eunuch.

February 26, 2015 / mscharlies / 2 Comments

The unexpected female empowerment spirit at the 2015 Oscars (#AskHerMore, Patricia Arquette’s speech) sent me scrabbling through the WordBowl archives for one of my more conversation-sparking pieces — intriguingly, most via private comment (rather than public) or e.mail — and I am forever grateful to Lynn Messina for providing such fertile word fodder. In honor of #ThrowBackThursday, EUNUCH:

Do you have a WordBowl word suggestion? Click HERE.

Talk about a stumper of a word…

1. A man or boy deprived of testes or external genitals (cue arias..)

2. A castrated man placed in charge of a harem or employed as a chamberlain in a palace (cue Game of Thrones)

3. One who lacks vitality or power (Oh. A relatable emotion at last…)

“eunuch” comes to us from the mad mind of Ms. Lynn Messina who, when she is not writing books both paper & digital, can be found ruminating on Motherlode, the parenting blog of The New York Times or baking treats to serve at Authors Unbound.

You do not acknowledge “victim” in relation to yourself, a weak word, feminine in all its steerage class citizenship. A term wielded by stoic stars of police procedurals, emphatic talk show hosts, news anchors parroting teleprompter feeds. A media word to manipulate emotion, a word smacking of petulance, self-pity as the complicit cry for attention. If you were any word, it would be “survivor”, but it, too, loaded with connotations, pop culture references. You will not be branded by a moment you remember in flashes, as though watching it onscreen, as fleeting as a YouTube clip. You stuff it down, the thing you refuse to dignify with a name, lock it in some dark mental attic where it remains — your own personal Picture of Dorian Gray — fresh, blooming, vulnerable as youth, even as your exterior armor hardens, your soul steels itself. You pull it out on occasion, at a certain point in a relationship, like an offering, but it is an unrequited gift, there is no comfort in the telling. You learn to catch the words tipped on tongue, as if in the not telling, you can muffle the power of the story. Smother it with silence.

BETTER & BETTER cocktail at Attaboy (and yes, it was)

To all outward appearances, you look the same, lulling family, friends into thinking you are intact, as though something essential has not been hacked away, hijacked. As though you had not been rendered helpless, just once, just one moment. Your stomach roils while your face remains placid, and you — the you that you remember — remains caught betwixt the truculent truce between interior and exterior. Your fantasies, if you allow yourself to fantasize, spiral, veer into unchartered territory, titillating and repellent in equal measure. Fearsome, what you may be capable of, what you may crave. Or what you withhold, or acquiesce to, in the playgrounds of power, negotiating the intricacies of intimacy with this foreign body of yours.

ATTAGIRL cocktail at Attaboy

You rise through the corporate ranks, notable for your canny emotional control, perceived ruthlessness, casual disregard for Human Resources guidelines, like the male executives. You chose not to secret yourself away, shrink to the size of unnoticeable. You will not invisible yourself. You count this as a victory. Another brick shoring up your defenses, tangible evidence you have, once again, staved off defeat in these internal battles you wage with yourself. Because you were once breeched, and the war rages on. You are powerless against the roar of emotions you refuse to feel. Powerless, in the face of what you faced. You do not know what it was about you, why you were singled out. What you had — have — done to deserve this. You will not say, even in your own head, “perpetrator”, “victim”. Or “prey”. There are many ways to survive — you need only find one — but there is only one word for what surviving transforms you into, as if all horrors were equal. If you were in charge, if you possessed the power, you would demand there be at least as many words for “survivor” as the Eskimos have for snow. If you possessed the power.

“eunuch” was scribbled by hand with a couple of bespoke cocktail at Attaboy the more populist incarnation (no reservations required) of beloved LES speakeasy Milk & Honey that takes their booze (and ice) quite seriously which results in delectable imbibing tailored to taste. The painful editing process was ameliorated with a fetching Americano presentation at Box Kite (east village).

Do you have a WordBowl word suggestion? Click HERE. I look forward to writing a story for you!

loquacious.

February 14, 2015 / mscharlies / Leave a comment

Today’s luscious WordBowl word comes to us from Lydia (thanks, Lydia!) of Urban Sound Review

“…so we’re all up in it, mad drum’n’bass, excellent tracks I picked up in the UK — what a trip, Raindance, Genisus88, the beatmasters who ignited this thing, you gotta get your ass over there — I’m scratching in some funk, and we roll the video, projected wall-to-wall, blown-up and out, slow-mo, I’m deepening the groove, heavy sub-bass, and no one recognized it, even though it was on CNN like non-stop for a while, such sick shit — literally sick, everywhere — George W. Bush yakking into the lap of the Japanese Prime Minister, and the faces, the horror on all those faces surrounding him,”

Bloody Mary schlurp, bits of horseradish clinging to the stubble above his lip.

“Jerked” Margaritas?

“Oh man, I can practically feel the vitamins coursing through my veins! Whatever that sparkly girl, the one with the butterfly wings, handed out was cut to shit with speed,”

Thumbs drumming scarred bar.

“You were already out of there, right? Damn! Check it: when the camera zoomed in on Bush’s face, we paused, and I sampled the “turn around, bright eyes” snippet from that Bonnie Tyler song, it was transcendent — seriously! — the humanity in those eyes, they melted the screen. Our president, the leader of the free-fucking-world, but in that moment a man, a human felled by microbes or parasites or some shit, all his political power meaningless. He who gave us Desert Storm, our first fucking televised war, captured on video bowing — literally, doubled over — obsequious to a higher power, to the body, or nature, primal forces the existence of which is unacknowledged until we are felled by their effects.”

