crankypants/sex dream

So essentially how I’m feeling is that in the kingdom of the annoyed, I’m wearing the Royal Crankypants. Everything—everything—is noisome. This feeling isn’t new. It’s been building like a tsunami in the open ocean of my unconscious.

That last sentence, that really irritates me. I’d cross it out and start again, but I’m going to let it sit as a silent, purple testament to exactly how prickly I feel. I’m tetchy, goddammit, tetchy as fuck. The world conspires to make me ill tempered.

I’m annoyed by my skin. It’s itching everywhere, particularly places I can’t reach.  Yesterday, I ran into Donny’s cousin at one of the places I freelance. She’s looking to be there full-time. That was deeply irritating. Not to mention awkward. This whole thing about Jezebel being sold to Condé Nast is galling me, first because I thought they’d been sold, and then later because I realized it was an April Fool’s joke. My obtuseness rankles me.

I’m really maddened by the fact that Ernie, my X, has apparently gotten a job at a college here in Gotham. I was really looking forward to his being forced to move to a very different Congressional district. I’m angry at how long it’s taken GQ to send me a check for the freelance work I did—maybe all of my annoyance is really Condé Nast’s fault. Darn that Sy Newhouse, darn him all to heck. Also—my iTunes is really bothering me. 7,000+ songs and all it can play are the ones that suck. How many times do I need to hear “Everybody’s Kung Fu Fighting”? That is not a rhetorical question.

My stupid book proposal is really annoying me. It’s annoying me to infinity; it’s annoying me to the nth degree. Which is pretty much the same thing, and my repetition really irks me. It’s also annoying me that beyond “irritating” and “annoying” there are not that many good words with which to express the feeling of being irritated and/or annoyed. My thesaurus really abrades, affronts, aggravates, angers, bothers, bugs, burns, chafes, confuses, distempers, disturbs, enrages, exasperates, frets, galls, gets, grates, harasses, incenses, inflames, infuriates, irks, maddens, needles, nettles, offends, pains, peeves, pesters, piques, provokes, rankles, rasps, rattles, riles, roils, ruffles, sours, tries, vexes me.

My sleep has been choppy of late. It’s infuriating. My sleep comes late, after much coaxing, many countings of breath, and too well into the inky blackness of night. When I do finally sleep, I toss fitfully. My sheets wad up like swaddling around my thighs. I sleep aware of my sleep, not plunged like a baptized infant in Lethean waters. And can I say, wow, this writing sucks like a pangolin. The sleeplessness and the sucking weary me. So does my pretentiousness. I should just fart in a wineglass, sniff it, and call it a day.

See, my sleep becomes all the more precious when, as I was early this morning, my unconscious gifts me with a sex dream, even one as David-Lynch weird as the one I had last night. (I might add that my cat chose the exact moments of my sex dream to walk over my head, press his wet nose into my eye sockets and purr loudly. I really, really hate my cat.) And it was weird, it was a strange dream, even as dreams go, but in it I got to kiss a woman who looked an awful lot like Madeline Zima. And that, unlike an echidna, does not suck.

In the dream, I was back visiting FlashDancers. They had remodled extensively since my last visit there in 2002, or at least they had in my unconscious. For one thing, it was a lot larger than it used to be. It sprawled all subterranean for blocks, like a parking garage stacked full of ecdysiasts. Plus, they’d installed these weird bidet-toilets that were separated from one another with iridescent blue shower curtains, apropos nothing. Really, the whole dressing room was the height of minimalist chic, as if Jacques Herzog, the architect for Prada, had redesigned it. It was pretty disconcerting, but I was accompanied by my Madeline-Zima look-alike stripper, so all was fine with the world when I had to squat over the weird bidet-toilet and my Frye boots kept skidding out from under me, threatening to deposit me in the toilet drink.

Of all the strippers in all the world, the one who glommed to me in my dream was this Madeline Zima creature. All big eyes and thin shoulders and white skin and black hair. All improbably young. Even in my dream, I was pinching myself that a woman like this would be interested in me for longer than it would take her to apply lip gloss. Yet here she improbably was, talking about hair cuts with a kind of improportionate fervor and dropping lines like “I think everyone needs both a boyfriend and a girlfriend, don’t you?” casually as used matches. I was—and am—inclined to agree.

