She So Funny

This past Thursday, we lost our sweet, sweet boy to a massive heart attack.  He was an asshole to most, but, a loving baby to me and my husband.

By Lisa Harmon

by Helene Gresser

Okay, here's the deal: it's now 11:45 p.m., I had a great afternoon and evening with my cousins, walking and talking and seeing sights in NYC, and ultimately sitting at the Olive Tree Cafe on MacDougal (which is above my favorite comedy clurb, The Comedy Cellar) and talking about family secrets.

It's fascinating and revealing and refreshing and a relief, even with the darkest of revelations, to discover that we all had illusions and delusions and horrid stories and tear-inducing memories of our childhoods and parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins, as well as touching moments that stay with us, burned into our memory hard drives.

This is why I tell stories, and not jokes. Maybe I'm not really a stand-up so much as a storyteller who tries to find the humor in the darkest of tales from my life. It's what keeps me sane (or at least sane-ish,) and I believe that sharing these "oh my god TOO MUCH INFORMATION" stories can make us feel part of the human race, when there are times that one feels completely isolated and weird and alone in one's quirks and ugliness and neuroses.

It is now 11:56, and I fear that if I write more, that I will not be posting on my assigned day, but bleed over into Thursday's post slot and that would be unfair to the lovely goddess who deserves to have the Thursday slot free of my late blentry. More to come, next week, I promise.

I love my family. And my family of fellow comics. That is all.

-hmg

by Helene "Oh My GAWD What Day Is It???" Gresser

-hmg

My penis-free era is going strong.  My buddy advised me to find someone good enough and not to talk with them too much because there’d be a good chance the guy will be an asshole, I’ll get turned off, and that will end that.  He always makes me laugh.

Men and women often don’t even speak the same language.

Our self-images are often distorted.  We aren’t even starting out on equal footing.

There is a married man I’d like to date IF he were single.  He’s passionate, unafraid, smart, not threatened by intelligent and willful women, and has a wonderful sense of humor.  That would be my man Joe.

I saw my ex recently as he and our son took the dog out for an afternoon.  I try to do my very best to keep things civil for our son’s sake.

I find that for some straight men, they are totally defined by not being a woman and not being gay.  It’s ironic because ‘woman’ means ‘not a man,’ yet we don’t spend all day grabbing our tits or checking our ovaries to make sure we didn’t suddenly lose them and become a man while we were distracted.  Maybe it’s the ones I meet, maybe they see me and get overly testosteroney, I don’t know.  In all fairness, I had a woman once falling in love with me and she was like that too.  I must draw them out.  I still have learning and growing to do.  I do know this.

There was a man who I had some fire with, it seemed, but something was awfully lacking.  He’s a smart person and passionate, yet he seemed to have a gap in his growth regarding the opposite sex.  (I know, I know, some of you are thinking yeah, yeah, what’s the point, they all have that gap.)  This gap was bigger than what I am/was accustomed to.  My ex-husband was sexually compatible with me.  Not humanly compatible, so sex ended, but for the years we had it, it was typically very good for both of us.  (If he ever reads my blogs, no matter how much else I might say, he’d feel very proud that I give him and his dick some credit for their performance.)  Anyway, this guy with the serious gap was only an on-line acquaintance.  So anything sexual was via the written word.  I don’t use a webcam or Skype.  I still like not having to look good to be in my living room.  
There are some things that were good the way they were.  The first time we spoke on the subject, I was quite displeased.  As time went on and after voicing what I found so distasteful, I thought maybe it was like a bad first time.  Like someone having a premature ejaculation or something.  His mind jumped too fast.  I let a second chance happen.  He began too far down the road.  I asked him to start earlier in the story.  He got defensive, we argued, that ended that.  I thought there was hope for the third and final time.  He knew I had wine and he told me to pour a glass.  I did and let my guard down to some degree, getting all cozy for what I expected to be a good time.  He spent too much time on what I consider silly and it felt uncomfortable and not sexy – names and checking with me if he may call me this and that, names I don’t find fitting or natural.  It felt like he was uncomfortable and worried about offending me.  But he worried about the wrong things.  He went from pet names to insertion.  Whoa.  I said, “You are skipping over everything I might like.”  He told me to pour more wine.  Wine is good, but it isn’t lubrication.  You’d think he’d have read some articles or a book or something, but it felt like he learned from male-made porn films.  In those, we are not real humans.  The first time I watched male-designed porn, I really gagged and I cried.  The second time, I just sat puzzled at how this could turn anyone on.  Basically a woman drives into a gas station, and then she’s having sexual intercourse with the worker or rather he's just doing it to her.  No anything.  Just gets out of the car and his dick is in her.  It was the only sense I could make of his gap.  I tried to work with the guy.  I said cock was not yet welcome.  Many would have picked up on the 'yet.'  It just wasn't going to work.  He’s talking wine, and I’m thinking, “Wine?! I fuckin’ need chloroform!”

I guess I feel compelled to mention April Fool's Day because, well, it's April Fool's Day.

Here's one of my early experiences with April Fool's Day, in which someone fooled me.  I wrote a Haiku about it circa 1981.