ninaherenorthere.com

I am single. And when I caught myself saying yes instead of no to something, well more than one thing, so outside my comfort zone, I realized that I do occasionally exhibit my traveler mentality at home, that telling myself “at least you’ll be able to write about it” always helps, and that when I am single, I do things I wouldn’t ordinarily do.

Occasionally I come up with rules, like I won’t travel over 30 miles or won’t spend over $50 or won’t declare my love for someone I haven’t kissed, but then I do, or at least I have.

These are a few of the things I’ve done for a variety of girls–none of whom  I dated or slept with–over the past decade.

1. Attended “Gay Day” at Great America with her.
2. Bicycled to her office and read three legal pages of handwritten sentences that all started with, “I love your….” or “I love the way you…”
3. Wore skin tight hot pink Paul Frank pants to a bar to make her laugh.
4. Did splits at a party to impress her with my flexibility.
5. Went to the End Up every Fag Friday and chain-smoked Newports with meth-heads while she danced to house music until the sun came up.
6. Wrote her a ten page story in which she was the main character and gave it to her as a birthday present.
7. Drove over an hour to meet her at the beach even though I’d never met her and she’d sent me an e-card with a poodle on it.
8. To see if we were sexually compatible, I went to the book store after our first date to read erotica written about her.
9. Drugs.
10. Met her mother, and her brother, and paid for a Yonder Mountain String Band show.

“It’s fucked up,” my therapist said when she handed me the letter. I read the first few lines, “I am writing in support of Nina in her pursuit of chest surgery. Born female, Nina meets the DSM IV criteria for Gender Identity Disorder.” The letter went on to say that I’ve been meeting with my therapist for over three years (which made me feel very well-balanced and dedicated to my personal development), that I understand the physical and psychological ramifications of top surgery, and that I have no “psychological disturbance” that would contraindicate my “pursuit of treatment.”

I had in my hands the infamous Therapist Letter, the permission, as recommended in the WPATH ethical guidelines (last updated in 2001), for those pursuing a cosmetic procedure that falls under the heading of gender reassignment surgery. I had already put up a half-assed fight against the letter, aware that my surgeon prefers these letters, but doesn’t require them. He assured me that the letter would sit in a folder in a drawer in the bottom of a cabinet never to be looked at again. I asked him if it was sufficient to say that I’m of sound mind to make a decision about my body. He said yes. I guess I’d hoped that the letter would say that and nothing else. When I expressed some disappointment at my offical letter, my therapist said she was filling out a template, but that I could re-write the letter if I wanted to, and she’d sign it. Although I cared about the issue on principle, being dianosed with something I don’t believe is a condition or a disorder that I need “treatment” for, I didn’t care about a piece of paper that is going to do nothing but yellow.

Rather than reiterate the problems of pathologizing trans people, or the problem of equated top surgery with a nose job or breast augmentation, I thought I’d just mess around with my own version of a somewhat typical transgender narrative therapist letter.

Dear Dr. Surgeon,

As a small child, N’s toys included My Little Ponies (with a stable) and a Barbie, the shower time version. She doesn’t remember actually playing with these toys, certainly not aggressively or in a rough-n-tumble fashion, but she remembers a picture of herself topless, washing a naked Barbie. It is the only picture she remembers in which she is without a shirt during that prepubescent phase when boys and girls chests look the same. She remembers that picture fondly.

During childhood, N occasionally tortured her brother. One of her favorite games involved sticking a broomstick between his legs. Her friend Alexis would grab the other side and the two older girls would jerk the stick up, launching N’s poor brother into the air. He would usually fly off one side with a burst of self-conscious, traumatized laughter. Because he laughed, N would then shout in his face that he had no balls. Once she asked me to hypnotize her. She was hoping to uncover a repressed memory, like maybe after her castration attempt, she’d said, “You can’t have one if I can’t have one.” But after the hypnosis, N only cried, hugged a pillow and apologized profusely to her brother.

N told me that she didn’t always urinate sitting down. She said she could go anywhere: trough, sink, in between two cars, potted plant, middle of a ski run, the side of the road, Snapple bottle. She told me that she didn’t care much for toilet paper. “Is that because men don’t wipe after peeing?” I asked. “No,” she screamed. “Urine is clean. Like water. Gandhi drank it.” She was very disappointed when I refused to label any of these behaviors as cross-gender practices.

