sweetheart redux

Posts

Don't Think Twice by Robin Crane

At some point in my teens, I became certain that ground travel across the United States, as well as staying in motels, were the moments to be most striven for, and once obtained, savored for every footloose second. I am aware that as a Californian, the concept of "car culture" - of road trips with stops at motels just off the highway, not so possible in parts of the country that don't live in a land of perpetual summer - is part of my home state's collective unconscious. But I haven't just driven. I have also racked up thousands of Amtrak and Greyhound miles, all across the country, countless times over. And as far as staying in motels, even when my heart was racing so much I was trembling, from sneaking out of my last house while my ex went upstairs for a second and was being crazier than usual, even then I still thought, "Well, at least I get to stay in a motel for the night." When I was younger, college age, a part of the Olympia Washington artistic ...

Grocery Shopping, A Personal Essay

Originally Published July 5, 2016 I was raised middle class but I always knew I would be poor. In the broadest possible terms, my mom was from a poor dad and a poor mom so she was 100% poor, while my dad was 50/50, so that has me at 3/4 poor, not in precise math I guess but definitely in fractions as done through an emotional filter. So, maybe that has something to do with it. In any event, when I went grocery shopping with my middle class dad and stepmom, it was usually to the Gelsen's in Marina del Rey, and in case you've never been there, let me describe the experience. For starters, the store resides withing spitting distance of a marina full of docked yachts and the top-shelf only bars where carefree, asshole-ish yacht-owners drink and dine (maybe not in precise geography but definitely in the Marina del Rey of my mind). Being in Gelsen's and knowing that all goods on display could be bought by this half of my family was a palpable relief. At this Gelsen's, if yo...

Shaggy Dog by Robin Crane

When he asked for a divorce my husband was strangely lucid. The past month though, he'd gotten obsessive about his fitness, mostly his abs. Protein powder and picking fights with customers at the working class grocery store he worked at and trying to insert himself into the social media orbit of his customers at the hipster upper middle class restaurant he was a server at. There was a black mother and daughter having a pleasant evening out and he was their server. I hear they were both attractive. He looked up their non-profit's website and in the "contact us" function, he left some thoughts about a white boy's sensitivities, like what it’s like to be a chill white guy who wants to be accepted by black people. At this point I thought, “I am in hell right now.” He wouldn't talk to me at home. At the bar we spent almost every night at, but in shifts, toward the end, our mutual male friends would ask me questions that showed they knew things were worse than ...

I Hardly Ever Did by Robin Crane

I watched TV Through birth, death and taxes When I was the addendum Or when it was my own mother Or my own uterus An organ saddled with far-reaching expectations And sickness I watched TV. People came and people went and still I watched TV. In the hospital, a woman named Holly and I watched Hours of this thing called Special Victims Unit Every day Even though a Vietnam Vet with delusions of grandeur Begged us to change the station. I watched TV every day of Summer Vacation for pretty much My entire childhood but I vowed that the next day I Would stop, That I would take a walk or something, But I hardly ever did. Special Victims Unit Hello there! I'm writing every day lately, but none of it is of a quality where I'd want others to read it! Still, I want to keep the momentum going, so here I am reposting something originally posted back in 2017. Why not? xox

Being Women Together by Robin Crane

My mother and I were women together. Well, okay, I was only her girl child for some of those years, but I quite easily grasped one evening when I heard the plentiful and ebullient family next door having a barbecue that lasted roughly from noon until midnight the summer of my eleventh year the disquieting contrast between those noises and smells and the quiet dusk of our own kitchen. “I’m lonely. I want more,” my sullen gaze telegraphed itself into her awareness. “I understand, one hundred percent,” the squeeze she gave my hand – two short squeezes and a long one that felt particularly sincere and protective – transmitted. So – this was womanhood, was our own version of womanhood anyway – a cloud of dissatisfaction palpable as a self-separate entity, a runty bunny rabbit, white with those gruesome red eyes. originally published 6/4/18

When Hollywood was Heavy Metal, Through the Eyes of a Teenage Daughter

When I was in sixth grade I was still trying to listen to pop music to fit in, but one day my dead mom let me wear her Doors shirt, a bleach stained black t-shirt with Jim Morrison’s mug shot from Dade County Florida on it, and underneath that the words “charged with lewd and lascivious behavior, indecent exposure, profanity, and drunkenness.” I could have shown up to school that day in a disingenuous outfit of Body Glove gear, but instead I chose to celebrate a moment in history when a sexy rockstar got drunk and whipped his dick out. I’d arrived. Within a few months the Guns N’ Roses albums Use Your Illusions I and II hit the shelves of Tower Records and the Wherehouse Music Store and my mom, who was born with the anarchistic aplomb, the witty or sometimes just brutal anger and the frantic creativity with which an outsider (punks, goths, metalheads, angel-headed hipsters ) learns to deal with mainstream society, was right there with me, choosing...