A Life in Eight Parts

A Life In Eight Parts:

Part one: Get born and be all smeary don’t be embarrassed, everyone is smeary at first

Part Two:

            A Section

            Meet parents, find out they had a daydream involving lofts and hay and many things you can’t understand and in order to understand you would have to take lifetimes to listen to all the things that they know and you could never know and they make you understand this by always holding a little bit back from your questions so that you will be tied to them in some way from this withholding.

Part Two:

            B Section

            Investigate affection and ways that parents withhold it or use it against you in order to control you and find out right then and there that more than anything else you just want them to stop yelling and screaming and throwing things. Watch them from behind the bathroom door, their bedroom door, your bedroom door, the kitchen cupboard, from behind the TV. Learn math.

           

Part Three:

            Discover boys are better than girls only different in the ways that they can be nice to you. Find out that it is wrong to not want to play with dolls and want to skate and hike and sail and surf with the boys, find out you are different and in being different you are part of a secret gang of boys who protect you from violence and bullies and other things that could happen to you were they not your protectors.

            Second part: Watch all your friends become sexual way too early and be scared for them and scared you will never be like that and terrified if you were like that that you would be a bad person and ask god why your mother always says Lori has giant boobs and then makes a frowny face and not understand what its supposed to be like and get scared and be called a prude because you don’t want to kiss one of the Sumner boys at the spin the bottle game in the dark on the McKinney’s dock. Nor do you know what a blowjob is nor do you want to know what the bases are but not be able to stop them from telling you how first differs from second in certain ways but hear third be different sometimes and not really understand certain terms and it makes you sick to hear it, so you go, that’s cool, I have to go home and study and you ask yourself in secret doesn’t love count for anything here we are supposed to put our mouths on other mouths and pretend it feels like something but I don’t even like these people in real life and now I’m supposed to kiss them? Be grossed out. Walk in and stare at your parents and think maybe you should say something but realize as with all questions that you really sincerely have no one can answer for you they just make things up to make you feel better.

            Third part: Find out that there are some boys and some girls that are like you and not sexing out all over the place but they like to hang out and drink and steal stuff, make another kind of gang with these people, a private better gang one where you don’t have to try the most embarrassing moments of your young life out loud in front of all of the neighborhood kids.

Part Four:

            Something here happens to you that might be considered demon possession or some kind of traumatic disorder brought on by the violence that you experience in your home mixed with the lizard that you did find in the shoebox that your mother said wasn’t there and you had such an imagination and at that same time remember being given worry dolls and talk to the worry dolls and try to believe and pray to god to save you but still be too scared to sleep because someone told you about the book the Amityville Horror and you know you won’t sleep again but you have to sleep so you keep yourself up until you cry. During this time call friends and talk and keep the phone open all night so that you can love the way you want to love in a way the world doesn’t allow and be open and quiet and secret and still until in the morning you hear the phone buzzing and know that they couldn’t keep their end of the bargain and realize this is the first knowing that your whole life and the people in it will be an entire disappointment, not just a passing one but the kind of disappointment wherein you will think that they will be cool and nice and not ordinary, but they always end up to be just exactly average and do the expected average things even though they promise they won’t be like every other person and you can’t fix that and it makes you cry and hug your dog and your bunny rabbit and watch the doves in the chicken coop for some kind of relief. Teach yourself to starve.

Part Five:

            Know death. See death happen in all sorts of ways, first to your friend Mark Suer when you were too young to understand death and then try to understand what a memorial feels like---look around at all the standers by your friends and neighbors and see what their faces are doing and try to feel something but remember your mom said you didn’t have to go in the first place but you wanted to go because he was one of those guys on the bus that you liked, he was a real person not a fake I’m trying to be nice person cause I don’t have the guts to be honest but a real live person and he died and the fake ones were left and you did feel something about that in a real way, but at the memorial you were just looking around for something to strike you as a real reaction but everything seemed phony and put on and realize that mark would not have died were he not the bravest person you had ever met and wonder what that meant about bravery.

Part Six:

            Grow up. Get some jobs, get fired over and over and over and over because you weren’t really made for jobs at least not jobs where you were at least 65 % smarter than all your bosses but making less money because they were old and you were young and try to understand what life is like when you are under the fluorescent lights and remember seeing that one X-Files where that office was and that boss was eating souls. Remember that you are a person, tell yourself you are a person a real life living breathing person, but in the middle of the day go into the bathroom and look into your eyes and say how are you, but don’t answer because the answer was too sad to contemplate. Watch one of those people in one of those offices get their stomach stapled and lose a shit ton of weight and see the other girls/ the office gossip girls make fun of her in ways that were cruel where they said she used to look like an M&M and now her stomach is the size of a peanut and they hold up their pinky finger to show you the size. Not admit what you really want to do to anyone, but take every acting class you can, ride the bus and lie to people's faces when they ask you what you are because when you were young you thought people would think you thought too highly of yourself if you pursued something that you really wanted to do.

Part Seven:

            Realize loyalty, integrity and people who mean what they say and say what they mean are almost non-existent on planet earth. Cry lots. Drink lots. Get arrested. Become a musician. Realize you kind of suck and then one day get a bright idea and go back to school.

Part Eight:

            (Happening right now)

Omitted parts: Boys, relationships, shopping, travel, what I really want.