Broken When He Found Me

 

I want to write about sex.

I want to write about the glorious way it feeds my creativity, and how deep pleasure is balm to my soul. I want to capture the absurd dichotomy of my existence as both single mom and sexual being, in long wet delicious sentences.

But then I would be a sex blogger. And I’m not brave enough for that.

 

I want to write about the tug of war going on in my brain, my anxiety and depression and PTSD and Imposter Syndrome.

But then I would be a mental illness blogger. I don’t want to be mentally ill, let alone write about it.

I’m inflamed with unexpressed ideas. It feels like sickness. Tender, feverish, swollen.

I want to bite off more than I can chew and chew longer.

I want to navigate the jagged edges of all my experiences, dance among the wreckage, celebrate the joy and the hideousness of every mistake I’ve ever made.

I want to write about the grief and anger that are spinning out of control, that feel like ground glass shredding me from the inside.

Instead, I am a phony.

 

 

 

Long ago I learned abuse and neglect as love. I am addicted to feeling never good enough, and the sweet momentary high when I’m mining for love and hit right into a silvery vein of approval.

Because in our first exchanges, you either criticized or ignored my writing, you felt like home. But this time, I WOULD be good enough. If only. If only.

If only.

 

I was new to the online world. And didn’t know that unwanted attention is part of the experience for many women.

You said it was because I had a sex blog. And that no one would take me seriously.

 

I turned to Brenda at Burns the Fire. Two years later, I have not forgotten how she saved me.

She told me, LOVE. Just, LOVE.

Yes, you are provocative, she said, and what’s wrong with that? Just LOVE.

 

I’m disconnected from what ever it is that people feel when they read me. When I sit at the keyboard all I feel is fear. The blood pounds in my ear so loudly all I hear is a verbal dance of madness.

 

I want to write stories of horrific post partum depression, the kind that makes you want to drown your own child. And how I crossed over to a love so deep, I’m the one drowning now.

But how tiring it is, that I need to share everything, down to the last blood cell.

I’m not funny on Facebook.

My rock tees are silly.

Bad things happen to me because I seek pain.

My beloved project was only popular because misery loves company. I left it over a year ago and once an arrow shot into the heart, it bled out.

 

I’m not a writer. I’m simply part of a cult that writes little 1000 word essays for other WordPress bloggers.

Yes, that is what I am. I have no evidence to the contrary.

Is that a bad thing?

*dances in a cult-like fashion around a WordPress statue*

 

I only use profanity because I’m a lazy writer. Yes, it’s an easy way to get a cheap laugh. Suck my dick.

 

I want to breathe fire into these keys and tear apart every fucking idea about what a blog should be

I want everyone to know that I’m crazy, and find it thrilling because it means I’m doing great things.

I want to Write Free!

Freedom feels like a walk along the ocean’s shore, accompanied by the cry of sea gulls and the briny smell and the wind blowing cooler than inland.

Freedom feels like a month in a loony bin inpatient treatment center getting electroshock therapy to burn this out of my brain, for once and for fucking final.

 

The wrong person at the wrong time can build a nest right inside your insecurities and confirm for you that you are, in fact, nothing.

 

I have learned the hard, soul crushing way that writing your deepest tragedies leaves you open to pain almost as fierce as the tragedies themselves.

When someone you cherish asks for the fourth time why you moved out of NYC. Or asks you how your beloved brother died, when you spelled these things out in technicolor horror on posts they, in fact, commented on.

I learned the painful way that some of the people I love most don’t read what I write, and that sometimes, people leave comments to keep up appearances.

Which is like, inviting you to my brother’s funeral, and you showing up in a clown suit.

 

My posts are too long. I violated the formulaic 700 word rule. What’s the point in tapping out this sentence when everyone stopped reading by the time I wrote “sentence”?

 

This will be another story that I won’t publish, part of the daily bloodletting.

I write daily but publish infrequently.

I fear being ridiculed again, hearing you sneer that not everyone writes about shoplifting and heroin, you know.

Yes.

I know.

Here. Here’s a recipe.

Vanilla Chai Frozen Smoothie

• 1 scoop vanilla chai protein powder
• I frozen banana
• ½ cup almond milk

Put everything in your smoothie maker thing. Turn that shit on. Eat it.

 

There.

 

I often sob while I write. Out of sheer relief that comes with sharing my truth as transparently and vulnerable as humanly possible

Self sabotage is my comfort zone. I squander my life on drugs and terrible choices and people whose need to make me feel small meshes perfectly with my need to disappear.

 

I have been force-fed so many different versions of myself, there is nothing left but everyone’s idea of me.

