My second cycle charting, I got a triphasic chart. All the message board ladies (no I was too scared to actually log on and join the conversations but I lurk) and even TCOYF – the real live software – was like, "Yo take a pregnancy test. It's highly likely you're pregnant."

I was out of control. So excited, I couldn't stand to be around myself. The days of my self-diagnosed "unexplained fertility" I found it rare to be happy and unfortunately, I am only comfortable when I'm most pessimistic. Sure enough, I tested for four days straight with the expensive digital pregnancy tests and they were all negative. I got my period soon after the negative fourth test and spent the morning bawling like an asshole in bed. Blubbering about some girl I'd just seen on Intervention that was addicted to heroin, still using, while she was pregnant as shit. I was mad at her! So irrationally mad at her. I felt bad a couple hours later, realizing how terribly jealous and disgusting my behavior had been considering she and the baby died from her addiction which is, honestly, a disease. And yes, you can beat it. But damn, sometimes you can't and I feel sad about that. So there was random, long-winded nonsensical crying and feeling sorry for myself.

My period finally ended. I visualized my egg eking its way out of my ovary, probably for like 10 minutes for every hour. Some book told me to visualize. I would wake up and go to bed thinking about what the hell could possibly be wrong with me. One night, after I already ovulated though, I dreamt about hostile cervical mucus. I didn't even know where that terminology came from and why that random celebrity (Pete Wentz) said it to me in my dreams. I must have read about it, but forgotten that I read about it. I was convinced that's what I had. I Googled and then bought the lube that remedies that issue so I'd have it for my next cycle. My husband, who is now more so on board with the seeking of answers as desperately as I am, was like, (laughing) "Yeah babe, you have evil cunt snot." I shot him a dirty look, and he was like, "No, but for real."

I went into charting my third cycle with half a black heart. I rolled my eyes when my alarm went off at 6 indicating it was time to take my temperature. I'd log on to my little TCOYF all late in the evening to record my numbers, not first thing in the morning. I'd forget which numbers I had. If my temperature was 96.69, I'd make a mental note that it was a nasty palindrome. But sometimes, they were off numbers and harder to remember like 97.31 and I'd say something like "Thirty-one today, alive and well. Miss Jones fired from Hot 97." But I'd still be all foggy by the time I had to put it in the computer.

I couldn't watch television. I purposefully avoided all TLC morning programming. A Baby Story. Bringing Home Baby (when you should have left that baby at the hospital if you plan on sleeping with him on the bed with all those damn pillows, ya assholes!) – all too much to take. Commercials, sitcoms. Everywhere, some lady was pregnant. I swear on my life that movie Knocked Up is always always on. Justin Beck is scared to even flip past it because at any moment, I could just unzip my face and elbow him in the ribs for no good reason.

I did really well at my job even though I was in no mood and so I was congratulated by really important people. Even though I shouldn't have, I drank wine with dinner.

Later in the week, my husband picked me up from work late and took me to the expensive sushi place on that side of town where most of the clientele acts all entitled and annoying. We go every now and again when the mood strikes. The food is that good. The people-watching is even better. Anyway, I had sake at dinner. And all kinds of raw shit.

I only had sex twice during my fertile period and not even on my ovulation day. He got brutalized for that shit. Enter Sybil. Wait, hold up. You don't want to have sex today? But today is the day though. "Justin Beck, I'm fucking ovulating today. Not tomorrow, not the next day. Not next week when you randomly 'feel up to it.' This is a team effort! I don't care that you been at work in the heat all day. Go fuck yourself then. Waste the babies. Go ahead! I hate your guts. Do you want to have Outback for dinner though, ya piece of shit!"

Actually, I only had sex four times in that 28-day cycle. Begrudgingly, at that. Umhmm, I was real stank.

The diary goes like this:

Entire cycle – all hope is lost.

June 26 I went in for an HSG test. They see if your ovaries are blocked. The test was painless even though I read on the Internet that it would be a nightmare. Doctor says I'm not blocked. I cried. You just want answers at this point. I almost would prefer something was wrong with me so I could try to fix it. I know that's irrational, but that's how you get to thinking.

Thursday July 10, 9 days past ovulation – I'm kinda mad at Justin Beck (still) for not wanting to get down on July 2, the day TCOYF told me I was going to ovulate. Plus, he had to go to California on business and decided to let me know mere days before. Not that it even matters, but let me try to go all about the country on two days' notice and let's see how well that goes over with him. Umhmm. I'm, again, irrationally upset about this. "It's not about the trip, freak. It's the double standard." He leaves in the morning for work at 6 a.m. and goes straight to the airport after work at 7 p.m. so I don't see him at all for the whole day. I feel really sad about it. Like, I shouldn't have been stank and please let the plane land successfully. I had all that shit going on. I caught up with some friends I hadn't seen in a while. Stayed out until 10 p.m. Look at her go!

Friday July 11, 10 days past ovulation – I take a pregnancy test just to see if I should guilty about having that drink three days before. Nope. One pink line. Cool life. I hate everyone.

Saturday July 12, 11 days past ovulation – Justin gets home at 6 in the morning. Takes a shower, gets in bed with me for exactly five minutes of cuddling and he heads right back out to work. He's printing one billion shirts for a major chain department store that sells anything from guns to ovulation predictor kits (at a good price, might I add). I take another pregnancy test. Knowing it will be negative, I turn on the shower and get ready for work. I live my life and come back to the test a full 10 hours later. Yeah, you're only supposed to look at it within the first 10 minutes but a negative is a negative so whatever. Sure enough, 10 hours later it is negative.

Sunday July 13, 12 days past ovulation – At 6 in the morning, I take my temperature. Still high. Small output of joy. Small. I take a test. I leave it alone while I pack for The Hamptons. I'm leaving for a personal day. Without Justin. He doesn't believe in personal days. He has to work Monday and that's that. This is monumental shit for me. I never take days off. I do not plan vacations. I don't even much show up late. I don't do half days. I have insane guilt issues when it comes to shirking work responsibilities so I just don't do it. I had perfect attendance all my life. Yes, even senior year of both high school and college. I was an asshole. Didn't know then that it doesn't matter. At all. I'm meeting Bossman at his house out there in the evening and we plan to eat, tan, watch Flipping Out and drive around looking at celebrity homes the following Monday. Then Tuesday, it's back to work for me.

So I'm packing for my little vacation. Justin is still sleeping now. He should be. It's only 7 in the morning. At 7:30, I look at the test as I am cleaning up the bathroom countertop.

Bitch?

Wait a goddamn minute.

Ladies is pimps too?

Yooooo!

That's a line. It's faint as hell, but it's a line.

On top of the clean counter, I dump out the trash to find yesterday's test to see if I missed a faint line. There was a pink dot. Tiny. The human eye that is not TTC couldn't see that shit. And an evaporation line. Like the white test line that would turn pink if you were pregnant was clear and the test itself was white. Like a white on white striped duvet cover. I'd never seen that before. I compared the two side by side. Pink dot with evaporation line on 11 DPO and faint pink line on 12 DPO. I can't believe it.

I shake Justin awake. Holding the 12DPO test in my free hand very gently.

"Babe, do you see a line! Do you see it?"

He replies, "No." And he rolls over all sleepy.

But you didn't even open your eyes, fool!

This is unacceptable.

I turn the lights on bright as they can go. And open a window. Super light shines through the room.

"Babe, sit up. For real. I'm not messing around. I know last month and the month before, and the month before, I said I was eating for two and I just knew I was pregnant and it was a false alarm, but for real. I see a line this time!"

He sits up and looks at it and says, "It's a small line. Relax."

He doesn't read the books. He doesn't know that there is no such thing, really, as a false positive. Only false negatives. He doesn't know because he doesn't read the books, I tell you! He says it's the astigmatism, but whatever.

He then goes on to say that the test is unreliable because I bought them online for 60 cents a piece from Canada. I had to buy my shit in bulk because last cycle, I was saving all my negative pregnancy tests and ovulation sticks. And then, in a burst of common sense, I realized that was bad chi up in here and I threw all that shit out. By accident, I had thrown out the digital ovulation predictor thing that cost me $40. So I had to scale back on my budget for expensive brand name pregnancy tests and I found these cheap ones online. The dollar store up the street was out of the cheap ones with the only Spanish instructions. And yes, I had bought them all in the previous two cycles.

He then says, "Let me take a test. It'll probably be positive."

Laughing, I said, "You're an asshole."

He gets up from bed and rifles through my underwear drawer where I keep all pregnancy related paraphernalia and he takes a test out. I follow behind him into the bathroom and I pull out a paper cup – the same famous NY coffee cups I used for coffee service at my wedding. I liked peeing in them. It made me feel closer to Justin somehow because every morning that I saw the cup, I thought of my wedding day. It's like using my rabbi's business card as my bookmark for TCOYF. Just little reminders.

He pees in the cup. We're married. I watch all this go down and he hands me his sample.

I perform the test and within moments it is negative.

"I'm not pregnant," he says, still sleepy leaning on the countertop with his eyes half open.

And I say, "But dude! I AM!"

He says, "Take another test and let's compare."

I don't think I have any more pee in me but I push at my stomach (scientifically) and make pee appear magically. A tiny bit.

I perform another test.

Faint line.

I put the tests in my purse. To keep them close to my heart for the whole day. I'm living on a mother fucking prayer for the whole day.

I drive out to The Hamptons that evening. I can't even concentrate. I get lost 5 times. It's one highway, one road and then turn left. Not that serious, but I get lost. I stop to get gas, right behind Matt Lauer who looks like he as the whooping cough. He looked rough as shit. I wanted to tell him to Google our names together so that my Britney blog would show up, but I refrained. He didn't have socks on. Again.

You're not supposed to tell people until 12 weeks.

But I rush into the driveway and pull the tests out of my purse. Bossman greets me and is like, "No!"

He hugs me. And he's like, "No! This isn't even real!"

I'm like, "Dude, I'm telling you!"

He starts saying my daughter's name to me. "Oh my God! ____! ____!" You can't tell your baby names, you know.

We agree not to talk about it for the whole night or the following Monday. We're suspicious and superstitious, supersonic and shit.

We ate grilled monk fish and grilled vegetables for dinner. We lounged around on art furniture and we "not" talked about it by looking at each other with raised eyebrows, hands on mouths and then changing the subject even though words were never spoken.

Monday morning I woke up and took my temp. High (the temp) as hell.

ANOTHER POSITIVE PREGNANCY TEST!

I run to Bossman's room and put the test on his bed. He shoots up out of bed and is like, "HOLY SHIT!"

And then, "Wait. Did you just pee on that? Get that off my sheets girl."

We laughed. But it's a dark ass line. Like, for real for real.

It's six in the morning. I call Justin. He tells me to relax, not to jump around and to just relax.

"Let's not get excited," he says. He explains he doesn't want me to be upset, God forbid something happens blah blah blah. Let's relax and wait until your period is missing for a whole month.

A WHOLE MONTH?

I'm like, BITCH (said it in my DMX voice). I can't believe this.

It's happening. I am so pregnant. It's my turn. Could you ever believe it? I am so thankful that my husband's health was okay, that I was okay! Mentally not so much, but we all knew that from Jump Street. And for some reason, I think this baby knew damn well that my mother-in-law would be very upset if I had gotten pregnant in the two years that I wasn't on the pill all not yet married to Justin. How could a baby show so much respect in its non-existence?

I wrote all of the above 12 weeks ago. I could not wait for the day that I got to yell it from the Internet mountain tops and share the news with you! I am three months and one day pregnant today. I am sick as a dog and yet happy as a clam.

I throw up daily (and nightly). Vomiting is a state of perpetual being, actually. I have the worst migraines you could ever imagine. I am constipated. I am seasick non-stop. I gag just pronouncing the word "vomit." I cannot get comfortable at all. I produce more saliva than Cujo. I am craving burnt pancakes. My face is fat as fuck, Real World fat. My rings don't fit. I started showing at 6 weeks. Yeah, yeah people say that's impossible but at a mere 6 weeks there was no denying there was a mother fucking snake on this mother fucking plane. Every little old sunbathing lady I encountered on my vacation in Aruba (yes, I took one) two weeks ago with my in-laws could not believe I wasn't even out of my first trimester and everybody thinks it's twins up in here. It ain't. It's one big ass baby in my little body. Trust me, I have already cried some about how big Justin Beck's head is. He was probably a big-headed ass baby and I get spasms in my lady parts just thinking about the pain that will exist in this dojo.

