Night In Hell at the Chelsea Hotel

Night in Hell at the Chelsea Hotel

The man was married, but not in any traditional sense. Morally speaking, he was getting off his original mark. The Chelsea stunk of perfume and opium. His trench coat was black and he was dirty. Dirty from drinking in a nearby dive, dirty from living wrong, from not being able to love. He brought Dolly with him, if this was his last night on earth, he might as well fuck. She was no whore either; she had nice skin and a pretty smile. She told him the first time she got paid for it; she had been out all night and forgot where she was going. Something about a bus ticket home. She said she had a mental disturbance that made her forget every man she had since that first one. She was smart though and took to reciting Allen Ginsberg's Howl for entertainment every time things got too quiet.

Finally, he said, shut up, and he took her hand in his and they walked quietly up the stairs. From some of the rooms you could hear fighting and others you could hear the white noise of late night TV. He held her hand and then opened the door. They sat on the couch with a bottle of wine. He told her it was going to be a bad night after she was gone. “I don’t have to go.” She rested her head on his shoulder feeling the warmth of two people who needed something they couldn’t give the other one.  He had changed his mind when he got her inside. It seemed too sad somehow to have sex with someone he didn’t even really know except for drinking. Too ordinary. Too every other girl he’d every met-like.

“Don’t you want to?” Dolly said.

“Nope. I want you like this, if we do it, I won’t be remembered.”

“It could be fun,” Dolly said, but made a face that said otherwise.

“I’m not going to be every other guy to you. No way.”

After she fell asleep, the man told himself that he better listen to some music and he better do his drugs before morning.  He gently moved Dolly’s head off his shoulder and lowered her onto his couch.  He pulled the blanket off the chair and draped it over her.  He thought her face was pretty in a noble sort of way, the kind of face that seems wiser than anyone else, only appearances were false, that much he knew. It wasn’t like he thought it was going to be, he knew things he wasn’t supposed to know, he tried it out and he realized he was good at it though, so what the hell, he did it every chance he got.  Some would call it weakness, but others might say it was talent.

He poured more wine. He got the David Bowie album and put it on.  Dolly was asleep so he didn’t put it on too loud.

Ground Control to major Tom

Ground Control to Major Tom

Take your protein pills may god’s love be with you.

Ground Control to Major Tom.

He sat down and dialed hoping against hope she wouldn’t pick up. Why does it always have to be me that calls, he was thinking. She answered.

“I know, I know.  I don’t give a fuck who’s sleeping.”

“Really, is that so?  Do you fight with him like we did? I miss you.”

She didn’t say it back.

Later at four, he put a gun in his mouth and said goodbye for good.

Advice For Writers

Lately, people have been writing to me asking me to help them in a variety of ways. Some of them are cool when I say, look I'm all tapped out, some of them get mad and don't understand my health issues or that I'm in school for a another full year after this one is done. So, here we go--My blanket advice to writers who hate me for telling them the truth and the manipulative ones who try to make me feel shitty for being a real live human barely able to do my own work: you guys can get fucked.

Rules for becoming a writer:

1. Fall in love. It should be noted that there are different versions of love most of which include one person parasitically sucking off the other more strong person, but this still can be used to the writer's benefit. What you do is you label anything love that you can't figure out or when a person acts inconsistent, one day happy, one day angry (like father), and you sleep with that person and you listen to their hopes and dreams and they never ask you about yours and you don't care because deep inside you know this isn't the real thing but the sex parts feel good and you really really really like their nose, but inside you know it won't last. This isn't love, and you won't call it love, but it will hurt you when you end it just as if it were real love because the person with the nose you love will cry and act needy and you will go, where is the one guy and or girl who is not needy and just wants to be around me without projecting their past bullshit onto me and assuming that I feel more for them than they feel for me when usually it is not the case. Don't you remember the story about my dog and how I stopped being able to love after my dog was put to sleep while I was at school? Bambi--I miss him. He loved me. He did hump my leg (not dissimilar from the men I date or even fake date). But, he loved me in a way that no one else can because their private parts steer that part of their brain that they try to idealize and call things love when it is really can I put my privates into your privates and will you be nice to me after and see me as a superhero? 