I always got the sense N was looking for evidence or proof, some rational explanation for why she couldn’t stop fantasizing about a painful, expensive procedure that would push her even farther into the outskirts of society. She inquired into possible medical explanations, but doctors never could find any undescended testes in the obvious places below the waist. So, she had them check her ear canal and nasal pathway. One doctor refused to treat her after she chased him around with her mouth open and tongue out, positive that in the place of tonsils she had gonads. She thought everything would be okay if she could just have an oral gonadectomy.

N appeared to have a completely normal puberty. She responded to menstruation as if she’d sprung a leak, plugging it up like she was a plumber. She eagerly requested a training bra before she needed one, and in eight grade, she began showing off her breasts in skin tight shirts. There appears to be some sort of inner turmoil going on at this time, because she also bought a carving knife to school and ended up in some serious trouble. I’m not sure if it was a plea for help, but her actions seemed to say, “Look at my tits! Look at my tits, and I’ll knife you.”

While N displayed no obvious signs of gender identity disorder throughout childhood, she did begin to show late onset gender development. Around the age of twenty-six, she saw a toddler playing in a sandbox. He was wobbling about in a pair of corduroys. His Keds looked small enough to fit in her hand, and he was wearing a perfect red dress shirt. “I need that outfit,” N said to herself in what felt like a grand epiphany. Shortly thereafter, N began window shopping for herself on the boys’ side of the Baby Gap.

As N grew closer and closer to age thirty, she began to look younger and younger. It didn’t matter if she was wine tasting with her parents or at a private catered briss, a bartender or guest would inevitably crack a joke about underage drinking. At bars, the quizzing over the validity of her driver’s license began: What color are your eyes? How tall are you? What’s your zip code? On two occasions, N had to provide backup identification. At one corner store, a cashier looked at her license and said, “Holy Shit.”

While I have no concerns over N’s late onset gender development, I am slightly concerned with her workout regimen. For awhile N thought she could exercise off her hips and breasts. Last week, she confided in me that she knows this is a lost cause, that the only way to lose her chest is surgery. And thank god. Her face was starting to disappear.

So, Doctor, there you have it. I am writing in support of N in her pursuit of chest surgery. Born female, resembling a girl and then a woman and then a boy, and on her way to looking like a pear-shaped skeleton with the face of a Jewish monkey, Nina meets the DSM IV criteria for workout manorexia. I recommend surgery as the best treatment option for her.

Sincerely,

Therapist

I’ve been a busy with my brother’s visit, a short vacation, and the new job, of course. I’m starting to hear the distant song of the blogging muse, but until she puts the megaphone to her lips, this post will have to suffice while I play catch up with my life.

Rather than describe a cubicle job, a hackneyed subject ever since the movie, Office Space, I’ll leave you with two samples from my job and hope that they don’t break any confidentiality agreements.

I snapped the following picture on my phone while everyone at my company went on a bowling excursion. I stayed behind because I’m a contractor and can get paid while surfing the Internet, but not while bowling. The sign is taped above the microwave with the text below.

This is simple
No Fish in the microwave
Nothing with Fish sauce. Nothing that sat next to a Fish in the store.
If you’re unsure, ask yourself, “Does this smell like Fish?”
If you’re still unsure, ask another person, “Does this smell like fish to you?”
If there’s any doubt, don’t microwave it.

I think of that as an office poem.  The other thing I want to share is an office email. It starts: “I have received numerous complaints about people using their cell phones while using the bathrooms.” I do not feel comfortable providing any more information from the email, which predominately focuses on the consideration we all need to avoid taking a piss and talking to our mothers while a co-worker is in the next stall. The email ends on an unrelated note, but perhaps one related to the fish poster, which has been up for as long as I’ve been at the company. The email ends with, ” Also, please do not post unauthorized signs around the office.”

Kristina (the gfriend) and I occasionally housesit/petsit for a friend who lives in the outer sunset, a San Francisco neighborhood reminiscent of the Jersey shore. I should probably clarify the situation to say that Kristina petsits and I water plants, move cars, change lightbulbs and do the dishes. I didn’t know what purring was until my mid-twenties, but Kristina makes up for my lack of cat and dog experience. She prefers animals to people and is the kind of person you’d want protecting your ant farm, fighting off bullies who flick the glass and turn the farm upside down. Critters, rodents, and insects large and small, she loves them all.

