A Birthday Rant

When I was a little girl. I got a ball for my birthday, it was before I knew there were other things to want and get. So, I was happy. It is the only photo of me being happy opening a gift on record. Once I knew what there was to want and I developed wants, I opened things and made a frowny face. No one could satisfy my wants because they would require you to be more open, more affectionate, more loving, more generous, more funny, more of a trouble-maker, less shut down and actually someone else entirely. I think of birthdays as a day where you get let down, the disappointing truth is, I just want more than the known world has to offer. Growing up we were poor enough that my mother made our dolls and made us clothes sometimes. I think that i never knew we were poor because my dad was buying oriental rugs for $10,000, but when I think about it now, I go, it's kind of like all our money went to that and we really didn't have much for regular living stuff. Not that i really ever went hungry, but we were supposed to ask for food and i was always too shy to ask. I went hungry a lot. I told myself not to be hungry. That's kind of what I feel like today. The list of disappointments, choices in men who couldn't love me but were happy to pretend to but didn't see me for what I am, but never actually going for boys/men I actually liked. I let myself get chosen because I was old-fashioned. But, it was like only the scavengers could find me, never someone with their shit together. So, it was a series of men sort of like my father, who were good on the inside but was too wrapped up in trying to make a future for us that he didn't spend that much time with me---nor unless it was a holiday were they generous. My father is Scottish and very focused on money and how much everything costs, so we had a few games and the reasons we were given for not getting real barbies was because of the cost. There are a few memories of my father I'll talk about now, because on my birthday I think of many things that are great losses to me. My father is still alive, but I count him among things I have lost that I can't really get back and when I think of it, I don't know if I ever really had him at all. I like to think so. I was definitely his favorite. I knew that much, but he was scared of the world in a way that I was not. He was interested in cults and meditation and strange ways of eating. But, when I was a little girl he sang with me and taught me to sing. He drove me in our giant car---(a Cadillac? I can't remember only that it was brown) to visit a goat he kept on a farm out in Sylmar. We lived in Franklin Hills, so that was a very long way to drive. We sang songs and talked about the universe. I loved the stars and he told me what he knew of them. He told me "Johnny Boy" stories of his struggles and near misses with death when he was just a kid trying to help support his poor family in Maryland. My father went to work when he was fourteen. Like him I went to work when i was fifteen, but worked for every penny I ever had. Allowance? I don't remember it. I think we washed cars or mowed the lawn for money. I am tired. i have worked that whole time. Nothing was ever easy for me. I always struggled. I was told I couldn't go to college because my father got sick and was in the hospital and my mom was afraid of making ends meet, so at 20 I dropped out of UCLA. My dad was always there, he just had some problems that equaled yelling and made me scared to talk to him. When I was 12, it was the last time I gave him a massage and he tried to tell me he was special, but I felt that even though he thought I was special, to keep telling me would make me never try for anything. I kind of told him to lay off and he did---only he laid off forever. I think my dad loves me very much, but might be a little scared of me. I can't explain to him entirely why I am still scared all these years later, but there was a lot of pain and absence and deprivation. I felt unloved. All my other friends had necklaces or some kind of jewelry, but we didn't have jewelry. We didn't spend money on things like that. I always wanted some shiny jewelry from Tiffany's to make me feel like I was loved. It never ever happened. But, not that they aren't generous now, not that they don't give me money during the holidays, there is just a period of years that happened where they hated me. I never really got over it. One time my father and I went jogging around Marshall High and I was walking on a handrail on the top of some stairs and I fell backwards. I think I was 5 or 6. My dad grabbed me and saved me. I remember knowing he had saved my life that day, but I miss the things we used to talk about. I miss the before the psychotic break he had. I miss him just being fun and happy. I miss him. Here's the time to say it. Maybe it will give you insight on the reason I am like I am. But, my father has never called me on the phone. NOT EVER. I'm am broken because of that in a way I don't expect you to understand. People always try to say---oh me too---my dad never calls. But, my dad has NEVER called. Nor has he asked me anywhere. I have to ask him. I guess there is a pattern that was set up a long time ago about the little bit men can give me. The withholding of affection. The me being expected to know how a person feels. But, I never do know. That's the thing. That's why every birthday, I know I've made good on a life that could be crime filled. I've been the better brighter smarter star. But, when there isn't love from family, what really do you have to work with? So, to all of you who are sick of me dating men who don't live anywhere and don't really love me anyway or don't have cars I submit---Some boyfriends have had the four story house, but I didn't feel love from them either. You can say I have a blind spot. But, I am fully aware of what I am doing. I am not closed off or shut down. Recently I decided to go towards people I want--- to tell the people around me how I feel. I did this recently to someone I really cared for, he isn't sure if he can give me anything back, but in my life that means no---and while I take no hard, it made me feel alive to tell someone that I love them anyway. Happy Birthday to me.

