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December 17, 2001
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December 9, 2001 I have all-day disgust rather than morning sickness. I just lie on the couch and sense things, hearing, smelling, feeling and tasting what no human should. My husband Dave was eating ice cream and it was like the ice cream and his tongue were in my ear and I realized that ice cream is exactly like cat food. I can only eat one food item per day. I never know what the thing will be, but then it will come to me and I'll call Dave at work and tell him to go get it and bring it to me. The other day it was mashed potatoes and corn, that's what I could eat. And he brought me a sweet potato instead and I
A great deal of my day is spent planning to sue. Between unpaid child support, distributors who blew me off when my magazine closed, producers who snorted my money up their nose and never gave me the master tape and magazines who never paid me for articles, I'm owed $40,000. I never bothered
There was a phone call for Dave. He took it in the office. "She's gone sort of wack-o," he whispered, unaware that my new ears can penetrate two closed doors.
December 16, 2001
There were maybe a dozen women, all pole-dancing, except they weren't doing it for the dazed onlookers — they were trying to come! Some even took their thongs off so they could rub against the metal poles uninterrupted by fabric. One woman — she looked like me — did a backbend and was rubbing her naked pubic area against the cold black pole, balancing on her shoulder blades so she could attack her own nipples with her fingers. She bent further and further back until her head was between her legs (upside down) so she could make out with the floor. Fortunately, it looked clean. Then I realized it was me, since I used to be able to put my head between my legs in a backbend, before I was pregnant (and before I was thirty-three). Some of the other ladies came around to stick vibrators and feathers at me, so inspired were they by my licking of the floor.
I was exposed to chicken pox last week, and since I never had it as a kid, I had to go to the hospital for horse shots of other people's blood in my ass. This was so their antibodies would "train" my blood to fight — chicken pox now could be very serious for Fetus. Instead, the
The next day I awoke in a good mood nonetheless, and wanted to go to the beach. We all put on our long johns, ski pants, coats, hats and mittens and headed out. We put one blanket down on the sand and Dave and my son Wolf wrapped me up in two other blankets and left me there while they went off to play. Have you ever seen a wounded animal that looked somehow happy? As long as they're not whining — the wounded animal whine is the worst sound in the world. But normally, they lay there with their bloody paw or whatever is wrong looking so content, as if they know there's nothing they can do but wait and lick, wait and lick, and having their entire spectrum of possible actions spelled out so simply for them is comforting. That's how I felt, in my big blanket roll on the beach. After spending two months on the couch in front of the TV and occasionally dragging myself upstairs to the computer screen, the wide open sky and sea was just about the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. The clouds were very thin and seemed to criss-cross. I started thinking it was an enormous canopy of mosquito netting, and I was a giant in India or South America going to bed. I still had my fever.
I could hear Dave and Wolf yelling in the distance. I don't mind my body becoming someone's house for nine months. I don't even mind the terrible time that I know will follow — where the former tenant wakes you up every hour-and-a-half all night long with their "Feed me"-"Gaze |
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Lisa Carver and Nerve.com, Inc. | ||||
Commentarium (35 Comments)
yeah, maybe you should ONLY publish when sick and horny: leave me wanting MORE instead of less;)
You sure don't sound happy. You sound miserable!
Lisa's writing continues to get less and less erotic and more and more neurotic and self-centered. It seems instead that she's intent on using her readership for some kind of therapy. There's always so much misery masquerading for intrigue and insight. Can't Nerve find an EROTIC writer that delights in the pleasures of the flesh as opposed to this public self-flagellator that we must endure rather than enjoy?
fuck off, jde, sometimes sex isn't erotic. And pregnancy is interesting. Lisa covers the whole spectrum of sex.
MAN, and I feared my post was obnoxious! jde - sounds like YOU're the one looking in this column for 'erotic therapy'.
I agree with jde. This writing is not even mediocre. I wonder if it ever occured to the writer that some women work through pregnancy and don't lie around on the couch for two months watching court shows.Maybe people aren't paying you because you are a lazy slug whose work isn't worth being paid. All of you fans out there, THINK about the messages you are getting from this column. If you are truly interested in good writing, go find it. It isn't here.
