1.

Okay. So this is it. I am forcing myself into a corner that I cannot back out of. I am entering, as the other female academics in my life say, the pregnancy time. No, I’m not pregnant in the actual sense, thank fuck. At least I better not be. As a lesbian who needs to really plan such things, I’d be more than concerned if I were. I do, however, have something brewing in my guts and I have exactly 9 months to spit it all out onto a cold, sterilized table. The facts: my child-in waiting is my PhD thesis. Her name is to be “The Lonely Gay.” (Yes, that’s the real title of my thesis. Sorry in advance to my supervisor). The due date for her arrival is 9 months from today. We’ll say 11:15 a.m. when I will/must deliver my innards to a committee of my peers, all whom will be wearing sophisticated skinny pants and expecting me to no longer be expecting anything.

In situ, I am able to foreshadow her arrival. She seems nice. Soft, well mannered, caring. The kind of gal I’d like to know. But she’s also full of large amounts of stinky shit. Fillers and bad segues, feet that look like cheddar-cheese scones, eyes like broken buttons, a voice that crackles like bubble-wrap. Truly, she is hideous at times. But I’ll love her anyway, right?

Today as I sit here with my Red Rose, my computer, my extra sweater, I hope so. My belly feels emptied. It’s sunny outside and I want to be playing four-squares with the kids across the street talking about what they’re hopeful for this September school year: friends, cool teachers, new ways to say vagina without getting in trouble. I’m still secretly hoping the ice-cream truck will drive by so I can run outside, take my toonie, grab a cone, and fill the day with sugar and banter about Rob Ford or Hannah Montanna with the man with one foot who wheels past my place every morning at this time. But I am stuck sitting. Calcified in teak plush.

I hope I have not lost her, I think now, staring at my belly. I hope she still has something to say to me.

My 4-year-old nephew caught me pondering one day, all contemplative over my pancakes. I was worrying about my lacks: my lack of publishing, job prospects, financial savings, a future, lovers, tits. But he looked me in the eyeballs, kissed my arm and said: “Lessa, today’s a new day and a new mood.” Best piece of advice I ever received. And this is the place that these writings come from. That hope that today, even though I am talking about loneliness in my thesis, even though I feel the pressure that there is no way it’s going to get done, ever, never, that today like tomorrow will bring a new day with a new mood.

So, I’m beginning this blog for her, my unsightly thesis-baby “Blister: The Lonely Gay.” That is, after all, what a thesis is to me. A blister that annoys and lingers but that I kinda like having stuck to me because it proves something to me, my body, others, that I actually am doing something worthwhile. Worthwhile enough to warrant a blister anyway. So I write for my Blister and me. She and I. Jesus Christ! How did I get into the English Department again?

I will try my best not to drop her into the thorn bushes or forget her on top of my non-existent car. I will care for her crooked teeth and wordy skin even as she pains and needs constantly. I will write her everyday, no matter what. Still, I can promise nothing other than tricky collisions of words but I’m sure there will be lots of storybook encounters filled with pretentious thoughts, scotch, neurosis, astrology, pubic hair, philosophy, politics, hot-dogs, compassion, and if we’re all lucky unicorns. And of course, loneliness, my lover.

The labor pains begin now.