Salon.com > Lily Burana

When we were strippers

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 00:30:00 +0000

They came from a trashy store on Hollywood Boulevard, the shoes, but the first sight of them spun me back to an infamous strip club in San Francisco. Clear Lucite platform heels -- a stripper wardrobe staple, they were comfortable and, in a sleazy way, quite practical. But it was the pink glitter accented with the sparkling white heart appliqué that sold me. They looked like something an O'Farrell girl would wear.

The Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre, in San Francisco's rundown Tenderloin district, was most widely known as a post-Flower Power bohemian hangout, where Hunter S. Thompson and other margin-dwelling luminaries would drop by to smoke pot and play cards with owners Jim and Artie Mitchell. I was never invited into the boss's office with Jim and Artie, though -- Jim was in prison for killing Artie with a rifle blast by the time I signed on to dance there.

When I started to believe in ghosts

Sat, 30 Oct 2010 00:30:00 +0000

I've only once woken up screaming. It was because I'd seen a ghost.

About 10 years ago, I was lying in the bedroom of my house in Cheyenne, Wyo., an old place that used to be workmen's lodging down by the Union Pacific railroad station. I wasn't in a deep sleep, more like that murky in-between state as slumber comes in for a landing. I opened my eyes halfway. In the doorway of the bedroom, a young man stood staring at me. Was he 15? Was he 20? Dressed in work clothes from the 1930s, of humble posture, he was there -- I will never forget those eyes -- yet I could see straight through him. Frightened to my core, I sat up, screaming until my boyfriend shook me. "What? What?"

"There was a boy over there! He was standing right there."

"No one else is here but us," he told me. "You were dreaming."

But I wasn't. The shock and fear left me shaking, but most disturbing was the physical sensation. I hadn't just seen this ghost boy; I had felt him. Sorrow, loss, loneliness. It was as if he was saying, I'm lost. Help me. I need to be seen.

I kept the bathroom light on all night for a month, maybe more, my eyes trained on that doorway. If I was going up the stairs in the dark, I would climb quickly, two steps at a time, as if someone, or something, was chasing me.

Anne Rice can leave Christianity, but I’m staying

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 18:01:00 +0000

"God" is a loaded word. "God" is a loaded gun. Of all the taboo talk points — sex, politics, religion and money, it's God that clears the room quickest. But earlier this week, when the subject came up on the Facebook page of beloved Gothic novelist Anne Rice, it drew a sizable crowd.

"Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out," Rice wrote.

I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being "Christian" or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious and deservedly infamous group. For 10 years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else ... In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

Stalking Dr. House

Tue, 29 May 2007 15:20:00 +0000

I confess: I don't get George Clooney. He's a looker, yes. A talent and a wit. But still, no. Ditto other obvious celebrity-crush choices like Johnny Depp, Justin Timberlake, Denzel Washington, Colin Farrell, David Beckham, Dylan McDermott, Taye Diggs and John Mayer.

When I crave a little fantasy, I dream about a 6-foot-2 fuzz-face with a posh English accent and a penchant for New Orleans blues and the Triumph Bonneville. Who's this, you say? Why, none other than the latest inductee into the Order of the British Empire, actor Hugh Laurie, aka Dr. Gregory House, lead curmudgeon on Fox's medical drama "House," which closes out its third season Tuesday night.

The rise and fall of Jack Ryan

Sat, 26 Jun 2004 17:24:00 +0000

Politics is a cruel mistress. If Jack Ryan were a masochist instead of an exhibitionist, he might be having the time of his life right now. The 44-year-old Illinois Republican is the latest politico to taste scandal's lash, and it's left the poor guy battered and bruised. In fact, the multimedia drubbing has cost the Harvard-educated aspirant and millionaire his senatorial bid: Friday, the AP announced that he has withdrawn from the Illinois Senate race.

Sucks to be him.

It all started Monday when Ryan's divorce records were unsealed. His ex-wife, "Boston Public" and "Star Trek: Voyager" actress Jeri Ryan, 36, alleged therein that during their eight-year marriage, Mr. Ryan took her to sex clubs in New York, New Orleans and Paris. Ms. Ryan claims her then-husband encouraged her to engage in sexual activity with him while another couple watched. Eager to protect his self-interest, his career and his 9-year-old son, Mr. Ryan denied her claims, calling them "ridiculous" and "smut," but still, the flames were fanned on this scandale erotique, and Ryan's political career just might be over for good.

Giving it up

Sat, 14 Aug 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Who hasn't gone through a period in their adult life when they thought about sex and then thought, "Eh, why bother?" There are many compelling reasons to have sex -- the need for affection, arousal, the desire to get pregnant, to get off, to get over someone by getting under someone else. Sex can be sublime and meaningful, or at the very least, something to do to pass the time. Sometimes, though, it just doesn't seem worth the effort -- either the motivations aren't clear, the feelings aren't there or the potential hurt and disappointment outweigh any potential heat-of-the-moment benefit.

Is celibacy a solution for sexual ennui and confusion?