In my dream, it was just a matter of time before we kissed, and soon—after wending through the new FlashDancer dining room (It looks like a Ponderosa, I said; she laughed), after downing monolithic dark drinks poured by my unconscious bartender with a very heavy hand, after my Madeline-Zima clone had instantaneously and inexplicably changed out of her long-gown stripper garb and into a pair of denim short-shorts and a tank top, and after she pulled me into a dark alcove, we kissed. It was, might I say, not at all annoying. It was, might I say, a really lush and lovely kiss. It was, might I say, too bad it wasn’t real. I'd like to pry her apart and eat her with my fingers.

Dream-drunk, I tried to write my phone number for my freshly bussed  Madeline-Zima girl, but I couldn’t. I tried and I tried, but every number came out wrong, wrong as pork soda, wrong as culottes, wrong as creationism. No matter how many times I tried to crib my digits on a card, the numbers were all wrong. Not-Madeline-Zima sat looking expectant and only a little bit exasperated.

Which brings me back to my own irritation. The cat walking on my head and nose-butting my eyelids woke me. I hate my cat. And here I am, typing crappity-crap-crap in crankypants.

I’m going to meditate on pictures of the real Madeline Zima in hopes that they will soothe the snappish beast within. It could happen.

Comments

[MJ]

I hear you - I am also super crabby right now, thanks to all work and no play for weeks making MJ a bee-atch. A bee-atch who wanted to do a more creative kind of work, and would be OK having creative outlets while working, but unable to have any for a while thanks to "all work." And the boys in the office keep trying to bump me out of social outings 'cause I ain't got they plumbing and all.

Maybe you need an idiotically good laugh or a trashy escapist film or something to break the spell. The Bank Job, and its numerous real (small, uneven, imperfect) English boobies did it for me. Oh, and that Jason Statham guy too.

[Dan]

Well. 95% of that certainly didn't suck. I'm sorry to hear you're cranky, but it certainly doesn't diminish your writing skill in the eyes of at least *this* semi-pro lurker. May something unexpectedly, startlingly wonderful bring you out of your funk anon.

Dan

[karl elvis]

God.

I like it when you write angry. You're fabulous this way. "I'd like to pry her apart and eat her with my fingers." - brilliant, and I oh-so-fucking-agree.

Unlike the pangolin, my love, this (and you) do not suck.

[Jen]

Oh, I couldn't agree more. I, too, am a crankypants right now. Everything annoys me. My children annoy me. My cats annoy me. The love of my life annoys me. The air is either too hot or too cold. Sounds are too ambient, too loud, too filtered, too jarring. I feel cranky to the point of enraged at times, unable to control or understand the true source from which it comes. I feel as though I'm stuck in mud, spinning like stuck tires and I can't escape. All I want in life is to break free from the mud and to get ahead for a change. It does lead to a great deal of crankiness.

YEAH! SOUTH PARK REFERENCE!

you smell that fart! eat crab cakes to enhance the smell, yeah!

oh, and embrace the annoyed, crankiness. This too shall pass.

much love to your crabby self

[mrs. hall]

i wrote the comment about the south park and the much love to your crabby cakes but the computer kicked it up before I had a chance to sign it. so now I am annoyed. well, not really. hee hee

:)

[knowtoryous]

Doll face, I love you but so glad not around for crankypants. Miss you, see you next week.

[geoff]

"Talk like crab, taste like people"?

I've stopped taking the happy pills lately, and I seem to find myself quite irritable lately.

Beware the D. Please take care.

[Isaak]

I agree with karl elvis! Maybe you could become a female version of George Orwell and rant against the Money God ;)

[L&I]

I find that there can be something luxurious and not unpleasant about that state of pan-crankiness. Hope you can too.

[chelsea g]

Yeah....still cranky. Yup, still with the X-Game, leveled-up, extreme-sport crankiness. I think I should go out in big, heavy boots and kick random objects whilst listening to Judas Priest.

Thank you all for your tacit permission to do so.

cheers,
chelsea g.

[Isaak]

uuuuuuuuhhhhh Judas Priest! Be sure to listen to "Ram it down", "Nightcrawler" and "Between the Hammer and the Anvil" while you're crushing random objects beneath your oversized, metalstudded killer-boots.

[Marianne]

I like you in this mood. It makes me giggle... and it makes you very witty.

Not that you're not always witty. Sorry, ma'am. Don't hurt me.

I'd go with 'irk' personally.