Broke-Ass Encounters Public Enemy Number 19: The Middle-Aged, Angry Hipster

Babydolls, Broke-Ass knows how long it has been since she was checked in with you–and it breaks her timorous little heart to have to weigh in now with an invective. But she has just undergone exposure to such a loathsome situation that she is compelled to deposit it here. Who else understands better than you?

So, it was getting on in the evening the other day, and Broke-Ass and Baby Poodle were on their way home from the city, where Baby Poodle rocks it as a gymnast–who ranks 15th in the whole fucking country, thank her very much!–at the gym for which Great Dad and sundry grandparents shell out the green for the tremendous experience she has there, when they turned onto Columbia Street in Red Hook, uptown. It was a dark and drizzly night, and Broke-Ass, in her 1998 used Toyota Sienna, was suddenly edged over by a giant city bus, and scraped against a Honda, causing her side-view mirror to flap back with a thunderous clap. Broke-Ass, of course, immediately pulled over to a safe spot, consoled the concerned Baby Poodle, was just stepping outside of the broke-back wagon she calls her car to check damage to it and the other car, when who should appear but a short, angry, aging hipster prick, his two dogs, and his iPhone.

And he began yelling expletives at the top of his stout little lungs. Expletives such as: “What are you going to fucking do–just leave the scene of the crime?!!”; “All you fucking yuppies just use this back way because you think it’s a short cut–you have no respect for anyone who LIVES here!”; “Fucking asshole yuppie!”; and so on. Initially, Broke-Ass explained, with composure, that she had her child in the car, would he kindly contain his seething monologue, was stopping to check her car before going to check the other car and to leave a note. The short, angry, middle-aged hipster accused her of intending to do no such thing, and that he was going to write down her license plate, which he began to do on his $400 iPhone, and announcing as he did, that Broke-Ass was driving a Volkswagon.

A Volkswagon. And this is where Broke-Ass utterly lost her cool.

“This, motherfucker, is a 14-year-old used Toyota minivan! Only one door works on it, and I can’t afford to replace the muffler! And WE LIVE HERE! We live around the corner from the PROJECTS! Where the fuck do you live? Carroll Gardens West? How DARE you accuse me of malfeasance, with your fucking iPhone, beagle, and bloodhound, and expensive, intentionally ruined-looking jacket? I support a family of five ALONE! And not very successfully!”

Did Public Enemy Number 19 stalk off in shame? More or less. But he continued to rave as he skulked down the street, manically pecking at his device that exploits workers in China, and mumbling about what a shitty mother Broke-Ass was. Broke-Ass had to concede that he had a point here, since she had just utterly lost her cool in front of Baby Poodle.

At this point, Broke-Ass peeked into the car and apologized to Baby Poodle, who said: “That guy didn’t even give us a chance to leave a note for the car! He was so mean!” Broke-Ass agreed that this was true, but that she was ashamed of herself for having lapsed into scatology. Baby Poodle was unfazed. “Let’s go and find that guy and yell at him, Mom!” Good Lord, what has become of us?

At any rate, Broke-Ass and Baby Poodle left a polite, apologetic, and thorough note for the unfazed Honda, and made their way home to the Rancho. There, the rest of the family–Big Daddy, Little Mousie, and Two Lumps of Sugar–commiserated with them. We all ate popcorn and felt better.

But the incident happily forced Broke-Ass to reflect on the incalculable number of times she herself has made unfounded presumptions about people. The beautifully turned-out supermom with perfect children who, as it turned out, was suffering in poverty and extreme emotional duress at the hand of her vicious, relentless ex-husband; the snotty, contemptuous, rich dad who, as it turned out, was in the process of getting laid off; a couple who was the picture of outrageously well-educated taste who, as it turned out, included the man part of the couple’s addiction to the most bizarre forms of pornography.

As Little Mousie pointed out: “Maybe that guy has a really hard life, Mommy–we don’t know.” Little Mousie was, as she often is, exactly right. And it made Broke-Ass wish she had been a little kinder. But it also made Broke-Ass remember that there is little better than being proven wrong, when the net yield is compassion.

