What's in a Name?

I've got a new post on Black Magpie Theory:  Sex and Civil Disobedience.  I'm always kind of stumped about what to write for Black Magpie on account of they're pretty serious over there, even when they're joking.  My friend Kathleen provided me with material this week.  She has been the editor of Best Lesbian Erotica for a couple of years, but this year, the publisher put her in charge of publicity.

The Magpie piece turned out well and the comment string is interesting which, I suppose, is about as good as it gets. I'm happy to say that things got better than good yesterday because Care2 News Network picked up my essay about the bacteria in Mono Lake.  Joe had it posted over at Worldwide Hippies, and Care2 linked to it from there. I was so jazzed I had to call my mother and my sister.  It's gone now, but for a while, there was a link to something I wrote on a news site that has over 14,000,000 members.  That's a very big number.

It was exciting, for sure, but once I caught my breath, I was kind of bummed because of my name.  The whole time I've been blogging, I used the pen name PENolan which are my real initials with Granny the Ho's maiden name.  Nobody except my parents call me Patricia, though.  On facebook, I'm Tricia Penolan because those fucks at facebook can write thousands and thousands of complicated algorithms but they can't fix it so that a person can use initials as his/her name.  There can be no P.E. Nolan in the land of facebook.

Tricia Penolan is better than Pe Nolan, which is who I used to be.  I hated that as much as when my family moved to Webster Groves, Missouri and my new third grade teacher started calling me Pat.  I had no clue how to correct a teacher, so everybody at school called me Pat until I went to Junior High.

Meanwhile, Monkey Muck finished the pages with my pictures in his graphic novel- which is totally cool even though Woody Konopelli said I look like a Meth Head.  Actually, I think that's the point since Hip Deep, Mountain High is all about hillbilly white trash in the hills of Tennessee.  Or somewhere like Tennessee.

 
Since Steve/Dr. Von Monkerstien and I are facebook friends, he naturally listed me in the credits as Tricia Penolan.  He's got PENolan now which is a good thing because my mother is going to shit bricks when she finds out that I have become a hooker in an on-line graphic novel.  It's very important that my mother be able to separate herself from my activities.  As long as Tricia _____ had nothing to do with it, then Mother can act as if she had nothing to do with it either.  If my shenanigans could be traced back to her, then she'd feel like her parenting was to blame for my disgraceful behavior.  Notably, when I made the Digg Patriots' list - or penolan made the Digg Patriots' list - Mother kvelled.

I don't have an issue with writing under a pseudonym.  It was Buzz Kill's idea to begin with, or at least the idea of a pseudonym first came up when we were sitting at a conference table with our lawyers negotiating the final terms of the divorce.  I can't blame Buzz Kill a bit given what I had said about him in that story I read at KGB.  It turned out to be for the best because if I used my real name here at Menopausal Stoners, the folks at Firestarter Academy would have been infinitely more pissed off about everything I said about my former assistant, the fennel breathing dragon who set the damn classroom on fire.  Getting fired was a drag, but at least I got unemployment all summer.  Besides, you never know when some random stalker might start hanging around outside Menopausal Stoners Headquarters.  That Geezer down at KGB was bad enough (Stonerdate 07.26.10, The Socioeconomics of Romance).

I'm pretty sure that the Geezer never knew my real name.  I might have told him, but he was too busy trying to figure out a way to use Menopausal Stoners to further his writing career which is about the goofiest thing I ever heard.  Menopausal Stoners has a ring to it, but even though it's a good title, it's not my name.

In one of life's little ironies, Steve had just corrected my name in the comic book when the subject came up in a different context. Lisa from That's Why and me conjured up a man.  The last time I wrote something for Magpie, Lisa made a joke about being my Yenta.  The next thing you know a very attractive fellow sent me a friend request.  He's smart, articulate and witty - not to mention employed which is quite a bonus these days.  The best part is that Lisa had nothing to do with it, although the minute she saw him make a comment about one of my links, she jumped on the idea because this fellow is a real, live, eligible bachelor.  If his pictures are any indication, he's substantially cuter than the man we had originally targeted, The Rude Pundit.

I wasn't enthusiastic about The Rude Pundit, even though he was my own suggestion, since he seems like another unavailable, condescending dick with a book.  I kind of like condescending dicks with books, but really, there are a lot of them floating around New York City and they all seem to think they're the only condescending dicks in town.  Nevertheless, Rude was the only straight man in sight when me and  Lisa put on our Matchmaking Hats.

So I was IMing on facebook this weekend with a handsome, single, employed, younger man who wanted me to tell him something about myself that a person couldn't easily discover on his own on the blog - as if there's something I haven't mentioned during all the time I've been running my mouth on the internet. Further, he had already read all about Velvet saying I'm a Klingon, and I figured that's all any man needs to know.  After some consideration, however, I realized that there is indeed something that isn't on the blog or on facebook:  My Real Name.

I sent him my real name without thinking, but when I saw it there in the message thread, crisp and neat in 10 point arial, I started to cry.  I wasn't a bit sad, but they weren't happy tears either.  I think I was suddenly overwhelmed because he crossed from the periphery into the Triciasphere, and he's close enough geographically to come all the way into the living room in real life.  It's a little bit scary, and not surprisingly, it reminded me of a song



Roam has been one of the official theme songs from the Gemini Parties for years and years - except for the year Kathleen had to listen to the radio the whole time because she was trying to win Joan Jett tickets.