2. Get drunk and take pills. This part, is debatable, because I no longer drink, but the thing is but when I did drink I DRANK EVERYTHING and drank with a vengeance and drank at people and drank with men without teeth and found myself making out with harelip dude and toothless dude and then had boyfriends that did drugs so I did drugs with them and we HATED each other and HATED ourselves, but it was FUN. The ones who drink are in the most pain and their pain makes it interesting to be them in their confusing sad lives and they are the best writers invariably. I also think the one guy in my class who only likes dogs and hates humans is going in the right direction. 

3. Jail. I think if you want to be a writer and you have never been arrested you can still be a nice writer, many people might read you, I just won't care about it very much. But, I, thankfully, in all my pretentious un-goodness as a human being, am not your only reader, nor will I ever buy your books or think you're cool at all.

4. Look rad. This one is a must for any writer. It doesn't have to do with your face as much as keep yourself cool looking. You have to have personal style. That is very important. A style that is not copied or fake. It is your own and while there may be copiers, no one does your style like you do.

5. Learn to hate. I was raised by Seventh Day Adventist/Christian Scientist/Sometimes Cult member parents and they taught me to never lie, never dance, if you are sick that there is something wrong with you on a deep spiritual level, because you wouldn't get sick if you could pray rightly. I don't hate them, but I have learned to hate ideas. Learned to hate people who try to make me feel guilty. Learned to hate parasites. Learned to hate the things in myself that close off to you when you are an ignorant person. Hate has wings. Hate is memorable. You can write about hate. I'd much rather be hated than almost anything else. I love hate.

6. Read astrology. This one sounds totally dumb, but is as real as the rest of them. Look up why people are acting certain ways and find that astrology answers the most predictable of all the questions you would ever have about said person, confirming what you already know but are loathe to say. Then you can admit to yourself that people can be categorized and no one is really unique or even that different from what it says about you on google. Take me for example Pisces with Leo rising. I am difficult, self-righteous and hard to be close to, but once you are in, I am loyal forever. If you cross me, you will go on my dry-erase board and become one of the people I am on a singular mission to destroy psychologically. It will happen. The Pisces may easily swim away if you do one wrong thing, but they never forget a slight. Not EVER. Serious. And while Pisceans are the most loving and giving of the zodiac, their ability to choose inappropriate partners is legendary as can be seen if you study this blog. But, the leo rising part makes up for it in ways that will make you scared to be alive. All this is factual and should be paid attention to in legions of ways, so that you can figure everyone out and waste a whole shit ton of time wherein you should be writing.

7. Be irresponsible. (Steal stuff, sleep with bad people, say stuff you don't mean, fake love fake people, don't be honest, etc.) This creates the kind of guilt that keeps writers up at night and those writers have very little to do having already worn out their lover, so they have to write stuff down so that their conscience can catch a break.

8. Lie. This one should be obvious to any would be writer. But, you only tell the truth on paper, lying and exaggerating facts makes you memorable and while you never lie on the page you confuse all those around you into thinking you are someone you aren't and this makes you memorable. (Writers, that are real should be memorable).

9. Be memorable. In all ways, be different. Think different, say different things that no one else would say because they are too concerned with being properly human but not a real human. Don't cater to societal expectations. Be a nice person one day a mean person the next. 

10. Write. While this is something that should be obvious to anybody, it isn't. You should write everyday and have opinions about the world you live in that are sacrilegious and scary to others, but don't fabricate this--they must be the secret things inside of yourself that you secretly think but would never ever say because you are too polite to say to someone's face. Say those things. Like when I broke up with you and I said the sex was good I only said it to make your face stop crying. I didn't say it because it was real. 

