Today I’m taking a class at the Florida Center for Literary Arts with Steve Almond.  I can’t even believe such a center exists in Miami, but it does, right there in downtown Miami on the Miami-Dade College campus.  

 I’m also a guest speaker tonight, along with Anjanette Delgado, author of The Heartbreak Pill.  

Our topic:  You’ve Written a Book, Now What?I’m gonna say, “Write another one right away.”  I hope Anjanette has some other ideas. 

You can hear us tonight for free at 6:30 p.m., Miami Dade College, room 3313-14.   

Misery Loves Comedy in Lesbian’s Tale of Pregnancy.  It’s been a while since My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy got any attention.  I’ve even sort of forgotten about it.  But today MiamiARTzine.com printed this review of my book.  

Tina Koenig writes that lesbians wanting to get pregnant have the will, but not the willy. 

She also says that all families end up being conventional in the ways they live, love and laugh.  How sweet and true.  If you haven’t read My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy, you oughta.  Go on.  

Victoria and I almost landed in the slammer last night.  We got kicked out of David Sedaris.  

When I heard Sedaris was performing in Miami the night before my performance, I got postcards printed up about my show.  I’m performing tonight at Books & Books on one of my last stops on the Misery Loves Company World Tour. I’ll be reading and telling stories from My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy and I wanted to tell everyone who went to see Sedaris about it.  

Jill Soloway, who wrote Six Feet Under said, “Andrea is like a girl version of David Sedaris,”  So I put that on top of my postcard and got my pregnant wife to help me pass them out.  I was not oblivious to the marketing genius of this plan. 

Victoria was in the middle of her pitch:  ”Critics say Andrea is like a girl version of David Sedaris. Come to her show tomorrow night,” when a man with an earpiece confiscated her cards.  

She came running over to me.  ”Watch your back, baby, I lost my cards.”

I went over to the guy who took her cards: a tall man in a yellow suit. He may have been the head usher, but he took his power way too seriously.  He put his hand to his ear and whispered something like he was contacting the Gestapo.

 I said, “Oh come on, I’m trying to promote my show.  Hey, I’m like a girl version of David Sedaris.”

“Ma’am, all promotional materials need to be pre-approved.”

“But I just wrote my first book and you can’t imagine how hard it is, being unknown and all and look, Jill Soloway said I’m like a girl version of David Sedaris.”

“Put your cards away or I’ll take them all.”

This guy wasn’t budging, so we said we’d stop and we went in to see the show.

Sedaris was good.  He made me laugh when he said his cab driver’s hair looked like a giant mohair pin cushion and then when his cab driver told Sedaris he wanted to get into the Guinness Book of World Records, Sedaris thought he might have a chance for the biggest hair bun.  

Sedaris is simple and funny and mostly true.  By true I mean, I listen and then think:  Yea, that’s so true, like when he read about undecided voters.  He can’t understand what these voters are undecided about.  He likened the situation to being on an airplane and choosing between the chicken and a plate of human shit.  I could see the crowd nodding.  I was nodding.  Yea, that’s so true.  

I don’t always nod with him though.  Sedaris has a little biting edge that sometimes makes me think:  No way.  Like when he said sometimes kittens need to be gassed.  Now I’m no PETA person, but I didn’t like that bit.

What I love about him most is that he has brought back the simple art of storytelling.  He stands behind a podium and reads.  That’s it.   

Watching David Sedaris is like watching the radio.   He doesn’t even look up.  And it’s not like his voice is anything to listen to.  He sounds like a Long Island grandmother who has a cold.

Last night I counted 600 people from where I was sitting.  There were probably hundreds more in the balconies.   And all these people paid $45 to $60 a ticket, plus $15 for parking, in a bad economy when they have the radio at home, for free.

As we walked out I felt my admiration turn sour.  I wanted 600 people to come see me.  And I’ll look up and I might even dance.   

The lobby was packed.  I couldn’t help myself.  I said, “Baby, this is our last chance.”  

We got rid of a few hundred more cards before Victoria got busted again.  The guy with the earpiece said, “Get out of here or I’m calling the police.”   

 ”But I’m like a girl version of David Sedaris,” I said, “except, I can dance.”  

Victoria grabbed my hand and we ran.

I have figured it out.  You show up with ugly-ass clothes and the people start to feel sorry for you.  That’s what’s happened to me. Twice.  I AM SO LUCKY.