Paula Bomer's story is a much more erotic and better written piece about pregnancy.
You're right! It's not erotic! And my column hasn't BEEN erotic for a while. I'm three months pregnant. Paula Bomer's story was set at the END of the first trimester, which I reach right around now, when people are no longer laid flat feeling like a garbage compactor is having at their insides night and day, when they're ready to resume sex and life. Just WAIT till you read my next essay, on the last million years in sex. It is HOT and even a little violent. Anyway, as for not working ... how do you think I've done my Nerve column and all the other radio and TV spots I've done in the last few months while pregnant? By dragging myself green-faced out of my pit of death-hell into work. So don't pull this blue collar work ethic thing on me, because I'm not afraid to fist-fight while pregnant, as long as it's not in the first or last trimester. Anyway, like one person said: sex is not always sexy. It's still interesting, I think, even when it's not XXX.
I loved this piece. (Forget all those haters Lisa, they wouldn't know good writing if it snuck up from behind and rimmed them).
Will the real BB please stand up?
It doesn't matter, I'm going to side with BB: it's funny, how people spend MORE TIME telling Lisa her writing is not 'really' writing. Nerve (I think) never aspired to be a constant stream of XXX erotica, I think it meant to explore all facets of a sexual life. People, reproducing is part of sex. I know most don't want to consider that, but you can't get away from it. Lisa delves in gristly cracks and corners. I think she is a reporter by nature. If you want to see penetration (which many of us tire from, we like the exploration) I can suggest some good sites to you people who every week come in here and rip on her.
Signed,
the bonafide
I'm afraid I must agree; this artlicle isn't erotic. And I am glad to dissagree with all those who thought that the point. For me Nerve has never been about the erotic, there are 10.3 million porn sites out there if that's your taste. It has been about sex, about the exotic, the non-erotic. If you want erotica, there's always the fiction section.
And yes pregnency is a part of sex, and yes sex isn't afterall entirely pretty. To quote my most recent reading of scientiae sexualis "fucking is the great humanizer." And that is, I think, what it's all about. I seldom read or give feedback (thinking maybe I should more oft) but this is an article that inspired me to do so. BTW Lisa, the section on the wounded animal being perfectly happy was beautiful.
Ah, parenthood; one of life's great equalizers (or humanizers, as I read below). Lisa, as always, you're where you belong and so is your writing. Never mind the detractors - there are always the critics and certainly, Nerve is going to have its share of snobs (albeit possibly credentialed only in their own minds). Sex is part of life and suffers the ebb and flow of life's changes. Writing is the communication of life and subject to the same dynamics. This is 'The Lisa Journals', afterall. Journals, folks...got that? Lisa's...got it? Nice work, kid...and having been the husband to a working woman through a couple pregnancies (wonder if your critics ever played either role), you have my continued applause. Not that its going to help, but you have it.
rlm - Just curious: You wrote, "fans out there, THINK about the messages you are getting from this column. If you are truly interested in good writing, etc." What exactly ARE the messages that concern you? maybe give an example of the "good writing" out there?
Wonderful, funny, warm, and real. Just exactly what I love about Lisa Carver!
Yes!! it was like a diary!!! I missed things like this LISA!!!!!!
mcg:I am concerned about the lack of critical thinking on the part of so many of lcc's most ardent fans, although the number is decreasing. I am concerned about her position as a role model for those comtemplating marriage and children. I truly hope that all goes well for her, but it would be naive to think that coming from such chaos as she does that serious negative ramifications will not be experienced by children (and husbands) of those who imitate her. I am concerned that people mistake her narcissism for glamour that is to be emulated.I am concerned that when she got married and the complaints started coming from the readers that she never addressed us with honesty and responsibility to the pact that she had with us. There was always some excuse, usually in the guise of humor, or else it was a shortcoming on the part of the reader. I am concerned that she is without direction and that readers find this laudible. One minute it's no more diaries, today they are back. There is enough chaos in the world at the moment. People are longing for something steadfast, at least for the moment.And I am concerned about the deterioration in her writing that is a result of all of this. As for good writing on the net, there is salon and mcsweeny's and occasionally some good stuff on nerve,but they are mostly giving us reruns now. Seek and ye shall find. And keep that curious mind of yours.Thanks for asking.