11. Be more yourself. I don't know what else to say about this one. Only you know what that means. But, if you are secretly copying anybody, trying to be like somebody else in anyway, style, dress, speech, thought, stop that shit and become what you were born to become. YOUR OWN PERSON. 

12. Eat things that aren’t known to be food, like hotpockets.

13. Question God or ideas on God or all the ideas that are in your head and ask yourself, are these my own made up ideas or did I steal them or be infected by someone else’s thinking to believe them. do this everyday about everything until you are able to generate your own ideas not tainted by socialization, weird parenting or psychologically abusive “friends.”

14. Dump people that are dicks. Do not let people around you that don’t make you feel better or suffer in some way, but for sure get rid of the dicks. Especially if they are dumb.

15. Burn things in your oven. Food because you fell asleep, but other things are fun to burn in there too. Use your imagination.

The end.

The Burning

The Burning

And there are other reasons I burned the mattress.

I learned to sleep standing up against the wall

The moon cast a shadow on the mattress

of the both of us when we were children.

You were in your bug phase

The one where we researched the bugs that could exist

in a house with no couches, no tables.

You told me, “They smell like cumin.”

But I couldn’t smell it

We checked our bodies

Cleaned our couches

I still have the vacuum cleaner

It was 400 dollars.

You were married, that’s the one thing I never say

It was a girl who worshipped me

Her name was almost like mine. 

Caroline--Dedication

Some of you know that my friend Caroline Thompson died of an overdose January 6th. I still don't know what exactly happened, and it is a terrible loss to everyone. Before she left us, I had just been offered publication in a journal called Blood Lotus Journal---it will be my piece Try Stuff--it's somewhere on this blog. I wrote to Caroline or called her and told her to submit. Then, she died. Her father recently wrote to me and said her poem On a Drawing of How to Kill Sam Pink was accepted and what did I think of the journal. I told him it was a great journal up that gets looked at by the Pushcart people and they give chances to many amazing new writers--in other words I told him what I knew--please accept. I will be in that same journal with her, so I wrote to the editor and asked him to make sure we were going to really be together in the same issue. She was a poet, and he is the fiction editor, so it took a few hours to figure it out. But, he wrote to me sincerely offering his condolences for the loss of this friend and wonderful writer, and asked if I would like to say anything on her behalf--of course I would, but what could I say? Her poetry is a work of genius? That she was a beautiful human who made me laugh at myself? What? So, I wrote a small dedication and it took me awhile to come up with something that made sense and didn't sound trite. Death is confusing, I'm still sad over it and I didn't want to be indulgent--I want Caroline to be remembered. So, the following will appear in the next issue of Blood Lotus Journal as a dedication to our friend Caroline Thompson. We fucking miss your guts, my dear and you will not be forgotten. 

Caroline Thompson was my friend and fellow writer. She died on January 6th of an overdose that for sure was accidental. I know Caroline’s choice those final days resulted from the thing most of us as writers deal with, an overwhelming sensitivity to the harshness of day to day reality and that she just wanted peace for one second from the brain that she was gifted with. Unfortunately the wrong mixture ended her life and broke our hearts. She was a wonderfully inappropriately funny human who wrote about the absurdity of life in a way that was remarkably disturbed and poignant. I miss her terribly. You can find her work at http://carolineruththompson.wordpress.com <http://carolineruththompson.wordpress.com/> . And who am I? Just another contributor to Blood Lotus Journal. I am honored to be printed in the same edition as my dear friend. I wish you all could have met her. She would have made you laugh your guts out. This little blurb is in her memory and to remind all of us who struggle with such things: life is beautiful, hard and incomprehensibly short. So, do what you love and be yourself and stay alive. Your invisible friend, Lisa Douglass.

