I Am Leslie Lange

Can you spell your last name?

I called my mortgage company today to get some tax info, and the customer service rep says, "Can you spell your last name?"

I say, "Sure. I've been spelling it my whole life."

Nothing Is Ever Just 99 Cents

The other day, my housekeeper, asked me to buy myself some hangers. "It will be easier, you know, to hang up your clothes."
So, as I was roaming Desperate Hot Springs, running to the bank, avoiding off-leash pit bulls with my car, etc... I happened to see a sign for a new local 99-cent store. Juana is going to be so proud of me, I thought. I didn't waste money on expensive hangers from Walgreen's.

It takes courage to enter any 99-cent store, because, you know, there's no such thing as a free lunch, freedom isn't free, and nothing is ever just 99 cents. The last time I went, there was a fight at the cashier's station--a fight that lasted a long long time. Hence, the discount was offset by the time wasted, and by that I mean the years taken off my life at the stress of being exposed to a large blotchy-faced white guy (the customer) yelling at a petite, clear-complexioned black woman (the cashier) who told him, "Get out my face you dumb m$#%&." (She was clearly worried about catching his blotchiness.) There was also the time the price of cheap goods was a wait behind this guy whose elbow had a tennis ball-sized open sore, complete with stench and small insects. Would I have paid a few cents more not to have had my face all up in that? Actually, I'd have paid a hell of a lot more--and I work in a hospital.

But all these things were forgotten as I plunged into this new 99-cent establishment. This was going to be different because I was in D-Town. Everything is so crappy in D-Town, I figured the 99-cent store would be actually upscale. So I went in and it was true. The aisles were clean, organized, the shoppers respectful and free of sores. The cashier spoke naught but Spanish, but, hey, that's OK. I'm a proud multilingual (can offend in any tongue). I was so happy to get my three sets of 5 maroon hangers for $2.97 plus the tiny bit of tax.

Then I exited the store.
And there she was.
There she was, pushing what looked to be a baby stroller from K-mart.

She was grubby and there may have been a baby in the stroller, but the stroller was draped in blankets. What kind of blankets? Grubby blankets. There may have been nothing underneath those blankets but a grubby stuffed baboon. Still, the implication was: a baby out in 100-degree weather. She asked me for some change, mumbling something about being out of gas. I gave her several dollars, enough dollars to buy 15 hangers from Bed, Bath & Beyond.

Then I got in the car. Did I think, Gee, I'm glad I was able to help another human being? No, instead, I thought this: Once again, I have not saved money at the 99-cent store. In fact, I spent more money and received lesser quality items.

Once home, I complained about this to Juana. She said, "Oh, but you didn't lose that money because God was watching, and you will be rewarded for this, you know, because He sees everything." This made me feel better, not because I think God is watching me and keeping records, but because Juana is watching..and now maybe she'll forgive me for that big dildo I left in the dishwasher last week. Or maybe she was reminding me, in her own subtle way, that God saw the dildo too.

How to Waste a Perfectly Good Morning

1. Get up early. You’ve got a lot you don’t want to accomplish.

2. Go online and check your e-mail. Read, but don’t answer any of the personal ones. For now, they are merely measures of how well-liked you are.

3. Police your spam. If you are getting a lot of it, use this to heighten your sense of “life spinning out of control.”

4. Check your other e-mail account, the one that hooks you up with MySpace and Facebook. Find out who wants to be your friend. On MySpace, take a time-consuming personality quiz. On Facebook, get sucked into some word game or whatever. Your scores will determine if you’re a genius or a moron (there is no in-between). Play against a friend. If you win, feel superior. If you lose, look for some excuse, and fight back your tears.

5. Check your weight six times: before and after exercising, before and after eating, and before and after pooping. Use these statistics to determine an overall sense of self-worth.

6. Check your book’s Amazon rank. Compare this rank to rankings of your imaginary friends and rivals. Next, check the rank of a literary masterpiece no longer widely read, and if it is lower than your own, think, Yes! I am greater than Henry James!