 

He did not break me. I was broken when he found me.

He was just drawn to the glittering shards and could not help but grind them down into dust.

 

Please refrain from disparaging comments. Be encouraging. 
I need positivity. Talk to me. I’m listening. 

 

Join me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter . Or don’t. You do you. 

MONETIZING HATRED: How One Mommy Blogger Earned Her Fifteen Minutes of Fame

 

It’s a simple formula. Write something offensive and inflammatory, sit back, and watch the flames blaze out of control.

Publishing intentionally sensationalist pieces designed to generate enraged clicks is going to garner more attention than meaningful writing. So when Josi Denise (link intentionally not provided) decided her Mommy Blogging days were over, she fantasized that she would take down all Mommy blogs with her as she stormed off the Internet.

To accomplish this, she launched a vitriolic attack on Mommy bloggers, and drew massive undeserved attention. She claimed that her blog is disingenuous, artificially cheery, and just “sucks.”  As part of a moral and creative epiphany, she wanted to write more substantial material. Frustrated with being taken advantage of by big brands and PR firms, she declared war against writing sponsored content.

Packaging your disgruntlement as a rancorous tirade towards everyone else, whose work and motivations you have no clue of, is more than just misdirected hatred. It’s socially and culturally irresponsible.

It’s women to women misogyny. And in the online world, where people act without consequence, it is especially brutal.

 

Some view “Mommy Blogger” as a pejorative term. Blogging in and of itself is a target in the professional writing world. Blogs are a self-regulated publishing platform, and as such, can be filled with questionable content and rife with cringe-inducing spelling and grammatical errors.

Mom-centric bloggers, who typically write about their homes and family, are often stereotyped as stay-at-home moms, with little or no writing skills, hoping to “make some extra money” blogging. This is a damaging cliché.

“Mommy Bloggers” write bestselling books. They have elite bylines, including The Washington Post and the New York Times. They publish gorgeously crafted essays designed to reach across the cyber channels to support other women in the often desperately lonely journey of raising a family.

Thankfully, the lines are being blurred here, in both directions. I may not write about diapers or breast-feeding, but my son is my highest priority. He is the subject of the majority of my blog posts, despite the reputation I have for salacious content.

Am I a Mommy Blogger?

And if I am, what of it?

Even if the stereotypical Mommy Blogger does exist, why do we need to judge her? How does telling all Mommy Bloggers that they “suck” help one woman on her journey to a different creative outlet? It doesn’t.

I have no experience in the world of writing sponsored content. Perhaps it is deplorable and inauthentic. Perhaps bloggers are being exploited by big brands and PR companies. It was especially important, then, that this blogger actually communicate her message, without alienating the very audience she was hoping to enlighten.

If there is a seamy underbelly to the Mommy Blogging world, Josi Denise could have called out the exploiters without being destructive and regressive in her writing. But she knew that it would drive anger-based traffic, and that was more important to her than contributing to the quality and diversity of women’s voices online.

She chose to feed the misogynist media climate and advance herself on the backs of women writers everywhere. 

The compulsion for women to tear one another down is deeply imbedded in the female consciousness. Intentionally and unintentionally, we collude with sexism – sometimes for personal gain, often, in response to feeling oppressed by a sexist society. However, the impulse to attack other women in response to feeling oppressed is a symptom of that same oppression.

We lash out at each other, instead of at the real issue.

Josi Denise is protected by her First Amendment rights. Like everyone else, she is allowed to publish what she pleases. That does not mean that these tirades are innocuous. We have a responsibility to acknowledge what hundreds of studies have shown – that media content directly impacts people; how they feel about themselves, and in turn, how they treat each other. Even if the writer does not have bad intentions, misogynist tropes in media are profoundly damaging to all women.

 

We are battling a world in which women are bombarded with false notions of physical perfection and hypersexuality. We are ravaged by sexual assault and domestic abuse. Even in 2016, women experience gender pay gap. Women writers are struggling to be heard in a male-dominated industry.

If we are going to move the needle on how we are treated, if we are going to create change of any kind, we have to join together. Can you imagine how much women could accomplish if weren’t preoccupied with publicly and privately maligning one another? If we stopped attempting to annihilate other women online, and in real life? If we focused our energies on building one another up and joining forces.?

Part of me is worried that by writing this, I am feeding the machine. I purposely refrained from saying disparaging things about this woman and her blog. That rhetoric would be dangerous and counterproductive. I would be contributing to the very agency I am battling. Because she, too, is a victim of our culture, which preaches and practices hatred against women.

She’s already received coverage on bigger sites. She finally got the widespread acclaim she sought, which eluded her in all her years of mommy blogging. But her big break came at a price – a price all women are paying.