The fist time we housesat, we received a list of all the items I.O., a Jack Russell with an underbite and white fur the texture of twine, has devoured. A few of the items on the list: lipstick, sunglasses, a bottle of anti-depressants, gum, chocolate, coughdrops and condoms. This list never scared Kristina and me. We considered it part of the warning, “Do not leave anything within I.O.’s reach and watch her at all times.” When we are there, we stash all of our belongings above waist level. We don’t leave any food out. We always know where she is.

The other night, while we were cooking dinner, I.O. was in the hallway with the cat, Chawala. Then Kristina was in the hallway. There was flapping, then Kristina screaming, “I.O’s got a bat. Rabies. Rabies.” I’ve always wondered whether I’m the type of person who would run into a burning building to save a stranger, leap off a cliff to rescue a drowning child, shield an injured soldier with my body, or whether I’m a coward whose feet would turn to lead in a time of crisis. I’m proud to report that I have the hero gene. Without thinking, I grabbed I.O. by the stomach and squeezed as if trying to perform the Heimlich maneuver. But I.O. wasn’t choking and she was hungry. With one crunch and a swallow, the bat was gone. I.O. licked her lips, all innocent and cute, and started sniffing under the door looking for dessert.

We think the bat came in through a locked, handleless door. Don’t ask us what’s behind it, we don’t know, we’re just housesitting. But whatever is on the other side is apparently used by the neighboring storefront. There is a medium-sized crack under the door and most likely the cat shot her mouse-grabbing paw through the crack and came back with the bat. There is a bird hospital a few doors down, and only after asking Kristina eleven times if maybe I.O. ate a small bird, a parakeet perhaps, did I believe her when she said it was definitely a bat.

We did all the stuff you’re supposed to do when the dog you’re petsitting for eats a bat. We called the animal hospital, the vet, animal control, and the owner, interrupting her peaceful yoga retreat. Both the dog and the cat were up to date on their rabies vaccines and we (and by we, I mean Kristina) took them for booster shots the following day. The vet is also conveniently on the block (yes this is a weird neighborhood), so first she took the cat, then the dog, over in the pet carrier. By now, I.O. has passed the bat, and we did not look for the bat head in her stool, as we were instructed to do. We were too shell-shocked by the end of the debacle.

Once the animals were fine, we turned to human concerns and whether Kristina and I needed rabies shots. After consulting two people in the medical profession, we learned that because the bat didn’t touch us or bite us or inject mass quantities of saliva into us, we would be fine. Even if the bat had left dried drool on the counter and I touched it with a finger that had a cut on it, I would be fine. Although by asking the question, I prompted concerns about my mental health and anxiety.

For now, everyone is okay. We added bat to the long list of things I.O. has eaten. It is the only the item on the list that was alive at the time of consumption, and I feel special to be part of that moment, holding I.O. by the stomach while she guzzled that flapping little mammal in 3 seconds flat.

I am dying for a job. Which is why I lied. These weren’t even white lies, but gray ones, with thick black stripes. And yes, there were several. Lies are like tattoos; it’s hard to stop after one.

See, I already dropped a lie in this post. I’m not actually dying for a job. But I’ve been told that employers seek out voracious candidates. They want their prospective employees to be like dogs, drooling and ready to rip into a spreadsheet steak. I’ve been told “half of having is wanting,” and still my job desires emerge in timid squeaks. Just the other afternoon, delirious from lack of mental stimulation, I pretended a genie had emerged from a bottle to grant me wishes. “Well, I guess I’d like to have a job that doesn’t suck,” I said. “With a boss and co-workers who aren’t lame. And it’d be nice if I made enough money to pay my rent and health insurance and school loans.”

“Are you kidding me,” Kristina said. “You’re going to waste a genie with that weak wish.”

Now I’m a blood thirsty pit bull. I pounce on any job post that appeals to my Interest Of The Week, which is currently literary agencies. You can only imagine my excitement when I saw the Craigslist ad for an “Executive Assistant to a Literary Agent.” So, I pretended I was “proficient with QuickBooks.” It took me a week to figure out QuickBooks wasn’t Quicken, another software program I’ve never used. But I can wing anything on a computer, especially involving numbers. And besides, in aggressive job search mode, I block out all second-guesses and let no obstacles stand in my way. Certainly not the job requirement, “Must have car.”

