Now I'm just being catty.

So, as it turns out, all it took for the nausea to subside was to sit down at my computer and complain for ten minutes. I should have figured that catharsis would come easy, especially since caring about the lurking behavior of the person in question requires a level of energy that I just can't sustain... which is to say, I do not care. Not really. Even if I did entertain the brief urge to write a really unpleasant finger-pointing diatribe in which I exact my revenge and render the details of the whole sordid mess instantly and eternally findable by anyone with a working internet connection by repeatedly using the offender's full name.

That'll just be my private cackle for a rainy day. Or my ace in the hole. If you get my meaning.

But anyway, enough dwelling, because there are more important things going on here.


If you've been following my spastic posting on Tumblr, you may have noticed that a cat seemed suddenly to have appeared in my apartment, where there was no cat before.

Magic cat! Yes! Our apartment is now be-catted, but more importantly, my existence has been re-catted. Vivian Leigh, who long-time readers might remember from my early days of blogging, is back in the fold. And while she's been here for a couple months now, I haven't written about it, because it's taken this long for my rage over the situation to subside to the point where I can actually talk about it without turning into a heaving She-Hulk and busting out of the house -- and out of my underpants -- on a frothing quest for vengeance against those who sought to wrong my cat.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Pausing for a quick confirmation that my underthings are intact and I don't have any renegade veins popping out of my biceps...

Yeah, okay. We're good.

Vivian had been re-homed back when Brad and I moved in together, after we reluctantly concluded that she and the dog could not occupy the same space without tearing each other's faces off. (This is mostly the dog's fault. Okay, completely the dog's fault. And it's totally unfair that the sins of the golden retriever shall be visited upon the cat.) Shortly before we signed the lease, on my 25th birthday, my parents came down to the city for dinner -- and when they left, they took Vivian with them.

At which point I spent most of the evening of my 25th birthday crying uncontrollably, occasionally pausing between sobs to wail that I had abandoned Vivian Leigh and what if she was all alone and wondering why she didn't have a home anymore OH MY GOD. This went on for hours. (Our neighbors likely thought that I was having a seriously over-the-top reaction to Gone With the Wind.)

Of course, within a few weeks things worked out pretty well: Viv found a new home with a family friend, and I even got to see her occasionally when I went to visit my parents. And for three years, all was good, the knowledge that my cat was happy and well cared-for draping itself like a soft blanket of eternal comfort over my lingering guilt at having given her up.

And then, a couple months ago, a tiny hole appeared in the blanket -- in the form of the news that the family housing Viv needed to find a new home for her. Thinking I might be able to help, I asked to be kept in the loop...

...only to have the blanket rudely ripped off and shredded into tiny bits by knife-wielding samurai when my mother called a week later and told me she'd happened to run into a member of said family at the grocery store, and the following conversation had ensued.

Mom: Oh, have you found a home for Vivian?
Worst Person Who Ever Lived: We asked a couple people, but nobody wanted her... so we're putting her to sleep tomorrow.

Um, what? Let's pause here and heat up a snack, shall we? I'm thinking I'll have a nice big bowl of WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE.

Because really, you guys, I know it was great of this family to take my cat when I couldn't keep her... but she's still.
My.
CAT.

And common courtesy dictates that you do not kill another person's cat without at least checking to see whether that person might want the goddamn cat back.

MOTHERFUCKING GEEEEEEEZ.


A lot of screaming and a couple hundred miles later, Vivian was safely removed from the home of the people who wanted to murder her and back where she belonged.

Which, just in case I haven't been totally clear, is with people who don't want to fucking murder her.

This haughty bitch doesn't have the faintest idea how close she came to eating her last bowl of Friskies.

Ew, ew, ew.

Whenever people talk about the nature of blogging, invariably, the idea of a "window" comes up. It's a pretty decent comparison: Life as a house, the information we share on the internet as an opening in the wall. It's a controlled glimpse, and as long as you don't place the window in, say, your bathroom, you don't really mind much about the general public hanging around outside and peering in.

But the problem, to really drag out this extended metaphor, is that the not-so-general public can also peer in -- including friends from elementary school, and grandparents, and (and this is the kicker) outsiders who used to be anything but. Frenemies, exes, and others who used to live inside the House of Your Life but who you finally evicted a number of years ago because they pissed on the toilet seat and set fire to your cat.