 

Going forward, how can we –  men, women, writers or readers –  change this conversation from the inside without harming this, or future, generations of women?

Talk to me.
I’m really, REALLY, REALLY listening. 

 

Join me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter  so I can have friends without leaving the house.

 

Samara’s Bad-Girl Guide to Writing Erotica

 

Ever since the appearance of Fifty Shades of Grey, the worst book to have ever sold 100 million copies worldwide, everyone is writing erotica.

I don’t want to discuss this Idiot Book, the fact that Anastasia is a virgin who can orgasm 20 times an hour, never worries about getting a urinary tract infection or somehow made it through college without a working laptop.

Bad erotica is sprouting up everywhere. All of it hackneyed and formulaic.

The characters are always flawless. Or if they have flaws, they are so endearing they make the character even more adorable.

For women,”clumsy” is the most popular endearing flaw. For the record, I am clumsy. There’s nothing sexy about. I fall down, smack my head on things, injure myself frequently and am generally shocked to still be alive.

Last week, in a meeting with a group of men, I dropped my pen under the conference table. I reached down to get it, hit my head on the edge of the table, and sustained a near-concussion. No dicks got hard.

I would like to read about a female character with some really detracting flaws.

“Monique had a grotesque mutant butthole growing out of her face. Her ass stunk like Exit 13 on the New Jersey Turnpike and she cleared a room whenever she broke wind.”

 

And of course. every male character has a frighteningly enormous cock. Let’s go for some diversity:

“Her eyes widened as he slipped his sweatpants down his short stubby legs. His peeny seemed erect but it was so small, there was no way to tell. She gave it a swift headbutt, because men loved that.”

 

Another thing that really gets my hackles up is how all these beautiful women smell. They always smell like fresh-baked bread, or lemons.

Can’t we try something a little different?

“She jerked open her vest, radiating the scent of stale cigarettes and 3-day old crab legs.”

“Her pussy smelled like an elderly man he once knew who moved to Florida and did something with pit bulls.”

 

There are only so many ways to write a traditional sex scene, and they can become repetitive and boring. It’s important to be innovative and unique in your erotica. Here are a few little snippets I’d like to share with you.

You’re welcome.

 Blake and Thalia

Blake unzipped his pants quicker than a hooker running from cops. His tube sausage flopped out. She began jerking off his pork sword roughly, like it owed her money.

Thalia released her breasts like one would release the Kraken. They were long and heavy, as if she had loaded a shitload of change into a pair of old tube socks and taped them to her chest. Blake wandered around them like a hobo at a hydroelectric plant.

He crammed his meat flute into her greasy rat’s mouth. He moved as awkwardly as a 6’2″ guy trying to get a laid in a Honda Civic. Thalia breathed heavily, making sounds like a child caught in a dry cleaning bag.

“Your bajina feels like I’m jerking off into wet balloons,” Blake said, struggling to breathe, like a fat man digging into nachos. Thalia thrashed around like a Jawa getting gummed by a toothless Sarlaac.

Blake moved over Thalia’s body stiffly, like a disabled person trying to have intercourse with a mailbox. Thalia’s pubes were thick enough to star in their own episode of Duck Dynasty. Her hairy ham wallet was trembling as he bit into it, and then peed on her bed, marking his territory like an irate Doberman.

Blake’s eight inches of throbbing pink Jesus rammed into her vintage golf bag. He dove into her nappy lunch meat like Scrooge McDuck into a room full of gold. As his all-beef thermometer slammed into Thalia’s hot pocket she orgasmed so hard, she sweated like a gerbil in a gay bar.

They fell asleep entwined together in the afterglow.

Thalia woke up the next morning with a meat pie in her hand and her mouth tasting like an ashtray.

 

 Garth and Savannah

Garth gazed at Savannah like a gluttonous person would gaze at a cheap, all you can eat buffet. All the calories rushed to his penis.

The cameltoes created by her pudgy baby-fat labias made him want to plunge into them like a sex-crazed Mario the plumber. He longed to take a bite of her wobbly jello salad. Savannah’s bald, fat-lipped special place was so enticing, he longed to hump her like a blind baby kangaroo trying to body box.

Savannah breathed raggedly, like an asthma patient at indoor casino that allowed smoking.

“Garth, I’m gonna touch your weiner all over that yucky looking part at the top, the entire peeny.”

She ran her wet toilet-plunger tongue over her thick lips. Moans like belches escaped her lips.

Savannah reached down, sliding her hand under Garth’s clammy beer-gut. She let out a small choke of lust as her acrylic nails scraped the bald, encrusted dent of his urethral opening. He roared mightily as he shoved her off the bed, causing her to lustily smash her head on the nightstand.