I could borrow a friend’s car for an interview. If the job turned out to be PERFECT, I could buy a car. I blocked out all the negative signs, like the pay and the location. The placement agency hiring for the position called me within two hours of receiving my resume. They couldn’t give me the name of the agent, but they said she represented “self-help authors.” I adjusted my blinders and accepted an introductory interview at the placement agency.

This morning, I took public transportation to my friend’s house, borrowed her car and drove over the Golden Gate Bridge to an office park in Larkspur. I filled out reference forms and application forms. I lied only once, stating I would take a drug test if necessary. I waited for the recruiter to invite me into her office. She wore vinyl boots with stiletto heels, the kind of shoes only appropriate for kinky sex. Her office chair was leopard spotted. She looked at my forms. “You’re only interested in direct hire?” she asked.

“I’m only interested in the Executive Assistant to the Literary Agent position I applied for,” I said.

“I’m sorry. That’s been filled.”

She apologized for not calling to let me know. She referred to it as an “oversight.” She apologized for my long journey from San Francisco. She didn’t sound sincere, especially when inquiring as to whether I might be interested in another “clerical/administrative” position that would most likely require a car. She was like a Stepford Professional, an automaton.

I’m a non-confrontational person (except with customer service reps). Even in bad employment situations, I don’t burn bridges. I didn’t yell at the recruiter or raise my voice. Instead, I asked her for $5 for my toll. Her face flushed. “To compensate for your oversight,” I said. “It’s only fair. I’m not even asking for gas money.” She reached over to zebra striped purse, dug out her wallet and handed me $5.

Okay, okay. I didn’t ask her for toll money. That’s the last lie I could sneak in. Because now I learned my lesson: liars never prosper.

I didn’t intend to spend my morning at a creative staffing agency. I filled out half of the online registration form last week, but stopped when I realized that if you diagrammed the agency’s needs and clients with my skills and interests, the overlap would resemble the new moon. Despite my incomplete application, the recruiter asked me to come in for an interview. She didn’t look closely at my resume, or else she would’ve understood that I’m not a “marketing/advertising” professional. Or, and I believe this is the case, she is new, eager and weeding through duds like me to build up her candidate base. I decided to visit her, and in order to maintain my advantage, I reminded myself that the meeting was a bigger waste of her time than mine. Words from a successful business man lingered in my ears, “You will find a job because you are smart and pretty. You are BEAUTIFUL.” Maybe if the recruiter sees me, she’ll find me a job.

I’m not going to insult the recruiter. Her smile was just a response to to my desperate rambling. And I felt bad for her, forced to wear a suit from the discount rack of a department store, stuck in an office reminiscent of an airport lounge and marinating in the disappointments of unemployed middle managers. She did say one valuable thing this morning, “We don’t have writers in here often,” and at that moment I finally understood the seismic chasm between copywriter and writer, and decided I can no longer pursue the former.

While at the agency, I had to do this exercise providing a “Commercial for Me.” While the recruiter left to find a co-worker to interview me (as it turned out everyone was “too busy”) I re-wrote my commercial, using the exact same format and even employing some of the same phrases (feel free to guess which ones) that I used in the original.

A Commercial for Nina

Nina can write about anything: kitty litter, adult diapers, vaginal anti-itch cream, home bidets, and pharmacy-bought douche kits. She writes killer instructional copy, and has a proven track record with applicators and suppositories. She specializes in the delicate handling of unmentionable products and the magic of her soothing copy will have even the most embarrassed customers running through supermarkets screaming, “BUY! BUY! BUY!”

Nina is professional and for a wordsmith, she is excellent with numbers. She demonstrates these skills with her greatest achievement: rotating 10 “business casual” outfits using only 3 tops, 2 sweaters, 3 pairs of pants, 2 belts and pairs of brown and black shoes.

The complete package of ideal employee, Nina comes with this intangible bonus: she is a pleasure to be around. The celebration of her birthday will draw more crowds to the 34th floor conference room than ever before. This means more cookies, ice cream, and cake. Afternoon sugar highs for all! Her personality is so engaging that each day in windowless rooms under fluorescent lights is a bit more bearable. References will attest to her congeniality, but the comments, which filled the inside and the back of her last company’s going-away card, provide the best testimonial: “Nina, it is great to work with you!”

I feel like I’m stuck in bad game of Duck, Duck, Goose. And the kid tapping heads is one of those attention-starved rascals who teases with false alarms and circles endlessly until a supervisor puts a cap on the number of laps allowed. At which point, the kid shouts “Goose” at his best friend, a popular kid who has been called upon so many times that the sweat dripping down from his temples has left dirt-streaks. Meanwhile, I haven’t been pronounced a Goose at all, and most of the kids are so indifferent to me that hands barely make contact with the top of my head.