Even having said all that, this is the happiest I have ever been in my entire life. Just think, 36 years ago today, my mother, yes The Adorable Mercy was pregnant for the first time in her life. My baby is due March 25, 2009. My sister was born March 22, 1972.

I get my second sonogram Friday. The baby will look way more baby-ish although at only 8 weeks I clearly saw a head and arms and feet – she (I really think it's a girl) wasn't a blob. All the other pregnant ladies I know said their babies at 8 weeks were hard to make out and did not look like little babies. Yes, I'm dead seriously saying my baby is photogenic already! I'm talking crazy, all proud and mom-like. Don't worry – my hair is still long for now. I am so excited it's just plain stupid. If I could kiss my belly, I would.

And finally, Justin Beck is fixing to by my baby daddy. I've always wanted so badly to say that. Thank you so much for all your congrats and mazel tovs. Much appreciated.

P.S. Justin Beck would like you to know that all along he knew his boys could swim and that it was, in fact, me with my "dusty pipes." Hmph. (Small voice: I think it was the HSG that pushed things along too actually, but I will never admit that to him).

I'm pregnant.

(:

I am now on a prenatal vitamin that has that disgusting concentrated vitamin smell that reminds me of raccoon urine. The raccoons are back by the way. I drink green tea every day to help with the cervical fluid (ugh). And I take folic acid and Vitamin C (for my skin, really, I admit). And yes, I prop my legs up post-coitus (love hate that word) like a freak.

I am also not as depressed and pessimistic as I was two weeks ago. Two weeks ago? Meltdown city. Melting the fuck down, for real. Like, ugly face child of war crying at the mere thought of a negative pregnancy test. A friend announcing she’s pregnant? Fucking forget it – windows open and I’m about to jump out this bitch while ugly face crying. Shit was deep. Poor Justin Beck didn’t know what to do with me. He just sat there at the edge of the sofa, wrapped in a blanket. Umhmm, a blanket. Because I had this fit at 1 in the morning which required that I move to the sofa downstairs so as not to disturb my hard-working husband’s sleep. But my Feds-just-done-broke-up-the-fundamentalist-camp style crying woke his ass anyway and he came down the stairs, bundled up, without the first clue of what to say to me.

“Melissa.”

“Melissa.”

“Melissa, dude…”

“Melissa, babe. Let’s just go back to bed.”

“Melissa. You gotta relax. It’ll be …”

Of course, when I hear the word “relax” the tailspin truly gets momentum and I become Sybil. Sophia. All kinds of crazy. You told Harpo to beat me? He consoled me by promising to get the semen analysis as soon as possible. Good thinking, babe.

That night ended (or morning started) with a batch of brownies and a good long Google session. I was trying to figure out how to get some fertility acupuncture on Long Island. Um, y’all don’t have that out here or something? Anyway, he agreed to get the test. We got the happy results and I am feeling lots better.

Lots better.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m still crazy and obsessed, but I’m not out loud with it. Plus, I have a soft space to land when I’m sad. I can express my feelings freely without being judged to my family and close friends. Well, actually, I have tried to talk to Mercy about all this shit but I’m afraid it’s a bit too complicated. So she doesn’t get the day-to-day struggle details anymore. I get very frustrated talking to my mom. I feel guilty about it too. But shit, she’s confused and there’s no way to explain this so forget about it.

I called this woman at the top of the week to say Justin Beck’s sperm works. And then I gave her some back story on my test results, a refresher because I don’t think she’s a very good actual listener. I love her to pieces, I do. But I don’t think she absorbs the information the same way I would, or you would. So I’m giving her the information. Like, a whole five minute telephone paragraph’s worth of good juicy clinical pregnancy talk that ended with, “So we both checked out. I ovulate and his sperm works so the doctor said I can resume regular sex every other day the week I ovulate and hope for the best! I’m so relieved!” Smile, smile.

There was a pause.

Silence.

Finally, Mercy Howard goes, “So go get dee pertility! When you gonna make dose baby, Meleesa!”

The fuck?

She then launched into this doozy:

I am watching dis singer on dee Ellen DeG…DeGen…dat one Ellen lesbian show. Oh my god, Meleesa. Dis singer, I need dat CD. He is Pilipino and oh my god, good singer. He is dee singer por dat group Journey.

“Journey was on Ellen, mom?”

Oh yes. Journey. He is Pilipino. He is good singer, Meleesa. Can you pind that CD por me?

“Mom, I don’t think Journey was on Ellen. They’re like old school.”

“No ees not. Dey are on dee TB yesterday. I watching dat one. Can you pind it?”

I just agreed to find it. Hung up and vowed to keep it simple on the baby tip for her. I won’t be calling home with any more pregnancy details. We’ll just chit chat about the price of Tide at WalMart and whether or not her best friend Eula May will be visiting this summer so they can be mall walking partners. Totally.

UPDATE: My husband just Googled and said Journey does have a new Filipino singer. Mercy, I apologize. Years and years of figuring out what she is saying and I got jaded. She knew what she was talking about. And I will be finding the CD like a good daughter should. Sorry mom.

But I am okay. Really okay. No meltdowns. No internal hate speech.

As a matter of fact, last night I went to dinner with a girl that’s 11 weeks pregnant. My husband and her husband do business together, but we’ve been going to dinners every now and again. We get to talking and it’s to the point now where if she asked me to take her to the airport between the hours of 8 am to 2 pm and then 7 pm to 11 pm, I would without hesitation. She’s a friend like that. So she’s pregnant and her bump is lovely. I find myself drawn to her because I get the sense that she has a level of sensitivity about her. Like, saintly shit. She knows what not to say or ask me and she’s warm about it. If you are TTC, then you know about that whole sensitivity thing. It’s deep and it’s so important and yet so often overlooked. Words are powerful.

I think I spent a good hour asking every question under the sun and then we looked at her sonogram pictures. The baby is adorable already! I left the dinner, not with a sense of doom and gloom about my own predicament, but instead with over-the-moon happiness for her and hope for myself and Justin.

Then tonight, your girl Melissa – that’s me! – is going to a barbeque hosted by another pregnant couple. Look at her go! I’m just walking right through the fires here! I’m keeping my shit together! I’m really proud of myself.

It seems like an easy enough task. Socialize on Long Island with like minds, homeowners expecting babies. But, emotionally it’s not that easy for me! I find it difficult to maintain a respectful sense of my happy self, to not become self-involved and totally insular with my depression. Plus, um gross, to be envious is so dangerous. So when it comes to this baby shit, I have to sit down with myself and say, Who do I want to be and what do I want to project? And when I’m fucked up inside, it’s ugly and I don’t want that. Justin Beck really doesn’t want that. So I have to work hard at this. Accepting invitations to places and events that require a glimpse into the world of easily conceived babies is a huge, brutal step but I’m a G and I can do it. Walking right through the flames, I tell you.

Fingers crossed for all my new cyber friends on the conception tip. No, I will not send baby dust, dancing glittery icons and hugging emoticons across your screen. I have not gotten that deep just yet but I will keep my fingers crossed for you.

And yes, I’ll say it because I mean it. For all the ladies out there with their first BFPs (positive pregnancy tests) or first babies, CONGRATULATIONS AND DO THE WOP! I’m so happy for you. (small voice) If you have any leftover OPK sticks, holler at your girl.

Again thank you, you, you and you for all your well wishes. It really does help and I appreciate you. Watch this video. I’m corny, but I’m saying…

I never wanted to chart. I either purchased or was given all the necessary tools – calendar, thermometer, books about lady parts -- to start charting five months ago and I just didn’t want to. I could not face the fact that normal happy couple relations inside of a normal happy relationship did not reward me with a baby and I’m pissed off about that.

Well…

The emotion surrounding the non-baby has range. It goes from standard pessimism (the regular Melissa Beck brand) to annoyed to angry to holy shit oh my g-d am I crying alone listening to Wendy Williams on the drive home? Wow! I can’t believe I care this much to start crying with absolutely no trigger. Heeeeey! How you doing? (And to think, all these “donkeys” just get pregnant, just like that.)

Then there’s resigned. Some days resigned feels more like who gives a fuck? I’ll just stay skinny and vain and pour excess attention on the flatness of my torso to distract me from the fact that I hate my own ill functioning guts on the interior of said flat torso. It ain’t even that flat so I don’t know why I’m fronting.

It’s like: best friend soul mate husband, check. Mold-free, raccoon-free home filled with mid-century modern snobby furniture that I actually use freely without guilt, check. Money in the bank just in case the baby gets hungry or needs dental work (mad likely), check. A full set of culturally diverse grandparents on both sides! Who has grandparents? Everyone does, I know. But as a child, I didn’t really experience that. I had a grandmother in the Philippines and I was so little I can hardly remember knowing her. And sadly, I do not know much about her in general - not her death, not her life. Cool language barrier. It's really frustrating. Then, I had one American grandfather and he lived far away and he visited once when I was 9. He cooked me some eggs. He was adorable and tiny and well-dressed. He brought his girlfriend, yes he did. I enjoyed the irony of his name. A black man named Ivory. I would sit across the kitchen table from him and stare at him and find all the pieces of me, quietly amazed. He passed away a few years ago. I was really sad even though I didn’t know him like how people know their grandfathers in peanut butter commercials. So again, I ask. Um, what’s the problem, baby? Who do you think you are to deny my gifts?

Then I realize I am a freak. That I can’t displace the blame on a non-existent baby that it’s my responsibility to create. That I am becoming a crazy person, talking to myself. Having entire wide-awake dream sequences and fantasies about a person that does not exist. I am out of my mind. I always wonder if I’m getting lead poisoning from my thermometer, you know.

I even tried to convince myself that I had a learning disability to avoid charting. One look at all the boxes and symbols and I was like “Math? Oh hell no.” And I promised myself, with a timeframe, I’d only keep “trying” the regular way of you know, lay down with the man and stay optimistic. Like, “okay we’ll go three more weeks of the regular way and then I’ll try that thermometer.” Three weeks pass, cool period. Fine, three more weeks once my period ends, hardcore regular way and then maybe I’ll take the thermometer out of the package.

It was like I managed to make myself believe that if it required “work” or extraordinary note-taking that I was somehow damaged, stupid or incompetent. I don’t even really have self-esteem issues that deep, but I was just so mad at myself at the top of this unfortunately labor-intensive “journey” that I deemed it punishment to take my temperature every morning at 6 am and then to snoop all around and indicate which kind of cervical mucus I’m experiencing – yo, doing way too much. I will not, I will not! test the positioning of my cervix until they tell me that I am unlike every other human woman and I have a horn growing out of my back which is somehow obscuring my fallopian tubes and that it’s absolutely necessary. I’m all for body science – pilonidal cysts, ingrown toenails – love all that shit (on other people). But digging around myself for science? No thanks.

Ugh charting. It’s essentially staying after school, writing “I can’t get pregnant” on the chalkboard 365 times for every day of the year that I can’t get pregnant and then having to clean the chalkboard. Oh no, that murky water and that smell. That’s what charting is like to me. Can't you see I've learned the lesson though? YES it's difficult getting pregnant. Nothing in life is fair. You can't always have what you want. If you want something bad enough, you have to work hard. YES YES YES I got the memo in kindergarten. Shit.

I know! I know! Get positive. Get positive. Totally. I will. But I’m having a moment today. I started crying to Mariah Carey’s “Bye Bye” okay! I am fucking out of control right now!

Speaking of Mariah Carey, to the Glassjaw fans on dot net, I know the reason behind the coding of Last Lisp being filed as Mariah. It has nothing to do with me although the Beck household loves Mariah. He is a liar if he says he does not like her. I did not "own" you, I promise. I would not do that to you and I think you all deserve more than that. I, like you, am tired of the fuckery and want the album out already as well. I nag daily on your behalf so we are friends in that respect. K?

Okay now, where was I? The TCOYF icons are pretty adorable. And fine, I have learned some useful things.