Garth did a jiggling frantic nut-swing. He plowed his pink tractor beam inside her field of dreams. Savannah’s velvet clown hole was as tight as Uncle Fred’s hat band.

Her rosy walls of lust shrink-wrapped around his beef jerky with a grape-squashing force. They squeezed his shaft harshly, as one would squeeze  out the last morsel of toothpaste from the tube. Garth felt like mini feminist ninjas were attacking his nut sack.

He cupped Savannah’s buttocks like a couple of freshly baked loaves of gluten free bread and gave them a quality-approving squeeze.

Slowly, he tamed Savannah’s skittish sphincter like it was a nervous filly. Soon it was as relaxed as a psychiatric patient on Seroquel. He took turns violating Savanna’s brown balloon knot with matching Pilgrim Thanksgiving salt and pepper shakers his Aunt Tillie had given him for a housewarming present.

“I’m gonna tongue punch you in the fart box!” he bleated at her.

 —

So, release your inner perv and give it a try!

 

Did you read 50 Shades of Grey? Do you have any interest in writing erotica?’
How did I do?
Talk to me. I’m listening. 

Join me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter so I can have friends without leaving the house.

The SISTERWIVES ARE HERE!!

There have been a lot of rumblings of this “Sisterwives” thing going round the ‘sphere.

 

Today,

WE ARE LIVE!

*throws confetti in the air*

 

There we are.

Nine vibrating molecules, dancing together in orbit.

 

This is a fiercely loyal and loving group of women.

And talented. And funny.

 

I met Jennie last fall, and it was love at first sight.

Or site.

Reading her blog was only the beginning of a friendship that was more than just a friendship.

It was a sisterhood.

I “proposed” to her two weeks later.

 

Friendships begat other friendships which became a support group which became a Blog.

Because we felt that the support and unconditional love we offer one another – deserved a place in the blogosphere.

We want to invite you in – MEN and WOMEN – and support you through life’s messy, beautiful journey.

 

Let’s straighten out a few misconceptions.

1. No. We are NOT all married to the same man.

I don’t know whether he’d be the luckiest man on earth, or running down the street, rubbing cake through his hair.

 

2. We have nothing to do with anything from the state of Utah.

None of us, to my knowledge, has ever even been there.

But we ARE planning a road trip to Vegas next year.

Is Utah anywhere near there? (geography is NOT my strong suit.)

 

3. None of us practices polygamy.

Although, if you follow my blog, y’all know where I stand on that.

See? I’m from New York, and they have me saying stuff like “Y’all.”

 

We call each other Sisterwives because we’re in love with each other.

It’s a term of solidarity and support.

 

Have I mentioned we also make each other laugh all the time?

Sometimes through tears.

We all have been through, and continue to go through, a LOT of stuff.

 

But I don’t go ONE day without guffawing out loud at our crazy banter.

At 12:30 last night, I was STILL unable to get myself on the Sisterwives Facebook page correctly.

 

 

 

 

And 15 minutes ago I was STILL trying to embed the code that Lizzi the wizard had concocted for the molecule drawing she’d created.

If you click on her link, you’ll see who taught me the beauty of Silver Linings; something I wrote about in my bio for the Sisterwives blog.

 

 

 

Come over to the Sisterwives blog, and read Who We Are and How We Came To Be. 

(I heard a rumor that there was an open bar)

 

love,

Samara xoxo

SHUT YER PIEHOLE, CHARLES BUKOWSKI!

Why wouldn’t you take writing advice from this man?

 

The writing gods have buried me.

 

Enter Charles Bukowski, “so you want to be a writer?”

This poem has always fired me up, like a pep squad before the big game, like anabolics the coach procured to shoot into beautiful blue teenage veins.

Today  –  that poem is the PLAGUE.

It’s a tirade of what I’m not and how I can’t and why I shouldn’t.

Fuck you, Bukowski.

Shut yer PIEHOLE.

 

Yes, I want to be a writer, Bukowski.

For weeks now, the words are bottlenecking at my throat; cutting like ground glass swallowed.

I dream HARD and wake up to words bursting! Grab a pad, and:

“The merry-go-round is only the equivalent of an undergraduate degree; not even a stream in the clown’s mouth on the boardwalk of academia.”

You think YOU don’t know what I just said? Try being the person who just wrote that.

 

You were incredibly prolific, Bukowski. Your work ethic unparalleled.

I CAN’T  DO IT.

I can’t work 12 hour shifts, dragging mailbags along the smog filled streets of LA, back and forth on gravelly pavement in cheap shoes and then come home and write all night long, fueled by insanity, nicotine and rot gut wine.