Sorry, angry, middle-aged hipster. Shake on it.

Broke-Ass Requests Your Thoughts: Would You Buy a Fucking Cookbook?

Babydolls, many of you lovelies have asked Broke-Ass to create a cookbook. Indeed, so many of you truly charming and marvelous friends have made this request that Broke-Ass is actually considering devising a DIY Broke-Ass cookbook on blurb.com and distributing to all those interested, at cost.

But there is no way on God’s gorgeous green earth that BAG is going to rally if you don’t give a crap. Because, really: Who has the time for crap? Be honest. Broke-Ass loves you, no matter what you say. Because you’re wonderful.

Killer: Broke-Ass Loves This

I Knocked My Head Against the Wall

By Anna Swir

As a child

I put my finger in the fire

to become

a saint.

 

As a teenager

every day I would knock my head against the wall.

 

As a young girl

I went out through a window of a garret

to the roof

in order to jump.

 

As a woman

I had lice all over my body.

They cracked when I was ironing my sweater.

 

I waited sixty minutes

to be executed.

I was hungry for six years.

 

Then I bore a child,

they were carving me

without putting me to sleep.

 

Then a thunderbolt killed me

three times and I had to rise from the dead three times

without anyone’s help.

 

Now I am resting

after three resurrections.

Fuck Beans: Let’s Talk Pretty

Broke-Ass was all ready to make good on her promise to talk about beans and how to convert their soaked selves into week-long meals, when she stopped and had a think. The result of which was: Fuck beans.

Broke-Ass is well fucking nigh sick of talking and thinking about beans, particularly as they invariably evoke comparisons involving hills and her life. Plus, she is about to turn 43 next Wednesday, so the combination of that impending anniversary and fucking chickpeas brought her to the mirror to have a look. And what she saw was: old. And tired. And balls-out haggard.

You mightn’t think that a person such as Broke-Ass would give a tinker’s damn about her appearance. You would be wrong. So wrong. Indeed, Broke-Ass devotes inordinate blocks of time considering clothes and cosmetics, how she can get her hands on some, and how depressingly fruitless such meditations are. But she’ll be damned if she’s not going to get her hands on some hyaluronic acid facial serum.

Hyaluronic acid, for those who don’t know or give a shit, is the juicy substance one’s own human body manufactures to keep the joints and skin all lubed up. As one ages, and one certainly fucking does, native stores of hyaluronic acid are mercilessly depleted and you get saggy and wrinkles–and it doesn’t help if you’re stressed and you smoke, but who can help that? If, however, you inject it into your face, as people are wont to do via the wonders of fillers such as Restalyne and Juvederm, those wrinkles flat-out disappear for about 6-8 months. And then you have to pay another 800 bucks to do the whole thing over again.

To say that such a routine is of out of the question for Broke-Ass is to say Two Lumps of Sugar will hurl a block at his sisters’ heads and think it’s a pretty funny thing to have thought of doing. In full disclosure, Broke-Ass did, several times, barter for such injections. But that’s a whole other fucking story, one that now seems like a distant, golden memory of childhood. It was worth it. Broke-Ass stands fully behind the Buddha when he said that sometimes the smile is the cause, not the result, of happiness. Moreover, while she despises that fucking Nazi Coco Chanel in every other respect, Broke-Ass does heed her recommendation never to walk out of the house without a nice lipstick on. Shit, when life is bleak, a little pretty on the outside goes a long way to staving off stress-puking. Just ask Broke-Ass’s friend, the Fantabulous Nat, who wears body glitter, like all the time. WORD.

Back to hyalauronic acid. It turns out that, when mixed into a facial serum and applied to old areas, this soul-buoying substance will push out wrinkles for the duration of the time that it remains affixed to the skin. It also turns out that facial serums involving hyalauronic acid cost as much as a weeks’ grocery bill. Again: Two Lumps, blocks, & etc. So, the question alighted: How does one make this serum?

