Raf and I

have been manning the pizzeria for the last two days and it's been friggin' waxy pants hott times sweet. I love delivering pizzas. I love the fact that I can listen to the radio, sweet songs of summer wonking my eardrums as Rihanna tells me that tonight imma let you be a captain. I'll be your captain, Rihanna. I'll be your rider.

Loie wrote and said it's too hot in New York to have sex. I remember those sticky afternoons, subway smell making a permanent home in my hair, girls wearing pants that showed their butt-cheeks, boys stripping down to wife beaters and sculpting their beards along the outline of their jaws.

An interview I did with my dad can be found here. I also did an interview with my mom and my husband. I talked to my mom about losing her job and rediscovering her ability to play. Raf and I talked about the moment he knew that he was willing to give up his home culture because he didn't want to live in poverty. Ultimately, though, it's always my dad that gets me. I don't understand his genius, his fluidity with words, his ability to remember obscure facts and his complete lack of commercial ambition.

I've been thinking about the gulf, how we're all implicated in the oil spill, how it's BP's fault but it's also mine. And yours. Yet the stories we're hearing are about corporate negligence and greed, which we latch onto because it's the afternoon soap opera. Will he apologize? How will he apologize? Why hasn't he apologized? How could he have said it that way? Why didn't he say it this way? We drown ourselves in thick, verbal slop, that makes us feel self-important but ISN'T PLUGGING ANY GODDAMN HOLES, with the self-importance being what landed us here in the first place.