Which is to say, people you'd hoped to thoroughly shut out will, years later, still keep tabs on you via your blog.

And by "you", I mean "me".

And by "people", I mean... well, no, I'm not naming names, but ugh.

Until last week, I'd forgotten this could even be a concern -- the way a person forgets about a wart once it's been frozen off. And while I've specifically angled my own inter-window so as not to display anything I consider private -- despite the profanity and personal anecdotes, there's nothing here I feel weird about showing to the world -- I'm thoroughly icked out by this one lousy individual, who is (figuratively) hanging around, looking in, and waving at me through the window even though I am (figuratively) calling the police, because it is (LITERALLY) extremely fucking creepy and weird.

And as it turns out, it doesn't do much for the whole "wanting to write" thing.

I'll be back when the nausea subsides.

Bits and parts.

Dear readers,
Thank you so, so much for your kind comments on the last post. There really aren't words to describe my excitement right now (or, I mean, there are, but they all sound like "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!") and though I rarely get mushy about blogging -- since nobody wants to come onto the internet and find themselves suddenly covered in the wet sticky mass of a complete stranger's FEELINGS -- I do feel unbelievably lucky to have had you all along for the ride. This week, I read back through my archives -- another thing I rarely do -- and felt a surge of emotional ohmygod when I realized that the thing I'd most hoped for when I wrote this post just under three years ago was finally, incredibly, a reality. At the time, a large part of me fully expected that this would never, ever work out, and I would end up starving and desperate and attempting to sell my body to make ends meet only to find that nobody wants a hooker with webbed toes and A-cup bongos.

So this is not just a thrill of the first degree, but also an incredible relief.

And now -- NOW! -- I can answer a handful of questions.

• The book is a YA novel, as in Young Adult, and will likely be aimed at older teenagers. (Of course, as previously demonstrated by the success of the Twilight series, that doesn't mean grownups can't read it.)

• It will be published by Dutton Young Readers, a division of the behemoth Penguin Group, in Spring of 2012.

• Unless they change it.

• Which I hope they don't; I am already seething with impatience.

• I'm not going to talk about the plot until I've got an official flap-copy blurb to share, but very generally speaking, it's about a tragedy in a small town and contains several hefty doses of sex, death, and intrigue.

So, there you have it.

Oh, and one more thing. Not that this has anything to do with the subject at hand, but...

• Yesterday I had my yearly gyno appointment, and while I was lying there, I noticed a box on a high shelf in the examining room that was labeled, "Spare parts".

I assume it was full of vaginas.

[insert unintelligible squealing here]

I should sit on this, but I just can't.

Could you?

No.

Because remember that big thing of which we do not speak?

We are speaking about it.

Specifically, we are speaking about a novel. Printed and hardbound and carrying my name. Coming within the next couple years to a bookstore near you.

Details when I have them, dear readers. In the meantime, I'll be running circles around my apartment, double-fisting a pair of brimming, bubbling champagne flutes, and screaming at the top of my mothereffing lungs.

The miracle of subtle marketing.

A long time ago, probably in the late 1970s, some not-so-bright douchebag decided that my neighborhood would be a really great place to erect a ton of billboards. I'm guessing that his decision was predicated on the fact that this part of Brooklyn is bisected by a major highway and home to a fair number of industrial docks, making it a daily pass-through point for thousands of susceptible people in desperate need of... well, whatever they like to sell on billboards these days.

And I'm guessing that it was in the late 1970s, because that seems to be the last time that anybody actually bought ad space on any of them.

Seriously, these things are OLD. If they're not hanging in tatters or faded by the sun to the point of unreadability, they're advertising something so hilariously outdated that it's probably not available anywhere, much less in the rapidly-changing landscape that is New York City. My favorite is the one for a gentleman's club -- so old that by now, all the girls pictured have probably traded in their pasties and pole dancing for geriatric shoes, midday bingo and occasional cackling swipes at the pool-boy's taut young buttocks.

Or rather, that was my favorite.

Because today, as I emerged from the local liquor store, this marvel of strategic marketing caught my eye.