Castera Street

Castera Street

On the floor of Nana’s house

---I was sent there because my mother couldn’t handle

my sister and I--

I played with dolls and gave them voices and names

Nana disappeared into back rooms

or outside to water succulents

the plastic pitcher with flowers on the side

I never followed her unless I needed something to eat

she sometimes made me those cookies
white powdered sugar over crescent moons
Later she forgot my name
called me, Janet, her dead alcoholic daughter
I thought that meant I was bad
but had no one to ask
Sometimes I sat in the avocado tree
watching her love her plants

bending down, dusting them in her sun-hat

I wondered why there were no other girls on that street

I asked Nana-- she said it was time to water the garden.
When I slept there, I stared at the alarm clock with
glowing hands while
Nana drew letters on my back
and I would guess what they were
Sometimes I would confuse X with T
because of the angle.
Nana slept with toilet paper pinned to her hair
and I asked her once
“When you die can I have this?”
holding up a beautiful watch with diamonds for initials
I didn’t know what I was saying
She walked out of the room

Her short heels clack clacking on the hard wood floor

He Wore The Shirt I Slept In

He Wore The Shirt I Slept In

I
My ex is behind me

Watching my neck, my ear, my hand to my cheek
I slump down in the black dress
On a chair that belongs in basements
Cold and hard 
My black suede booties slung out into the aisle
Covering the feet that inspired him

To paint the dead thing and stick it on my wall
Leg over leg or ankle stretched out
I am with witch girl

Who swears she sewed her soul into mine

But I can’t feel it
She laughs her puppet arms around me
I touch her face like a lover
And make fun of her blow-job lips
Not quite kissing them, but almost

II
I stand in line and turn to catch him
In the purple shirt
I used to sleep in
Hiding by the coffeemaker
Eyes like a showroom
Full of the things he once loved
And remembering the things he thought I could make him forget
I only glance in his direction then turn
To the two men who want to talk about
My outfit, my style and what they think about
Late at night
I turn again to see my ex hiding, but I can’t see his face
Just the shirt and the torso of my lost lover
He hasn’t been eating
That much is clear

what sets you apart

what sets you apart

so me and some people are in an apartment


we don't leave because we are paranoid


they agree to anything i suggest

it is not my beauty or youth because i never looked more tore up


but my passion they warm to


I guessed you won't believe me, so i kept the pictures

in a box


they don't like me
 and i don't like them

but we get along-
our understanding is as loathsome as the political climate


but why should i care, i'm here ain't i?

hate streams from our eyes cause no one is smart enough to stop the dreary incomprehensible sameness 
of days


  

i hold my breath for what seems like weeks
 with kings on hollywood hilltops and dirty homeless
 in basements where hill street meets that bright neon sign of jesus



we are always peeking out windows

time isn't anything to us
--lifetimes come and go
 
i have always gotten my way through them all 
and what of it?
you don't let me and that's what sets you apart

There Is No Substitute For Love

Dear Daddy,

          When you went away and the Mommy went to bed, I didn't know where you had gone. I was told you were traveling, but no one travels that long. My small girl heart didn't know what things meant, so I would ask, but the answers were lies. I don't blame the Mommy, she went to bed and I gave her orange juice and tried to find out why she was crying. She couldn’t tell me. But, that's not all. You were the fun one, you were loud and silly and smart and we looked at the stars together out in the courtyard under the Jacaranda tree.  When you went away--for many years after-- the Mommy said that you had been traveling. The day you came home, I ran to hug you and kiss you and love you and ask you where you were why'd you go, I missed you so much I cried. The Mommy told me to leave you alone. Your eyes were sad or dark or other-than-regular. I didn't understand where you were. You were standing in our Los Feliz House--the one over the Shakespeare Bridge and you were not yourself. Anyone could see that. I didn't know what to do. Because the Mommy told me to leave you alone, I thought it had something to do with me.

         We still took long walks through the streets and up and down the stairwells in rain or shine. We listened to records on the oriental rug in the living room. You taught me to sing.

         Many years later, when I was seventeen, drunk on Thanksgiving, I threw this tantrum saying to the Mommy, you lied to me, you left us in this house where my sister got beaten and Daddy went away and you said he was traveling. At this point, I was told you had a psychotic break and that you had been on Thorazine and that I wasn't told because you didn't want me to think there was mental illness in the family or not understand what it was, but either way, lie or no lie---I felt it. I knew something was different. I just didn't know it didn't have to with me. 