Oh shit.

Did you know that it’s not a monthly appendicitis? That’s it’s ovulatory pain!

All this time, I thought my fucking guts would burst through my bellybutton once a month. I’d have this weird urgent pee that smelled like I ate asparagus coupled with this nagging tingling pain. I’d assume I had a UTI and I would keep going to the doctor and he would keep saying, “it’s nothing again, Mrs. Beck. I don’t know what to tell you.” I’d recount the symptoms again and again. Tingling, discomfort, only on this side, for maybe two days, sometimes less, bloating, minor cramps like my period is coming but it’s so not. Are you sure it’s nothing! And he’d look at me like I was a fucking asshole, like I enjoyed wasting his time. Sure, maybe he’s still annoyed that I made him Google Morgellon’s that one time I thought I had it. But I had real tingly pain. Fine, I didn’t have the fibers. But I had fucking tingling pain in my abdomen, fool. READ UP ON WOMENS HEALTH already, freak.

So this is today. Tomorrow might be better. But I doubt it. The entire baby train came to a screeching halt last week when Justin Beck left for tour, a day before I ovulated. DAMN YOU! He can manage to fly to Ireland and play the guitar and eat Lebanese food, but somehow can’t make it the 10 paces to the lab to get those swimmers checked. He just got home. I have yet to say this passive aggressively about the sperm analysis because I am in sweet mode because I really missed him and he looks really cute and stuff. But next week, stank mode and I will be demanding about that shit so I hope he’s prepared.

The good news is for my first foray into charting, I am not half the dumbass I thought I was. I understand it! I have 7 high temps post ovulation! Eleven more to go and boom, I’m off to scour the Internet for my push present. Did you know about push presents? I didn’t. You get presents (aside from the baby) from your husband when you give birth! I was reading about it on the message boards (another world of insanity and glitter and bizarre abbreviations). Louis Vuitton and everything! I haven’t gotten a LV since the summer of 2005. Dude, we could be on to something. I need the duffel, that’s for sure. I mean, I have to get home from the hospital after the birth…

There are so many things I have been wanting to write about but more and more, as I am embracing my true adulthood (holy shit I'm 31) I keep thinking about my footprint, what I leave behind, how the Internet is so not a place for me to just be putting all my private thoughts on blast. And then I say to myself, but I have so much to say about things that I truly believe other people care about! I have so much to say about Blackville*. I have so much to say about Glassjaw. I have so much to say about vaginas, quite frankly.

I've been debating whether or not I should open up about my personal process of trying to get pregnant. You see, it is not only my story. It is my husband's story as well and he probably doesn't want the world to know about his business this way. And by business I mean all things related to a man's part in getting his wife pregnant including talk of sperm, ejaculation, dicks and sex (!) plus all other things that a lady shouldn't say out loud, on the Internet no less. Then there's that whole other issue. In the event that there could be something truly wrong with me (or him) that would suck and to share it would be a bit too personally tragic to have on the real live Internet. I have hope that we are okay and that we are just stressed out or something. I can always blame the highly anticipated (if only by me) Glassjaw record and its ability to both monopolize our time and brain capacity and yet still take forever. An interesting phenomenon that even I -- in the midst of it, ears to the speakers -- have yet to decipher.

So I have decided to start sharing. No, not about the fact that I started watching Real World again (fucking fuck and there are no better, more eloquent words for it to be real with you). And no, not about Glassjaw shit. Although if I were allowed to share my opinion on the matter, I totally would because I agree with the patiently waiting fans when we all ask, in unison, WTF? [insert emoticon smashing computer with a hammer].

But instead I'll speak on my babies that I'd like to meet one day.

I will also say that at any time I have afforded myself the right to get ghost. And if I get ghost, you can interpret it as my baby's on the way or my baby's on the way from Cambodia (or Amityville, because I believe in supporting the local community).

Last week, my husband and I drove around Syosset aimlessly with a Tupperware of his dying sperm in the back seat.

These lab people need to get their shit together, seriously. I can explain.

In my mind, I have been trying to get pregnant for two years. That's when I got off The Pill. And that was a big sacrifice in terms of my vanity. I quit The Pill and my skin became a fucking nightmare. Breakouts, hyperpigmentation, self-consciousness -- all because I decided my body needed a break from The so deserves to be divinely capitalized Pill. I don't care what the studies have found and what the experts are saying, I believe that because I was on it for fifty-eleven years that my body forgot how to get pregnant and so I needed to retrain it by quitting. Which sucks. Because not only has my skin gotten brutal, but the periods! The return of the regular bleeding, my fucking g-d. It's like 8th grade all over again. I'm a grown ass woman. Am I really using tampons and maxi pads, avoiding white and sleeping on an "old" towel in King Tut formation three feet from my husband right now? Is this really happening? Do I want a baby this badly? Wow.

The cramps! New paragraph. The cramps. Fuck it all to hell. Shit! Oh my back. My neck and my back. It's like that!

Sure Justin and I have only been married for a mere fortnight but when we started dating, that eventful night that I vomited all over him (including his ear lobe) in front of Boy George, I knew that this was it for me. He was the proverbial ONE, all caps with a halo atop. So whether I had his babies (who will become the ultimate band) in or out of wedlock is a moot point. A point that matters only to my in-laws. Shorty and Mercy ain't even really tripping, they never do. Out of respect, I think my ovaries overrode my mind's decision and decided to shut the party down until Rabbi Tyrone pronounced a mother fucker "wife", but still. I was trying. And I was not secretive with the trying. I told him point blank.

"Justin Beck, I am trying to go halves on a baby so get there."

So the two years passed and still no baby. I discussed this with my sister-in-law and she gave me the number of her OB/GYN. She said go in, ask a lot of questions and she will check everything out.

I called over there and made an appointment. This OB/GYN is like the Russian waxing lady at H salon in LA. A waiting list for months! I put my name on the list anyway and kept my fingers crossed (and legs open) in the meantime.

I made a tiny confession on my last blog entry that I was trying to conceive. TTC is the formal abbreviation in pregnant people speak. Letters poured in about books I could read, tea I could drink, acupuncture I could fear and so on and so forth. To those of you out there that wrote me, bless your kind hearts. I have really taken all of your advice into consideration and I am reading Toni Weschler's Taking Charge of Your Fertility like a fiend. I love the color inserts, so gross and yet so engaging. So I thank you!

When I finally got to see the OB/GYN, I was armed with all kinds of information and like a first chair violinist, I was proud. Throwing out medical jargon that, unfortunately, the average woman doesn't even know about herself! She asked me a bunch of questions. How long have you been trying? How often do you exercise? Do you smoke? I usually exaggerate or omit because I am insecure. It's the standard frontin' like I get my fitness on and simultaneously don't get my recreational in. However, I answered these questions with clarity and truth because there's a greater goal to be achieved here.

She signed off on some paperwork and told me to go to this lab on the third day of my period and back again on the 21st day of that same cycle. I also got a prescription for my husband to have a semen analysis. Which leads me back to driving around Syosset at 85 mph looking for somebody to please test the sperm.

I did everything correctly. Made the appointments for the blood work. Picked up the special Tupperware for the sperm collection so that my husband wouldn't have to handle his business in a scary little cubicle with science class diagrams of vaginas on the walls. With the proper collection cup, he could instead do it at home as long as we made it back to the lab within a reasonably short time to test it. Well, the first lab said they don't do that. That some other place does that. Only on these days at this special time. The next lab that we raced to also said they so don't do that even though the first lab said they did. Hmph. So the sperm was left in the back seat to perish. And when we had to pick up his business partner Lee to run errands later that same day, Justin put it in his pocket so Lee didn't have to sit beside it. Lee, by the way, doesn't have sperm in his pocket. He has instead opted to place it in his wife's womb and thus, a new baby will be in my life soon enough so congratulations to the happy couple. The delicious baby will be here any day now!

So throughout the day, anytime Justin had to get his phone out of his pocket he'd have to remove the sperm which was funny at first and then upon further analysis, I realized was really gross and I asked him politely to do something with his jizz please.

He dumped it down the kitchen sink. Because we are not sociopaths, we chose not to put it in the mailbox of a misogynistic, demanding freak old ass client of mine who thinks when I say "How are you?" that I am being offensive. He scowls at me and looks dead in my face for an unnerving 45 whole seconds like I just said "How are you feeling about going back in the oven?" instead. We also decided not to put it under the car handle of the lady that sued my in-laws years ago for the Great Fireworks Debacle of '88 that left little Jakey supposedly deaf in one ear (liar) which put into motion my husband's present day disdain for all people that went to Kennedy High between 1990 and 1995, including Amy Fisher. But the thoughts alone were delightful.

My blood work on the first day checked out. I am waiting for the second set of results. I am ovulating normally, I think. Is that what she said? Yes. I am a real woman (golf claps). Now we wait. For Justin to jack off in a cubicle at the right time at the proper place (hopefully in Blackville) to get his shit checked. Please, before you embark on the world tour, if you're reading this lovely husband of mine. Hello!

And when that checks out, then I guess we move on to the next step which is to pump me full of dye to see if my fallopian tubes are blocked. YAY!

So. My skin is turning against me.

What do you know about hormonal acne? Do you know that it’s so fucking hot?

Dude, I woke up right after my 31st birthday with two knots on my jaw line. I was like, Yo! And I kept touching them, thinking oh my goodness this can’t be happening.

Oh, bitch, but it is.

It’s all going down right now.

In January, I went to my lady that does my facials and waxings. My skin was broken out worse than it had ever been, but there were no nodules, no hard lumps, no overnight morphing into Rocky Dennis. As she was doing my extractions, she said, “Melissa, this is the worst it has ever been. What are you using?”

This was on some ominous type shit. I was feeling like the breakout was a sign of ugly shit to come. And when she asked about my skin, it was in an accusatory kind of like stank tone. Because, you know, I am only really using the products she tells me to use. The tone is the kind only my lovely Egyptian aesthetician can get away with. You know what I’m talking about. She can be brutally honest and say really hardcore stuff about my skin and in the same breath call me “my baby” and I understand that she means well. And at the same time, I feel like I am in trouble if my skin acts up even though I did nothing wrong. We go way back. She is territorial with my face, but mostly my eyebrows.

Matter of fact, I went to the other lady that does my henna tattoos on my hands and she convinced me to do some threading because I was overgrown in the eyebrow department. I was only overgrown because I had gotten my waxing schedule all messed up. I like to do everything in one big beauty day. Top to bottom. But I had a couple engagements requiring either armpit exposure or moustache removal, and the shit got all messed up. And now all the hairs are growing in at different times so I decided to just get granola and grow all my shit everywhere out and do one big satisfying visit.

Now, in the henna place, my lady who was once crowned Miss Bangladesh, was really selling me on the eyebrow threading. I’ve done threading before. I am just a waxer now and I can only have it done by Miss Egypt, you see. She knows the ins and outs of my left eyebrow that has a hole and grows in a different direction than the right and yet she can make them look like twins.

So Miss Bangladesh is really selling the threading.

I have a really hard time saying no, especially when the pitch involves a roundabout way of actually calling me ugly. I mean, that’s how I took it and that shit hurt my feelings. Miss Bangladesh had an equally difficult time reading my body language and hearing “um, nah” to mean a stern hell to the no. So she convinced me. And now I have a sharpness, an edge, a meanness to my face. I’m sure she didn’t mean to make me look mean. To a random passerby, I’d look like a regular lady who gets her eyebrows done but I know how my face looks best and this ain’t it. Eyebrows are everything. I only know that because for 28 years I had the shittiest eyebrows ever (self-inflicted) and had nerve enough to go on TV with them. Wow.

Now, Miss Egypt will be very upset and I will totally get in trouble so I have to grow my shit out for the next 30 days, i.e. avoid my appointment with Miss Egypt for a whole month and then act like I did not cheat on her. That’s what it boils down to. I feel guilty like I cheated on her and I would never cheat. It’s that Miss Bangladesh had the spool of thread all in my face, like. And I just, I just couldn’t say no. It wasn’t even enticing. It was that she knew if she called me ugly I’d be vulnerable and agree to do it! SHIT!

So back to my facial.