When I read your brilliant poems, I hear them punctuated by the yellow phlegm of your hacking cough interrupted by trips to the 7-11 to corrode your teeth and liver and soul.

You lived like the pulp fiction heroes you immortalized. You cavorted with lowlife hookers and winos. No one depended on you or asked anything of your booze-soaked brain and sociopathic womanizing EXCEPT to write.

I can’t wake up painfully hung over in a flophouse motel after a one night tryst with an unwashed hooker, watch a man plummet to the ground outside my sooty window and then crawl to the school where I projectile vomit at a PTO meeting.

So, BITE ME, Bukowski, literary king of LA’s lice infested underworld.

You wrote as you lived – blunt, angry, vulgar, demented and sordid. Your creativity fed off of drama and chaos and emotional filth.

Emotional disarray vaporizes me; blocks my words which need release SO BADLY. The frenzied high of shooting dope on the keyboard, the good nod when I hit the vein of an idea.

You arrogant know-it-all, buried with that obnoxious “Don’t Try” on your gravestone.

Easy to say because YOU BECAME FAMOUS.

I HAVE to try.

Not everyone can get hellafied on a jug of MadDog 20 20 and then word vomit genius.

 

HERE’S WHAT I THINK OF YOUR STUPID POEM:

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don’t do it- 

What if it crawls out of me slower than an Amish drag race? Don’t judge my process.

 

If you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter for words, don’t do it.

I’m not that old that I would hunch over a goddamn IBM Selectric, but I do stare at the computer for hours.

I wrote the last sentence at 7 pm. Now it’s 9 pm, and I’m hearing it through a different set of ears. My words gestate slowly. Soon it’ll be midnight; by 2 am – maybe I’ll have a paragraph.

Then I’ll reward myself with porn.

 

If you’re doing it for money or fame, don’t do it.

While writing rarely yields a solid living, anyone who tells you they don’t want recognition is lying.

Why would bloggers be tweeting, meme-ing, pinning, tumbling, instagraming, and making YouTube channels of themselves?

So they can hide in the Witness Protection Program?

 

if you’re doing it because you want women in your bed, don’t do it.

You were infamous for bedding everyone, you he-whore!

If I write to impress Jennie Saia, because I want to visit her and drink wine with her SO HARD, run away with her to Mexico, are YOU going to judge me?

You’d write 50 poems to her smooth skin. Have you seen the picture of her in her bikini?

 

if you have to sit there and rewrite it again and again, don’t do it.

I do and I do.

My first drafts are complete SHIT. Shit is the fertilizer that makes my ideas grow into beautiful flowers.

 

If it’s hard work just thinking about doing it, don’t do it

Sometimes, it is. And I have to push through that place of resistance.

Would you have me lay on my deathbed thinking of all the things I didn’t do because they seemed like hard work? That describes 2/3 of life. The other 1/3 I’m sleeping.

 

if you’re trying to write like somebody else, forget about it.

Sometimes artistry is emulation. Or else we can discount every band that emerged from the Seattle grunge scene after Nirvana.

 

if you first have to read it to your wife or your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your parents or to anybody at all, you’re not ready.

I don’t.

I would rather be paid minimum wage to help elderly people fix their Internet over the phone than marry another writer.

 

don’t be like so many thousands of people who call themselves writers, don’t be dull and boring and pretentious,

Because, you know, that’s totally what I’m GOING for here.

 

unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don’t do it.

Suicide? You’d love that, you tragic asshole. And I was close to murder today. I wanted to kill YOU deader than you already were, telling me “don’t do it” like some backwards Nike commercial looped endlessly.

 

if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way. and there never was.

Yes. FINALLY we agree.

It chose me.

 

What do I do now? Now that I’ve deconstructed you, sentence by sentence, I guess I don’t want to be a writer. By your standards, I’m NOT a writer.

You hijacked my identity.

I can’t live the self destructive fallacy of the vice ridden artiste. 

So would you have me buy into your perception of me? Just, give up? Your own advice would tell ME to tell YOU to go fuck yourself.

 

But if life is made up of a string of moments, and there is only THIS moment,

Then in THIS moment, aren’t I a writer?

So confusing. Now I know why you drank daily.

 

Maybe just today.

Maybe just this moment.

But I finally put down words. So, I want to be a writer.

And now I’ll hit, “Publish.”

Seriously.

Go fuck yourself, Bukowski.

Did you ever have horrible writer’s block?  Or lack the time, energy, whatever, to write? 
Does it eat at you?
Talk to me. I’m listening.