My Brother's Keeper

There is a door. I am on one side. You are on the other. Standing in your checkered vans. I can see you standing there, not knowing what to do. You are afraid. You are staring at your father. My father. Someone is bleeding. The kitchen floor is covered in glass.  My brother is crying and trying to clean up. He is only eight. I don’t know why it happened any more than you do. This isn’t about that. I can’t tell you why. Some things just happen and we stand there and watch. If I had been older, I would have helped, but I didn’t know what to do then. I am there too. You can see me if you look. I am covered in blood. It is on my school uniform. Mother is gone. I don’t know where she is. I look at you. I catch your eye and I know you will save me and I will save you. It’s just how that I don’t know. It’s just how that I can’t imagine. It’s just how that will take me out of this world.

But, I am still with you now. I am here now. Please take a look at me. Remember my sweet eyes, because they will look at you with love. Remember how I smell, because it is that you will miss. Remember my skin and my smile born out of longing. In the darkness, you hold things to yourself. We call that love. I loved the broken thing. My father. I held his broken parts in my hand like so many flowers disintegrating into dust. I knew it would happen. That’s the other part. I knew it would happen, but I couldn’t stop it.  When we were watching it. We knew it would change us, but not how. The how is what I’ve forgotten most. The pact I made with you and with myself is still there, unbroken and unflinching. You will say it was me. I will agree. I am the culprit of our deviance. I am sorry, dear brother. I am sorry, my father. I am sorry, my mother. It is this thing. This hatred of choices, I carry, but cannot put down. If I were to put them down, what would happen? Love could come in the door like a butterfly.

After the end, you will say you saw it coming. But, you didn’t. You held me in your arms and loved me. I didn’t want it to ever end, but I had to go to school. The girls’ school with witches posing as nuns. Their hatred changed me too. Wrapped in normal clothes with pinned back hair, I look like the rest of them. You will say I was the best, but I wasn’t, I was just angrier than they were. She was my friend. Katie Santini of the mother on the couch and the playboy magazines where we asked the questions of sex and ate cookie dough. When Katie stood in line with us, the mother nun, Mary-Catherine asked Katie why she was fat. It started then. The anger. I never told you, I beat Katie with a lunch pail until she was bleeding and crying. Blood was on her uniform then too and we became the arbiters of one another’s pain and forgiveness. I put the pills I found into the holy water and watched while everyone got sick. Sick from lack of spirit within themselves. Sickness that felt like love. It still does.

School was closed, but no one ever found out who did it. It wasn’t so bad, no one was permanently sick; I just wanted the nun to stop being so mean to Katie. I guess I was wrong. Still, I would never take it back. It was as satisfying as any thing that you can do and get away with.

My brother, you came to my room when I was only thirteen. I was in bed, my smile was innocent, but you knew I was not. It was before I knew. You crawled into bed and we lay like that against all things holy. Against god. Against hatred. Against our violent home. Your arms were like paradise. Something I did know about, but wanted to. You smelled my hair and I cried for hours and shook the shakes of longing. How can you say it was wrong? You can look at it and say for genetic reasons. The propagation of species it is wrong. I will believe you. That’s what they did on my father’s side. That’s what made our uncle retarded. A genetic flaw. But, you touched me softly and told me I was beautiful. You told me my secret name: angel water. You whispered a cobweb I couldn’t get out of and now, we are here and deciding the future. Well, one of is.

When---or I should say before the day when I went to the other side. I stood before you like a shimmering candle. You ate me with your eyes and told me you found another girl. I knew it would happen. I’m not sorry. In fact, as long as you think so, I will yearn for a life we can be proud of for both of us. But, I am lost now. I cannot explain to Katie who I am crying over night and day. I cannot explain that it is my own brother. There are consequences for that, with no forms of sympathy. 