Miss Egypt was like, “Are you sure you are only using the serum?” And then she was like (!) “My hands hurting, this is so bad…” Cue the Wendy Williams blaring shock sound.

So a couple weeks later. Ominously enough…

The nodules. The hard bumps. I am tripping now.

Go on my MySpace right now and look at the default picture. That is not Photoshopped. That was my real face a year ago. Shit ain’t like that now. Trust. From the nose up, my face looks like the MySpace picture. But from the nose down, yo! For real, my face is sabotaging me.

So I made myself an appointment with my dermatologist. This is not considered cheating. This was a medical emergency.

This is the dermatologist that put me on Obagi. The Obagi is a miracle and I believe in it. But I believed in it more so when I was a childless housewife with nothing do and I could melt my face off, 47 weeks straight, in the privacy of my home to my heart’s content. Now I have to contend with this thing called “adulthood” which requires that I have a “job” where I have to answer to a “bossman” and interact with people that I hope don’t recognize me as a 22-year-old reality TV persona. Luckily for me, I have successfully morphed into a real nobody and I only get recognized like ten times a week, usually in social settings where I can choose my own adventure. Like, “You know what it is! My husband bought the air compressor from your husband.” But my favorite is, “I do catalog modeling for vitamins and herbal supplements. I’m in Target’s thing like every Sunday. Yup. Weird, right? So…”

Lately though, I just hope they don’t recognize me eva because I’m mad self-conscious about the nodules, which, in all their sexy glory, grow overnight and shit. DAMN IT ALL TO HELL!

The dermatologist is like, “You have hormonal acne.”

I’m like, Hurrah m’fucker hurrah!

So essentially I did all that Obagi work for nothing? All that! See, Obagi is lifetime shit. You do it until you get the results you’re happiest with and then you go on a maintenance program. I got my results, thought I was too cute to stay studious and now I’m all jacked up again.

So all that for nothing! All that! So my face can turn around and laugh in its face? Wait, can my face really laugh at itself? Whatever. Shit’s going down and my skin is BRUTAL right now.

No concealer can do the trick because there is a texture there. A hard lumpy nodule. Sometimes two side by side. Enjoying picnics and shit. They roll out, day by day, kicking it. Multiplying. They love each other. They make love to each other. They multiply. Singing J Holiday songs to each other. Bed, bed, bed.

I hate them.

(Sigh).

Oh I know.

This is all vanity speaking. There’s a war going on. Puppies getting thrown off cliffs and shit. Wifed up governors buying whores. I have hormonal acne. It's not that serious (it is, though). I know I need a hobby. I know there are more important things in the world. However, that doesn’t mean I am not stressed out about this shit.

So I logged onto acne.org where my people kick it, looking for some solace. Just depressed me more. I can’t get involved. Justin Beck says I have “cyberchondria.” That I have created this “hormonal acne schtick” so I have something to be upset about. I’m like, “Fool do you not see this lady that has replaced your wife? Do you see these bumps? Do you see me? Are you tripping?”

He was teasing me the other day about the elliptical. He said, “How’s that elliptical treating you?” in a sarcastic tone because I made him buy me a new one because he and I have an ongoing disagreement about [story retracted for fear of judgment]. Anyway, I said, all snippy, “It’s obviously not treating you very nicely either fat head…”

He said, “Oh I’m a fat head. Fine. Hey pizza face!”

And he said this as I was sitting Indian style on the floor with my steamer, a magnifying mirror and my baking soda paste – a Sunday morning ritual involving lots of picking that I should not be doing but I can’t help myself.

I was so sad. I didn’t tell him I was really sad. I held it inside. We were doing our married couple fifth grade banter. I can usually take it. And we usually say way more disparaging terrible things that no one should hear us say and yet we find them hysterical. But pizza face was next level. I don’t think he understands how self-conscious I am about this new skin issue but whatever. This obsession will pass when I get a kidney stone, or some other real problem. I am sure I have real problems just beneath the surface. Morgellons, I just know it.

So, I had some extractions at the dermatologist’s office. Had some shit drained. Yes, when they get big and scary, they drain them. Yes, I used the term drain. Umhmm. Totally.

Then I said, “Can’t we pour some chemicals on there to speed up the healing or something?”

I actually pleaded with the lady to give me an Obagi Blue Peel but my skin is not prepped as I have not been Obagi for a minute. Besides, you have to be put under to get the Blue Peel. Google that shit. It’s crazy and I want it with no anesthesia. If it’s not hurting, in my mind, it’s not working. Burn, melt, drain – give it to me. But she did agree to give me an MD Peel at 35% which was cool, but I have some hyperpigmentation issues as a result. If it ain’t one thing, it’s amotherfuckingnother.

I’m not allowed to be back on Obagi anyway because I’m trying to get pregnant. Oh, the irony of it all. The hormones work to bring the acne and yet, the baby is nowhere in sight. Cool baby. Where are you little baby? I have a name, a modern molded plywood bassinet with Eiffel style legs, a whole life, a home, even a father that is ready, willing and able to like you, love you, take care of you, give you drum lessons and inappropriately silk-screened onesies – all waiting just for you and yet, you’re not that into me. I understand. Is it because I’m totally self-involved? So self-involved that I just spent an hour writing in my online journal about my stupid skin problems that don’t even matter? I thought so. Sorry, it’s therapeutic.

In time, newborn, in time.

So, tomorrow I am off to another dermatologist appointment. A second chemical peel. I’m supposed to get one every three weeks until I’m all healed. It’s supposed to help with the scarring but I think it causes some. Brown skin is different. It really is. Anyway…

I hope I either pull a groin muscle or get a positive read on my dollar store pregnancy test so I can focus on those things instead. Yes, the dollar store has them cheap. But you have to pee in a cup and then take a baby plastic dropper thing and place the sample on the thing. It always says no, Mrs. Beck, not today. And then I have a glass of wine. What if the dollar store ones are faulty and I’m boozing my baby up? Shit, I never thought of that until just now. Whoops.

Hmph.

My husband said that Mariah Carey released her new single Touch My Body just for me, today, on my birthday and I totally believe it. She even makes a reference to Wendy Williams in the song. Another one of my favorites. Did you know Wendy Williams mentioned MerchDirect on her show a couple weeks ago when she was talking about Old Dirty Bastard doing merch. Yes, we do his merch. Wait til you see the Jesus I'm Rolling With You car shade. O. M. G. Too cute. Anyway, she mispronounced it Merchant Direct (why?) but still, she was talking to us. I was tripping. My point is Mariah put that song out for me on my birthday. And she loves Hello Kitty? This shit is kismet, I'm telling you.

I'm spending the (birth)day enjoying all my friends, you included, and my family. I got Hello Kitty candy bracelets, a bobble head doll of Harvey the Empire carpet man, yes 800.588.2300. I got a chemical peel. Hurts so good. I got a little dinner party this Friday with some homies. I got a new car. Whaaaaaat? Yes, got a new car. I'm cute back in the BMW. Just how I like it. No bells and whistles to distract me. Just seat warmers, automatic windows, good cup holders and tint. Black on black. I was in a Volvo before. Which was fantastic. Justin Beck chose that for me on my 29th birthday saying he wanted his future wife and his future children to be in the safest car on the market (could you just die?). But now I'm back in the BMW which is what I was rolling around in in LA. It's a little throwback to my stomping around in heels going out with The Gays every Tuesday falling asleep in all my makeup days. Oh my. Remember that shit? Memories.

So...

I am, like, so okay with being 31. It's really not that bad. Thirty was just depressing because it was all for whom the bell tolls and shit. I was like, I'm so over. But now that I got past that, I'm okay. I exfoliated my entire body this morning and then lotioned all up and stared myself down for about five minutes. I found some dimples, a few bizarre dark spots and a random wrinkle or two but then I did the B Scott Paw Paw dance and was like, "Fuck this shit, I'm happy with what I am at 31." I put some clothes on and went on about my business.

I am hitting some milestones in this decade. I got married and the shit was mentioned in the New York Daily News. Did you see it? Just a little blurb in the wedding announcements. I shouldn't say it, but my story blew the other ones out of the water. Well, except for Perniece's. Her announcement was really cute. She was quoted as saying she felt like Beyonce and her husband was Jay-Z. I wished I said that in mine, but I didn't.

And what else?

Um, I'm trying to get it cracking and rolling on the baby tip. I did not think it would be this difficult. All my life, all the women around me would be like, "I'm pregnant..." just like that. But every month it's a no go. Is it because I'm 30-ish? Ugh. But still. I have hope. I want that baby yesterday. Every day there's an announcement that another celebrity is pregnant (again) and I want to snatch somebody up but still. My turn will come soon, I think.

I'm just really happy.

I know I've been neglecting this here blog. I apologize. I'm shorry. You have to be remindin' me. I have truly just been busy being happy and shit. Like a damn fool. Running around all joyful and shit.

I have lots to tell. I do. I just never get around to the sharing aspect of it all.

I tried to come up with something really fantastic about my wedding but every time I sat down to write it, nothing came out. And it's not that there isn't anything to share. It's just that it's so great and so not readily able to be put into words. Shit was a great day. On so many levels. I'm just stupid I'm so happy.

So when I come down from the highest of high and I'm back to my regular sarcastic, stank self I'm sure my writing will flourish.

Thanks for all your birthday messages on my MySpace. You are all too kind. Thank you a million billion. Love you lots.

Hi.

So should we talk about the wedding first? Or my honeymoon that I took before my wedding. I know, right?

I haven’t written in a while so I will be all over the place. There is no editing. This is raw. Eddie Murphy red leather pants suit raw. I’m just saying shit. Wait, was he wearing purple?

Doesn’t matter. I’m feeling old and lazy big time so let me just confess that. I have avoided this blog by occupying myself with all things ridiculous. Last week, I thought I had Morgellons and distracted myself with that. When I got over that, I had the nerve to attempt to track my ovulation calendar but when that got too difficult, I just broke open one of the many bottles of chardonnay I have in my fully stocked bar (post wedding). I don’t know why I’ve been avoiding this for so long. Fear of failure, I’m sure. Reading this entry about my wedding back to myself, I find it far less interesting than it was at the time. That is not to say I am not happily married. Loving this shit, for real. But rehashing it seems so boring. But maybe you’ll like it.

So…

We went on our honeymoon before the wedding. We’d decided we were having the wedding at home after a long elimination process. But how did we get to the honeymoon before the wedding? I’ll explain.

Justin has all these personal standards and rules for his vacationing.

1. He can’t be on a plane for more than 6 hours.
2. There must be Internet.
3. New York must be only a simple phone call away.
4. The music native to the location cannot include that blaring blow horn sound and should be of some interest to him.
5. Film crews working on anything spring break related or anything of a Girls Gone Wild or Real World Road Rules Challenge nature cannot be interested in said location.
6. As for the exchange rate, verbatim he said, “Five dollars of ours has to be like 500 of theirs, dude.”

My requirements were much simpler.

1. Are there handcrafted earrings for cheap?
2. Is there shrimp cocktail?
3. Will I come home crispy and black meaning gorgeously tan?
4. Does their Diet Coke taste like our Diet Coke? No, for real. In Botswana it tasted like Tab and I wasn’t with that. Not that Botswana isn’t a hot vacation spot. I’m just saying.
5. Do they serve cocktails on the beach?

I could already tell looking at the lists (yes, we really had these requirements) that there would be some compromise. Six hours on a plane? We can’t even get to Marfa, TX in six hours. Dude. Come on. Marfa was on my list, you know. So cute.

Somehow, one day, he said Dubai. And I was like, That’s so many hours on a plane, fool. And he was like if it’s sick, he’d be willing to travel. We wanted to check into that sailboat hotel for a week. That ended up eating up most of our wedding budget. Oh, there was a budget. A budget I deemed laughable until I got straight creative. The creativity combined with my “Long Island wedding outrage” – I’ll get to that -- really allowed us to coast through this process. I’m getting ahead of myself.

So we’re trying to decide on a honeymoon spot.

