Category Archive

I bought it. I registered the domain name justlikejessejames(dot)com. Why, you ask? I don’t know. None the less it’s mine… Aaaaaaall miiiine.

Try it. Type in justlikejessejames(dot)com up top there and watch, you’ll end up right back here. Magic, I tell you. Simply magic.

I don’t remember where or exactly when I heard this story, but I was young when I did and it stuck. For several reasons, it has been stuck in my head all week. I would love to sit all of the people I work with down on little nap-mats, give them a little organic juice pack to suck on and have story time with this little gem.

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During lunch, two construction workers always sit together on one of the rafters and eat together. As they open their lunches it always goes the same way. One opens his lunchbox and finds a fresh, crisp sandwich, a bag of chips, his favorite drink and a dessert of some sort, usually a chocolate chip cookie.

The other opens his lunch sack to find a squashed peanut butter and jelly sandwich on soggy white bread and that’s it. Every day, Monday through Friday, he seems totally surprised and disappointed to find the same thing and proceeds to start his lunch hour moaning, “Man, peanut butter and jelly again!?! I don’t even like peanut butter.”

One day the guy with the awesome lunch listens patiently to the other guy complain and finally asks, “Dude, why don’t you just ask your wife to make you something different?”

The guy holding his lifeless sandwich says, “Wife? No, my wife doesn’t make my lunch. I make my own sandwiches.”

A very sick dog, a few slashed tires, a dysfunctional bus system and way too much going on at work has Jesse far, far away from blogland. Apologies. Back next week.

Dear California,

I apologize for being a few days late in my letter. It is a bad habit of mine to always be a little delayed with thank you notes.

Regardless, thank you, California. I can’t tell you how wonderful it felt to wake up next to my partner and hear the news that another state stood up to refocus and recenter definitions of equality despite the lack of support from most of your neighbors. I wish you all the best in the coming months and hope that your brilliantly beautiful decision is met by nothing other than love and wedding mixes with Cher songs. Like Massachusetts, you are a hero of a state to me. Hopefully, the other 48 are listening.

Thanks again.

love,

jesse james  

p.s. Getting married in Cali? Getting married anywhere? Married already? Send me photos or info or whathaveyou to jessejamesblog@gmail.com and I’ll post ya

This is Fraidy. Fraidy Phat the Fish. It’s not the clearest picture but that’s because when the sun is out he is cruising all over his pond at warp speed, making a clear fish shot hard to catch. 

A few Saturday’s ago, while Violet was gone, I set up camp right next to the pond with a book, some coffee, and nothing to do but sit in the sun with my fish. I hadn’t seen much of Fraidy until then. I thought he was just really shy and afraid of being seen (hence the name). But as it should turn out he’s cold blooded, just like all of the other fish in the world, and so during the winter season all he’s really doing is hanging out at the bottom of the pond, freezing his little fish balls off, trying to stay… not frozen. 

But now that spring has sprung, Fraidy is a fire-fast, fat and happy, flippy little fish. A cute little red head, as you can see, with a ring of red around his lips as well (I’ll do what i can to get a picture of that). I have grown to love him rather quickly and pretty seriously. And now that he actually does stuff you can count on regular fish updates- meaning, if the fish, the raccoon, the girlfriend, and/or Cher bore you, you will most likely lose interest in my life.  

Last night I dreamt that I was having coffee at the Planet with Bette and Tina (do not even pretend like you don’t know exactly who I’m talking about). I asked Bette where Jenny was and she said, “Oh come on, she knows you hate her.”

I was so embarrassed. I looked at both of them and said, “No, no, I don’t hate her. I don’t even know her!”

Bette leaned in, with that Julia Sugarbaker posture that she has, right before she says something serious, and said, “Well, obviously your lack of acquaintance was not a prerequisite in forming such a strong verbal opinion.” (what a Bette/Julia thing to say, don’t you think?)

Besides being a little turned on, I felt awful. I thought about how many times I had told people that I hated Jenny. But I don’t. I don’t even know her. And when I thought of her just sitting there in her poorly lit shed, writing sad and twisted carnival stories all by herself because Shane was at work cutting some rich MILF’s hair, I felt really, really bad. I asked Bette if I could catch a ride back to her place so I could go next door and talk to Jenny.

And then Tina said, “Um, maybe you haven’t heard or something, but that’s my house again too!”

And then my alarm went off, reality started to filter back in, and I realized something:

It really is for the best that there is only one more season.

