Define explicit...

Working backwards morally:

Actual job posting Lauren found on Craig's List:

Clean apartments in your bikini make $100+/hr (Downtown)

Looking for atractive females with beautiful figures to entertain wealthy clients by cleaning there apartments in sexy outfits. All of our clients are screened and have background checks. No explicit activity involved.

Yeah. OK. The author of this also works part time as a Princeton grammarian. But we have all been there. Desperate. I confess that I considered being a product representative, passing out shots of some new alcohol mixed with caffeine and pomegranate to guys whose 'game' includes questions about your 'other life' when your wearing a mid-rift tank top, wearing enough makeup to protect your face from a nuclear explosion and hope the disguise would work if a business suit from college walks into the bar saying, "Oh I was just taking those Creative Writing courses for fun." "Oh you majored in English?" "How did that working out? Still writing?"


I never did it. But MJ did. He was Captain Morgan. In an alternate universe, I actually met him while being a Captain Girl. A Bucaneerette, if you will.. And he courted me with his pirate accent and his mysterious fake beard. We stole a bottle, got drunk, and ended up married the next day, which was annulled because of false identities. He is not actually, "The Captain," as was written on the marraige certificate, and my name is not "Tennille." But love kept us together, and we created some prevarication for the kids.



Better than meeting outside Randall Balmer's Religious History class at Barnard? I don't know. But the latter brings us once step closer to Stephen Colbert:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Holy Water Under the Bridge - Randall Balmer
www.colbertnation.com
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Earlier that Easter Sunday...

The 15th Street Religious Society of Friends

My first meeting. I overdressed, even though Michael said simplicity was paramount to these people. I thought my stilettos and red lipstick would somehow be apropos. Maybe it's all that Roman Catholic/High Anglican pomp I grew up with.

Basically you sit on these wooden pews (I can't believe they make pews more uncomfortable than the Grace Church pews I grew up with. What factory in Dante's Inferno makes those bloody things) and everyone faces each other and you sit for an hour in silence. Some people were meditating with their eyes closed, others were turning at every noise and checking out other congregants. Others were ostensibly sleeping. Occasionally someone would stand up and say something, which would invariably cause someone to jump in shock of the broken silence. I find this occurrence extremely funny, so that part was hard for me. People talked about non-violence A LOT. I give the coffee hour a 7. Not as good as the Pure Land temple on 105th and Riverside, but there was some amazing cranberry walnut bread. The people were interesting, but they always are when you drop into a religious environment like that. Besides there is a certain type of person who always volunteers him or herself for the welcoming committee, and they usually have colorful personalities. Despite that, I think I may have stood out. Thanks to my Latino heritage, it is hard to separate the religious experience from tambourines, the apogee of modern religion.

But the Quakers accept everyone, even JEWS and AGNOSTICS! And they don't hate homosexuals. So that makes them the best sect of Christianity in the world.



MJ and I talked about religion for hours afterward. We brainstormed on our "most religious experiences." We agreed on running. There is a euphoric point during an unexpected run where the body disappears and so does our boundary with our surroundings. Sometimes I feel myself running into the molecules in the air in front of me. But I do not brandish them, rather, I meld into them. It usually tingles in the scalp at this point. I also get a similar feeling in dance, but there is also a connection to the people around me, which can be insanely powerful. I think number one however is hiking. Hiking in the Hudson Valley region. With Daphne. And that deserves its own post.