I’m still totally not creative. I’m like Fiji. Hawaii. Shit, I’ll even go back to Jamaica and I say it like that because as Mos Def would say, “I. Had. A. Bad. Experience.” Not really, but I’ve somehow convinced myself that anytime I was being filmed couldn’t have been that great when in reality, it was pretty cool if I go deep into the recesses of my mind and really think about it. But thinking about it makes me think about a bunch of things I might have done differently and then it’s all depressing like and blah blah blah. Actually, I would not have met J had I not made the decisions I made. And I would not have had my teeth fixed. So all things considered, I'm happy about the decisions I made. I mean, I could have been a stripper. Or a chain smoker. Or a chain smoking stripper that's really excited about laying down a whole mess of burgandy plush carpet.

Wow.

One day J came to me and said, “Babe, I have a really great idea. Hear me out.”

I immediately thought to myself, “Absolutely not. If you’re coming at me talking about you want to go the Hamptons, I’m gonna fuck you up.” I just assumed he didn’t want to go anywhere far and this was a brewing argument, you know.

He was like, “Israel.”

I was like, “Israel?”

He was like, “Israel, dude.”

Half joking, half serious I was like, “Like suicide bombs and AK47s and war-torn religious guilt and shit? I’m really trying to get my drink on, though. Can I really wear a bikini top while we’re looking at the Dead Sea scrolls and shit?”

He had all this fucking research too. Fool is brilliant.

He just started rambling. It’s the sunniest and best weather in September. The flight is so safe it’s retarded. I’ll shave my beard so there won’t be any problems. We can go during Yom Kippur, even safer! I know some people there. It would be so fucking sick. Who does that? Who goes to Israel for a honeymoon? Really. Dude. Get fucking psyched. We’re going to Israel! You’ll be tan in your dress. I fucking rule, I’ve thought of everything.

I’m like, “Tan in my dress?”

He’s like, “Babe, you know. You see other people’s wedding photos and it’s like everyone’s all pasty and shit. They look really refreshed in the honeymoon photos. I mean, think about it. You’re like so hot with a tan…”

“I always have a tan. Have you met your father-in-law?” I snapped.

And he was like, “Babe, I’m just saying let’s go on our honeymoon before the wedding. That way we’re not all stressed out on the day of. It’ll be sick. We’ll be tan! We’ll do all the work before we go. Come home. Set shit up and get married! Don’t even trip.”

I got to thinking about the honeymooning before the wedding. I really like it because a) it makes sense, actually and b) I just don’t want to follow formal wedding rules, just because I’m me and he’s him. We just don’t follow. It’s not what we do and it’s not who we are. We’re naysayers just for the sake of naysaying sometimes. We’re annoying in that way.

For example:

I discovered while planning my wedding I really hate the process. I hate everything about it. I hate mostly the duping and bamboozling that’s going on in the finance department of the wedding business. I hate all of it. I hate all the rules that apply to having a wedding.

Why do we have to take the photos shortest to tallest? We’re all the shortest, so now what? Why can’t my dress be a mini-dress? Why do the wedding cakes that look super pretty always taste like crap? Why must my dance with my father be all on blast for all to see? Why is a Soul Train Line deemed tacky? Why do I have to slow dance with Justin in front of everyone? Justin ain’t trying to slow dance! Why do I have to play that wedding song as I walk down the aisle? I can’t think of a worse song actually. Except maybe the Sex and the City end credits song, there is not a worse song in the world in my opinion. Why does the invitation need all those extra little thin papers and 40 envelopes? Why can’t I say “Shorty and Mercy” on my invitation? That’s their names! Why am I instantly annoyed upon walking into a “hall” or “chateau”? Why does excessive drapery and moiré disgust me so…

See – annoying but all so true. I really feel this way.

And then I said, Wait a second! I can do whatever the hell I want to do. I don’t want to be put through seven hours of rituals where the fun only begins once everyone is good and liquored up so why should I do that to my guests? I want the party to start immediately. The bars are open! Fuck this babe! We’re doing this our way and you’re right, it’s way smarter to go on the honeymoon before. I’m trying to be tan and stress-free!

Now we’re all fired up all Bread and Roses like. We’re like fuck this, fuck that. And yeah, I’m walking down the aisle to The Girl from Ipanema, how about that?

I’m liking this tan idea. I really am. I’m adding shit in, shouting, getting all riled up, practically jumping on the bed, “And I can wear my earrings! And Rabbi Tyrone will be all impressed with my knowledge of the homeland. You can wear a yarmulke from the catacombs of Jerusalem, all authentic and shit! Oh man, this is the bomb babe. I straight up love you!”

Anyway –

We ended up agreeing to going on the honeymoon before the wedding because we think we’re so smart and we think we’re revolutionizing the 10,000-year-old American wedding process and industry. We ain’t but we’re self-involved enough to think we are.

Is there nothing sacred anymore with the Internets? I’ll divulge a few tidbits about Israel, just a few. Justin Beck ain’t really trying to have y’all read about romantical hand-holding walks on the beach. We only did that once anyway. Besides, I need my hands free to scratch my eczema which, I discovered, is not merely a cold seasonal thing. Ugh.

Now, these are the things I am choosing to share about my honeymoon. This is not to say I did not learn a bunch of cool shit and experience a bunch of spiritual stuff and blah blah blah. That shit I keep to myself. Like you want to know the real me anyway (wink).

We stayed in Haifa and Tel Aviv.

We went to Jerusalem on the last day of our trip. We had to put wishes in the Wailing Wall. I woke up, all ready with the itinerary. I spent 30 minutes putting together a “respectable” outfit that could handle the heat. I covered my knees, my chest, my arms, my head. I looked like an asshole but I had to respect the environment. We boarded a bus to Jerusalem. When I came home and told people I got on a bus to Jerusalem, for some reason there was outrage, straight tripping! Don’t ever ride a bus blah blah blah. Is this racism at play? Probably, totally. Israel is really mellow, nice-like. Everybody and everything! And, I’ll have you know this bus was carpeted and air-conditioned. It was fly.

The bus unloaded us at a mall. A mall in Jerusalem. This was not what I had expected. I went into the pharmacy and bought tampons though. With Hebrew instructions! Just to say I could and I did. I hate myself for thinking at length about such stupid things, but you know I also wanted to be prepared. Imagine being on that El Al flight only to discover it’s that time and there’s no solution! Interrupting the prayer circle that’s going down right at the back of the plane, right in front of the lavatories. Oh no. Not happening. I got hives just thinking about having to do that. Who may I borrow a tampon from on this flight anyway? Why am I wondering about what a Hasidic woman does for that – you know what? I need to stop. Anyway, everyone was Hasidic on the flight, you know. Wow. It was really interesting.

No editing is really terrible but I don’t have time right now. So…

At the pharmacy this crazy beautiful (like a face I’d never ever seen before) African woman with tattoos on her face came up to me as I’m holding the tampons waiting in line to buy them. In another language, she starts talking to me all animated like. Expressions are universal and hers were saying, “Wait, don’t I know you from somewhere?” And I’m thinking, How is it possible to get Real World’d by this African woman with tattoos on her face? How!

I’m tripping right now. And I instantly hated myself for thinking I was getting Real World’d but you know, it’s been 8 years. I am trained to think that is what is happening.

She just kept going on and on, like she knew me. Cornered me and Justin into the tanning lotion endcap. Finally, Justin was like, “Sorry Miss, sorry Miss…” repeatedly like that was going to help. She kept staring at me as she walked away. We were helluv confused. Other African women with tattooed faces, the same ethnicity, did this to me throughout the day. It was bizarre slash interesting. I definitely must live to do my family tree. I’m onto something. Daddy, I done found our people!

At the Wailing Wall, girls were dressed like straight up tramps. It was baffling. Stomachs out, high high wedge heels, titties everywhere, above-the-butt tribal tattoos exposed. I thought we were in the wrong place, but it is the biggest tourist attraction in the world so I guess that’s to be expected. E’rybody dresses like a streetwalker these days. From Ohio to Pakistan, you don’t have to look too far to find a scantily clad ho. Do not email me about the mutual exclusivity of wearing very little clothing and being a ho. You know what I fucking mean. (See, this is why editing is a good thing but alas no time!)

But damn, how you gonna go to the Wailing Wall with no clothes on? Ugh, did I even use mutual exclusivity correctly? Shut up. I’m drunk I think. I’m not but I should be as it is my day off. What?

In Tel Aviv, we met up with our new friends Arthur and Lior. Arthur had messaged Justin on the Glassjaw MySpace weeks before our trip asking if they’d ever tour in Israel. Justin wrote him back and was like, “No, but I’ll be in Israel soon with my wife.” Somehow some way, they exchanged information and all of a sudden I had my own personal tour guide in Tel Aviv. Arthur showed up to our hotel with Lior. Lior had on a t-shirt with the Burger King logo on it but it said Murder King. Justin asked him if he was a vegetarian, as small talk, and Lior said no and said he got the shirt at some store they have there that’s probably like our Hot Topic. Lost in translation, I guess. I don’t think I even saw one Burger King in the place.

As we were walking, I asked, “How old are you guys?”

I was just curious. They looked at each other and started speaking Hebrew on top of each other all funny like, and then in unison, in English said, “Eighteen.”

Okay?

They were lovely young dudes. We walked all around Tel Aviv, asking lots of questions. Justin went to the record store with them and regaled them with all his music snobbery. When we went back to the hotel, Justin went upstairs to give Arthur a Glassjaw shirt. Arthur was tripping. And I felt bad about Lior not having one so I told Justin to give him one he’d already worn which Justin thought was rude, but it’s like, dude Justin you have 25 of the same shirt at home, you won’t miss it.

There were girls my size carrying guns. At 18, you have to go into the military. All the kid soldiers were home for Yom Kippur so there were guns and uniforms everywhere. Arthur told us that if you say you’re gay you don’t have to go into the Army. I said, “Yeah, we have a version of that in America too, kinda. In a weird way. Nevermind…” I wasn’t really trying to get into a political debate with someone under 18 about war and homophobia. I was more interested in where we could find the houkas, really. Wait, does that make me sound like I have no interest in culture or politics? See! Not editing is so bad. But whatever, that’s that truth. Where are the houkas? And are you smoking dried fruit or nicotine or marijuana or what? Why is that kid over there only ten years old and smoking a houka? How is that happening?

We bought hilarious matching shirts like couples do on honeymoons. It has two Uzis forming an X and it says “Guns and Moses.” Justin was like, “Babe, this shirt is sick.” I said, “Let’s get it!” Hours later, walking back to our hotel, I was like “Guns and Moses…” randomly and Justin goes, “OOOOOH! Guns and Moses!” I was like, “Yeah, like Guns and Roses, what are you retarded?”

We saw this kid wearing a Bleeding Star shirt. Justin went up to him and said, “Hey, where’d you get that shirt?” And the kid went off about this amazing store called Revolver and how they have all the good American stuff. I was all flattered, and in that way that your mom would embarrass you, I go, “Well, his company printed that shirt in New York.” And the kid lost his mind. This pleased me so I started roll calling. I asked him what kind of music he liked. He’s like, “I like Evergreen Terrace.” And I’m like, “We print that shirt too.” And he lost his mind again. Sick of it All? Yup. Naming band after band and finally the kid says he’ll tell us how to get to the store. On our way to the store, we saw a guy in a War Zone shirt. If you’re into NY hardcore, this shit matters. We were freaking out and we got a picture with him, like assholes.

Israel rules. Rules so much I was not at all worried about the fact that I was set to get married upon my arrival home.

I really did not worry for a single minute. It was really liberating. We set the date for September 29 and we flew back to New York September 26. We had the whole wedding in place before we left so when we got home it was a matter of moving furniture, shuttling Florida folks in and out of the airport, confirming deliveries and killing raccoons. Oh yes. No, we didn't kill them. But did I think about lighting their little leader on fire on a stake in the backyard to show all the other raccoons that this is not a household to be fucked with mere days before my wedding? Yes.

So that was my honeymoon. Yeah.

Oh snap.

There is one honeymoon mystery we have yet to solve though. On the night of Yom Kipper, we’re all hugged up in our hotel room, fake fasting. I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and one Twizzler. I couldn’t take it! I tried. I tried.

Around 11 o’clock, there’s a knock on the door. The entire Tel Aviv was shut down so I was like OH NO, they know we’re up in here eating sandwiches dude, don’t answer!