Author Donna Marie Williams thinks so. In her book, "Sensual Celibacy: The Sexy Woman's Guide to Using Abstinence for Recharging Your Spirit, Discovering Your Passions, Achieving Greater Intimacy in Your Next Relationship," she makes a case for consciously curtailing sexual activity for better peace of mind. Not that everyone needs that. We all know that some people can just naturally balance love, sex, work, family, friendship and spiritual growth. Others, however, find that time and time again, their lives are totally eaten up by their romantic and sexual pursuits -- even when they're certain to be dead ends. Those are the people Williams is trying to reach in part because she's been there herself.

Girl fight, boy fight

Sat, 19 Jun 1999 16:00:00 +0000

The New Year came in with a bang. Or rather, with a solid pop to the jaw.
Defensive and dyspeptic as I am, it's surprising that it took so many years
for me to haul off and belt someone. I suppose it was bound to happen
eventually. But on such an auspicious occasion? Who knew?

I've always liked the aesthetics of aggression -- punk rock, fast cars, barbed
wire tattoos and boots with spike heels that could take out a man's eye -- but
I'm not so keen on the real thing. I can't even watch "real life" dramas like
"ER" (too much blood), pundit-laden cable news channels (too much yelling) or
talk shows like "Springer" (ditto, plus all that klutzy fighting.) Common
brawling has forever been, to me, the trashiest means of conflict management.
A surgical strike delivered verbally seemed much more dignified -- and so I
maintained the position that only the truly uncivilized negotiate with the world
using their fists.

But then, no one had ever pushed me too far.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Cowboy love

Tue, 04 May 1999 16:00:00 +0000

If I fancied a felonious path to riches, I'd start a gigolo service called Midnight Cowboys to service all the city girls who dream of a nuit d'amour with the Marlboro Man. I'd set up a brownstone with a hayloft room, a bunkhouse room and a ravish-me tack room, where the clients would be tended to by highly skilled wild men who wear skin-tight faded Wranglers, quote Yeats and give superior head. A few well-timed "Yes, ma'ams" and a toe-curling roll in the calico sheets: With a 40-percent cut of the $500-an-hour fee, I'd be set for life.

Sophisticated women who are tired of neurotic, vain urban men often pine for the fabled earthy eroticism of the cowboy. We're sure he's a sensual, sensible, strong and loyal bad boy who will never say we're fat or dump us for a younger woman. That one man could be all those things is a long shot, but still, we hold the dream dear and use it to lather ourselves into a serious cowboy letch. The good news is: The fantasy is reciprocal. Modern country music is full of songs exalting the sexual heat in a hick boy/slick girl alliance; "Cowboy Love" by John Michael Montgomery and "Country Club" by Travis Tritt spring immediately to mind. In these songs, a brazen male entices an uptight girl to get her world rocked the cowboy way. They're invitations to drive-by slumming, a torrid little affair that might involve the two of them eating barbecue in the backseat of her Beemer -- or whatever euphemism they're using these days.

Pamela Anderson's breasts, R.I.P.

Tue, 27 Apr 1999 13:26:00 +0000

Dear Pamela,

It's hard to believe you did it: You went and had your breast implants
removed. The legions of Pamela watchers are agog, Leno is cracking wise about
it, and Ripley's wants to put your implants on display in its Hollywood
museum. Mostly, though, everyone is just wondering why?

The official reason you gave is "I just wanted my body to
return to its original state." When a friend of mine heard this, he said,
"That's like Samson going out and getting a buzz-cut." People are assuming
you had the surgery because the implants caused you problems (though you
claim they have not), and they can't imagine why someone who rode to fame and
fortune on the cleavage ticket would extrude her most marketable asset. But
you know what, Pamela? I think I get it.

Breast implants have always been a controversial surgical
enhancement. We sneer at the implanted woman, because by paying
thousands of dollars and exposing herself to the risks of surgery to have her
breasts enlarged, she's going to lengths to advertise her
sensuality. She's pursuing an old-fashioned notion of femininity by putting
her breasts front and center. Big breasts -- especially fake ones -- are
vulgar, down-market and attract the gaze of the common male. So maybe you're sick of catching the heat, Pamela. You've spent years suffering slings and arrows regarding your man-made endowments.

Letter from Laramie

Fri, 16 Oct 1998 19:00:00 +0000

This is a tough time to be a Wyoman. The robbery and fatal beating of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard, an openly gay University of Wyoming student, has yanked Wyoming -- the ninth largest, yet least populated state in the United States -- from its peaceful blind spot in the nation's consciousness and repositioned it as the Home State of Hate. The tacky hi-jinks of Colorado State University students who sprayed anti-gay graffiti on a scarecrow ("I'm gay" on its face, "Up my ass" across its back) in a Homecoming parade float while Shepard lay dying doesn't cast a flattering light on our neighbors immediately to the south, either.

These acts reveal the tough cuticle layer of bigotry at the surface of this region. As a recent transplant I found myself wondering what the crimes reveal about my new home state. I moved to Wyoming from New York several months ago because I loved the land, the clean, uncrowded lakes on which to kayak and, most of all, the friendly, freedom-loving people. Shortly after I arrived, however, something happened that made me think I'd made a terrible choice.

