MEME
FAMILY PORTRAIT 2007
Gina Myers has tagged me for my first meme ever. I’m delighted to share five things about myself that you probably don’t know:
1. When I first moved to New York about nine years ago, I was on a guest list for an “exclusive” private party called, “The Bitches Lounge.” I frequented the scene on a regular basis for maybe a year and got to see the rich and famous up close. I danced a few feet away from Donatella Versace’s nose; I insulted Bill Maher by drunkenly insisting that he was “that actor”; watched Queen Latifah cause a stir, among other notables, etc. I’ve also attended other swank events that I no longer seem to be invited to, including a party at George Plimpton’s upper East side apartment, where I told Marisa Berenson she was hot and that I loved her, as well as sparring with Anthony Haden-Guest in the kitchen, literally, until our host intervened to make sure I was okay. Incidentally, Mr. Plimpton had enormous, gentle hands.
2. For a period in my adolescence, I was a hardcore born-again Christian. We’re talking a lust for churches where people are “touched by the Spirit” and then speak in tongues while doing a little jig, sometimes falling and writhing a bit at the end. Most churches were not radical enough for me then.
3. I was once arrested for “Loitering in front of a known crack house with the intent to purchase and use crack cocaine.” Yes, that’s a real charge, and yes, I was strip searched.
4. When I worked in a high risk Labor and Delivery Unit, the nurses came to trust me with duties that did not necessarily fall within my job description. One of those was to transport the ‘expired’ babies on weekend shifts to the unmanned morgue, where I had to place them in the refrigerator. I think the nurses were glad to be rid of the task, after exhaustively and diligently caring for the mothers and their families. Pardon any morbidity, but I have held many dead people in my hands, no small thing.
5. Health item: I am terribly myopic and have a hearing deficiency. I do not wear my glasses regularly and refuse contacts. The inadequate sight and sound combination often comes back to me in the form of, “Why didn’t you say hi to me yesterday? I was waving and calling to you from across the street/cafe/bar!” Others have simply written me off for ‘ignoring’ them.
I also have a heart condition called Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome (WPW) that I have consistently refused surgery for over the past few years. But that’s another story.
** Now, it’s my turn to tag five: Dan Coffey, Patry Francis, Nada Gordon, Tim Peterson, and Susana Gardener – Happy New Year, Everyone! **
10 Responses to “MEME”
AMY KING View All →
Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the Women’s National Book Association (WNBA) Award. Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She co-edited with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She also co-edits the anthology series, Bettering American Poetry, and is a professor of creative writing at SUNY Nassau Community College.
AMY KING 
January 2nd, 2007 at 7:19 pm eoh man…. stuff you don’t know about me is stuff you don’t WANT to know about me….
January 2nd, 2007 at 9:48 pm ewow.
your dog is adorable
January 2nd, 2007 at 10:24 pm eOoh, this looks like fun–though I don’t think I could compete with your crackhouse story.
Happy 2007 to you, Amy King!
January 2nd, 2007 at 11:31 pm eFascinating anecdotes,
and a fun picture:
you’re nosing up to the camera, and the
dog is looking aside. I think it’s jealous of
the camera (and us), but a parallel interpretation
is that the dog is the sophisticated critter.
You’re looking right though the cam eye-to-eye, more
than other pictures..a rather striking look. Would that
I were Marisa, lol.
Quite a mix of the fun and the frightful in the items..
a bit like life, perhaps.
January 3rd, 2007 at 12:13 am eDoggie looks cute, & so do you!
Now I’m worried about your heart condition… but since you’re over 25, you’re pretty much in the clear, yes?
Hoping so,
Janet
January 3rd, 2007 at 2:02 am eyou were great last night at the P Project.
January 3rd, 2007 at 6:06 pm eDan – It’s not just me: the world wants to know!
michelle – Thank you! She turns a few heads now and then~
patry – The Crack house arrest was a fiasco and a half. The cops were really teaching me a lesson for giving a black man a ride, ultimately. Pretty incredible stuff.
Jim – That dog resists looking at the camera due to the flash, so I look like the dupe and she looks cool. She should be wearing a beret!
Janet – No need to worry! It’s very sweet of you to though. They really don’t know much about it, if it worsens/progresses or stays the same, etc. I knew a guy who had the operation because he was fainting all the time and couldn’t drive. I”m not that bad. I only come close to fainting when I’m sick and overdo it. The glitch is that it’s electrical, and yet, it can be exacerbated by caffeine, meds that make your heart race, etc. Not so long ago, it required open heart surgery. From what I understand now, they go in and burn around, nearly blindly, trying to get the extra chamber. I tell my doctor when they perfect it more, I’ll consider it.
Todd – Thanks a lot!
January 3rd, 2007 at 9:23 pm eAha..I have trouble with flash too.
Half the time I react too fast to the pre-flash for redeye,
and my eylids are down for the shot.
January 7th, 2007 at 5:40 pm eOK, I’ve memed.
January 20th, 2007 at 8:24 pm eHmm…a poem for that.
Portrait With Dog
Your piercing eyes press on with
a measured show, two blue earths, two
cameras with bicycle spokes.
You make my computer look into me, from
galaxies spun of your words.
Your Anubis-cottonball snubs the canned lightening.
A compact life suits that one:
why look out when there is one big answer to it all?
I hear a faint rush
through my walls,
as things change outside, as water cracks.
Something gnaws my head.
Is it change, or microbes?
Or things I dare not think?
All I can do is cap my head-lenses now,
and ride the changes where they take me
again.
–Jim Knowles