Justin gets up from the bed and is trying to sound all mean, “Who is it?”

The man says, Room service.

Justin goes, “Babe, did you order something? Are you out of your mind right now? What did you order on fucking Yom Kippur dude?”

I was like, “I didn’t, I swear. I know the rules ya cheap bastard! Don’t open the mini bar and don’t order room service, duh.”

(For some reason, only I and not Justin, find the above hysterical. He wasn't laughing but I managed to crack my damn self after I said it.)

Justin opens the door and starts telling the man we didn’t order anything and he’s so sorry blah blah blah.

The man is like, “No, this is a gift. They send this to you.”

J’s like, “There’s a misunderstanding. We didn’t order…”

He says, “No, it is a cake and champagne for you.”

I hear champagne and now I’m out of the bed. Say what?

He rolls this cart in. It’s an adorable chocolate cake that says Mazel Tov on it and a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket. No card. No message.

For some reason, I’m still feeling guilty so I tell the man, “We’re not going to eat it tonight though…” And I shut the door.

Who sent the cake and champagne? When we got home, no one claimed it! It’s still an unsolved mystery. But whoever you are, thank you. That was really really sweet. A whole bottle of champagne to my damn self? Let me tell you. Eragon with Hebrew subtitles was the most hysterical movie I have ever seen.

And now onto the wedding (and by that I mean this whole sentence will be clickable in like a couple hours or something).

Wow. I just told the world. It's crazy how literal that phrase can truly be. I just told the world. There it is. I'm getting married. Today, this minute. I never even knew I could schedule a post to go up at an exact time. Technology is insane. But yeah, say goodbye to Melissa Howard.

Allow me to re-introduce myself (my name is HOV).

It's Melissa. Mrs. Beck if you're nasty...

Hi.

When the marriage dust settles, I have stories. Straight up tall tales and shit. Until then, go to my MySpace.

xo

(They gon' mix it with Biggie. It was all a dream, like daaaaamn that's hot. And yes, I just threw my hands up in the air, to the side and did a little shoulder jig. I am stupid tripping so excited!)

But before I get to that Part 2 with Shorty and Mercy –

I just got home from London last week, two weeks ago, something like that. Justin played a show there on 07.07.07. This happened to also fall on the same time as Tour de France (whatever that is) and Harrod’s big gigantic sale that only happens once a year. I would have shopped but a) everything costs twice as much and b) there were so many people it was like shopping the day after Thanksgiving times ten, times ten.

My trip was fantastic despite the following:

1. You go through customs twice with 8 cases of musical equipment. Wires, boxes, cymbals, all kinds of things that look real fishy with a bearded half Puerto Rican half Indian bassist. Try it. Racial profiling is awesome. Do not email me about racial profiling. Get a fucking sense of humor, already.

2. Sit on the tarmac for an hour and a half in a seat that doesn’t recline trying to leave JFK. Bet you’ll love it.

3. Be forced to walk through the most amazing high end cosmetics and accessories shopping in Heathrow airport while you’re racing to your gate after again, checking 8 cases of equipment and see how spent you feel. Yeah, that’s just how they set it up. The long long long security queue spits you out in a shopping wonderland. Duty free. And there’s nothing you can do about it because your husband-to-be is already in a mood because of the customs situation and he ain’t stopping for no Lancome. No. Don’t even think about it. I didn’t dare put my lips together to even say Cl…Not Clarins, not Clinique.

4. I had been told the weather was disgusting and wet and gray. So I packed accordingly. I brought my Dunks and Timberland rain boots. And all clothes that aren’t the cutest because I just knew I’d find something to wear when I went shopping. I had planned to shop for two hours on the day of the show .Then I’d take a leisurely walk back to my hotel to rest before I had to make my way to Brixton. None of this was going to be possible, I would soon find out.

5. I got to Topshop and Harrod’s. Anxiety attack. Too many people. Can’t even look at the stuff. But I forged ahead. At Harrod’s there were five, count ‘em, five racks of shoes, lined up on both sides so really ten racks, in my size. Never happens to me. Usually, the size 5 sale rack doesn’t even exist. I fought through the crowds, nudging my way into the mirror trying on every shoe ever. There was a yellow pair of every day summer sandals and then a stunning gold pair of Lanvin strappy sandals with a white herringbone conical heel. When the man brought back the right foot of the yellow shoe, it did not fit. Apparently the left shoe that had been on the floor was all stretched. The right shoe, however, was not and my heel was somehow hanging off the back. Keep in mind, I’d spent about an hour looking for shoes at this point only to discover I wasn’t going to be able to adopt them after all. Then, the Lanvin ones fit immaculately. They were insane. They were also 600 of my American dollars. Um. Fucking fuck fuck fuck that. I thought this was a sale?

6. I really thought I’d shop for a couple hours and then rest. Instead, I left the hotel in the morning around 11. I didn’t get back to the hotel until 7:15 ish. Why? In my ugly rain clothes on the most perfect day of weather imaginable, a Mercedes smashed into the bus I was riding thus forcing me to unload that bus to find another bus which so wasn’t happening with all the Tour de France and shopping foot traffic. My girlfriend Lauren, who goes to school in London, said we should cut through the park. The park was brutal. People everywhere. I still have not purchased anything and it’s hot. My London touring outfit however is not.

7. I finally make it back to the hotel. The doors were at 7 for the show but I don’t need to be that punctual, right? I could get there around 8. Eat up catering. Make sure J’s got everything he needs. Shoot the shit with the other girlfriends. Shake hands with business-y people. Accept all my little congratulations on the engagement and then watch the kids fill up the venue. Right? This is going to be a perfectly timed night after all. I showered. Put on the cutest possible outfit I could come up with given the dumb shit I packed and we headed for the tube. That’s their subway. It was only four stops to the Brixton Academy where J was playing. Over the loud speaker, there was an announcement that some man fell underneath the tracks and died so there would be delays. It’s 8:40 pm at this point. J goes on at 9. I can’t believe this is happening to me. I mean, I feel bad about the dead man but I am not in the proper space to grieve this stranger’s untimely death. A tear welled up in my eye. Not for me. Not even for the dead man. But for J. I was like, How could I be this inconsiderate and this late to the biggest headlining show of his whole career? Granted, it’s not really my fault. It’s Tour de France’s fault and why is Tour de France in London and not France! Anyway, we sat in the tube for a couple minutes, makeup melting, before we got the bright idea to just catch a fifty-eleven million dollar cab.

8. We came up from the tube only to discover there would be no catching a cab. The traffic was standing still. All of it. For miles and miles. Inside, I was devastated but I didn’t want to let Lauren see it because she had just taken me all around today. Without her, I’d have been lost. That’s true. And there is no one at fault here so why make her feel bad for shit she or I can’t control? We went back down to the tube.

9. Bitch, the tube I’d just gotten off of – yeah, that one – that one took off right after I got off of it. So we just waited for the next one. Lauren has to pee really bad now and her feet hurt like a mother fucker. I feel terrible for her. And sad for J. How could I do this to him?

10. Everybody getting on the tube was going to Glassjaw (it seemed). They were anxious and so now I’m anxious. I’m tripping. The tube finally came and we got off at Brixton. We just followed the Glassjaw kids because we didn’t know where we were really going. I was speed walking like an asshole. Lauren has to pee “like it’s my job” she said. We got in right as they started to play the first song. And when I went to the security desk to check in, the lady said, “This is Melissa! Oh good, sweetheart. He didn’t think you were going to make it.” It is moments like this, when you realize your arrival is anticipated and it has been discussed with people who have been directed to put you where you need to be that you feel most loved. Maybe that’s just me.

And finally, this doesn’t even merit being in the list it’s so crazy. Here is the disclaimer:

I know that I will seem insecure, petty, mean and just plain stank. I know. But this is my brutally honest re-telling of the emotions. Don’t judge me. You’d feel the same way. Maybe you wouldn’t. But yeah, you would. You’d just not put it on the Internet. I’m just saying. Whatever, judge me if you want. This is how the shit went down.

The day before the show, they did a warm-up show in a little dive bar on a tiny little road in a tiny part of London where, apparently Pete Doherty does heroin and um, yeah J’s ex girlfriend showed up.

Rewind it back. Your eyes do not fool you.

J’s ex showed up.

Yes girl. Old girl was all the way up in mother fucking London to see him. (I like to leave out the part that she actually lives there, you know, to create better, more dramatic storytelling, but yeah she lives there. Hmph).

What does a girl like me do with this kind of information?

I’m 30, you know. You can’t really just get a running start and windmill drop kick a bitch in the throat just for showing up. It’s a free world. She can go where she wants. I’m supposed to not care. I’m supposed to be mature. I’m the one with this diamond ring on. Pinky rang worth about fiddy bling bling. I mean, at the core, I am still a country sweet tea drinking hood rat from Valrico when it all comes down to it. Sure, I've got my Long Island suburban costume on but I am still a southern girl that viewed stripping to pay for college a viable option. Until that scholarship came. Imagine! What a different person I'd be. So what do I do with this information?

I’m the one that knows his nephew. Raised him from a cub, met him fresh out of the clink. I’m the one who spends 27 minutes in casual conversation with Mama B like three times a day. I’m the one he’s been with for four times the amount of time he spent with her secure in the knowledge that he spent the last 6 months of their relationship breaking up. Ooh, that was mean. I take that back. But I do not backspace and delete.

She doesn’t even speak English. Okay, fine she speaks English. I should be ashamed of myself for saying that. But Mercy has a better grasp on the language to be perfectly honest. I’m just saying. Okay, she speaks English. What do you want from me!

They have nothing in common. She’s adorable in a squeezable way but she is nobody’s wife. She is inconsequential. She is but a pebble in the sand. She is nothing. She is nobody.

She is here.

I’m a grown ass woman so what do I do with this information? You see the quandary I am in. I spoke to the singer’s girlfriend. She told me that the ex spent at least five minutes talking and asking about “us.” Me and J. And she kept repeating, “Oh I hope he does not get mad that I showed up” and “I know his girlfriend is coming and I hope he is not upset I showed up.”

First of all, game recognize game. A sneaky m’fucker will straight recognize another’s antics. I am no fool. I was once a game-playing female from the age of 17 all the way up to like 25. I know what’s up. You only say “I hope he doesn’t get mad” in the hopes that he does, thus gaining the attention you so desperately seek. You only say “I hope she doesn’t get mad” in the high high high hopes that I do get mad and spend an entire night berating him for shit that’s not his fault. I understand the strategy here. I am no fool. What does a girl like myself do with this kind of information?

Am I genetically predisposed to wash away tumult with alcohol? Who could say?

With this information, I excuse myself and have a cocktail. What else, really, is there to do? I can't say hello. I can't go looking for her. I can't acknowledge, out loud, that this actually annoys me. That's like, breaking all the rules. Never let the interloper know you are fazed by her. Never. Except for when you write about the interloper on the Internet, but still, never.

Seems easy enough but no. I am forced to neck-roll and take my frustration out on the little bad body odor bartender. I ordered a cranberry vodka. I watched her put ice in the cup and proceed to fill the cup entirely with cranberry juice. She comes back and tells me what I owe. I say, “I wanted a cranberry vodka” with the emphasis on vodka. She said, “It’s in there.” I said, “No, it’s not actually.”

I have just left my body. Some crazy bitch, in a bizarre coincidence also named Melissa, has appeared and she ain’t having this shit. She ain’t having none of this shit for she is a gutter bitch.

Bad Body Odor said, “You can have a go at it” and lifted the cup to offer me to drink it. I sipped. It still ain’t in there. She told me I could order a double and pay extra. This drink is already costing me $8. Understand, too, that J doesn’t drink so he doesn’t think to put alcohol on his rider. HELLO! Is this a rock show or not? A girl can’t get a free drink in the back? What is this?

I’m like, “How about you put the single in there and we call it even?” And she stands there and looks at me real fucked up. You must understand that I haven’t been a bitch like this, in any customer service related snafu, in years! I mean, Sprint from years and years ago might have been the last official time. Since those many moons ago, I have coolly dealt with blatant racism, shady encounters with all kinds of people, disappointments left and right and have never just resorted to being a raw animal stone cold angry banshee.