          You went off Thorazine, you seem better, you are happy and dancing but there is a lost thing that we had between us. I was your favorite, we were close, now there was a space that I couldn't get back. I saw your love still in your eyes. You told me I had a pure heart, you told me I was the most special kind of person that there was and that life was going to be hard for me because I love things more than other people love things. I feel more, I am more open, I am happier and sadder and all that stuff. You told me I was the most beautiful thing, the thing that no one could touch, I would take over the world, but it would be hard and I would feel everything but you told me not to change myself just because I was different. So, I didn't.

         But, what I remember and what I can't take back or change now, is there were years when you were angry or moody or couldn't talk to me in that old way and I never knew how it was going to be. I was just a kid, I tried my best to understand you. You were my first great love. When you told me I couldn't marry you I stomped my feet and said, "Who will I marry, then? No one will be as good as you and no one will love me like you do so why would I get married?" I was depressed at the age of 5 or 6 or whatever that age was when you told me I'd find someone else to marry. It's so weird, but over the last month I've had three different men ask me why I never got married and I didn't know what to say to them, but what I can say to you, is no one was smart enough and funny enough and liked me enough for whatever weird overly energetic happy to be in the world but sad when I saw an orphan bunny kind of person I was. You did. There is no substitute for real love.

         The Mommy did her best to protect me from whatever was wrong with you and you did your best to help me see what kind of person I really was. You told me I was the smartest, funniest, most brilliant one. But, you were right. My life was hard. You had problems and couldn't see me as much as I wanted to see you. You never called me on the phone. I thought these things meant you didn't love me. All my other friends saw their Daddy's even if they were divorced. I really thought something had happened that made you not love me. I asked you about it more than once, but you always said it was ridiculous. I find in life people say things are ridiculous when they are not accountable or can’t give a logical reason. They don't show up and have an excuse. I know why though. I always know why. It's just that even if what I know is wrong. I just can't help it from being that.

         Whenever I come home for Christmas you tell me to stay over, I know you are hurt that I don't. Things happened in that house that I still remember—not things that had to do with you, but the whole adolescent disillusionment happened there. I started writing there. I did cocaine on the floor of my room. I made a girl dry hump me in my bed and I made out with my first boyfriend and then broke up with him when he wanted to have sex. I wanted to stay innocent.  You say you could just have me there forever and ever and I love you that way too, it's just I'm out here trying to be a person and make a life for myself.  You were lucky you found the Mommy when you were young and handsome and you two made a life. I am lucky in a different way. My idealism and uniqueness has kept me silent or hidden or vanishing from individuals that want to trap me, but still I perform for the people who know what it is I am and what it is I do without letting them get too close. The ones I don't care about are safest. The ones who want to get close I push out. I am afraid that something will happen to them, like that thing that happened to you. I just want you to know that that thing that happened to you also happened to me. It still affects me, but I love you even though we are not close like I want. I know you love me although sometimes I can’t feel it like I want to.

           I know I never have said these things, because truthfully they embarrass me, I am an adult and should be able to shake it, but I just can't.

           Your daughter in all ways that can be counted, felt, expanded upon but never diminished.

With my whole heart,

Lisa

The Grad School Diet

          

LISALAND

THE GRAD SCHOOL DIET

Today I was driving down the street and it occurred to me that I haven't been eating. Sometimes I don't have any food here or any money for food or sometimes I have food, but it isn't what I WANT to have at the moment. But, that is not why I stopped eating or am now eating very little. I never eat A LOT unless I'm at a beautiful restaurant, but right now I'm on my cute but hard chair with no couch and feeling a bit depressed. This depression is chemical though---from antibiotics. They make me sick and feel twirly and have bad thoughts. They make me hate food and most people. They make me go: where the fuck is my couch and why did I pick that banned book to read when all it turned out to be was one dude touching other dudes but really really really badly written? I don’t need to read about cocks described in a million different ways and how some of them seem to be smiling.

