I live with cockroaches I’ll admit it but I’m a New Yorker so I’m used to them. I don’t like them though. One time I lived with so many I got in the habit of flicking them hard if they crept within range. But my squeamishness level has risen and when I see one I get flustered and fill with anxiety. Sometimes I think I see an expression on their faces. Expressions almost cartoonish of dread. I always try to kill them, raging instinct, yet whether I catch them or not afterwards immediately I am drowned in remorse. I don’t want to fear them or hate them. Few other beasts have the ability to rattle me quite so.

So when the other day I came across a big fat cockroach chowing down in the bottom of a large bowl of rice I took the opportunity to seal him into that bowl by applying the flat rubber lid suctioned closed. Sealed him up and I was giggling right away with contentment at this suitable revenge. Ha ha ha you are my prisoner now. He had plenty of air and all the food he could stuff is ridiculous fangs into so I wasn’t concerned about him but what I did know was that he was panicked with anxiety. Payback.

After about an hour commonsense woke me and I set the fellow free, albeit outside of my house.

Ever since my game with the roach I have noticed his brethren creeping from their home in the stove, the next wave of soldiers, the frontline food finders. And for some reason I am less prone to want to attack them. The score has been settled. Except when I think about big fat old grandpa roach who I mercilessly threw out of my home after ‘water-boarding’ him and I rue I have parted him from his family forever. I am a monster.

 For more Christina Oxenberg visit: Amazon.com/Christina Oxenberg

                  ... the other day a smart sexy good-looking guy with a grown-up job asked me out on a date. We were on the telephone, chatting and arranging things. At some point he said to me, I am dominant. Do you know what I mean by that?
I replied, I think so.
He said, I am a 50 shades of gray type of guy. What do you think of that?
Oh…., well I get claustrophobia in elevators so I don’t think this is going to work out.
We never went on that date.

David Wolkowsky’s annual party was the usual roaring success with the best of Key West from the artists and authors and poets to the elite conchs with streets named after them. And of course there are the ‘guests’ who have never received a cream colored embossed invitation in the handwritten matching envelope, but they crash the party each year. David notices everything.

I, on the other hand, notice very little these days as I’m in the middle of swimming across the Atlantic Ocean, metaphorically speaking. Only two reasons are good enough for me to tear away from my current project, one being anytime David Wolkowsky calls, and the second being anytime Xperimento perform at the Green Parrot, the Ozymandias of watering holes.

Another not on David’s party guest list is the new most popular personality in town. This personality has their own Facebook page and ‘friend requests’ are blowing up.

This fresh personality can reliably be found outside the Green Parrot. To be precise, directly across the street. Because it is a bench, it is :www.facebook.com/courthouse deli bench the bench outside the Court House Deli. This bench by day hosts coffee drinkers and newspaper readers and by night it hosts stringy strung-out hippies and snoozing drunks. Some nights it is host to me and pals with parrots, for chatting smoking drinking laughing. One local told me, “I post on the Bench’s Facebook wall if I’m coming out, so it’s like a date!”

The bench is the latest subject under observation at L.A.R.S.(Large Animal Research Station).

Since David is unlikely to invite this bench to his party perhaps I can persuade him to come sit on the bench with me, next time Xperimento are in town.

In the meantime I’ll content myself with the memories of a couple of great nights and now it’s back to the Atlantic for me, for the long cold home stretch to gold, Diana Nyad watch out for your record!

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 For more Christina Oxenberg visit: Amazon.com/Christina Oxenberg

The other night late I dawdled to chat with my friend Malloy, the joke teller. I have spent many hours seated beside Malloy out there on Duval Street until business hours end, which is after 4 in the morning. My first year here before I knew anyone Malloy was a place for me tarry and watch the nuttiness I love so much about Key West. Strolling around is fun, but sometimes I want a good perch from which to observe and Malloy has been that perch for me on many a night.

When I saw him, he said, “I have a gift for you,” he said, “wait here, it’s in the van, I’ll be right back.” He handed me his sign, which is the size of a beach towel, with one word in large letters, JOKES.

“No problem, I’ll make a fortune for you while you’re gone!” After all, I know loads of great jokes. So I sat in his chair and I held up the sign.

A couple of lads stopped in front and said, “Tell us a joke.”

I went brain-dead, frozen. Stalling, I said, “Give me a dollar.”

One dude said, “First tell us a joke.”

I stared at the two expectant men, and absolutely nothing came to mind.

My mind was a belfry of echoes.

“Tell us a joke!”, the men demanded.

I couldn’t think of a single one. “I can’t remember any!”

Incredulously they stared at me, “But you’re holding a sign that says, ‘JOKES’!”

“Sorry, I’ve gone blank.”

They were shocked.

I did manage to get the fellows giggling, because although my memory failed me I always have my goofball personality to fall back on, so I got them laughing.

At last Malloy returned and I gave him back his sign, “Sorry Malloy I failed horribly! Couldn’t think of anything!”

He didn’t care, he had an incredible gift for me. About 20 CDs of all his own original music in a black and pink case with a zip. Thank you and Happy New Year Malloy.

PS: So this guy goes into a bar….

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After three months of near total isolation I scraped off the Yeti exterior and made myself presentable for David Wolkowsky’s annual downtown rooftop party to celebrate the start of the Key West Literary Seminar. This year’s party was in honor of poet Billy Collins. Only for my dear friend David would I make the monumental effort to buff and dress up. I’ll confess I toppled in my high heels.