Now, in this space I’m American. And I’m an American bitch acting all entitled. But really, I ordered vodka ya whore so get it cracking. I’m exactly the person that I imagine she despises. I actually say, “I get it. I’m the American bitch that is getting all cunty about the drink situation. That’s cool.” Can’t believe I used the C word. For real. I was disappointed in myself but the chain of events that lead me to this space – does anybody understand the duress, the stress, the uncontrollable urge I have to up and pinch a stranger, any stranger just because?

I put my little coins on the counter. J’s business partner notices the scuffle and comes up and pays for my drink. I know he was probably thinking I was fixing to get kicked out because I was mid neck-roll with one eye closed, mouth open, index finger to the sky. Fierce, stank, grimy body language going on. In my mind, I visualized smacking this lady right in the mouth. I really did.

I understand it’s real tacky to be the nasty band girlfriend. I know. I am usually quite nice. Ask anybody. J is completely unapproachable and in full-on work mode in situations like this and I make him take photos with fans. I’ll run up a flight of stairs with helluv records and drumsticks and other GJ memorabilia and straight interrupt the band mid-interview to make them sign shit for their fans that are just waiting out back, trying to say what’s up. I was that girl once. I just wanted to say hi and it meant a lot for a band to honor that one moment for me.

Granted, they are all really nice boys. Except J. He doesn’t mean to not be nice. He is just busy. He’s the tour manager, accountant, taxi, roadie, lights coordinator, merch man and guitarist. He’s got shit to do. I get that. But still, from the outside perspective, as a fan, you don’t see that. You just feel the rejection and then J gets a bad rap and it sucks so I make him take pictures. You understand. You see, I’m normally very nice.

But tonight, my cheeks are on fire. I’m fixing to cut somebody and it happened to be this little no deodorant ass bartender so whoever you are, I apologize. You did not put vodka in my drink. You did not put deodorant on your underarms. But you did not deserve that kind of venom from me. I’m sorry.

So there is my confession. I feel like I have worked very hard on my evolution. I want to be a genuinely nice person. Like, “Oh shit – Melissa is really nice.” I do. And I messed up in London. I was real mean to a stranger. I was real crazy. For a few moments. But I have put it out to the universe. I am sorry for how I responded to the world around me. But otherwise, London is great. And I'll have you know that I was not even moved for a moment when he came home to an inbox of email messages from her, including one where she says congratulations to him on his engagement in the same paragraph as "write back." Girl, you so crazy. Nope, didn't even flinch.

Now, about Shorty and Mercy…

Anyway, y’all are like enough of all your excuses. Where’s Shorty and Mercy Part 2?

Quit tripping. I was actually busy trying to execute three different wedding plans that all failed weeks into working them out so I've been totally depressed. I'm okay now. But for real, I was busy. I swear it. But here it is:

We left off where?

Oh yes.

The next day was the day of the cocktail party where J and I would introduce our closest friends to Mama B (his mom) and his dad and to Shorty and Mercy.

I decided not to go the engagement party route. It’s trite. It’s been done. I feel like engagement parties automatically put a formality on things that is entirely not necessary. Not to mention, Shorty already had his outfit planned and it was so not formal. This fool wanted to wear a Lil Jon shirt with his “dungarees” and his customized MO55BLU Nikes. He tucked the Lil Jon shirt in too. Twas a tall tee, as well! So the graphic at the bottom was all half tucked in. Ridiculous. The man is just ridiculous.

So people showed up to the cocktail party. I had to use an Evite. I know right. Who have I become?

So the Evite was entitled “Hallelujah Holla Back” so that those invited could understand the vibe. Basically, get crunk with Shorty and Mercy and Mama B and Mr. Beck.

The morning of, Shorty and I did a beer run. J insisted on getting the last minute things at this Asian supermarket he loves. I’m half Asian so I can say this. I was trying to go to Waldbaum’s. The “regular” supermarket. I was not trying to be up in the Asian supermarket. First of all, Mercy is a damn fool up in there. I don’t have time for this leisurely shopping. And I hope she knows she ain’t making no Sinigang. There will be no bagoong on any of my breakfast bananas. I have successfully avoided those smells for the 10 years I’ve been on my own and I intend to keep it this way.

Second of all, it’s way out there. All out of the way. But J insisted because he loves Mercy that much. He was like, “Babe, think out of the box. This is not for me. It’s for Mercy!” But the thing is, J loves an Asian market. He will bring home all kinds of shit I have never even seen before. And it will coagulate in my fridge for months before I think he’s forgotten about it enough to throw it out. Yes girl, I just throw his shit out with no permission. He hasn’t caught on yet. Why one man needs 28 different hot sauces and 18 cans of jackfruit – I don’t know.

But my biggest hesitation in going to the Asian supermarket is that it conjures up really crazy childhood memories.

We used to have to go every week when we lived on base. When you got a soda, it would have this insane fish smell on the can. So the fish smell combined with the Coke smell combined with the metal of the can would make me want to die. Sometimes we’d have to share the can of soda. My brother would whine and say, “But it has her breath on it! Ew!” And my dad would say, “You better be happy you have the breath to be sitting up here complaining!” And then we’d all get in trouble and either not get the soda at all or get pinched. One day, I threw a straight up fit. We got all loaded up into the Oldsmobile. I was in the middle seat, on the hump because we had to sit in birth order to prevent fighting over the window seat. It was a battle I’d never win based on biology which is so fucked up but whatever. My mom had gotten the first sip out of my soda and for real, her breath was on it.

I think I actually said, “I hate you!” and kicked the console of the seat between the driver and passenger seat. Keep in mind, I’m like 8. My daddy looked in the rearview mirror at me with this face that meant straight up business. I might have seen stars before I even got the beating. My mother snatched the soda out of my hand so fast not a drop fell from it. My brother started complaining because we were sharing it. Mercy snapped back and said, “I bang your head together!” and SHE DID. That shit hurt. And so that’s why I hate the Asian supermarket.

Shorty and I banded together and complained the whole time in the store. He was like, “See, that’s why I don’t like to take her nowhere with me. She up in here trying to make friends with e’rybody.” She was only talking to the produce man. Every couple of aisles, he’d go, “That’s why I don’t come up in here. Gotdamn! What the hell is that smell? Meleesa, you smell that?” or “Mercy, there go your cousin…”

J and Mercy ignored us, shaking their heads in shame that they had to be seen with us in this, this glorious conglomeration of all things ethnic. Mercy bought all kinds of oversized odd-smelling grapefruits. She bought a wok. A tool to flip the lumpia. J bought more hot sauce. These weird sesame candies and shrimp chips which he and my mother went off on in the car.

The preparation for the party is boring so I’ll spare you. It’s just my father cleaning things and saying “I don’t know when the last time you dusted these blinds girl, damn…” and Mercy went around putting everything that was on a real table surface on top of some kind of doily or placemat or wash cloth. The woman can’t just leave anything on the plain surface. Everything must be on top of something else. “Meleesa, protecting dis one! Iss not good if you don’t protecting it!”

Let’s just get to the party.

You know that little Chinese sculpture that I turned into an incense burner, the one I bought and told you about here. Well, to refresh, I got this lady sculpture. Her legs are wide open and there’s a hole where her vagina is. She even has the nerve to have hairs painted around the hole. She’s on her back. I got her at a discount because the man that was on top of her, humping, broke. But his penis broke off inside her. And so when you shake her, you can hear the little ceramic ding dong rattling around inside her.

The Gays were standing around the sculpture and talking about it, saying it was adorable to which I said, “yeah right, like you really like it” and we all started laughing. It’s a wonderful conversation piece so I started telling the story of how I found her. I get to the part where I bring the sculpture up to the story listeners’ ears and shake her. My father came around the corner, didn’t stop and enter the conversation, just shimmied by on his way to the food and said,

“And that’s what I call breaking a bitch off…”

The Gays were beside themselves. Red in the face. There was lots of “I love Shorty!” to follow.

Now, as far as the alcohol…

I already have in my mind what Shorty is allowed to have. He is allowed to have two beers per hour. Any more than this and we will have entered another realm of Shorty. He has layers, you know. Sometimes it’s performance. Fool will belt out some old school R & B hits and during the instrumentals, where there is no singing, he lectures us about how the face of music has changed so much and that "these young cats” don’t know shit about shit. “Lean back my mother fucking ass.” Sometimes it’s straight monster trucks with the furniture. RIP Bauhaus inspired tubular brass table with glass tops. Sometimes it’s a whispering to the children about how much he really loves us. “Can you hear me? I’m telling you, you are my favorite child. I love you!” Didn’t matter that all of us were right there when he’d tell one or the other. We were all told this same thing, but in front of each other. We’d just have to wait for our turn to hear it. Then sometimes, my personal favorite, there are war stories that never happened. You can understand how upset I was, at 23, to have discovered all those stories were alcohol fabrications. So, you didn’t jump out of a helicopter and land in a marsh in Vietnam? So, you’ve never seen a grenade?

How I plan on controlling his consumption is by making him do work.

“Daddy, can you fill that ice bucket?”

“Daddy, did you check to see if there are napkins in the bathroom?”

“Daddy, can you make sure mom isn’t confusing anyone?”

After awhile, Shorty wasn’t having it. “Girl, you need to relax. Ain’t nobody tripping off none of this bullshit. We all having a good time. You up in here bossing Jason around while he trying to kick it with his friends. It ain’t right. You setting yourself up with all that bossy shit. Don’t nobody like that!”

This actually hurt my feelings but it was totally true. I needed to relax but I couldn’t. The party doesn’t run smoothly by itself. Somebody’s gotta clear the trash. Somebody’s gotta keep the dumb ass pigs in a blanket hot. Somebody’s gotta make those cocktails for the arriving guests. And that somebody was me.

Shorty’s beer pick for the evening was MICHELOB ULTRA. Yes, I had that on ice all night. Not Stella. Not any of those prettier sounding beers. Michelob Ultra. And he kept that cooler stocked all night.

At one point, Shorty was at a table with a co-worker of mine and my boss. I heard him say, “A woman that wear mismatch lingerie is a ho.”

I said, “Daddy! What! What are you guys talking about?”

My boss was red in the face from laughing so hard. My co-worker was like, “It’s all good.”

So Shorty continued to expand upon this theory.

“You see. I done took the time up at Victoria’s to get you the matching set. I know your lazy ass ain’t coming down here all mismatched in a mother fucker.”

Mercy chimed in, “Yeah, I always hab dose matching one, you know?” Does she not realize that he’s talking about her? And if he’s not talking about her, who then, is he talking about going to Victoria’s for? Who is coming down “here” all mismatched?

Mama B was helping me clear the kitchen when Shorty decided to pop in and take a look around. A friend of mine asked him where he got his Lil Jon shirt. And he pretended not to hear him and said, “Whaaaaaaaat?” like Lil Jon does. Mama B had never seen or heard anything like this, so she said, “What?” like a regular person. And Shorty, mere inches from her face said, “Okaaaaaaaaaaaay!” and she looked stunned. I just did the smile face shrug and hoped this would all end soon but secretly I enjoyed the interaction.

The party started getting into that space where you care less about the pile of abused cocktail napkins and discarded bottle caps. I started to relax a little.

But it was oddly quiet. Where is Shorty?

I went down to the back of the house. We’d set up a little lounge area under some trees. He was sitting there talking to J and some of J’s childhood friends. One’s name is actually Jay and he’s in a heavy ass band called Unearthly Trance. The other’s name is Danny and Danny is a real actual crazy person. One time, while cleaning out J’s dresser, I found a photo of Danny’s genitalia wearing sunglasses and a small square moustache. I won’t go into further detail because it just gets more disturbing, but you understand. Wait, why is this in your dresser? And how does one discover how to do this with one’s balls?

Danny, Jay and Shorty were talking about music. Shorty said, “Y’all like Howling Wolf?” And Jay and Danny were like, “Fuck yeah!”

Shorty proceeded to get up. He just left. Um, okay?

He returned with his Apple laptop.

He brought it downstairs and started playing Howling Wolf, in the backyard, off of his computer. They were all feeling that shit. Nudging J and being like, “Dude, that’s your father-in-law!” and J would be like, “Shorty’s fucking sick.”