Funny you should ask. Lo and behold, it appears that hyalauronic acid comes in capsules you can buy in the hippie section of supermarkets, or far, far cheaper yet, in bulk powder form online. People take it to relieve bursitis or whatever. Why not take it make mama look good?, Broke-Ass wondered aloud. Why, indeed, the fuck not?

Moreover, one sees such white slavery-priced serums with ingredients such as “green tea extract,” “soy peptides,” and “olive oil.” So, Broke-Ass boiled up a tea cup’s worth of green tea, steeped it, waited for it to cool down, emptied a small amount of said powder into the tea, and whisked it until it formed a gel-like consistency. Then she whisked in some soy lecithin (which she also buys in bulk for under five bucks to ease her addled brain function, such as it is) and a droplet or two of olive oil, and voila: hyalauronic facial serum.

Note any egregious wrinkling?

Now, loves, Broke-Ass’ brew should be made in small batches, and because it doesn’t contain anything that will give a body cancer, it’s best refrigerated. But it works like a freaking charm–no creasey wrinkles! smooth skin!–and costs bubkes to make. And if that ain’t talking pretty, babydolls, Broke-Ass will just hang up her fucking hand-knit hat right this second. Be beautiful: Broke-Ass loves you.

(And pretty, pretty please, pick up a copy!: In Spite of Everything: A Memoir by Susan Gregory Thomas)

BAG and Big Daddy, Plus Dearest Muz: Even Though We Ain’t Got Money

Broke-Ass and Big Daddy may got bubkes, but they do have schmushkies and love. And chickens:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/11/03/garden/20111003-SHEEP-8.html

Broke-Ass swears recipes are coming. Really. But right now she’s in LA, where she spent last night stress-puking at a Marriott in Marina del Rey, and this morning in a parking lot via the open door of a rental car. So, the thought of writing about chick peas and olive oil are causing her to feel rawther less than peckish at the moment.

The saving grace of the moment is that Dearest Muz is here with her. Broke-Ass is SO grateful that her Dearest Muz is here with her. “Grateful” is not the word. “Flat-out, weepily moved beyond reason” are the words. Dearest Muz knew that her daughter was on a trip with a lot riding on it–a lot financially and psychologically riding on it–so in a gesture of unexpected tender motherliness, Dearest Muz booked a ticket and hotel room so that she could fly the hell out here and chaperone her terrified daughter.

When Broke-Ass was crying and bent over the hotel toilet last night after her Big Business Day, Dearest Muz was right there, holding a cold towel on her forehead and saying the kinds of soothing things that would calm the retching soul and upper GI tract of her kiddo. She made her chamomile tea and tucked her in. Broke-Ass is almost 43; Dearest Muz is almost 74. They are still daughter and mother when it counts most.

Broke-Ass often fails to recognize Dearest Muz and Perfect Stepfather in these pages. To be clear, she’d have actually plunged headlong into the abyss without their unyielding compassion and financial back-up, though they can ill afford either. To be further clear, not everyone gets to have parents like this. Broke-Ass is damn lucky.

Right now, Dearest Muz and Broke-Ass are doing what they’ve done together their entire lives. Half-watching a crime show on TV and reading stuff like Thomas Merton and John Milton. In spite of feeling like shit, and having suffered a major letdown today–and in spite of being on the opposite coast from her schmushkies–Broke-Ass feels completely at home and happy.

Sometimes you just need to be with your mom.

In Spite of Everything: SGT, not BAG, Makes an Appearance in the NYT Today

Broke-Ass loves you. She is going to get her bean recipes to you: promise. But in the meantime, mama gots to make a living, and here’s what she’s got for you this fine Sunday:

They Love Me in the Netherlands: BAG Talks to Dutch Radio

 

 

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=268839460

All Apologies: Broke-Ass Responds to Comments and Promises to Supply Bean Recipes

Babydolls, Broke-Ass has happily received all your lovely messages of encouragement, following her piece in the New York Times last Sunday. Thank you. You can’t know how far and wide these missives go to cheer her up. As for some angry or bewilderingly critical responses that have been posted on the Times’ site, Broke-Ass has nothing to say: She just doesn’t read them.

