The Queen Bitch Speaks

Today, I am home, sitting out another series of orange radar blobs as yet another hurricane passes through my end of town. It's ok. It's Mother Nature exhaling the poison from her lungs. The poison being suburban sprawl and humans, and the lungs being the wetlands.

And since everyone knows that Mother Nature is a bitch, I'm letting out my own inner, and too-long-supressed, bitch to tell off a couple of the younger members of my tribe. I don't know if Surrogate Daughter #1 still reads my blog, but if she doesn't want her pride and our relationship permanently scorched, she won't read this entry.
To my Surrogate Daughter #1: I figured out today why I've been wanting to bitch-slap some sense into you for the past year or so. You have become exactly what you scorn: a patronizing and annoyingly self-aware bop poseur rich snot. Your writing, in which you have such pride, if your Live Journal is any indication, is merely jejeune and pretentious. You cannot commit to anything: not your supposed and adopted poverty, not your family wealth, not your vocation, nor even your various facial and body piercings. You sport an impressive sports injury scar, but it came from doing a black diamond run on your first day of your annual Aspen ski trip. If you haven't seen the e-mail joke about the subject, you cannot sing the blues in Aspen.

You tell your mother that being in debt is "liberating". For you, perhaps, because for the past 21 years, you have never had to face the consequences of your actions. You have been lifted over every puddle, had every bill paid.

I told you when you went off to college that school is a four-year experiment in discovery of self. What have you discovered other than that you are a head and an incipient lush? Have you discovered any inner passion? Strength of will? Potential? No. You've discovered cheap beer and dope. Kind of like discovering America, sweetiedarling: there were already plenty of people there. I can't believe you turned into your father.

So just fucking grow up. Pick a persona. Try to pick one a little more original than a beat poet or post-modern, new-wave slacker.

I love you, your other mother.

To my nephew: I cannot believe that you would be such an ass as to ask me, by e-fucking-mail, for an interest-free loan from your grandfather's estate so that you can buy an engagement ring for cheap and end the note with a PS about football without even, in passing, ask how your grandmother might be doing after a week in the hospital.

Maybe your father, my brother, Biggus Dickus, neglected to mention to you that the woman who practically raised you, who gave you everything your greedy-grabby little heart ever desired, has been declining rapidly this past week. How would he know, anyway, since he hasn't been to see her, and has announced that he has no intention of it, either? But either way, the woman is in a nursing home, and a casual "Oh, how's Amma doin'?" wouldn't be amiss.

But no. All you want is the fucking money. I remember all the times you promised your Amma that you'd take care of her when she and Gruffy got old. Gruffy let you out of the bargain, by dying quickly. Your grandmother, however, has been in this home here in Miami since last December. You haven't come to see her once, although you've been in Florida visiting your father. You haven't called me to ask about her. You felt free to take more "souvenirs" from her home, though; her antiques are more than enough to remember her by, I suppose.

I can't believe you. You have turned into your father, and he is a defective throw back to some recessive eddy in our gene pool.

Love, your doting little auntie.