7. Check your blog to see how many hits it got since your last post.

8. Pet and baby talk your dogs. Tell them the things you really want to hear. Things like, “How could you be so pretty? Huh? Just how could you be so pretty?”

Tasty Nagel Print

"What's a tasteful Nagel print?" you ask.
Well...here's one that's tasteful and tasty.

[note the sexy mullets on these two babe-a-liciouses]

Mullet Memories

Early on in my coming out phase--and no, not when I was 3, but around 1986 or so when I had just turned 21--in the rainy and depressing city of Portland, Oregon, my self-described upper middle-class girlfriend, Blair, said to me, when I proposed one day getting a flat-top for fun, "As long as you don't get one of those awful lesbian haircuts...you know, the ones where the hair is short in front and long in back."

[FYI, she had a little hair tail when I met her]

That was a lesbian haircut? I created a mental checklist, searched my memory banks for the women lounging at Bar 927* where my last gf had bartended, and a little light went on--aha! She was right! Moments later, another light went on: as I was imagining my own hairstyle about two years earlier. For shame!

Blair went on: "That has got to be the UGLIEST hairstyle I have ever seen. Whenever I see one, I cringe. It makes me ashamed to be a lesbian. In fact, it's the very thing about lesbianism I DO NOT want to be associated with."

Of course, part of me was thinking Blair was being a bit mean. But another part of me was thinking Blair was giving some good information. After all, Blair was artsy and sophisticated. She'd taught me how to use my silverware. She'd taught me only low-class people lived in apartments with wall-to-wall carpeting. She'd eased me out of polyester and into 100% cotton. Her insights were invaluable, infallible, and respecting them got me laid. My decision was easy: I adopted a disdain for all things mullet.

Years later, a friend tried introducing me to "The Indigo Girls," but I took one look at their album cover and said, "Um, no thanks." He tried playing their music for me ("just listen to these lyrics"), but all I heard was, "Mull-et, mull-et, mull-et."

Now, however, I am over it.

I am not afraid of the mullet. I EMBRACE THE MULLET!

Join me, my sisters! Free yourself from class-based shame!

Send your mullet photos to leslie@leslielange.com. I will post them. I WILL FLY YOUR MULLET FLAG! We'll get though this together.

* the rougher lesbian bar of two in Portland. The other was called "The Primary Domain" and its lavender walls wore tasteful Nagel prints.

Doggie Haiku

Prehistoric gaze
scooter pulling wrinkle dogs
noble worry-warts

Holy Mugilidae!

The definition of a mullet per Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th Edition): "any of a family (Mugilidae) of valuable chiefly marine food fishes with an elongate rather stout body"

OK, I don't know if I'm crazy or what...but, how can your body be both elongate and stout?

But then again, how can your hair be both elongate and short?

Wait. Oh, my God...is that it?

One further mystery: just how valuable are these food fishes? And how can I get my hands on some nice mullet-stacked mutual funds?

[Below...what appears to be a rather stout lesbian sporting an elongate rather stout mullet]

Mullified2

OK, so no one thought I had even close to a mullet at Pride. Turns out gf and I were suffering from "lesbian mullet hypersensitivity syndrome," wherein short-haired (or even fairly short-haired) lesbians and their friends and girlfriends, fairly freak when they see even the slightest wisp of a hair inching its way down the back of the neck.

It's time we all joined hands to fight this disorder. Start by sharing your own mulletophobic story with your friends--analyze how shame played a part in leading you to loathe only the mullet at first, but gradually yourself, and your own wisps of hair, even your own lesbianism.

Sigh.

Soon I will share my own sad story.

And a picture of myself when I used to have a real mullet.

The Cat

Right now, as I sit here typing, a very cute cat is walking back and forth across my hands, artfully stepping over my forearms, tightroping along the tiny edge of desk in front of the laptop's keyboard, and running her tail along my upper lip, which is to say up under my nose. The cat's name is Maisie and she's filled with love for me, and I for her...except for one problem: I am allergic.

Weird Search of the Moment

"new anaesthesia lesbian story"

It's true...lesbians are famous for discovering new anaesthesias, as many pursue the pleasure of "going under" on a fairly regular basis.