14 Comments

Plath was a poet. Hughes was Mr. Plath

Expand full comment

LUV this post, and I bought that damn goop candle. Let me explain: I teach a course about sexuality, gender & health and it was online Covid days. We were talking about celeb influencers and yada yada I said "I'm gonna buy it." I did, and it was very expensive but is, as it turns out, a very good candle. It burns slowly and evenly and smells most strongly of citrus. No clue if that's what GP's orgasm (not her vagina = :)) smells like, however.

Expand full comment

I love this comment so much! Hilarious. xxL

Expand full comment

i love this generous, roaming platter of seemingly non-related goodies that you manage to thread together almost as much as i love certain drugs. and you. xx

Expand full comment

And I, you!

Expand full comment

Really, really enjoyed this meander.

Expand full comment

What a glorious reading adventure. Midway through I briefly tried to remember how this journey started then told myself to keep on. Plus, new things to investigate.

Expand full comment

Thanks! You are my kind of reader! Please consider coming to the Zoom conversation on Saturday, the details are in the post. xxL

Expand full comment

I love your writing. I have also watched Cardinal occasionally and fast forward beyond the gore but I like the looks of Billy Campbell. Especially the furrowed brow. He has a presence. Sylvia Plath’s poem Wintering is one of my favorites. The bees and the only women world. Her father was an apiarist. I think she was a bit of a proto feminist.

Expand full comment

Thanks! and yup to all. xxL

Expand full comment

Good one. That thing about calling up Auden is just wonderful. It's the kind of thing I did all the time when I was young, get Mailer's address and write him a letter, call up some asshole I had an assignment to write about and pester him until he gave in. Rock stars, politicians, didn't matter. It's still possible. The thing is, you have to look at life like, if there's a door open, I'm going through it, and if it's closed, I'm knocking until somebody opens it, and then I'm going through. The thing I've always seen in your writing is not taking no for an answer. That is one of the key things you need if you're going to write, and you have it in spades.

Expand full comment

Happy birthday, bubbele.

Expand full comment

"The first is the drug they give you before a colonoscopy. It’s fantastic and lasts like a second. You know it happened, but it has no content. It’s a beautifully wrapped present with nothing in it."

That's propofol. Wonderful drug. I get why Michael Jackson died on it. The moment before a stretch of time is simply snipped out, you experience an oddly pleasurable distortion of perception. Before the knee arthroscopy, my field of vision became a parallelogram. (When I woke up, the anesthesiologist was leaving the room and I yelled at him, "Nice drugs!") Before the colonoscopy, I was looking at the heart monitor and it began racing and blurring like the cherry wheels on a slot machine! I tried to protest, why was my heart speeding up like that?! Then I was awake and the whole procedure was over.

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
May 10
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

Versed once, propofol once. In my experience, Versed was not as pleasant or as effective. I woke up in mid-procedure having horrible cramps and the nurse squeezed me around the waist to deal with it.

Expand full comment