I’m talking about rejection, mostly rejection from places I send my writing. I could be talking about jobs, too, but to be more accurate, that would be called “non-responses.” The few resumes I’ve sent out have disappeared into the universally recognized black hole of cyberspace, and about five hours after my sole interview, the company reposted the job description, a somewhat passive-aggressive rejection. Oh, and I’m about to be rejected for an unpaid “internship” assisting a freelance copywriter. Maybe we should all keep our fingers crossed for that rejection based on the unpaid aspect.

For the most part, when I receive a response from a magazine, journal, radio show, or whatever, I consider that an accomplishment. When I see that SASE in my own handwriting or an email subject “RE: Submission” I think, “Wow, this did not get lost in the junk mail folder, or underneath a desk, or in a stack of papers left for an intern not-yet-hired.” My spirits perk up as I can’t help but believe that someone pretended to read my submission.

I’ve received so many rejections in January it’s as if editors across the nation made New Years Resolutions to get through their slush piles. I have enough rejection letters that I can (and will, now that I think of it) critique and rate the quality of the various letters. Since that might take awhile, for now I’ll just tell you about some of the rejections:

I was REJECTED from an all female writer’s colony in Washington State. Judging by the name, Hedgebrook, there’s a good chance I saved myself from voluntary commitment to a sanitarium. Hedgebrook told me the notification letters would go out at the end of December, but I, an extra special rejectee, received mine in November. I probably never made it to the second round of consideration, which would mean only my “Why do you deserve to be here?” essays were rejected and my writing samples never looked at. Not so bad since I probably don’t deserve to be there.

I was REJECTED from This American Life, but who hasn’t been. I was also REJECTED from a magazine called make/shift, but the editor said I could submit again, probably because the submission numbers are low, or because that is simply part of that magazine’s form letter. I should point out that in all the rejection letters I’ve received none of them have even a quick hand-jotted, “entertaining.” We all should have goals and mine is a personal comment on a rejection letter.

I was REJECTED from reading at not one, but two local literary series. These hurt my feelings, one more than the other. The call for submissions asked for humor writers to read short personal narratives like those of David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs at a first-time unestablished event. This is what I do. This is all I can do. Write and read funny shit aloud. That rejection hurt. A blast of mace to the heart. And I’d be a jerk to call the other event that rejected me dinky, because it isn’t, but is there anyone who wants me to read anything anywhere?

“Writing is Rejection,” teachers say. That is when they aren’t saying, “Writing is Revising.” (It was disappointing to find out I have to do all this revising only to be rejected.) Today I arrived at Chapter 5: The Rejection Section in the book I’m reading called Putting Your Passion Into Print. (PYPIP is a pretty decent guide to publishing, proposals, the book business, despite having what I consider to be a tacky title but according to what I’m learning in the book, exactly the kind of marketable title appropriate to the content.

There was one thing I expected to read a lot of in this section: anecdotes of success stories and a list of the many famous writers who have been rejected, or as the punk who scribbled in my library copy wrote about the rejected: “The whole wide world of writers!” The chapter opens with John Kennedy Toole and the Confederacy of Dunces, an anecdote with the lesson that you should not to kill yourself before winning the Pulitzer Prize. There are also quotes regarding famous books once rejected as manuscripts, and statistics, which I like, specifically, “Joe Quirk wrote five novels and received 375 rejection letters” before publishing a bestseller. Just when I started to feel inspired, I realized that the PYPIP authors did not include the multitudes of people who write and submit and write and submit and write and then die. Rejected. And, the rejections the authors are talking about refer to book-length manuscripts, one hell of an accomplishment to complete such a thing. I’m getting rejected over twenty pages tops. I don’t even have a manuscript available for rejection. And, the authors are talking about manuscripts that are rejected for a variety of reasons usually regarding marketability, and not the most common problem I see at the literary agency where I intern, which is the quality of writing just isn’t good enough. I know this is often a problem with my work, too.