“In one way, longing kills us all,” you said under the Jacaranda trees lying on those sharp pointy things at 3 am. In the middle of Franklin Hills, Los Angeles smells like wet leaves. “Dead to the world,” you said about our parents, when we would sneak glimpses of the moon and pretend it would be okay. The thing that would never be. I loved you then as I love you now. I remember your smile and the gap filled grin. When I look into your eyes I have no fear of the future. But, it is in your eyes that I see my own death. I do see it. I do not look away. I don’t welcome it. I love this world more than anyone. I love the taste of oranges in the summer and the laughter of my father when he makes me taste watermelon juice. I’m supposed to like watermelon, but I never do. He laughs at me and tells me about the universe. It is in his laughter that my own madness grew.

I told you about the grey-blueness of them. In the mirror, you see it too. I stand alone at first and look at my naked body. I am beautiful. You come in beside me and looked at me. It felt like forever. Watching and waiting for the other to make the move that no one could say no to. In my eyes though, we both see my father. You got lucky, you got eyes from the devil, so we can see one thing, but not our own father. “The devil is better to be with you than away from you,” you say.  When the devil is away from you, you can’t see what he is doing. If he is in your bed, then you know. You can feel it. The cause of your humanness being opened bit by unstoppable bit.

In time I know you will forget I was ever there, in the ways I was. You will remember things like drinking orange drink from McDonald’s and keeping that a secret from our parents. You will think of our babysitter, the one who taught me to French kiss, the one who taught us how dirty a crank caller could really be. You will think of me while undressed with your wife and you will feel guilty. No one will be what I was to you. It’s my voice that you won’t be able to remember and you’ll want to. You’ll try for months to find that one tape I made when I was in school, but you won’t find it and my voice was on nothing else. You’ll think I left because of you. That’s not the reason I’m going. The reason is not you at all. The joy my body felt for knowing you, made this life sweet. The reason I am leaving is I can’t make sense of not loving anyone else and I can’t make sense of what happened to my father. That is why. I can’t make you believe it though. You will think it is because we did the forbidden thing. I want you to know, my darling brother, that you gave me the one reason to stay. Like oranges and the yellow bird or childhood or the speed of roller skates. The innocence isn’t lost if I say it. In the innocence I found you. The blood from father and the madness is stuck in my mind forever though. The only time I ever forget it, is when you look at me and smile and say, “I want what you want.”

Say goodbye to my beautiful pink dress that glows in your mind. Say goodbye to words on paper that fill me up or leave me breathless. Say goodbye to sitting in churches and cursing God. Say goodbye to Valium’s pull and the hot sex of the bar-room floor. Say goodbye to air and its glorious filling of the lungs. Goodbye to the sting of whiskey. Goodbye to an after the gym cigarette. Goodbye to my fair city, filled with more beauty than I can name. The list of things I will miss should include my mother, and it does. Her voice and the dolls she made me when she couldn’t afford to buy them.  The list of things I love is too long and to say them all would cheapen what they mean to me. My last thought was not about the mundane. My last thought was of you and your warm hands on my skin and the look in your eyes holding me captive and of my father bleeding on the kitchen floor.

By All Human Measurements

When I was a yellow bird. I sat high in the jacaranda tree amongst the velvety periwinkle flowers. They looked good against my feathers. I was small then. At least by all human measurements. In bird world, I am as I should be. All feathers and down and attitude. My mother died in the mouth of a cat. I saw it go down. She was looking for crumbs, for me. I was too young to know the difference—as in what I would have been like had I a mother to raise me. I don’t know if you saw me eating or heard my song, but I was there day after day watching you in your plastic play-pool with the sponge shoved in the crack to keep the water in. your mother made fun of your watermelon belly and you cried. You looked in my direction when the girl who did that bad thing to her belly button started screaming and bleeding. You didn’t know why you had to play with the girl. Far apart eyes. Dull voice. Blood everywhere. But like all things, there are no reasons, not when it comes down to it. I sang you a song the day your dad was taken away for thinking he was Jesus. The song was the best I had—you didn’t hear it, you were explaining the universe to the ambulance guys, vying for attention. Showing them how normal you were. But, you weren’t normal. Later, after you knew me, I came to watch you from the tree above your bunk bed, but you didn’t look out. You told your mother, “I’m never wearing dresses again,” but she didn’t see the impact—not like I did. I saw you steal cheese from the fridge and wipe the knife clean. They had put locks on things and you were starving. I saw you the day you ran out into the middle of the road screaming naked wanting to go to gymnastics class. Your mother laughing at your nakedness. It made me want to be a dancer. 