Calloused thumb flicking lighter to flame, flicking to flame, flicking to flame.

“Like this Rodney King shit. unacknowledged undercurrents, fears and resentments gurgling underneath this construct we call civil society, and I’m not talking just about anger, righteous anger. I’m talking about hope.”

Plucking ice cubes from his glass, dilated pupils dancing, still raving.

Not your everyday cuppa

“Don’t look at me like that it was hope, is hope! Hope for a future without artificial barriers between races, man-made class structures, peoples housed in specific geographic zones within our city, like Indian reservations, all the same bullshit, inflicted by those who seized power, declared war, claimed victory. So even as shit-crazed as these past weeks have been, as Los Angeles burned, so did something else, and at some point we rubbed the ashes from our eyes, looked at each other and really saw each other, as people, because once rage burns away, we are left with is hope. And love! Yes, I said love!”

Tugging frayed jacket, exposing fresh t-shirt, rainbow graphic L-O-V-E beaming bright.

Miss Lily’s ONE LOVE BELLINI

“Someone was selling these last night, LOVE a sellout, we wore our love like tribal colors, a love tribe! It’s 1992, we are dancing toward a new millennium, we are shaking off the shackles of a corrupted past, rocketing past corroded ways of thinking — designations based on race or gender or nationality, music ticking to a specific meter, sexuality codified within specific confines — we are all human, we are a world race, we are melding into one glorious, orgasmic species, Our Brave New World an extended middle finger to Huxley and Orwell because we survived the Apocalypse, we are post-apocalypse, post-race, post-gender, there is no turning back, we incinerated those bridges, we are beyond just getting along, we will be worthy of our hope, worthy of love.”

Out of loyalty to the dearly departed 7A (although in truth I had not been in for a 3am patty melt in years), I initially eschewed Miss Lily’s Avenue A but on a bitter winter weekend afternoon their World-Music-by-way-of-Ibiza vibe proved irresistible.

And if you have yet to experience Everyman Espresso, drop whatever you are doing and head deep into Soho for — depending on your mood — one of the most thrilling or satisfying cups of caffeinated deliciousness in town.

Coffee for everyman…

What’s YOUR word?

reparation.

February 5, 2015 / mscharlies / Leave a comment

In honor of #ThrowBackThursday, revisiting one of the first WordBowl entries while resisting the temptation to re/write and re/design! Such a loaded word, REPARATION (click for definition). I initially started scribbling a fictional piece, but the act of (hand)writing jogged a memory, which became the story I share with you here.

It remains the only WordBowl post to have been entirely conceived, written and uploaded in a bar(s).

WordBowl Word-of-the-Day from Jeffrey Q Sholemson, Chicagoan by way of Long Island, Expert Listener, and once, long ago, my college Freshman Orientation Leader.

This story is in no way in references him.

Conundrum: what to wear to an Amends Meeting.

You recognize the courage it took for him to call, reach out after decades of radio silence — you heard through the collegiate grapevine he fell hard fast, cleaned up good — you have seen enough Oprah/Dr. Phi/Dr. Drew/BarbraWaWa to appreciate an addict’s narrative arc. Still, a surprise, the call, the formality of the request for a “meeting”. Not a “get-together” or “a coffee” and obviously not for “drinks”.

A meeting to make amends. To you.

You wonder what the proper preparation is for an amends, this momentous occasion not of your planning. What your role is in his story: Recipient? Protagonist? Heroine? Victim?

You notice “heroine” is only one letter but a whole world away from “heroin”.

12-Stepping, there are handbooks, guidelines, amends processes. Are there any such materials for the amendee?

Balance, you think, somewhere between sartorial sophistication and sartorial seriousness. You jettison “sexy”, despite your history of drunken fumbling in your relative youth, the two of you studying and partying with equal abandon, the late — or early, depending on the night/morning continuum — heartfelt, booze-fueled discussions which inevitably dovetailed into an unarticulated need to for a physical closeness as bared as the conversation. As if to manifest the talk.

Post-call, memories flash, flood.

You flip through your times together, legendary stories, hazy moments, half-recollections. Fragments. You try to figure out what he could possibly want to say, so you can formulate a response.

Because if the moment was so significant, a betrayal, what does it say about you, that you don’t remember?

That you do not remember them as THAT, whatever it is they see as the fulcrum of your relationship.

You wonder what your culpability is in all of this.

Dredges of Classic Margarita, Rosa Mexicano, union square, nyc

The night before, you go a drink too far attempting to drown out the questions arising unbidden as a result of the call. You wonder how an addict is defined, wonder where weed falls these days on the addictive substances spectrum, now that it is legal in some states. Prescription pills, legal, too. Alcohol, also legal. You live in NYC, so cigarettes are virtually illegal, sugar nearly so as well. You debate personal responsibility with your bartender as he refills your wine, gratis. You go out often, you are accustomed to the appreciation of bar staff.

On the big day, A-Day, you wear black, as you have lived in Manhattan long enough to be considered a New Yorker. You convince yourself your quavering hands are a result of too much caffeine, a day of coffee shop meetings before the main event, at a hotel the choice of which you cannot help overanalyzing.

Your high-heels click-clack on the reflective marble as you cross the lobby, he is up out of his lounge seat, waving, as you approach. He smiles a familiar smile. You reach out to shake his hand, he clasps the whole of you in an embrace, trapping your arm between both bodies.

There is no turning back now. You are in this. You are to be Amended.

This responsibly consumed cocktail-fueled post was written at Bakehouse (meat packing district, nyc) and uploaded at Rosa Mexicana (union square, nyc)

Do you want a WordBowl story of your own? Use this form (or drop me a word: wordbowl@gmail.com)