Dear Angry Anonymous Girl,

Its been a few weeks now since I ran into your post on Craigslist and responded. Ever since I read your words I’ve had the same two lines from a song stuck… stuck… in my head. My brain won’t stop chanting the first two lines of Dairy Queen by, that’s right, the Indigo Girls (it’s always a song that acts as my lesbian default-defense mechanism for that costume changing period in-between the thin and thicker skin maneuver). Anyway, it goes like this:

 “I heard that you were drunk and mean down at the Dairy Queen. There’s just enough of you in me for me to have some sympathy.”

You’ve inspired me on so many fronts and as ironic as it sounds I owe you some thanks:

Thank you for inspiring me to write again. Thank you for reminding me to gauge my level of personal awareness, impact, language, output, and intake. Thank you for helping me brave my way through some of the many dark boxes I carry around, all of the time, just like you. Thank you for waking me up and getting me to look into my own rage, insecurities, anger, loneliness, hopelessness, mistrust, fears, hurts, remorse, grievances, and prejudices. Thank you for reminding me that my level of tolerance needed a check in, a tune up. Thank you for encouraging me to celebrate my inner and outer queerness, which you refer to as “a sore thumb”. Thank you for helping all of us freaks check in with each other and find new mediums to support each other. Thank you for helping me brave wearing who I am even louder and prouder, and being even less afraid and more prepared for you, because you are everywhere, in all of us, somewhere. Thank you for softening my brow in general. Thank you for helping me find new and creative ways to let my hurt out because, man, you have got to get it out somehow, right?

I realize that you probably just felt so alone in all of your hurt that you finally boiled over and your explosion was that public post on Craigslist. Probably so that someone, anyone, from anywhere, would hear you.

I heard you. We all heard you. And I’m so sorry you carry all of that around.

Violet loves to say, ‘you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.’ But I like vinegar. It stings a bit but it is refreshing and helps with digestion (i.e. processing). I’m not condoning your choice of outlet, but it was obviously old, fermented hurt and you woke me up.

In my mind you’ve realized that you don’t really mean what you said, maybe some of it, but certainly not all of it.

In my mind you’re standing outside the proverbial window of every freaky queer who had their feelings hurt by you, wearing a trench coat, in the pouring rain, with a boom box lifted over your head, blaring the song “If I Could Turn Back Time” …but that’s just how my mind keeps the sun locked in.

My offer still stands, if you’d ever like to talk.

jesse james

I read Dooce daily. It is a successful, world famous blog for a reason. Heather, the author, is incredibly open and frank about her life and adds an edgy, witty spin on everything she writes about. Last week she posted some of the hate mail she’s received and her responses to a few. The comments she received were drenched in hate. Their content had no substance, just cheap and dirty shots targeted directly at her. And it wasn’t that these strangers had such angry hateful things to say to another human being that surprised me, no, I was surprised at how acts of hate don’t surprise me. 

I guess after thirty one years of hearing about hate, watching hate on television, seeing it happen to strangers, friends, family, experiencing it, carrying hate around, dreaming about it, reading stories about it, talking about hate, using it, feeling hate, and assuming that hate has happened, happens, and will continue to happen, like how Tuesday keeps happening, has sanded down what I hope was once my natural ability to feel surprised, at least, when hate happens.

I was talking to one of my very favorite people, Sinclair, about Dooce’s hate-mail and we were trying to decide if the people that throw around this angry anonymous hate are aware of their impact? Two weeks ago Sinclair posted an ad on her blog that she ran into on Craigslist that some angry anonymous girl had written. Should you chose to read it, I warn you: it is a long and hateful rant and it got me. I was surprised. And honestly it felt refreshing to be shocked and hurt by the hate I was reading. I took some time to respond to this girls post (also posted on Sugarbutch).

So, where do I go with all of this? I have no desire to become a pacifist, and walking around with a bucket over my head won’t work for obvious reasons. So, my experiment for all of this week, starting right now, is this: I will not participate in or with hate. I am removing the word h*** from my vocabulary and when it tries to hit or grow inside or around me I will first try to defuse it back into its natural state of ‘hurt’. If hurt presents itself to me I will engage, if h*** refuses to disarm I will simply walk away.

I will keep you posted on how this goes. If you’d like to join me in this weeks mission let me know how it goes for you. I can imagine that this mission would look very different person to person and that the challenge level would differ as well. It may be that for some, avoiding h*** from the outside could be impossible, so what do you do about that?  If you join me in this I would love to hear about your techniques and experiences trying to go seven days without… ah! not even gonna say it.