Broke-Ass has three goals in life: to love up, feed, and educate her schmushkies as well as she can. That’s it. Maybe it doesn’t seem like an all-consuming aim, but in this economic climate for a middling writer such as Broke-Ass, it’s pretty damn tough sledding. Broke-Ass could break out the white board to quantify and qualify why this is so, but she hates PowerPoint, and plus, it’s kind of humiliating.

The basic thing is that financial fall-out and its consequent stresses have left Broke-Ass with a blown-out thyroid, a couple of holes in her stomach, and a daily regimen of anti-nausea medicine given to chemo patients; without it, she literally stress-pukes her guts out, unable to stop until an IV of the stuff is jammed into her arm. Suffice it to say, she needs to read mean things like she needs a third hole in her addled tummy. But she writes for a living, such as that living is. So there we are.

People always get mad when you write stuff. They’re mad about a lot of stuff, and when they read your stuff on a public platform, they often feel even madder. They kind of forget that the stuff is just written by a person with a lot of crap to deal with, too. It’s all fine. Broke-Ass doesn’t sweat it too much anymore. We’re all angry, irrational, sad, flawed, and lovely–everybody’s a Tom Waits song, to one extent or another. What can we do but just keep doing our best, even when it strikes some as bullshit? It’s what we got.

The more important thing is beans. So, look out: Tomorrow is going to be full of fucking beans. Awe. Some.

As We Live and Breathe: Broke-Ass Makes the Cover of the NYT Sunday Review

When Broke-Ass wrote the first entry of this ongoing eye-wateringly scatological rant almost a year ago, she had all but bubkes. Sure enough, she had her sparkly-minded schmushkies and Big Daddy, plenty to supply gratitude for a lifetimes. But other than that, she had a bilious humor and all but bubkes. Now, she’s written a memoir (In Spite of Everything–Lord, please buy it and feed the children), growing a lot of her own damn food, raising 20 odd chickens, working on three kinds of stress-related illnesses, and is moving to Philly, where it is possible far, far from guaranteed that she might be able to wring out a living.

But today, in particular, she’s on the cover of The New York Times Sunday Review. Were it not for the encouragement of you beloveds and Thomas Merton, she’d never have heaved herself out of the compost to even pitch the story.

So, Broke-Ass would like to thank you. Even the few who have sent her mean messages (though maybe not quite as much–they really did sting). When you’re scatological and grouchy, people can assume that you’re really doing just fine. But you’re not.

When you live on the edge as Broke-Ass and the schmushkies do, the most punishing consequence is the loss of faith and heart. You wonder how, and if, you can keep on keeping on. There seems to be no evidence that any of one’s work comes to anything but more bubkes. One feels, simply, like giving up. Sometimes, one does.

But the vitality rendered from the kindness of strangers ends up being more than a hackneyed line from a storied fallen aristocrat. It ends up being for real.

Broke-Ass is finally feeling as though she may be able to peel herself off of the floor of the crap-layered chicken coop and do something actual.

Thank you for your help. Thank you so much.

Tuesday, Dark: A Hymn for Broke-Asses Great and Small

Sorry–one more. It’s just too flawless and lovely and hopeful.

Tuesday, Dark: Evening Hymn

When in the soul of the serene disciple
With no more Fathers to imitate
Poverty is a success.
It is a small thing to say the roof is gone:
He has not even a house.

Stars, as well as friends,
Are angry with the noble ruin.
Saints depart in several directions.
Be still:
There is no longer any need of comment.

It was a lucky wind
That blew away his halo with his cares.
A lucky sea that drowned his reputation.

Here you will find
Neither a proverb nor a memorandum.
There are no ways,
No methods to admire
Where poverty is no achievement.
His God lives in his emptiness like an affliction.

What choice remains?
Well, to be ordinary is not a choice:
It is the usual freedom
Of men without visions.

From Thomas Merton’s “Book of Hours”