Slow Motion: A True Story

Mon, 27 Jul 1998 19:00:00 +0000

Growing up is an ambiguous concept and, in many cases, a seemingly arbitrary process. Rarely is the call to maturity as blatant and sudden as the events that jerked writer Dani Shapiro out of the last vestiges of her meandering girlhood. In her new memoir, "Slow Motion," the author of the novels "Playing With Fire," "Fugitive Blue" and "Picturing the Wreck" details the events surrounding the car accident that landed her parents in the intensive care unit, forcing Shapiro to bring her own life into sharp focus.

Memoirs by the young are something of a gamble -- often the writers have neither the self-awareness nor the quantity (or quality) of life experience to warrant a book-length exploration. "Slow Motion" is the exception that proves the rule. As a pretty, pampered young girl from an Orthodox Jewish family living in northeastern New Jersey (the part of New Jersey the jokes come from, she writes), Shapiro grew up feeling torn between her parents, her religion and a desire for freedom from its constraints, and the rewards of developing her intellect vs. cruising by on her abundant beauty. Prior to the accident, she was a Sarah Lawrence student who took up with her best friend's married stepfather, Lenny Klein, a flashy attorney who dolled her up in couture suits, trotted her around the world and showered her with lies and lavish gifts. She traded in college for the gilded cage, dropping out of school to pursue her acting, her ambivalence-ridden mistressing and her drinking. These events, and those that occur after the accident, are presented with the artful structure and language of a novel and the absorbing pace and intriguing details (running through the airport in her mink coat; tossing back screwdrivers on a lunch break from her hospital vigil; hiring a private investigator to track the activities of Lenny) of a true-crime thriller.

The Itch

Fri, 19 Jun 1998 19:00:00 +0000

"The Itch," the sophomore effort from Benilde Little -- author of the bestselling 1996 novel "Good Hair" -- is a brisk, engaging buppie beach read. Set in the world of the black upper middle class of Los Angeles and New York, the book focuses largely on the lives of two 30ish best friends, Abra, a well-married suburbanite, and Natasha, a flashy, Angelino career girl, who are partners in an upstart film company, the deliciously named Is My Wig On Straight Productions.

The book follows Abra, Natasha and their similarly well-dressed and well-positioned friends as they scratch The(ir) Itch(es) for fulfillment. Abra's itch is for a child -- and for healing the wounds inflicted by her own absentee father; Natasha's is for a husband. Amid all the internal conflicts, there is a good deal of emphasis on hard-won designer labels, documents and locations: Porsches, lunch at Shutters, Tiffany jewels, Ivy League M.B.A.s, Cristal champagne.

Bitch

Mon, 20 Apr 1998 19:00:00 +0000

I was so hungry for this book. "Bitch" has been hyped as a text that would examine the way women are punished for misbehavior that would seem merely piquant in men, how female sexuality and credibility are seen as mutually exclusive and how women have -- and haven't -- "gotten away with it." Ah, would that it were so.

Wurtzel is the Marisa Tomei of literature: a cute, bright girl who has invoked wrath not because she has the audacity to be unashamedly cute and bright, but because she plays up the cuteness (winsome waif on the cover of her first book, "Prozac Nation"; glammed out, topless and middle finger aloft on the cover of "Bitch") while creating mediocre works that those less attractive, less connected or simply less lucky probably couldn't dream of seeing so richly rewarded. She's seen as someone who skates by, an ugly reminder that life isn't fair and success isn't based on merit. People play on her self-absorption and problematic personality, too, but talent tends to obviate those things. Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath were forgiven their trespasses (as are Philip Roth and the rest of the boys) because they wrote like motherfuckers. The dismissal of Miss Liz isn't unchangeable; all Wurtzel would have to do to shut everybody up is write a really great book. Unfortunately, she hasn't.

Vice grip

Tue, 04 Mar 1997 20:00:00 +0000

if culture in the '90s suffers from an aesthetic disease, it's a crippling case of "realness." Television has a stubborn rash of hyper-confessional talk shows, celebrities in every medium are obsessed with street cred and the publishing industry is fixated on the memoir. The latest mutant strain of this malady is a publishing phenomenon known colloquially as the "bad-girl memoir," and it's quintessentially Real(TM): The authors are real attractive, their life stories are real lurid, and those two elements combined make their books real marketable.

It all started with the stunning success of Elizabeth Wurtzel's "Prozac Nation" (Doubleday, 1994), a bestselling memoir that chronicled the author's troubles with depression and indiscriminate fellatio dispensation. Since then, we've faced a glut of confessionals that leave no taboo untapped: from alcoholism (Caroline Knapp's "Drinking: A Love Story") to teenage delinquency (Jill Ciment's "Half a
Life") to adult incest (Kathryn Harrison's "The Kiss"). It's all about ugly behaviors in pretty packages, bound in ribbons of sexual tension -- and it's all anyone I know in books is talking about.