My sister-in-law said she was going to nominate me for that make-over show, What Not to Wear, but now I totally dress too cool for that.  

First there was Napapijri.  (See post on how I got that sponsor).   
And now there’s DEMANDSHOES.COM.     Diane Butrus, Chief of Operations of Demandshoes.com came to my St. Louis reading and I’m guessing she took one look at me because after the show she invited me to visit her showroom.   Look at all those shoes.  She said I could chose whatever I wanted.

 I’m no shoe whore, but I didn’t take this lightly.  I know plenty of women who would have been drooling out of the sides of their mouths for this opportunity.  So I took my time and got Diba sandals and boots by Luichiny.  

You can get shoes too.  Go to DEMANDSHOES.COM and enter the secret discount code:  ANDREA and get yourself some kick ass shoes.  
Before: After:


Hey now, I’m a rock star.  Got my game on. Yea! 

  We had a successful show at the hot lesbian bar, Novaks, even with Melissa Etheridge stealing half our audience.  The bar was packed for a pre-concert happy hour and then all these perfectly smart-looking lesbians walked out of the place.  I have nothing against Come to My Window, but I was like, “Wait a second.  Don’t you want to hear My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy?”  Most said no thank you, but 50 people stayed and the show was awesome.

 Danielle from Left Bank Books can organize the hell out of a night. She got local playwrite, Kyle Kratky and poet Julie Dill and we performed outside under a blue sky and setting sun.  Perfect.  

 I just found this on the web.  An advertisement, except that picture was taken at the event, so it was really an aftertisement. 

 

Below are some of the great women of St. Louis.  This is what they do at a reading:  READ.  

I stopped in St. Louis after the MichFest.  Amy Waterman and her husband Brian–smart, lovely, wonderful people–picked me up from the airport.  Amy is a writing friend and also a psychologist, so she has sort of figured me out.  

Right away, Amy and Brian took me to an Indian restaurant on the 11th floor of a Best Western where only real Indians eat.  Great food.

 We chatted a little, but not long after we got the chicken masala, I told them about how I bombed at MichFest.  I retold my miserable performance.  How I told a few hundred women about my stinky ‘gina.  (See full text of my performance in yesterday’s blog.)


Amy said, “You can’t hit people with that level of intimacy so fast.”

My face got hot.  I was sure I was blushing because I had just hit her with that level of intimacy and her poor husband who I had only known for one dinner.  

She said, “It’s like this: you meet someone, you say, ‘hey, my name’s Andrea.  I have a daughter.’  Then you wait for a response.  If the person you’re talking to says her name and maybe something like I have a daughter too, then you can move to the next level of intimacy.  You can say, ‘I hated being pregnant.’  Then you wait for a response.  But you can’t say, ‘Hi I’m Andrea, I have a vaginal infection right off the bat.’”

Why hadn’t anyone told me this sooner???

 It makes so much sense.  And at MichFest I only had five minutes.  No time to get to know someone.  No time to build intimacy.

When I got off the stage, I knew something went wrong.  My very old friend, Jeanne, said, “Interesting, but I don’t think that was your funniest bit.”

I saw my friend Julie the next day. She told me she and her girlfriend went to sleep loving me more.  That was sweet, but it was a pity love. 

There’s Julie in the middle (below) pityloving me.     

She said, “We’ve all been there.”

I said, “Where?  In bed with a stinky vagina or bombing on stage?”  She hugged me for a good 30 seconds.  I needed it.

But it wasn’t until Amy laid it out for me that I got it. Don’t give too much too fast. 

Thank you Amy Waterman.  

I took the stage at the August Night Cafe.  I was 6th on the list, after five singer/songwriters–all talented women.  It was a very competitive open mic.  Hundreds of women wanted to perform, so there was a lottery and I made it.  

I’ve been telling stories for the last few months without reading.  I’ve also been reading my stories, but telling stories is a different kind of performance.  It requires a different energy and a different give and take with the audience.  It also gives me diarrhea all day.  But I like a challenge, so I decided to try it at MichFest.  

Here’s a picture of the August Night Cafe during the day.  
I’d been thinking about what I would say all day–a sure sign of disaster.  I know now that I’ll never again stand up in front of a few hundred people without having rehearsed first.

 I started off with a rehearsed bit, but after about 30 seconds, I took a huge detour to tell everyone about one of my most horrifying and embarrassing moments I’d had in my life.  And that moment happened just three days before.  

