WHEN I WAS YOUNG

There are things in our past that in a just world could vanish from our record if only we had gone to traffic school. I’m speaking, of course, of mistakes of misspent youth, inebriated confessions, impulsive leaps of faith and above all else, mercenary romances whose tactics, though foul, yielded expedited rewards.

Those of us blessed with the fairer features favored by the rougher sex have been taught from a young age to leverage our gifts toward gain. In a rigged world dominated by men, guile and deception are countenanced by the asymmetrical circumstances that govern professional hierarchies.

As my mom, who was second to none in the feminist department, used to say: “If you got it, flaunt it!”

I guess what I’m doing here is a bit of retroactive penance. I’ve come a long way since those callow, calculated days of crass careerism. Now that I’m an accomplished woman, an artist of undeniable merit and a mentor to a new generation of young women making their way in the world, I’ve come full circle. Judge us by our merits on a level playing field and sisters, don’t stab one another in the back!

There’s always going to be those who want to crush us and diminish us and reduce us to that demeaning condition of mascot and eye-candy. But I say, let’s come clean, admit our past indiscretions and move on from a position of strength and self confidence.

So here goes.

As most of my readers know, my career was, to say the least, facilitated by my notorious liaison with the French artist Currado Malaspina. At the time, rumors, though true but nonetheless vicious, circulated in the art world that I was something of a “kept woman.” I admit that I pursued this romance for practical reasons and I endured the indignity of acting as an exotic accessory in order to further my ambitions.

Malaspina has recently published a few images in advance of an illustrated memoir to be published by Gallimard in the fall of 2017. It’s a masterstroke of a French publicist and a young social media maven and this highly anticipated publication has already aroused the interest of a few key players in Hollywood.

Fine.

But the best way to head off a scandal is to meet it head on (or so my publicist and my young social media maven have advised). Here are a few of the images that are trending and I’m sure there will be more as time moves on. Make of them what you will but be sure that I fully intend to publish a powerful countervailing narrative that will flip the scales in favor of empowerment!!

 I have to admit, the old guy does have talent …

BITCHES AND HO PECCATO

Long before it fell back into fashion I always had a weakness for beards.

When I kiss a guy, I love the feel of rough crushed rock rubbing against my cheek. I love the bristle and the brine that spew like a broken pipe from a really hairy man. A face pitted like pumice carries the brutal remnant of First Man and it turns me on and I love it!

But hipsters with the man-buns and the unibomber beards make me feel like a mommy. These guys who just a few years ago were puking in their girlfriend’s laps after too many Jaegermeister martinis leave me as cold as a jello shot. It feels like dress-up on Halloween. Just look at their delicate hands with their gentle calluses that speak of their long hard nights at Starbucks tapping on their laptops.

No, give me the grizzled guttural visage of an unaffected stiff with a tool belt and not some prancing dude in a fedora. 

Give me a real man and I’ll show you what sin is all about!

MY KANT

Why is it that every man that wants to sleep with me invokes the categorical imperative?

Well, not every man, just married men – young guys treat moral philosophy like Medicare, something nice that’s best deferred till later.

I have a friend, an older gentleman, who visits me in the summer because he loves the beach.

 

He never wears a bathing suit and if he takes off his socks and rolls up his pant legs it’s as if he went skinny dipping at Woodstock. I like him precisely because he is eccentric for how many true eccentrics are still around?

Sure, you have your nut-jobs – especially in Los Angeles – but the cultivated original is a breed apart.

Anyway, this friend, who refuses even to be photographed, would like nothing more than to make love to me and for some mischievous reason I adamantly refuse. As Robert Musil pointed out in an age where poetic ideas still mattered, an amorous woman is far more clever than a man of character.

Since my friend is married – I don’t think it’s too much of a betrayal to say that he lives in Paris and he is in his early 60’s – one could plausibly argue that adultery might deviate from the Kantian idea of universal law.

But it’s funny because nearly every married dude I go out with can come up with some marvelous refutation of this fairly basic premise. Complete fidelity to one’s wife, I’m told, falls under the category of “imperfect duty” and therefore its moral imperative is somewhat hazy.

Still, I argue, these circumstantial duties are no less binding. This infuriates my brainy suitors and it is especially infuriating if I’m wearing a bikini.

Men are swindlers and women know this. The metaphysics of morals must be argued persuasively if I’m going to consider dropping my panties.

These guys think that if they can theoretically legislate a universal principle, some maxim of scruples, some normative code of behavior than I’ll melt into their arms like some velle brutum. But fellas, I have news for you, determinism and debauchery are a thorny pair!

So every summer my European friend returns to his wife tanned and disappointed.

These guys should try Wittgenstein.

A little silence can go a long way.

LET’S GET (PARA)PHYSICAL – PHYSICAL

Though I’ve lived in California for over fifteen years I’m still fairly conservative when it comes to crackpot anti-intellectualism.

