All packed up and ready to go. It seems like we’ve been packing forever. We started putting our stuff into storage in November, took a break for the holidays so we can spend time with family, then it’s back to finishing up putting things away.

We’ve done all this before when we packed up our stuff to move to Maine for a year. I admit I like shaking up my life this way. It helps me re-examine what’s important and what I can live without.

I must be a vagabond at heart. A nomad. A gypsy. I love to move. I love exploring new places, meeting new people, learning their ways. It’s as if I have lived a million lives. I’ve been a child in Manila, a struggling actress in New York City, a dot-com millionaire in Silicon Valley, a Las Vegas porn star for a night, a haunted mermaid in Maine and a beach mom in Half Moon Bay.

What new and exciting lives will I lead in the coming years?

See the rest of this set of photos at MAYCAM.

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

The article about me published in last month’s Esquire Philippines is now online. Go read my interview with Gang Badoy and check out the art by Gamo Tuano. It’s so lovely!

This is Year 13 of the Birthday Nude tradition. This is one of the rare moments I get to sit still and reflect on what’s past and where I’m headed in the future. This past year I became a Pornsaint and muse to two paintings, one by Chelsea Greene Lewyta exhibited at La Galerie Provocatrice in Amsterdam and another by Karl Backman exhibited at the Museum of Porn in Art in Zurich. I am also in Suckpax 3, a collaboration between The Suckord and SideKick Lab on a pack of trading cards in which my pussy appears in scratch ‘n sniff ink.

The future? I’m at a crossroad. It’s not clear to me which direction I am taking. I’m taking down notes from my subconscious. See if you can help me figure this out.

Around my birthday I had a dream about Nick Cave. I’m sitting on a couch. Nick Cave sits on another couch next to mine. He leans over and says, “You’re never in any hurry, are you?” I feel like time has passed me by, and he is reminding me to seize the moment. I get ready to go on a date with Nick Cave.

I get in my van but as I pull out of the parking spot I realize I am on water. I drive the boat/van out of the parking garage and plummet down a waterfall. It takes my breath away. I remind myself to relax, everything will be fine. The boat/van is submerged for a moment, then is buoyant again.

I drive it across the water to a place that has mirrored walls. I check my reflection. I’m pulling a piece of luggage, wearing a loose dress and flowers in my hair. My hair is big and messy, like a bird’s nest.

I go up an escalator and find Nick Cave at the top, talking to two old men in Spanish. He straightens up when he sees me and gets a big table for all of us. I wonder what the hell I was thinking bringing my luggage with me.

Another dream: I have pencils in my hand and am poking around me at an invisible ghost. I finally feel an entity that resists like an invisible balloon that refuses to pop. I am frustrated by the dullness of my pencils. I woke up with the desire to sharpen all the pencils in the house.

Am I going crazy or am I going sane?

My birthday is coming up on the 7th. I tend to be introspective around the time of my birthday, but this year I feel it even more. I feel like a full grown baby being forced out of the womb because it’s time, but I’m petrified and don’t want to come out yet because I’m not sure where I’m going or what I want to do once I’m out there. And there’s so much out there.

I can’t stay here anymore. I’ve stayed longer than I should have. It’s comfortable and cushy here. Life is good. Why should anything change?

But the world is changing around me. My oceanside home is crumbling underneath me. We’ve given ourselves until the end of this year to move all our belongings, our art, our books, our dreams out of here. I hope this house can sustain us until then. I hope we know what we’re doing and where next by then.

“When I was born,” said comedian Gracie Allen, “I was so surprised I didn’t talk for a year and a half.” I suspect you will soon be experiencing a metaphorical rebirth that has some of the power of the event she was referring to. And so I won’t be shocked if you find it challenging to formulate an articulate response, at least in the short term. In fact, it may take you a while to even register, let alone express, the full impact of the upgrade you will be blessed with.
- Rob Brezsny’s horoscope for Libra, week of Sept 29

I’m keeping this little oracle under my pillow for the time being. I’m reminding myself that sometimes, maybe even often, it’s okay not to know. That life will unfold despite my not knowing, and that I can trust the steadiness of my steps and the strength of my instincts.