Admittedly, this might be some smart advertising. This street is a thoroughfare for trucks -- and therefore, truck drivers, who may be more likely than most to drive around with their eyes peeled for a giant sign that says, "GOT HEMORRHOIDS?". Because after a lifetime of eating greasy roadside fare on the run, it's probably only a matter of time until you blow your asshole clean out.

Or so I would imagine.

But the real beauty of this sign isn't just in what it's selling, but how. I can just picture the design process.

Client: (looks at sign) Wow. This is great, Donald. It really is. Just great.
Designer: Thanks.
Client: It's just...
Designer: What?
Client: I just think we could sell it more.
Designer: Well, you know, it's very direct -- hemorrhoids, proctology clinic, the phone number...
Client: Yes... but still, it's like something's missing.
Designer: What do you mean?
Client: Well, look, Donald. I just don't think people will know that we're talking about butts. You know? We need something more, some pizazz, something that says...
Designer: Something that says, "butts"?
Client: Yeah. BUTTS. I want everyone to look at this sign, and no matter who they are, I want them to come away knowing -- we're talking about butts.
Designer: Well, I did have this one idea.


Ladies and gentlemen, let it be known: they are talking about butts.
And now, so are we.

Facebombed.

Without the daily refuge of an office job to offer me a little bit of social distraction -- even if only in the form of a cubicle neighbor who spends her lunch hour screeching un-ignorably about the who, what, and where-did-he-put-it of her latest hookup -- I am now spending an embarrassing amount of time on Facebook. It's a problem only compounded by the fact that I recently established an official profile for my alter-ego and now have to check the site multiple times per day in order to field her unending stream of friend requests, messages, and a hilarious newsfeed consisting of the meandering inside-jokey and hyperactive inner thoughts of 600 fourteen year-old girls.

Yeah, you heard me. SIX HUNDRED. That advice-giving trollop out-friended me on her second goddamn day of online existence.

I don't even want to think about the number of hours I've lost to Facebook -- tumbling down rabbit holes into the photo albums of friends-of-friends, or wall-stalking people back to last fall in order to find out exactly when they broke up with whatshisface, or giddily discovering that one of my high school's resident mean girls now looks like a potato. Sometimes I interact, but mostly, I just lurk.

Some comfort comes from the sneaking suspicion that at least some of these people are doing the same thing to me. But it's also a total blast, in that a lot of my former coworkers, classmates, and third-degree acquaintances have shed pretty much all evidence of their earlier college-common personas and are now leading seriously incredible lives.

The girlfriend I once bikini-wrestled in a kiddie pool full of chocolate pudding? Now a successful archaeologist with an adorable daughter.

The oft-drunk, odd wanderer from my freshman dorm? Now a bona fide Maine lobsterman with his very own boat.

The beautiful, lanky blond neighbor who wooed me with quoted passages from On the Road? Now a Catholic priest. (Which is equal parts incredible, weirdly sexy, and deeply disappointing. Probably because I have seen Quills too many times. Or because the gentleman in question had certain tools that just won't get the sort of use they deserve in the service of the Lord, if y'knowwhatimsayin. But I digress.)

But while many of my friends are very interesting Facebook spy-fodder, the voyeurism also always seemed really harmless in that I'd never come across anything that gave me pause. I'd never found myself worried for anyone's mental health or well-being; everyone, regardless of where and how and with whom they've lived over the past several years, seems to be doing so well.

Or at least, that was the case until I clicked my way into the photo album of a college friend who recently passed the bar exam, and found myself re- and re- and re-visiting a series of images while staring with deep concern at the screen, and thinking, "Oh. Oh nooooooo."

Because, and I don't think I can overstate this, something is really wrong here.

Am I overreacting? I don't think so. But you tell me, guys. You tell me, because I am going to show you the pictures in question.

Yes, I am.

Don't lecture me about privacy; you know you want to see them.

And this is some scary shit.

And frankly, I don't think the subject of these photos cares much about it one way or another.

Because...



I don't know what terrifies me most: the fact that my friend seems to have no compunction about shoving a camera in the face of a possibly-rabid possum, or the demon possum itself, or the inclusion of this photo series in an otherwise-innocuous album consisting of bar shots and closeups of burgers like some sort of photo-stalker's terrorbomb.

But if there's a lesson to be taken away from this, I'm guessing it's something about not being Facebook friends with lawyers.