         And standing in Trader Joes I tried to remember what it is I even like to eat. That was hard. Ever tried eating when all you feel is nauseas? Well... what I like turned out to be lemon yogurt and bread and water (jail comfort food) and mac and cheese (firestarter tendencies) and chips and Orangina. All these seemed like safe foods. I bought them with a hundred dollar gift card my mother gave me when she came to visit me last week.  I was happy for one second. Then, I had to come home and try to eat something. I tried. I made toast. But the butter was too cold and the toast not toasty enough. I tried. I really did. I ate one half of the cold butter violently mashed into the toast by the wrong kind of knife because I was too dizzy to look for something else and covered that non-toasty enough toast with cherry jam because I might like to have some fruit in what I refer to as the Grad School Lisa Diet. I don't recommend this diet, but in case you were wondering it goes like this:

1. Wake up shaking from lack of food and/or sleep and or love.  Be sad. Have sad memories. Realize my boyfriend is gone. My friend is gone. My dog died when I was a child.

2. Hear alarm (yes after) go off for 25 minutes until it shuts itself off--get up--make coffee with half and half and sugar.

3. Do homework and at the very last minute jump in the shower and find outfit--make it cute but not too revealing because there is a cute boy in your class and you know he's cute and he knows you know he knows and he thinks you're cute too or likes your brain and you say things to him on his paper like: do you need to suck a fat cock? I mean your character? And you make it funny and fun so he will think you are a genius. Make sure the outfit has sex appeal but no see-through tops. Save those for workshop.

4. Drive to Irvine---look at balance bar, other kind of healthy disgusting bar, luna or otherwise on the passenger seat and or at the bottom of your purse and turn your face away in disgust.

5. Get to Irvine--hit Peets and buy a tiny scone. Put that scone in your purse, but don't eat it. Just drink the coffee. Forget there is a scone until much much later in the day when you see it in your purse, maybe on the drive home, take it out and put it on the seat with the rest of the rejects. Think about eating it, but not know if you really want to eat it. Is it still good? Fresh and crumbly like it was at the beginning when it was born? You wonder, how many scones get to travel around in Lisa-Purse and wonder what it would be like if scone knew all that you know but never ever say. Not even to your own Lisa-self. The lies and stuff.

6.  Drive home and go to Starbucks to do coffee--I mean homework. Drink coffee with so much sugary goodness that it might just be the sugar keeping you alive. Have more. Try to read or think or write or whatever. Get distracted by every text message and human that passes through the door. Be grateful when someone comes to visit you to save you from your thoughts. Someone who really likes you and finds you to be entertaining and tells you---you just cheered me up so much now I don’t need coffee (yesterday). Say no when he asks for your number. Too much pressure.

7. Go home (this really includes eating) put something in the oven and sit on hard chair and wait for it to be something more than its frozen boxy previous self.  Know in your heart that this thing—this made up frozen thing will in no way be like food or delicious. Set the alarm on your phone to be sure you'll know when the non-delicious thing will be unfrozen and ready to for the experiment.

8. Call friend. Say ridiculous things to friend till both of you are laughing and crying from laughing at each other and the dumb same story you are both always trying to figure out but never will. Laugh at your ignorance. Realize your lack of intelligence in new and different ways.

