Straight No Chaser

Cor

1. you are in the witness protection program and must invent a new first, last, and middle name. what's your new name?
i just realized that, on top of everything else, i inadvertantly but completely blew off my conference with dean baxter this morning. i think it was scheduled for this morning. equally likely it was yesterday morning. either way, i didn't show, because i didn't write the time down anywhere, and i've been tired. especially this morning, after less than three hours of sleep. i am really really fucking up, as shannon. hopefully janet september depp will do better.

2. you are in a threesome with two famous people, one male and one female, alive or dead (hopefully they're at least alive in the fantasy).
they aren't. i want to get it on with the corpses of cleopatra and marc antony, because to do that i'd need to be granted access to their tombs, which i would promptly relieve of all noteworthy riches.

3. you are in charge of naming your new band. what's the name of the band? what's the name of their first album?
"public indecency," cunnillatio. catchy, right?

4. you are going to get a free tattoo. what and where is it?
speaking of tattoos, i got a merit badge today. i am officially a perpetrator of trifling smut. it was only a matter of time, i guess. my free tattoo will be a dark reddish stain on the side of my neck, lip-shaped, and i will wear it proudly.

5. you are being forced to listen to one song over and over, ad infinitum, as a form of torture. what song is it?
this isn't such a stretch, because that's approximately the same situation i have going right now. elton john's "tiny dancer," which, though excellent for manufacturing almost famousesque charter bus bonding moments, gets more and more draggy each time melony starts it over. freshman year, treesje and i worked out a system, because our musical tastes did not mesh. i got even-numbered hours, she got odd. that shouldn't have had to happen with melony, because she is eclectic and a jazz buff, but alas, she is also an l.a. lady, and in one minute i'm going to insist upon reinstatement of the system.

6. you are leaving your state/province. what state do you move to?
i'm going home to maryland, damn it. i hate atlanta.

7. you are leaving your country (remember, you're in the witness protection program). what country do you move to?
i love when writers write about writing. i am insanely jealous of the as-yet embryonic nanos gestating all over the site. when one novelist announced his pregnancy, i was like damn, this is going to be the most beautiful baby ever born under the sign of sagittarius. he's having some problems, hormone surges and such, afraid he's going to miscarry, trying to find a heartbeat and a connection. i don't care, i say he's glowing, and i want to be there for the quickening. and i don't want to leave the country, i'm going home to maryland.

8. you get to choose one book as the best ever written. what book do you choose?
melony has taken the initiative to start cleaning my side of the room. i'm the one closer to the door, because she got here first and wanted the big window; she has to step over my shoes and papers to get in and out, which is not my fault because she chose first. it bothers her that i put things in piles instead of throwing them away. it bothers her that i keep a pair of flip-flops by the door for showers. it bothers her that my anvil-sized shakespeare textbook always finds its way out into the center of our connective walkway. so i came in this evening, after what can only be described as the longest day ever, and she was down on her knees, scanning through my papers, determining which ones were "important enough to save." i picked up my timeworn copy of arabian nights, the best book ever written, and brought it down hard over her head. it's been too long a day.

9. you get to choose one movie as the best ever made. what movie do you choose?
charlie and the chocolate factory will be released to dvd next tuesday. do other movies exist?

10. you get to spend one day each as a bird, an insect, and a mammal. what bird would you be? what insect? what mammal?
the only reason i'm not writing a novel, this month, is because of the insane amount of work professors crowd into the second half of the semester. i have twenty-four pages of academic writing to do by monday afternoon, meaning no novel-writing would get done this weekend, or probably the week after, and a month is really not a long time when homework and other extraneous shit consumes your life. if i were an american bald eagle, i'd fly a low circuit through poacher territory and hope someone clipped me to decorate the elk lodge. if i were a bumblebee, the kind that dies when its innards come out with the stinger, i'd rev my engine and immediately sting the shit out of officer gary bowden. if i were a human, i'd tie my things up in a green bandanna and hitchhike to juneau.

11. you must choose to go blind or go deaf. which do you choose?
both, so that when i am a tremendous success, everyone will know i must be a genius.

12. you must relive one year of your life. which would you least like to relive? which would you most like to relive?
i could not be thirteen again. i'd like to relive the first year, if i could be cognizant through it, because apparently my parents got along then, i was an only child, people gave me gifts...life was good.

13. you have a time machine that will take you backwards anywhere from 1800 to the present. what decade do you most want to visit?
new chapters of "in the closet"!!! thank god!!! dear god, make me a bird, so i can fly far, far away from here, back to the seventies, perhaps, when pedophiles went to jail instead of producing seven million installments of tuneless inanity.

14. you must choose to go skydiving or very-deep-sea-diving. which do you choose?
"Campbell Leilani" . see items 1 and 3 of "three things that scare you." obviously i will be skydiving.

15. you get to return to the past (using that handy dandy time machine we were talking about before) and have a sexual encounter with a rock star who is no longer alive. who do you pick?
i pick bob marley, who, though not technically a rock star, is musical and phallic enough to count. he's got something like twenty-five children scattered about; i'd make it twenty-seven. i associate him strongly with sex, probably because one of my earliest physical experiences was the same year they released all those technoized versions of "sun is shining." he would smell like ganja. he would give me diseases. he would sleep with all my friends and female cousins. he would make me move to kingston. i would love him endlessly anyway, and make him repeat, over and over, "to the rescue, here i am!"

16. you get to be a contestant on any game show, airing today or in the past. what show do you want to be on?
i could kill myself about the baxter thing. i was doing so well, with her, even after the whole midterm debacle. she wrote me a recommendation for my summer internship, freshman year, and for my tutoring job, and would probably have continued to say only glowing things about me if i weren't so continually fucking up. i am continually fucking up. i am a fuckup.

17. you are given one million dollars but you must give it all to one charity. what charity do you choose?
i guess the united negro college fund, because it has helped and will help a lot of my relatives, and i'd trust the officials to allot the money responsibly. the christian children's fund only donates like eighty cents to every dollar. most other ones are even worse. but i'd much rather spend the million in installments, using different amounts wherever i saw fit.

18. you must ban one word from the dictionary and all usage, to be no longer uttered or written. what word do you ban?
"miasma."

19. you can have one hundred million dollars tax free but if you take it, you'll die at the age of fifty. do you take it?
no, because it would be just my luck, i'd drop down dead at my kid's graduation, or something. i know i'm not guaranteed fifty years anyway, but at least this way i don't have to know the end is coming.

20. you know this chick with too much time on her hands who sits and invents quizzes instead of working. do you tell her to get a life?
instead of a novel, i might write a couple of vignettes, to make myself feel better. it's been a bad day, a bad night and a bad week; i think i have a government quiz tomorrow; i'm going to barf if i keep thinking about baxter; my real-life threesome would consist of marcus, strange and myself (am i a lesbian because i love her so???); today on the phone my dad gave me the sex lecture, eight or nine years too late; i have been bad bad horribly bad this week and it's about time for a break already.