording artist. I use the term loosely.

There are dozens more just like that. And this is not to mention all the deaths by alcoholism, drug overdose, HIV/AIDS, and an amazing amount of car accidents. And even those who survive don't have happy endings. Lori Michaels faked her own death to avoid creepy stalkers. Max Hardcore went to jail on obscenity charges. Hyapatia Lee suffers from dissociative identity (multiple personality) disorder which worsened after years in porn.

Most would point out first that many (some would argue all) have suffered from abuse, broken homes and/or addiction thus leading them to a life of pornography (not the other way around). Although, I imagine many getting hooked on drugs after starting their careers. How many people out there can do a rough gangbang totally straight? Not many. I know I would have to be coked out of head. Regardless, something about the business inherently brings tragedy.

For better or worse, it will change the way I watch porn from now on... Not that I do in the first place.



P.S. Amanda Seyfried will be playing Linda in the new film, Lovelace. I will probably see it.

Check out more porn stars fate at a strange and fascinating site:
Frances Farmers Revenge 
NIOSH and CDC database of occupations and death
LA Times article about Savannah

A Hard Day and a Dark Hole.

Today is hard.

Some days are easier. I can hop out of bed, go to the gym, run errands, apply for work, clean the house. I can't seem to do that today.

I'm a bit pathetic at the moment. Curled up in front of my computer, under the covers. I am with out a job or income besides being able to sell things online and at consignment stores. The house is a mess. I've gained weight and I hate the way I look right now. I wish I were smaller. My husband, at his gratifying and well paying job, is sexually unsatisfied with me. My parents feel neglected. My friends move on without me. I'm alone here, under the covers.

Unemployed friends and acquiescence were with me once, part of the disenfranchised and unpaid looking for work here and there. It was our little club where we could support each other, laugh at terrible interview stories and the desperate search for the silliest jobs.. But now, I look around the club house and find I'm all alone and so scared of more failure.

Why won't anyone hire me? I've spent hours on my resume, given it to no less than 7 people to review. I desperately try to speak to a person, get an interview, even to just look someone in the eye, proof to myself that I've made it to this step, that someone has noticed me.

I feel this physical hurt through me. I grit my teeth and rub my legs, like I can somehow push the sad out through my toes. Wouldn't that be good?

I make no money, therefore I have no worth.
I have no career, therefore I am of no concern.
If I were on ebay, no one would bid.
If I were at a swap meet, I'd be in the free pile.

Why can't I just be happy? Why can't I just paint and sew and not feel a crushing guilt of being without a 'path'? Is it true I can't be an artist unless I can live off my earnings? I feel it must be true. I watch the credits at the end of a movie, the long list of names; they all have careers. All my facebook friends update about how they hate their jobs. Someone had to assemble this computer, sell it, ship it. All those people were paid to do that. The garbage man outside my window. The person who designed these sheets. Every building full of people working on something.

I miss my brother. I feel like he would understand. I imagine it in my head: He sees me struggling, sad and he would come over to see me, pizza and video games in hand and we would spend the rest of the day talking, stuffing our faces and killing zombies. Then we would drive in his car and get dinner and he would tell me that it's just a rough patch and it would be ok. He would help me find something, somehow.

I'm going to allow myself a shower to feel all this. About 30 minutes to feel bad, cry and hate myself. Then I'm getting up, getting dressed, putting on makeup and going out into the world, looking good so no one will know. (Because as much as I hope someone will notice, I hope even more that they don't.) I'll feel better later, when I get over myself, when I realize there are people starving, people that have cancer, people who suffer while I lie here warm, under 300 count covers.

I have to reference one of my favorite people here, because I think she nailed it on the head. It makes me feel not so bad and made me smile.

Deep breath. Here I go.