So then Shorty said they should all start a band. A grimy blues band. Shorty offered up his talents as a singer. And dead serious, he was like, “Let’s jam next time I come up here.” He then said he’d get to work on thinking of a name.

...

Shorty has always been the king of redundancies. Over Thanksgiving two years ago, he had dragged the speaker into the dining room so that he and J could listen to Baaba Maal. J was at one end of the table and Shorty was at the other. My mother wanted them to sit at the heads of the table as a “welcome to our family” kind of gesture. The music was loud so they were yelling to each other. Yes, this was Thanksgiving dinner. The menu included crabs and not turkey that year.

Shorty said, “Son, you like this shit?” as he air drummed to the beat, still chewing his food.

J was like, “Oh yeah.”

And they rattled off other albums and other like artists and they went on and on.

Shorty then said, “Yeah, he’s like the black James Brown.”

And J said, “James Brown is black” but he said it in a question mark.

And Shorty quickly responded with, “The black James Brown of Africa, I mean!”

Sure enough, three days after he got back to Tampa, he called me and said, “Meleesa, I got it. I been thinking long and hard about the band. I got a name. Want to hear it?”

Of course I said yes.

“Dead Fossils.”

Silence.

Dead Fossils. But…

“Dead Fossils. Hello? You heard me? Hello? Meleesa.”

“No, I’m here Daddy. Dead Fossils. Okay. That’s cool. Yeah.”

“Let e’rybody know so we can start putting some shit together.”

I said I would do just that.

And he hung up.

Danny myspace’d me with this message the following week:

i finished a weird passage of music, (with the thought of only your father dropping lyric over it), that will lead into a heavy as fuck blues ruler. i have it on mini disc and will pass it along to beck and newman for their shot of being part of the grimmest blues outfit ever. hands down. we'd puke on a priest. and slap his mother for not testifying to the realest of blues outfits, send out the black bird, send out the dove.

All right!

So, cool band. The most stunning part about the whole thing is they are all really serious. J’s got music for it. And Shorty’s got a voice. When J wakes up in the morning, he plays guitar. Just tinkers around, sitting on the edge of the bed. I hear parts he’s working on for his new record. Or I’ll hear songs I know already or songs he’s had floating in his head for YEARS now that have not moved forward with any more parts.

Shorty came into my bedroom on the day they were leaving while J was playing.

He just started singing. Something about “Maylene” and all the blues she’s been going through. “Oooh Maylene baaaaaaabaaaaaay…” and J continued to play as he sang. To see my father, standing in my bedroom in his pajamas singing his ass off as my future husband, sitting on the edge of our shared bed played guitar for him – that shit was on another level.

I’m in the right place. Shorty is supposed to be J's father-in-law. J is supposed to be Shorty's son-in-law. It really couldn't have worked out better. I brought them together. That was all me! Go girl.

Shorty and Mercy came to visit and so I decided, at the last minute, that it might be a good idea to have a mini cocktail party. A nice little mixer to see how interesting it would be for all the different worlds to collide. We have all kinds of friends. Some are tattooed from neck to knuckles. One's a geologist. One's a real live model, like an Abercrombie one. One is that cool music teacher you wish you had in third grade. Then there's my girlfriend that's 50-ish that is a member of Hadassah. And of course, you throw Shorty and Mercy in the mix and it's a little crazy. And I like crazy and I want to see crazy.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my life as an “our life” and I decided that I want it to never feel stuffy and stressful and “on the edge of my seat” with concern that something might go wrong, something inappropriate might be said. I’m like, this is who we are and we should roll with it. And to make the night of the cocktail party (better known to the universe as wedding) even more fun, I said Let’s let the key players meet in a casual setting. This way, when the ink dries on the marriage certificate and we are all together for the official union of me and J, with the whole family – I consider friends family too – that we’re actually excited to see these people again.

They came in on a Thursday. Little did they know, Coral was coming in on Thursday night too. Kismet, I’m telling you. She had a job lined up in the city. It couldn’t have fallen into place more amazingly.

I told her that Shorty and Mercy would absolutely die to visit her on set. That’s a big deal for two cuties like them. They are country folk. They are enamored with all things Coral and Melissa and J. My father rocks this Glassjaw shirt under his post office clothes. He is feeling that shit. Mercy makes Coral sign headshots to her dying patients in the nursing home. It’s one thing that I have to do it, but it’s like even better to my own mother, that Coral will do it for her. She once tried to sign one, "Ethel, stay up! Love Coral" and I was like but Ethel is always lying down, that's the thing.

When I said that we should visit her on the set, Coral was like, “Duh.”

She even ordered them a barbecue lunch. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

So my parents came in Thursday. When J and I headed to the airport to pick them up, we stopped at the fish store in Queens. J has a thing with aquariums. This is not a phase. This is not a hobby. It’s on some lifestyle shit. Put it like this: When he’s away, I have to feed these fish a block of frozen worms which stay, hugged up in my freezer, next to my Boca burgers and somehow, I’ve gotten okay with this.

Anyway, J wanted to pick up a couple of new fish for his tank at his office. Yes, an office tank and a home tank and he’s fixin’ to have an outdoor tank and I’m about to break the news that, actually, he’s doing no such thing. We picked up the fish and headed to the airport.

Shorty and Mercy were at the taxi stand just as I had asked them to be. (!) You don’t understand. This is huge.

When it comes to airports, the both of them go plum out of their damn minds. They get lost when there is no need. They wait in lines that they have no business waiting in. They just get foolish at the sight of an airport. Did I ever tell you about the time I came home from LA after a long stint of not visiting and my mother was honking outside while I was at the baggage claim 5 terminals away? And when I waited on the curb for more than an hour, dialing my parents’ home every five minutes, getting more and more furious by the minute, it dawned on me that it’s absolutely ludicrous that my mother is not yet comfortable using a cell phone. I had to call my father who had no way of telling her where to go anyway. And I’m like, Why aren’t you with this woman? Come help your wife, please.

Regardless, I didn’t respond to her honking because how the hell could I know she was out there honking when I was light years away, getting baggage like any other traveling human would be doing? She went all the way home, thinking I just didn’t show. All the way from Los Angeles, Mercy? I just don’t show up? Who do you think I’ve become? I am not that cute, damn.

I got her on the phone and said, “Um, I’m at the airport like we discussed 90 times.” She came back to get me, after I gave very explicit instructions. I waited on the curb for four hours. Get there.

So they are at the curb like I asked. Yessss. J and I swoop them up and we decided to take them to visit J’s business. I talk to them about what he does. And they understand, but not really. It’s like, he has this business but they don’t really get it. So we take them to the warehouse and everything.

Before we get out of the car to tour the office, Shorty asks my mother for her pack of gum. He does not use words. He just slides his open hand in her general direction and she gets to digging in her bag. She pulls out the pack of gum. He pops a piece out of the foil pack for himself and proceeds to pop one out for her. I’m in the front seat, sorta seated toward J, the driver, so I could look back at them and talk and then face forward at the same time. I am thinking, That’s adorable that he would be so thoughtful.

Before I could even finish that thought, Shorty hands her the gum and says, “Slay that dragon.”

I keep my (uproarious) laughter to myself just in case it would further hurt Mercy’s feelings. She appears to be oblivious though. At least we have that.

We go inside J’s office.

Shorty is feeling this shit. He’s walking around the warehouse, giving J tips on how to run it. Oh yes. Unsolicited advice from Shorty. “Son, do you keep a maintenance log on these machines?” To which J would reply, “Yes sir.” And Shorty would say, “Okay because I know a thing or two about running this kind of operation, you see…”

He does?

“Right here, I’m afraid you have insufficient lighting…”

Advice and more advice, and it was really cute to see them bonding, I guess you could say.

So they got the full tour. Shorty told a guy in the art department that he looked just like “Old boy, that actor that always be protesting and shit.”

“Damn, who was it?”

The entire office is shouting out random names of actors.

Finally Shorty blurts out, “Emilio Estevez, yeah.”

Okay? He looks nothing like him, but okay.

So as we’re leaving, Shorty notices a box of printed shirts in J’s office. He starts rifling through the boxes and chooses a Lil Jon shirt (no longer available ie collector's shit) and a Glassjaw shirt. He says, “I’m fixin’ to wear these with my Nikes and my dungarees.” Dungarees, people. Jeans. And the Nikes? Well, he designed them on the Internet. They are navy blue and white. In gold print, on the side of the shoe, they each say MO55BLU. What is MO55BLU? I don't know, but he tried to get it as his screen name and it was taken. So he tried POSTMAN2007 and that was taken. He tried MOTERROR and that was taken. He got pissed and said, "I'm gonna try OCTOPUSSY in this bitch and see if that's taken, I mean Goooood damn." And yes, Octopussy was taken. This was a whole different day and I just went off on a tangent. There are so many amazing things about the man, I can't help myself.

He proceeds to yell a la Lil Jon, WHAAAAAAAAT? and OKAAAAAAAAAAY for the rest of the weekend, mind you. Just wait. It gets more amazing.

Moments after we’re all buckled up into the car, Mercy taps me on the my shoulder.

“Meleesa, Justin porget dose peesh.”

“What fish?”

He porget dose peesh inside his job.

Wow.

I had to break it to my mother that those fish were tropical fish for his tank. Not fish for our dining enjoyment. I was like, “Mom, those fish are for his tank.”

She replied, “Last time I come, he pick me up dose big peesh. Remember, we eat dat one?”

And yes, last time she visited, J was a total sweetheart and got her this huge spiced and marinated white fish from this Indian restaurant he frequents and she loved it. She couldn’t have been happier. J and Mercy threw down on that fish all weekend. So I guess she just assumed he’d be hooking her up on the fish tip for every visit, but alas this was not that.

To make it up to her, I told her we’d get some crab legs this evening.

So Thursday night, I told them I’d take them for seafood. They love seafood. The both of them – fools for seafood.

So we’re sitting at dinner and J and my dad get to talking.

My dad is telling J what kind of people we are, what kind of family he will become a part of.

He says, “Listen. I’ll shoot you straight. That’s the kind of man I am. If you got black toenails, I’m going to let you know ‘Hey, you got black toenails…’”

J is trying to follow. And shit, so am I. Black toenails?

“You ain’t never seen black toenails, Jason?” he asks.

“Justin,” I snap back.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It was an accident,” Shorty says.

Here’s the thing. It really is an accident. My mother called me Marlene for half the damn trip. When my name’s not Marlene, it’s Lisa Marie. When it’s not Lisa Marie, it’s just Lisa. And so Justin became “son” and “Jason” and occasionally Justin. P.S. My ex’s name was Jason. I was mortified that my father called my future husband by an ex's name for four whole days.

He goes on to explain that black toenails look like a “walnut” or “Perhaps, you seen a Brazil nut. I don’t know, like a raggedy black toenail. It’s all hard and shit…”

[Crucial part of this conversation deleted due to recent controversy surrounding the N word, but the one ending in –gga. My father does use that terminology. I’m just keeping it real. It’s a part of a being a fifty-something black man from Baltimore. He means no harm, I assure you. But I don’t want this entry to go a whole ‘nother direction because my father described the "toes" further in detail, which is how we stumbled upon that word.]

J, wide-eyed, is like, “Yeah, okay. Right, you’ll shoot me straight…”

We make it out of dinner without incident. I mean, if you exclude the fact that my father asked the waiter if he could keep his beer glass because “damn, the whole beer fits in the glass, that’s nice. Sometimes you have a little bit leftover and it’s all warm and shit…”

He’s appreciative of good design. What can I say?

The next morning, J went to work and I got Shorty and Mercy up.

Actually, Shorty woke me up. At 7 in the morning after J had already left 45 minutes before, Shorty comes busting in my bedroom in a bathrobe talking about, “I’m ready to rock and roll baby…”

We all got showers. And I took them to a diner for breakfast.

We are drinking coffee. I explain to my mother that I never really liked coffee until J.

She said she doesn’t like it that much either, except now she drinks it occasionally.

“I drink dees one sometime only. It’s good egg salad.”

Egg salad?

“Yeah, egg salad,” she says.

It’s good with egg salad? What? What are you talking about? You ordered French toast.

“No Meleesa, ees a good egg salad.”

Please understand. I understan