The Loneliness of a Body

The Loneliness of a Body

Your arms are a casket

white tulips; money; mouthwash
they push me into a garden
where ghosts keep us

from being ourselves

I dig my hands through wet
earth and find your father’s skull
vine-wrapped with a dead bat
sticking out of his eye-hole

I suggest I sit in a saucer of milk

or drag you with a chain

You ask me to come back
on a day when you are living,
but nothing lives, not like the dead

I stare into the sky
one hand on my grand-mother and one hand

on your chest --- the stars are wondering

if your piercings indicate slave or

master

What else is there, if we can’t talk
about the things you hid---
lovers in closets, man--
but, your girl found me, told me
you wouldn’t fuck her

I am not yours now
and that fact is endless

Killing Dolls--Read by my friend Brendan Sexton

Becky Fisher--Know It All

Becky Fisher opens her eyes and takes off her little eye mask and she goes, what time is it baby, only baby isn’t here anymore, baby is living with that ugly slut, the one with the chin job and the suboxone habit. Becky isn’t angry, Becky likes a big empty bed, one where dreams lived and died. Becky is feeling happy, she takes one happy blue pill every night at 7 and then another when she wakes up at 7. 7 to 7 she calls it. They make her not feel stuff. It’s part of her master plan, the part where by not feeling she can stay on planet earth with all its ants and weird clothing made for special purpose sex. The pill's side effect makes the air smell of butter and makes being quiet almost like sleeping in the arms of someone that loves you but won't say it. Becky takes a blue one without water or any hope in a future. Becky Fisher can get through heartbreak! Becky fisher is All American. She was a cheerleader her big boobs bouncing so far up her chest they called her Torpedos. She remembers them fondly, now she is old and they aren’t big like that, they are small hanging on to her starvation frame for dear life.

Why did Conor lie about his broken cock and tell her that it didn’t look as much like a tomato as like an eggplant? And why did this make Becky actually go the Ralphs even though she doesn’t even shop Ralphs, she is a Whole Paycheck kind of girl to see one. Becky goes to the produce and chooses one out. A giant throbbing Eggplant, not the Japanese one either, but the ugliest fattest one she can find and she goes home and waits for Conor. Did it look like this Conor? Did it happen with the girl on the trapeze, the sex nerd? Is that what you forgot to tell me? Because now here we are. Like this. Me with my perfect pussy hole and my mouth that knows what to do but look at you, yours is BENT. Not right angle bent, but hurty kind of bent a bent that doesn’t make physical sense unless you have a giant pussy hole which I don’t, mine is small. Remember the story about the children’s speculum?

            Becky was not calm. Becky tried to remember the therapy session that made her feel better, the one where Becky got mad and instead of saying the same thing no one could ever help her with Becky just peed in her pants right there. She peed right through those little shorts that she had cut because she was featuring her thighs now that she was far away from her sexually repressed parents. And speaking of being far far away from sexual repression she had taken a female lover, that’s right---trying it on, just to see if she liked fisting better than cocks, only she was built too small so she never ever got to even try. Becky said, I’m a pillow princess and wouldn’t know what to do and plus it grosses me out. If we were both dudes then maybe because I like cock, but you cannot judge what God is not judging. Unless HE is and then we are both fucked anyway and Becky Fisher showed that girl the door and tried not to mention her giant chin hit her in a way that was painful and worse than that was the accent. Who has a gay irish accent anyway?

            Becky Fisher was All American, she had good breeding, a genetic lineage that she could follow to the Hearsts on one side and then there was the white trash bacon side. That was the side that seemed to pick her boyfriends.

            Becky Fisher landlords stole her bike and she called the cops and told them, if you don’t come now, someone will die. I have a knife and everything, but they didn’t come.  Instead a little Mexican named Sergio came. He tries to give Becky her bike back through the door, but she has her period and if he comes any closer she’s going to kill him with the knife. Never mind it’s a paring knife. For apples. Sergio is smiling. That dick shouldn’t be smiling. Becky says, what the fuck? Why were you born you mother fuck. Becky isn’t very smart when she gets mad. Anyway, She says show me the bike you ass-fuck. How dare you? Your children are going to die of eye cancer. Then he steps back from the door, he’s getting the picture that Becky is crazy. Step away you mother fuck. you’re gonna die. WALK AWAY. Becky is lost, screaming, red so that her eye mask to help eye fatigue are falling off ruining the look she had and completely destroying the relaxation the box promised. She puts down the knife and opens the door and brings the bike inside. She goes to her phone to look at the big giant perfect penis her friend sent her. She looks at it like a child would look at a teddy bear and she becomes calm. Who knows calm Like Becky Fisher. Becky Fisher knows what to do, she wrote affirmations that tell her so. Becky Fisher is pretty. Becky Fisher is not embarrassed for liking a big cock. Becky Fisher makes money. Becky Fisher is skinny. Becky Fisher has style and class and then the door rings.

