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April 30, 2004
Dilly Dally
I am an orchid in jeans and boots.
That’s the best thing about procrastination. Sometimes I discover quotes like that, or find really great shoes and dare I say make long lasting friendships. You see, if you’re wondering why it takes me so long to post something new, it’s because I’m working on writing something else. Sometimes, I test that something else on the site too, but most times I just click X and save wishing that it was better somehow. That something else has proven time and time again, every day, to kick my ass. Kicks my ass so much, I have no choice but to procrastinate.
Suddenly my entire life has become one big ugly Word document that mercilessly snacks (yesterday it was toe-smelling Fritos and baby Teddy Grahams called Cubs) and voraciously IMs (got quite a ridiculous buddy list going). Staring at this blinking cursor literally makes me want to stalk Rhonda, the life coach on Starting Over just to kick her in the shins as a way to expend energy doing anything but this writing shit. And only because I’m so miserable trying to get it just right, I, with my limited range in optimism, have decided that this must be a good thing. That there must be something there. That this vicious cycle -- ordering dumb shit like pudding pops midday just to find myself with my head in the freezer for five whole minutes only to be brought back to the fucking blinking cursor – will end soon, and when I crawl through all the wack bullshit (which can also be labeled fear), I’ll be proud and happy that I did it. That I wrote the thing I set out to write. I’ve found that writing with brutal honesty is the easiest part. Braving how it feels for everyone “to know” will be the worst. But I won’t know what that’s like until I get the former done. And I won’t get the former done while procrastinating.
My procrastination comes in many forms. The latest avenue of fucking around was so intense, I couldn’t go it alone. I had to drag an innocent bystander in and force him to co-sign. Actually, there was no force involved. He willingly agreed which makes me think he too is insane. I was browsing around the Internet looking for the lyrics to that R. Kelly song Homie Lover Friend. Why, you ask. It’s all a part of the procrastination process. We may never know why. In doing that, I was brought to a link for www.writeaprisoner.com. Now, I had stumbled onto this site a year ago, browsed around, got scared and never went back. Til the other day. I was having a very emotional day, a day where I felt like I needed to change the world. Oprah was on in the background. She has that power over me.
Wait, let me back up a second. I also found the lyrics for that song Salt Shaker by The Yin Yang Twins. It was on in the car one night during a drunken trip through the hills of Sunset Blvd. (don’t worry, we had a designated driver at the wheel). We were on our way to the proverbial after-party and I swear I heard him say, “Make your p****y fart for The Yin Yang Twins…” Not wanting to be less than a lady, because that’s way easier to fuck up if you’ve had two and a half cranberry vodkas, I mentally jotted those words down in my head so that I can research later rather than ask aloud if I just heard that. Sure enough, that’s so what he said. Disgusting. And hilarious, but never ladylike. Ladies, don’t ever queef just because some rapper told you to. I mean, is he going to write you a check? Doubt it. He’ll probably just stupidly dump some Cristal on your boobs and if you’re like me, you’ll catch it all in a Tupperware and save it for later. Mother fucker, I don’t know about you but I don’t really have access to Cristal. Hello, I drive a Honda Civic.
Now, so I was in this good humanitarian space when I decided to browse through the prisoner pen pal website. I thought to myself, Wouldn’t it be amazing to change the quality of one’s life through the lost art form of letter-writing? I could single-handedly brighten someone’s entire cell with a one-page letter about life on the outside. I could talk about anything or nothing at all. He could write me back and we could start a friendship. Then the needle skipped all the way across the record, the piano closed up all stank and loud and I realized that I didn’t want to get myself into a potentially dangerous situation. I said get MYSELF into this situation. So, I called on Spriteboy who can also be labeled my Homie Lover Friend. I mean, he doesn’t get down with the ladies, but he’s still my homie. Sprite was sitting on IM, and I know his ass wasn’t doing anything productive. Maybe he was. But something inside me told me to send him the link and open that dialogue. I did, and we went off.
You see, we IM’ed back and forth about the karmic peace we could bring to someone through our words. We were straight up writing haikus about how great our deed would be. We were making plans to get post office boxes, stamps, the whole thing. Then we started cruising through the bios and that, my friends, is when shit just started to go awry. Okaaaaaaaaaaaaay. I was looking for a lonely man, but all of them wanted more than friendship, more like “sensual lovers with full lips”. I don’t really want a lover. I just want a pen pal that’s happy to get mail. One dude grew his hair crazy long and quoted the bible, almost cryptically, so I had to press back real quick especially after I saw his rap sheet. He was killing fools. I just want to correspond with a non-violent person serving excessive time for drug possession or something. I mean, Whitney Houston and Rush Limbaugh are in possession, probably right now, but we wouldn’t know for sure with Whitney because only her “mother is privy to that information.” They’re so not in jail. This one dude nearly bragged about selling 180,000 hits of ecstacy and then detailed how all the people in his crew were “rats” but that he held strong and didn’t “rat” and now he’s in prison hoping to find a good-looking lady of any race, but she can’t be big.
Now Sprite’s ass knew that to be a good person, he should just pick a dude randomly but he was steady looking at pictures. He sent me a link to a fine ass prisoner. A fine ass prisoner and I said to myself, We must stop the madness right now. What are we doing? Sprite noticed that the fine ass prisoner wasn’t getting out until 2033 anyway, so he didn’t need to get his hopes up. He said that fool “went in looking like Danny Roberts but will come out looking like Sean Connery…” In that moment, we simultaneously decided that we needed to write older lady prisoners. I thought it might be interesting to get an old lady killer, but instead I picked a lady who’s locked up for selling hella weed. I don’t think that’s fair at all. Selling weed? Locked up for four years? She’s getting out soon though. Bless her heart. Sprite picked a lady who’s good at “guitar pickin” and once was a rancher and a cheerleader but also a murderer. She’s a pretty lady, and she asked us nicely, very poetically actually, not to judge her until we know the full story. I don’t know if that’s his final choice though. But you can see how a project like this could go awry. I mean, it’s born out of kindness though.
My sister then IM’ed me from her office to say hello. She’s new to IM, but she’s high-tech. She can send a Band-aid, a song whatever you want. I told her what I was looking at and she said to stop it right now. She used to live near a prison actually. Way far off in the deep woods in Florida. I hated visiting her there. We had to drive past the prison and it was always so depressing. Why she chose to live out in the woods, I don’t know but thank God I got my sister back. She’s in a townhouse in the city now. Got a tattoo and everything. Even I, her baby sister, don’t have a tattoo. She’s a rolling stone these days. She loves her some booty rap too. Bizarre for a lady that goes to church Sunday AND Wednesday. Yup. Anyway, she didn’t like the idea that I’d open my world up to someone I didn’t know. What if he asks for money? What if he gets out and looks for you? You see, I don’t necessarily want to demonize all the people that are locked up. Sure they’ve made mistakes but that doesn’t mean they’re diabolical insanos. Well, I did just watch Red Dragon and that shit fucked me up. I had to pack an overnight bag and go right on over to my friend’s house. I hate when Coral’s gone. She won’t even watch a scary movie though. She’s all kinds of scary about that shit. Red Dragon though? How you gonna put glass in people’s eyes? So yeah, picking a pot-selling lady with pretty hair was the best route.
Sprite picked a killer. That fool is brave. Procrastination is about to cost him his life. Umhmmm. (Ooooooooooooh, it ain’t my fault. Did I do that?)
Posted by melissah at April 30, 2004 02:07 PM