rlm: why bother to comment so lustily on what is wrong with this piece? Do we care what you think? No.
sls: mcg asked. That's why I bothered. Someone asked me and I answered. Next time read the feedback if you want to participate in the dialog. sls stands for sucker lisa slave.
rlm:
What writer HAS been a role model for "parents to be"? That is a bunch of crap. What of Henry Miller and the child he spawned and didn't even WANT? Or Virginia Woolf? Or Joyce, I could go on and on about "supposed bad parent writers". So do we say, "Gee, Picasso was bad to his kids, HE's not a good role model for parents. She's a writer for crissake. If you can name some writers who were perfect parents (And Lo and Behold!) good writers go for it. The association is not there. Lisa is not REQUIRED to be a good parent/ role model and who says she is or isn't? This is an adult-oriented site with diversity in it. Just because I don't agree with someone's writing does that give me the right to say they are not a good role model? Who the HELL is a good parenting role model these days? Bill Clinton? (ohh right, he had that "troubled past" too.)
This is also FICTION. That's right, it's MADE UP. So where do we draw the line? Is Judy Blume a bad adolescent model because she writes about perversion and jerking off and -oh my- the reality of being 13? This argument you give for not liking her work is so flawed I can barely believe I bothered to respond to it. Why is she a poor role model again? How about Britney or Madonna or Jesse Jackson or anyone else?
Let's check Nerve's new job posting:
Wanted. Creative writing pieces on sex. Please make sure you are a role model for parents to be. EOE.
see, there's that lack of critical thinking again. Surely you jest in comparing lcc to Joyce, Picasso, Miller, and Picasso??? They were ARTISTS.
Oh please rlm. I picked high-profile people. Are we going to go into what is art or what is not? How pathetic. Hey are you an artist? I'd love to see your work. Or are you just a critic? Do you have anything we could see? Or are you a frustrated, angry person, devoid of a life?
For a critic you sure are mean. Why don't you try using some bigger words next time?
Dear lisa, I need to know more about you, please E mail me at uecollins@yahoo.com,
If you're going to use last names for the men, use one for me too. I'm Carver to you, not lcc. I am a very good role model because I am imperfect but I don't leave. (These pieces are not fiction, by the way.) My parenting ideals were Ma and Pa from Little House on the Prairie. Aspiring to imitate them can only make a person feel inadequate, whereas with ME, someone can say, "Well if SHE can do it, I must be OK." Then they're happy and that makes people act nice to their children and spouses. As for marriage -- realizing other people fight and want to leave makes you a lot better prepared for bad times than watching The Brady Bunch. As for my parenting, you know nothing, because I try to respect Wolfgang's privacy by not talking about him in any depth on a sex site. But he is a fearless, kind little boy with a lot of humor, so while I don't do everything right, I can't be doing so bad either, or he wouldn't be so good.
A couple kinds of people would attack a diarist's ability to parent in a site like Nerve; a site based entirely on issues of sexuality. The first is too young to have children or anything more than opinions, and has totally missed the point of Lisa's writing or Nerve as a whole. The second is likely lying to those around them (and perhaps themselves) as to what kind of person they are, or they wouldn't be in Nerve in the first place, spouting such drivel. Totally inappropriate time and place, I think. Either way, they are to be disregarded. To thine own self be true, Lisa. No artist ever became regarded as a master through any effort less than that, and whether you or any writer ever achieves that laural isn't really the point now, is it? Its about being able to look at yourself twenty years from now and knowing that you did it all the best you could and that it all turned out o.k., including you. I already know you're a good writer. I have no doubt that you're a great mom. You're passionate, and that's what it takes. By the way...I've had my share of success in literary criticism, and this isn't the place for it. When you write your next book, THEN, maybe. Not here.