I’ve alienated many a fair-weather friend when subjects come up like hypnotherapy, transubstantive biofeedback, mirrored manifestation, wet yoga, large group awareness training, fluoride, magnetic healing, reverse flow temporality, atavistic clearing, auto-immune sweat lodges, sensory discs, hydrolactose intolerance or designer neurons.

Not that I’m closed minded. I’ve flirted with any number of personal effectuation fads.

I’ve walked barefoot on shards of zinc on a scalding beach in Maui in order to “come to grips with my delicate fears.” (price tag $1299, not including air fare and hotel). I’ve chanted with Yogi Yoma Arikhta looking for my under-utilized chakras. I even attended a three day confidence building seminar, a sort of Woodstock Festival for short people where everyone was required to take to the podium and deliver an elevator-pitch rodomontade describing three highly marketable skills.

I tend to fall on the practical side of the paranormal. In other words, if I’m going to stare at my navel it better reflect later on in my bank account. I once took a course on Zen Dating where we were trained to detach from any expectation of romantic affinity or even basic companionability. It worked great but after a while I started seeing the “blissful vacuum of detachment” as simply boredom and as we all know, everything falls apart once you stop believing.

I recently downloaded a Transmigration of Souls app for my I-phone  and I have to say I love it. It’s sort of like having an outer scrolling experience in the comfort of your own home.

The way it works is that you type in the name of some dead person – it could be a friend, a relative, a celebrity or an historical figure – and you enter the decade and century in which they died. Within seconds they give you a complete CV of all their incarnations and even speculates on their future. I got the deluxe $6.99 version so on mine you can even find out about people who are still alive.

I did myself, of course.

Apparently I used to be Thucydides’ niece, a salamander, a eunuch in the court of Song Taizo and most recently a flight attendant on the Hindenburg.

Honestly, I don’t believe the Hindenburg thing for a second!

LIFE IS HELL

Sometimes the best ideas are the most obvious.

I wrote a book. I thought that the premise of the book was brilliant and that there was no other book like it. I was sure that if I put the manuscript in the hands of the right publisher the book would be an instant best seller.

It’s a “self-help” book and granted, the book had something of a niche market but still, in the right context and with the right promotion I was sure that the book would cross over into a much wider readership.

I got an agent and together we pitched the idea to at least fifty different outlets. I didn’t want to self-publish because I find that route a bit too desperate and a bit too vain.

I have a folder buried in my computer with each and every rejection email I received. Most were your standard sort of brush off but a few were actually encouraging so I decided to soldier on.

And then it hit me.

Europe!!

Of course, the final frontier! Unlike the United States, Europe isn’t saturated with “How to Live a Better Life” type books. In places like Italy, France and Spain people are too busy living to be fretting over whether they are sufficiently empowered or not.

I asked my friend Currado Malaspina to take a look at my manuscript. He made a few suggestions and changed a word or two here and there and within a month he translated the whole thing.

He even hired one of his interns to illustrate it!

The book is coming out in the fall but there’s already quite a buzz around it.

New York Times Best Seller List …. embrasse mes fesses!

SURVIVAL OF THE FITNESS (TRAINER)

“Sorry, I’m busy.”

If I had a shekel for every time I said that in the past year and a half I’d be as flush as Maecenas.

I am so slammed with work, professional obligations and ‘personal development’ workshops that I barely have time to eat. I haven’t read a book since The Corrections, I don’t know Breaking Bad from Lassie and I’ve long since lost track of whether we’re on the Sunni or the Shiite side of the global jihad.

But I have to say it’s been worth it!

Honestly, the only feet I’ve stepped on in the process have been those belonging to the inconsequential.  Really –  just the bunions of the minions. The people I’ve lost by my frenzied absorption in DahliaWorld have been the people I can honestly do without.

 I recommend this cold-blooded exercise in salubrious social censorship!

If you’ve ever wondered who those people are who are truly important to you, fill your calendar till it looks like an extra-inning scorecard and pay attention to who you end up making time for.

You may be surprised by what you find out.

I had lunch the other day with the brother of my chiropractor. A really cute, young guy who wants to go back to school to get an MFA in sculpture.

It was fun!

Last week there was a reception at the Hammer for this editor of a small Italian art magazine. All the significant Los Angeles art writers were there.

I couldn’t miss that one.

There was a four day Tax Deductions for Artists seminar at the Japanese/American Cultural Center downtown which I went to reluctantly but turned out to be a pretty decent networking opportunity.

On Friday I’m having drinks with the directors of the Paso Robles Art Fair. Sounds silly but you never know to where something like that may lead.

On the other hand, I haven’t spoken to my mother for four glorious months. My niece Jessica had her fourth birthday party last weekend and I really had every intention of going but this guy at my gym was having a yard sale and I promised I would help him out.

You really can’t do everything and besides, I have to think of my well-being. If I said yes to everybody I literally would never get any rest.

I’ve had this on-again, off-again thing with the artist David Schoffman. He’s a really nice guy and he always takes me out to these really highbrow performances and lectures. Up until a few years ago I could pretty much keep up with him and have a decent time.

 Now, I’m afraid, it all just puts me to sleep.