the incredible world of traci.

If you could write a book about anything, what would it be about?

I did write a book. It was about me. DUH.

i was just recently dialoguing with someone about bad haircuts. and then serendipitously i came across this picture just now. a picture i took right after my terrible haircut. this was when bela was about a year old. i had grown tired of all my hair falling out everywhere so i decided the best thing to do would be to get it all hacked off. i called someone a friend of a friend had recommended, someone whose salon was in an old house in a neighborhood instead of at supercuts or whatever, so i thought that lent the guy more cred. i put on my hippest green dress and wore my big ol black glasses and carried my vintage purse, hoping that the guy woud be able to infer the perfect sloppy-cute haircut (my sloppy cute short haircut ideal is and will forever be winona ryder in reality bites, holy shit) but unfortunately for me, i have to take my glasses off during a haircut, and without them i am blind. so i had to just sit there in the sunlit blur, feeling my head grow lighter and lighter from loss of thick long hair. and then i put the glasses back on at the end of it and OH GOD it was shellacked old-lady newscaster hair! not not NOT hip at all! and i squeaked out a thank you and paid and tipped and got the fuck out of there, crying and smoking cigarettes all the way home. and then i wet my hair and scrubbed the hairspray goo out of it and tried to make it look cool and took a picture of it. it does not look cool necessarily, but not all bad. but the hair guy did pay no mind to the natural curl of my hair, so as it grew out it pretty much grew straight UP, so i had this great unruly bush of hair for the better part of a year, o god! but now my hair is down to my bra strap and i ain't touching it.

Picture 275

What books are on your nightstand?

There's an erotica anthology that I bought at the Friends of the Library Old Book Sale. It's kind of new and hip and features a picture of a woman's crotch area (the crotch is wearing short-shorts). I've only read like two or three stories in it. I'm not as erotic as I once was, I guess. I like having it on my nightstand, though, because it looks kind of provocative, and also because maybe it will inspire me to do some steamy nighttime reading instead of just collapsing into bed all dead-ass tired.

There are also some kids' books, because I read Bela night-nights (our word for bedtime stories) in our bed. So we have a pile of Sandra Boynton board books, plus The Paper Bag Princess.

Oh, I just went to look to make sure I wasn't lying. There's also a copy of Phoebe Gloeckner's A Child's Life on there.