 I told this story because I needed support.  I needed to be understood, which is why I tell all the stories I tell.  I thought the women of MichFest would be there for me. 

My story went like this: Hi, I’m Andrea Askowitz.  I’m the author of My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy.  Yea, my pregnancy was bad.  But I’m a lot happier now.  No longer miserable.  No longer pregnant.  Still lesbian.  


I was 14 weeks pregnant and already everyone said, “You’re having a boy.”  By everyone I mean, the man behind me at the Mini-Mart, my grandmother, and my across the street neighbor.  When you’re pregnant in Los Angeles, where I was pregnant, everyone you meet is some kind of psychic or intuit or clairvoyant.  

Apparently, the same is true Miami, where my girlfriend, Victoria, is pregnant.

Yes, I’m a mom and now I’m going to be a dad too.  

I told my mom I’m going to be a daddy and she said, “Andrea, don’t say that.  Makes you sound so dykey.  Makes you sound like you have a mustache.”

(As soon as I said dykey and mustache to my MichFest crowd I started to worry.  For one thing, the lights were so bright, I couldn’t see anything, just flashes, like stars in my eyes.  I couldn’t tell if the women in front of me were dykey or mustachioed or naked or what.  But I should have known better because the women of MichFest come in all stripes and many, many of them, many more than I’ve ever seen in the general population have mustaches.  





I’m not saying anything against mustaches on a woman.  At first, like 13 years ago, when I first went to MichFest I was scared,  I’ll admit. I was like, “Motherfucker, is this going to happen to me?”  But in the last 13 years I’ve truly come to admire women who wear their hair on their faces proudly.  Fuck society, that’s what I say.  But that’s not what it sounded like I was saying with this homo-hair-phobic comment my mother said.  But that’s not where I went sour.) 

Are there any lesbian dads out there?  (I put my hand over my eyebrows to shield the lights, but I couldn’t see if anyone was raising her hand.)

Is there anyone out there who has ever been lovers with a pregnant woman?  I need help with something.  (I couldn’t see any hands and I didn’t hear anyone cheer or acknowledge me at all.)

Okay, I think you guys are being shy, but if there are any lesbian daddies out there or women who have had a pregnant lover, please see me after.

When I was pregnant, I had a bionic nose.  If I were pregnant right now, I could tell what deodorant you were wearing. Yea you, in the back row.  Secret, Lavender Fresh.  

A strong sense of smell is some kind of pregnancy survival instinct.  I think it was originally intended to keep pregnant women from eating poison, but in modern society, it’s just gross.  

When Victoria got pregnant I was afraid she would go to kiss me and my breath would be so stinky to her she’d never want to kiss me again and so I’ve been brushing my teeth four times a day.  So far, so good.

But a few nights ago, I was lying in bed reading, naked, waiting for Victoria.  She got into bed and right away started sniffing everything.  

“Something stinks,” she said.  She smelled my hair.  She smelled her hands.  She smelled the candles I had lit to set the mood.  And then she flipped around and sniffed me like a dog.  

She jumped up lithe for a pregnant woman and made it to the toilet on time.  I lay in bed listening, waiting for her to finish.  I didn’t know whether to hold her hair or leave.  I mean, leave forever.         

In the morning I felt a little itchy and the good news is that I went to the gyno and I have a bacterial infection.  

THANK GOD.   

So I guess the moral of this story is pregnant women should not eat rotten pussy. I’ll stop there.

I thought of a beautiful moment I experienced at Michfest.  And I want to write about it because it was the type of moment that made me want to write a letter to all my friends.  A moment when I felt so inspired and so connected to the world that I wanted everyone I know to be there with me.

Every once in a while I get this feeling, sometimes it happens when I’m drinking a decaf mocha with whipped cream on top.  I feel warm and maybe a little buzzed from the caffeine (even in decaf) and the whipped cream tastes so good that I want to share my decaf mocha with all the people I love.  That’s what happened at MichFest.  


But before that, I was talking to Victoria on the phone, which is a real pain in the ass.  I walked about 15 minutes to this lame phone station and then waited my turn for a free phone and even though the phones were under a canopy, when I was there the sun was low so it was shining in my face and I hadn’t yet put on my sun screen so I was worrying about skin cancer and I had just woken up in my tent where if I had spent one more night I would have developed bed sores.  As it was my hips were black and blue.  Jeanne said her hips where bruised too. The ground seemed soft when we picked our spot, but dirt is no feather-top mattress.  