            Becky is like now what, and then she goes to the door and it’s just the UPS guy, he’s got her straightening iron the one she’s been waiting for. The one that Gwenyth Paltrow used when she was pretty before she got old.

PAPA, CACA, DOO DOO, WEE WEE

Today I created something, it's called, "Put this oil on your pussy lipgloss." It's my very first product. I'm hoping it will sell well and that I can share my wealth with those people who have been nice to me and withhold it from the people who have been mean to me in the attempt to make themselves feel better about their own mediocrity, lack of loyalty and cowardice. This story isn't for you ridiculous people. This story is for the rest of you.

START:  When I was a kid, my neighbor's father said I was a bad apple. My neighbor's name was Michael Soma--for the life of me I can't remember his father's name and for the sake of things it doesn't matter. Michael Soma hung out with me and my friend Tom Maher. We were always together as kids. Michael's father said I was bad because I was the one that told about a snake that didn't exist---which I only said because me and Michael and Tom were ALONE and didn't want to be bothered by adult people or other kids that we thought were dumb. Our cave was our cave and we were being quiet and telling our dangerous secrets of the Witch Coven that existed in Lakeside and how on most nights I could feel a demon trying to steal my soul directly out of my chest. We had been trying to figure out what to do about the demon. I had been up all night praying. My mother bought me worry dolls who I whispered the problem of the demon to, and they were supposed to handle things in the night. But, they didn't. The demon stayed digging into my chest--trying to steal my soul.

If you ask many kids at the lake---I was not the only one having night terrors, demons and witchery happening to me. Most of the kids start their stories by saying--i know you are going to think I'm crazy, but I swear this thing really happened. All of us spoke like that. Those friends at the lake had secrets that were loaded with the supernatural. I believed in God, but also that a devil worshipping cult near by could hurt us. We were all superstitious--not just me---and if you didn't believe an arrowhead could kill you, we didn't want you around. Michael had a whole collection of them but we didn't talk about what that meant.

Michael's father said I was bad because Tom chucked a rock at me and I chucked one back and his rock didn't do anything, but my rock chipped his front tooth. Michael's father said I was bad because were were playing catapult off a bed wherein Tom and Michael would sit on my feet and I'd be laying down with my knees bent and fly them across the room and of all the times we took turns it was Tom that broke his arm when I sent him flying. Lisa Douglass is a bad apple. That should go without saying. I wasn't actually the one that talked about sex and how to spy on our parents and then report back, but I was blamed for it. And even though when we were older I was the one who mashed the coke into my floor just to see if anyone would take the dare to eat it directly off the tile and no one would--I still shared with everybody. I knew what friendship was.

But, Michael--the son of the dad who called me a bad apple-- used to pee on his own dog. His dog's name was Pudgy--he was a doberman pincer. Michael would chase him saying PAPA, CACA, DOO DOO, WEE WEE and then unzip his fly pee on Pudgy. He did this a lot. After Michael died, I saw him once in a dream. He was wearing eyeliner, speaking to a baby cat. Telling it what he wanted. "I want love. I want kindness. I want obedience." The baby cat ignored him and just licked his face over and over as to make the rest of the dream people uncomfortable. I tried to speak to Michael but he held up his hand and said, "Not now, Lisa. My dad said I can't talk to you anymore."

Before Michael died and years after I moved away from the lake and was living with my sister (or had she moved out?) off DeSoto, Michael came to visit me. He came with Tom Maher. They were there. I was on drugs, in bad shape and didn't know what day it was. They drank wine coolers with me or whatever I had back then. Maybe Bacardi 151. They lay on a bed, that for some reason was in the middle of the living room. We laughed like we had always laughed, making fun of ourselves and people we knew. We fell asleep in each other's arms, dreaming of somewhere safe.

Michael died from a shotgun his girlfriend/wife fired at him during a domestic dispute. I think they were high. His ashes are marked with a cross at the top of Sugarloaf---the mountain that overlooks Malibou Lake. I miss him a lot. He was always my friend.