Typically, I am the opposite of my mother. I am the Saffy to her Edina Monsoon. And Patsy? Well, that’s my dad. Patsy post-rehab, that is. My mom, though, is still her Absolutely Fabulous self. The last time I saw her she fanagled a photo opp with PNoy (Philippine President Noynoy Aquino) on a flight from SFO to Manila.

Believe me, I don’t Like being Saffy. I have moments of escape much like the decadence alluded to in the episode in Morocco. But for the most part I am a mousy girl, and I am willing to bet you wouldn’t notice me if I walked past you in broad daylight. Ok, maybe I’m not quite willing to bet the house. I do realize I have a low opinion of myself right now so let’s just bet m&m’s.

When I was in theatre school in NYC I once revealed to a group of actresses that I was thinking of getting a boob job. I was extremely self-conscious of my flat chest. I wore these horrible miracle bras from Victoria’s Secret, which not only had the uncomfortable underwire for pushing what little breasts I had upward, they also had a lot of padding to create the silhouette I wished I had. My revelation led to an afternoon of beautiful women, actresses, urging me to feel their breasts. I’ve lost sight of what point they were trying to make. Were they trying to convince me not to get a boob job by showing me that naturally full breasts can be lumpy, hard, saggy, insert unpleasant adjective here? I suppose they succeeded indirectly because I forgot all about getting a boob job and enjoyed the attention instead.

It was Jay who convinced me to ditch the padded bras. Before I dated him, I felt apprehensive when it came time to remove the bra and get in between sheets with a man. I felt like I had falsely advertised boobs where there were none. Here was a man who actually liked small breasts, and preferred them to the pendulous giganticus boobs most men tend to favor. After he posted nude pictures of me online, I learned there were more men like Jay out there. I learned I was beautiful just the way I was. I realized I didn’t need to change a thing. I set my perky nipples free.

Eventually I got my big boobs when I became a mother. They were so raging huge I couldn’t fit into any of my clothes. During the first week or so after giving birth I wore Jay’s shirts and overalls. After my breasts got used to supply and demand with my baby, they trimmed a little. I loved having big boobs. I loved being milky. Too bad I didn’t have more time to show it off back then. As my kid shed her dependence on me, I too shed the mom boobs. Now I have more time, but less boobs.

Getting naked online has helped me appreciate what I have. At every stage of my adult life I have found people who made me feel beautiful and courageous. It has shaped my perception of my body and myself. It has helped me find confidence in my real life. It has given me a little secret something to daydream about as I live the daily mundane. So I thank you for Liking me, and for helping me Like me.

On Mother’s Day they came
Back to their childhood home
Carrying their mother’s ashes
Hearing the voice of her wishes,
“I want my ashes to feed the roses.”

I woke up on Mother’s Day with a funeral outside the tall windows of the Master’s bedroom. The old man who built this home had passed decades ago, but his wife, the woman who looked out those tall windows in loneliness all those decades to the rosebush that blooms red in the California winter, just recently died.

And her children, who themselves have grown old and lonely, formed a procession outside what are now our windows and fed her ashes to the rosebush to fill their dead mother’s last request. This is what I did on Mothers’ Day. I walked outside and stood in my grey wool dress and red shoes, and silently hugged these lonely people before they walked back to their cars and drove away. I had nothing to say. There was nothing that needed to be said.

Later my daughter picked a ripe rose from the bush and gave it to me. The rose looked plump, juicy, full of life. Too soon the petals will dry and crumble to dust, just like the woman whose ashes joined the dirt under the bush. I hugged my daughter tight, smelled the freshness of the sun in her hair. On this Mothers’ Day I am alive, juicy, maybe even a tiny bit plump. I feed on the ashes of those who have died, smack my lips and say, “I’m alive!” Someday it will be my ashes that will feed another rose, and it will be the sexiest, most fertile ashes any rose has ever fed on. She will smack her lips and look up to the sky quivering in ecstasy.

“I’m alive!”

(Update: Read the edited version below.)

People are always surprised that I worked with Max Hardcore, and more than that, I speak well of him. I gather that it is a bit of a leap for people to reconcile my feminine power stance with my involvement with notoriously misogynistic and incarcerated-for-obscenity Max Hardcore. We sort those issues out in an interview with Miss Lagsalot of Conflicted Exxistence. Includes juicy behind-the-scenes details of on- and offscreen shenanigans with Max Hardcore. Go read it!