Friday January 25th 2008
Stomach Pat Count: 3

Rainy darkness. Hard rain hitting the skylight in the bedroom. The phone rings. It bolts me up. I hold back hurling. I glurb out the name of my company on the phone. The chirpy woman asking me to renew my website for another 14 years. I glurb happily. No thank you, but thank you for calling me!

Hang up. Run to the bathroom. Hurl.

From that the day takes an expected turn for the worse. Starting with emails from people I really don't have time to soothe as my stomach with baby is going "Mom, did I mention that whatever you ate yesterday I fucking HATE" Running back and forth to the bathroom with just enough time to answer the phone and hearing upcoming production shoots for webisodes locations getting cancelled. An entire crew and actors. Stranded.

Throwing on a rain coat. No umbrella. Walking the five or six block radius of the SOMA to offices asking "Would you mind if you stay open on a Sunday"

Wet. No Umbrella. Desperate wet black woman in the SOMA asking for a business to open up for 'Lord knows what". The answers are obvious before I can even ask. One place would not even let me inside of the doors to get out of the rain.

Wet. Cold. Angry. Disillusioned. Cold. Wet. No umbrella.

AFLSWB. "Asking For Location Shooting While Black" No...its not a black thing! It's not! It's a "Cold Wet Chick with No Umbrella Thing" It has to be! It just has to be!!

Please god...let it be.

If there was a time in the world where I would have popped open a bottle of wine and lit a Marlboro Light and sat on the couch listening to David Bowie? This would have been the time. Today. Right now. The moment that building called me up two days before a shoot and said "Sorry. The guy who you were going to pay can't let you in"

Into the pack of smokes.

I'm PREGNANT! I just can't. It is horrible. This monkey on my back. The Horse to the Marlboro Man.

That cat has been riding my smooth stallion like back since I was 18. I remember the first day I had a smoke: San Quentin Prison 1984. They had lost count of the inmates while I was working with Geese Theater Company. They put the inmates in the yard until they could find the missing guy. We had to walk through the mass of men.

We get to the space. Set up our gear. Counting every piece of equipment to make sure we leave with every single piece of equipment. We wait around. They had already found the guy...but the wait was incredible. Finally four men show up with a lot of riffles and firearms. One correctional officer stares at us. We have seriously put him out of his way:

Correctional Officer: The Guns are here. You can perform now.

I look at my hands that are void of fingernails. I have bitten them all off months ago. I had taken on chewing on the sides of the nails and the skin. There was really nothing left there either.

Me: (to John Bergman) May I have a smoke?
Him: You don't smoke.
Me: I do NOW.

=================================================================

I get home from the emergency location scouting. I call my husband to see if we can use his offices in Oakland. No go. I call my friend Jon. His place is too far away. I cannot turn any of the theaters I work in into realistic looking offices.

I call up Theater Bay Area Offices. Been a gold Member since lord knows when. No response.

I look at my hands that are void of fingernails. I have bitten them off YEARS ago. I don't want to take on chewing the sides of the nails and the skin as that just make my worker hands look all the more gnarled.

I start digging through my desk to see if there are any smokes there. I find myself hunting for a butt or one that might have spilled out into the drawer. Then I stop. I just stopped.

Wet. Cold. Angry Black Woman. Without an Umbrella.

For the love of god. I'm pregnant. What is more fucking important here?

Fuck you Marlboro Man. FUCK YOU. The ride is done. The horse goes back into the pen. You have ridden me long enough. Put this horse out to pasture. They Shoot Marlboro Men Horses..Don't They?

I dry myself off with a towel. Turn on the heat. I go into the kitchen. I get myself a bagel to munch on. I come back and turn on Blue Jean really loud and dance around my home office with my bagel.

Fuck. You. Marlboro. Man. Fuck. YOU.

Baby seems to like dancing and bagels. First time today my stomach has not cramped up. I sit down from expending anger and dampy coldness and think again: Who has an Office.

It all worked out in the end. I found a location at the last minute with the same people who host The San Francisco Family Festival.

And it all worked out without having the Marlboro Man strap a saddle to my ass.