Things I try to remember: collect as many rejections as possible in order to find the elusive acceptance. This is why I used the word rejection so many times in this post, to get all the rejections out of the system. Unfortunately, I had an essay that a respectable website wanted to publish and pay me for, but because the essay had previously won a contest, I couldn’t offer the magazine first time rights and they wouldn’t take sloppy seconds. And that same essay is being considered for an anthology, but will most likely be rejected since the reader said it was “overwritten,” cliched and had too many adverbs, even though she still put it in the “maybe” pile. (Assume it is rejected until I tell you otherwise.) My point and the problem is that this one essay that editors have expressed some interest in is ruining my accumulation of rejections statistically necessary for an acceptance somewhere down the line.

I hope I didn’t get too depressing with this post. I’m not depressed. I’ve been rubbing sandpaper on my body and now I have calluses and a lizard-like exterior made up of super thick skin. And get this, I asked a few former co-workers and supervisors if I could use their names as references in my job search. None of them rejected me. None. They might even say something nice about me. How cool is that.

I knew this post was coming eventually, the one where I tell you I lost many hours and about three whole days this fall discovering and catching up on season 1 of Friday Night Lights. Days when the tears rolled down my cheeks episode after episode, my heart falling with each dropped pass and rising on the arc of a Hail Mary or launch over an end line, as I watched the Dillon Panthers battle the obstacles that only television dramas can create in their quest for one of the greatest accomplishments in sports, to become high school Texas state football champions.

I have many a good thing to say about the first season and a few bad things about the second—namely the lovable and lust-worthy wife of Coach Taylor acting nuts after having a child, the ludicrous and soporific murder plot, and the cheerleader, Layla, becoming a born again Christian, as if being a regular Texas Christian isn’t bad enough. But it always has been and always will be Tim Riggins that keeps me watching.

For it is Tim who comes onto Lyla with “I feel closer to God if I’m with you,” and Tim who seduces the new neighborhood MILF, and Tim who will save you from undergoing a shark transplant to fix your busted spine. He may be a raging alcoholic and dumb as only a football player with a rally girl to do all his homework can be, but he knows enough to step out of the crystal meth lab and run from that trailer.

There comes a moment in the life of every bisexual boy-dyke when s/he cannot ignore the cock throbbing in hir fag fantasy. Mine came the first time I saw #33 on the tiny square of NBC’s streaming video. He spoke few words those first few episodes, and it seemed as if all he could do was take off a shirt or put it on, swig beer, run, hit and catch. And then he showed us he could fix gutters, cars, cable TV. Better than most men, I think. He’s the kind of guy who you want to save, an example of paternal abandonment grown into a boy-man-child-Michelangelo’s David.

While the other characters look too old for high school, Tim looks and acts too old for it. He is an adult, the kind of adult who picks bar fights and knows his glory days are behind him. He is the kind of man who conveys the burden of his being with a handshake, a nod of the head, and a simple “Thank You.”

I want Tim by my side at a girly bar, the wingman to inspire a thousand lap dances with one smirk of those plush red lips. I want to use his old button-down shirts as rags and shine his rifle from the back of his pickup truck. I want to put mascara on his pretty boy eyes and run my rugged hands along his polished cheeks. I want to watch the water ride the roller coaster of his abs while he is in the shower, his head tilted back, Adam’s Apple rippling in the steam, and those biceps popped as he strokes the grease from his locks, sheaves of bowed wheat in the fading sun. A toss of his head and a V-neck shirt, or a football uniform, or those sleeveless Underarmour shirts he wears, or… Forget it, a toss of his head, and I might even bottom for him, but only if he asked nice and called me “sir.” Then I’d lick those cowboy boots.

That’s my ode to you, big guy. I love you, Riggins.

Boners, anyone?

About four years ago, I was working on a one-woman show about my dating debacles, perpetual singlehood, and fundamental inability to find a girlfriend. I planned to make a video of me and my substitute lover, Dilderina, but only got as far as the pictures (taken by Zippy). And so, this post completes an old unfinished project. For those of you who didn’t know me for the two years I had dreads, I have a head full of them in this video. I say this to quell the shock. Because when the video played to test audiences (receiving rave reviews) there were some individuals too mesmerized by my dreads and former appearance to enjoy the unfolding of the love story. If the dreads jar you on the first go around, feel free to watch it twice. Or instead of Where’s Waldo, pretend you are playing Where’s Dilderina.

Dilderina is one of a kind, manufactured by Dede on the premises of Vixen Creations. I received Dilderina as a present for my 23rd-ish birthday. I wanted a mail-order girlfriend. I received a paper-mache breast filled with sex toys. In the end, there wasn’t much difference.