10 o’clock the excellent party ended, but I was out and dressed and it was a Friday night so I went to the Green Parrot where, reliably, there was a great band, www.facebook.com/Entrain  I have heard them before and I keep their CD in my car, and there are a couple all drums tracks that cannot be played loud enough. The lead drummer has an extensive and worn kit spread out in front of him, he is always smiling, sometimes his eyes are closed and his head is thrown back. The drummer is all wide shoulders and wiry arms and moving so fast you can barely see what he’s doing. His legs are pounding up and down, like he’s stomping, but his sneakered feet are on tiptoes, like he’s running wildly through a brambly dense forest. His energy is mighty. 

Some songs are blissful pure percussion, lead drummer, steel drums, bongos, shake-shakes and a tambourine. I defy you not to dance when you hear them. Preferably not in heels, however.

The only peculiarity was that everyone I ran into at the ‘dirty bird’ aka the Green Parrot, made fun of my attire. I was shocked. This has never happened before and I have appeared there in polkadot nighties worn inside out (by accident) and flip-flops (not always matching) and no one has ever said a thing except ‘hello’ and ‘good to see you’.

From everyone I caught quite the reaming. Over and over I had to explain I had just been to a grown-up’s party and dressed accordingly. Ha ha ha! they laughed at me and one and all said, ‘It looks like it’! 

Turns out there is a dress code at the Parrot! In any case I’m going back into isolation. 

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For more Christina Oxenberg visit: Amazon.com Christina Oxenberg-Royal Blue

I don’t even like to touch doorknobs.

The night the three of us went to the strip club a stripper offered to mash my face between her breasts. I declined. So she went up the pole and swung around in some impressive positions, and I gave her a dollar.

And then the unthinkable happened, she stuck out her hand for me to shake!

I didn’t know what to do!

I am totally germ phobic.

But I did not want to be rude so I took the sticky pole-dancer’s hand and I shook it!

Then I had to run home to wash.

What is correct strip club etiquette?

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 For more Christina Oxenberg visit: Christina Oxenberg’s amazon 

The 5 stages of seeing a project from start to finish.

1. New idea! Full of enthusiasm. Brilliant! Going to change the world!
2. Small compromise. It’s going to be ok, not great but good enough.
3. Very flawed, but you’re in so deep already, you have to finish.
4. ‘Who do I have to fuck to get off this project!!’
5. Blame the innocent and/or take credit depending on how things end up…

Best of luck with Resolutions!!

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 For more Christina Oxenberg  visit: Amazon.com Christina Oxenberg-Royal Blue

At the end of a long path of shells and hemmed by tall grasses nestles a cottage surrounded by garden, the lip of which sinks into dense mangroves and there opens up a view of a peaceful ocean inlet. Beautiful by day and beautiful by night.

At night, matching the stars above, in indentations in the sandy ground you sometimes saw shimmer, crushed and scattered diamonds. If you poked at the glistening piles, say with the tip of your flip-flop, it would collapse and spread, still lit, relaxing into smaller sparkly particles. You could pick it up and in the palm of your hand closely examine the tiny heaps of bright matter. Be warned, however, because magic vanishes when you mess with it.

A scientist friend came along one day and scooped up some of the diamond dust and took it away for analysis. He tried everything but he discovered nothing. And ever since, in the field around my friend’s house, the diamonds have never re-appeared. As if perhaps the magic was offended, somehow, by the scrutiny.

Perhaps life itself is an easily vanishing pile of sparkly motes. Feel, learn, love, laugh and dance, and never scrutinize too closely lest the magic be pressed out.

For instance, were you to scrutinize this post, written half comatose form overdoing things at birthday celebrations (still going), I trust you will forgive me.

Thank you all for participating in another year of story telling. Thank you for reading my posts and returning the energy in your witty pithy comments. You inspire me. With gratitude, your friend

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I did not think I was the luckiest six-year-old in the world when, at the start of one week in Switzerland with the family, I broke my leg for a Christmas present.

My ski pass already purchased I wrecked my leg before even getting on the slopes. I had nothing to do except learn how to get around on the snow on crutches. For company I would have to spend my time with the new boyfriend of my mother as he was not much of an athlete and did not ski, although as an actor under contract he may have claimed this for professional reasons. According to my mother he was an alcoholic with a smoking habit, two issues she hoped to curtail and she enlisted both me and my sister in her schemes.

To fill the days the old actor and I sat in the restaurant of the hotel, a large room with a roaring fireplace and we played endless games of hangman. He told me stories, like how he hated acting and only wanted to be an English professor and that he was from Wales and hated to be confused with being British. Meanwhile I monitored his intake of alcohol and cigarettes, as per my mother’s instruction. I was her little spy, her Black Hand. No doubt he saw right through my sophomoric efforts. The best I could do was delay him from his drink, at the end of each game he would pick up his wine, fingertips on the round ass of the glass, and swig it all. Then we would play another game of hangman and he would order another glass of wine. It just so happened this man loved kids, and I soon learned to love him.

In the middle of the day the two of us would wobble carefully over to the gondola and travel up to the top of the mountain and join for lunch the avid athletic family members, all of them bristling with suntanned skin and exuberance.

I don’t know if I realized it at the time but I was the luckiest six-year-old in the world. What a Christmas present I had to enjoy Richard Burton for a nanny for a week. Merry holidays one and all. I doff my cap to you my friends and RIP Richard Burton and to the many other long gone friends who lit my childhood with bursts of fireworks.

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 For more Christina Oxenberg  visit: Amazon.com Christina Oxenberg-Royal Blue