 This was my third morning at MichFest and I was on the phone complaining like this to Victoria and also whimpering a little bit about how much I missed her when she said, “Baby, have fun.”

 ”BABY, HAVE FUN.”

This is why I love Victoria.

 I walked back up the path and I was heading to lunch, since I had missed breakfast by hours, when out of nowhere, in the middle of the forest where tents were set up and women were sleeping or reading or playing hackysack, I heard my name.  Penny jumped onto the path and gave me a big, long hug.  

Penny is a very, very special woman in my life.  17 years ago, Penny and I biked across the country on the Reproductive Freedom Ride. We were a band of women and one man who, in 1991, biked across the country to tell the world that we could control our bodies.  





Penny was 50 and I was 23.  We both fell in love with women on that ride.

 I was planning to meet Penny at the mess tent, but there she was no where near the mess tent and right on my path.  She pulled me into the woods where there was a gathering of about 200 women from East Lansing, Michigan having their own concert.  The women at MichFest are so industrious.  There was a generator and sound system and amazing music by nervous but excited.  I sat on a little folding camping chair and told Penny it was all perfect, except I was really hungry.  So get this:  brunch was served.  Scrambled eggs and bacon all around.  

   



I listened to the music with 200 women and thought:  I’m having fun!

I got home on Sunday from ten days of Misery Loves Company.  I took My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy  to Michigan, Missouri, and Illinois and I gotta say, I like the Midwest.  I also gotta say that life on the road is a lot more fun without a 4-year-old.  I missed Tashi like crazy, but my days were so much easier, not having to worry about where to find a swing set.    

First stop was the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (MichFest 2008).  There were 3,500 women playing hackysack, topless.

 I didn’t play because I’m not that good at hackysack.  Of course, not all the women there played hackysack.  Just like not all the women were lesbians.  It’s true, I met two straight women.  One who called herself pomosexual.  That’s post-modern sexual.  I don’t quite know what that meant.  I’m thinking it’s something like taking a concept of sexuality she had from the past and reframing it to make something new.  I’m sorry I didn’t ask what her new sexuality is like.   MichFest is like New York City to me, only strictly feminine and sometimes naked.  There is so much going on, so many ideas and modes of expression, it exhausts me.  And then there are music stages, drum circles, anal sex workshops, breast casting, volleyball, campfires, the femme parade, the butch parade, sweat-lodges, and hackysack.

 I have too much going on in my head to deal with this much excitement.  Took me two days to acclimate and still I woke up looking like this: CRAZY TIRED.

 I wasn’t just crazy tired because my pillow was a jacket or because one of my tent mates was a giant spider, I was crazy tired because of all the hackysack.  Here’s a view of the spider taken from inside the tent.  She’s on the outside.

Here’s Jeanne, my other tent mate. 

 But there is beauty at MichFest.  The women there are the type of women who hug for a long time.  I told Victoria about the long huggers and she said, “We need more of that.” This is why I love Victoria. She’s right, but still, it took some getting used to.

I’d meet a woman, connect on some profound level and then we’d embrace.  My problem was I never knew when the hug was over.  For me, a hug was complete, I mean I was always fully satisfied, about twenty seconds too soon.  I’d pull back a little, maybe move my head slightly or slide back one foot, but my hugging partner never picked up on my cues.  

Those cues are subtle, I know, but before MichFest, I assumed these cues were universal.  Or at least universally American.  I can’t speak for other cultures.  But I was wrong. 

I met this wonderful deaf woman.  She was standing at the People Called Womyn Bookstore tent with her nose in a book when I said, “You’ve got to check out My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnacy.  It’s so funny.”  She ignored me.

I had said the same thing to about twenty women who were browsing books and about ten of those women actually bought My Mis. I did admit to all the women I spoke to that I was the author, and then I told them that I wasn’t the only one who thought it was funny.  I told them they could ask my mother.

Somehow, and I can’t remember how, it became clear to me that the woman ignoring me was deaf.  And then we started talking in my notebook.  Here’s our conversation:  

  

It was such a nice conversation especially for me at MichFest with all the noise.  It went on for a few pages in my notebook; so quiet.  And then we hugged for a very long time.

This is me on the Misery Loves Company World Tour.  I’m doing my kegels.