You're not Carver. Raymond Carver is. If any of you have not yet read him, by all means do. There is where you will learn about the human condition and realize the drivel you have been exhalting.
Ok. This thread just became way too sophomoric. Next!
Oh Raymond Carver is boring. And talk about a bad parenting role model! All these MEN, these dead men, everyone with their same list of dead men sanctioned as classics. Don't you ever like something because YOU like it? Why did it take James Joyce so long to say something anyway? Do you think maybe he was showing off? I'll tell you a really good book -- Waiting For My Cats To Die by Stacy Horn. This woman lives alone with only her two diabetic cats and (her friend said) a ghost. This book got me into Buffy The Vampire Slayer and veterans. What I loved most was that Ms. Horn loves a lot of the same things I do, like graveyards, but instead of being passive with her love, she went out and did something about it. She started weeding one graveyard with this old lady, and got permission to go to this island graveyard where all the unnamed babies are. It sounds like a lonely book, but it's not -- she's just drawn to all things no longer living; she feels like their caretaker, and she is. But at least they're her OWN dead things she found -- not "the classics."
hot dog! where to start? rlm - if you HONESTLY believe Salon and McSweeney's are any standard for quality writing, I think I understand your problem here;) [details available upon request - in five words: poetry, poetry, performance-art, and poetry] erl - yeah, r.carver is the king of sliced bread, and all that, but how would he read without his editor and amanuensis and mentor, the great gordon lish?
how many women could possibly imagine "several disappointing orgasms"?
Goddamn you're good.
My God! All these feedback people are so boring! All of Raymond Carver's stories are the same, and they all make me depressed, and who wants that? Some pretentions fucking English grad student, that's who! Lisa, this was good to read! I remember the first trimester craziness of being pregnant -- for me, the second trimester was great, I was active and wanted to eat and fuck all the time. My third trimester was horrible because I got sick and spent much of it in the hospital, but my orgasms were amazing, huge things that shook my whole body and my whole huge belly. The baby would always kick so hard afterwards! The end of your story made me teary-eyed. xoxoxo! traci
Those are some bizarre responses to what I thought was a great read. Re: Raymond Carver - I think some people need to realize that grad school writing and real life writing are two different things. Lisa does real life, because she has a life. As for the people dithering about parenting skills etc., it begins to sound like we have some moralists among us attempting to apply their morality to somebody else's life. More bullshit dichotomy for women: if you play by the rules and get married and just have sex with your husband, then you get pregnant, why you're bound to be a good mom! But if you have an interesting sex life and don't play by the rules, and decide to have kids, why surely you'll turn out to be one of those Evil Moms who chain their kids to a bed and feed them dog food. What a bunch of bullshit. All those years since the Puritans died in their miserable anal-retentiveness, and damn if their ghosts still don't haunt the American mind, whispering in the collective ear. (Yeah, so what if I'm wordy.) Tell you what folks, let's all MIND OUR OWN BUSINESS and NOT JUDGE PEOPLE. Lisa: good job as usual; your stuff always makes me think.
When are you going to change that picture? It's making ME nauseous.
Wow Lisa - I sure hope you do get paid! I have a five month old baby girl now so I can remember a year ago and I relate very much to all you said! Just wanted to let you know there are some good times ahead for you! Love - Paul
oh Lisa.
that one made me cry.
you are such a dear.
now, i'll be thinking of you guys when i'm on a beautiful, chilly beach(as i was today).
i wish i was bringing you my semi famous mashed potatos, or bread pudding w/ lemon sauce.
and you know, if you want some home cooking, i will deliver whenever, and i really mean that.
remember when you made rabbit stew? I thought you were joking, but you really made it. you cooked rabbit!
I'm not good at cooking meat, but i can do all sorts of other stuff.
anyway, that story felt good.
thanks.
Love, Elizabeth
oh, and i know stuff about suing...when it's right, it is very righteous, and satisfying.
I support you completely in fighting for what you, and your family deserve.
Now you say something