9. Dinner is ready---stare at it and stay on phone so you can ignore that you basically are living like a kid without skills or even the desire for skills---take bite—make face no one can see, but pretend you didn’t make it so you can go on eating, hate it all the way through because you don't like TV dinners whether they are supposedly healthy or not. They disgust you, they make you wonder why the world exists at all and then you come to the sad realization that everything disappoints you, not just frozen TV dinner, but TV itself. How the people who are ordinary and boring and latching onto you or running away from you that they are all their exact predictable selves and know this and know you can’t change it and know it doesn’t matter we will all be dead in the deep earth one day where no one can run or hide or be annoying anyway. Not only that but also be greatly worried about the people who pretend to like you but don't really like you and then get mad and tell you things about "how once a girl did a thing and I hated her and made voodoo dolls and stood outside her house because I didn't have a car" but its the EXACT thing you did and you know "the girl" is really you and you worry if voodoo dolls are real. A guy last night really said the words: “Your pussy makes most guys crazy, but it just makes me angry.” Ask why but not really understand the answer about how you wouldn’t fuck him and then his girlfriend hated you and etc. etc. Remember the time he lifted you up at Swingers in a front of all your friends and ran you down the street and pushed you up against the wall saying this is your one last chance and you laughing at him and after that he didn’t talk to you for nine months enough time to make a baby only you didn’t make one and he didn’t make one—he just vanished from your life.  Be disappointed that you can’t tell when someone really likes you for you and wants to be your friend or just for your sex parts and know that if you are attracted to each other hanging out as friends will drive you both mad and that you are lying if you say you can.

10. Sometimes eat a snack of some kind of chip dipped in something too delicious---cheese spread, hummus in all its varieties, bruschetta sauce, etc. Sometimes eat ice cream that is still after all this time in the freezer---more likely look at it and know it was once delicious but you aren't really hungry at all just eating to stay on planet earth.

11. Think about why you are on planet earth to begin with: the food isn't very good anyway and the people are mean and shut down and not playful like they should be and you don't have any money and it makes you worry about if they will be kind when you are outside pushing a shopping cart but well dressed and hope you can still look cute when you get old and be cute and act retarded and make your friends laugh. Stare at computer screen. Make puppet show about a boy you like.

12. Think about a time you were happy, but that just creates longing and makes you feel like eating less. Remember the saying affection and attention are two different things. Remember that right now there is nothing that could be categorized by a brain that is being misled by all these antibiotics.

13. Bite something, chew it down. Swallow.

14. Remember that you are here at all because you mean something to someone even if they won't ever say it and people mean something to you even the ones you lie to and make sad. And writing. That might be the whole thing. I might only be here for that and never get what I want in any other way. 

I will have to be on these pills for the next few weeks: side effects are:

1. Alienate friends with rages similar to ones my father used to have. see the effect it has on people—say sorry but watch relationships destroyed. Scare myself.

2. Make up with enemies because now they seem suddenly just in whatever their initial hatred of me stemmed from.

3. Dislike everything I previously liked including whatever I have in my closet.

4. Feel nauseous and dizzy over and over and over and over and over

5. Lose sleep because I keep feeling like I’m falling into a dark deep ravine and can’t wake myself up because I’m already awake.

6. More stuff that isn’t very interesting except to say my always puffy stomach is now very flat and weirdly cute.

(omitted parts--real boys, action in cars, subways, stairwells)

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.

In That Empty Room

It was a high-school gymnasium, basketball hoops on either side, bleachers with the outlines of invisible teenagers--dashes like on coupons cut from the newspaper---two giant slicers rolled diagonally. The game was to run across and not to die. I did that. Later, up on a giant sidewalk floating in space, none of the concrete pieces touching, Lucille Ball chased me and tried to pull me off. There was no bunny rabbit. There was no neighborhood scare dog. There was no prank call to the McDonald’s strawberry shake. It was just us. You weren’t there. Don’t keep saying you were.

I got my dress cut off of me once.

one day, when i was a bird and a not-girl, meaning i wasn't what i am now, but different in the way wherein i was exposing myself to a variety of things that should not and will not be discussed under any circumstance except in the arms of my next lover. for the sake of things, in this story i was a bird--a pretty little bird who drank and swore and fought her way through the bars of los angeles. i was in the middle of a breakup in a long line of breakups and this one breakup i was drinking at a kind of sports bar wherein people would get up and sing songs and make general fools of THE SELF and this one night i was next to this minor celebrity. i say minor because i've forgotten her name only that her first name was lisa and that she was a comic type actress if my bird self remembers correctly. ANYWAY, my bird body was sitting at the bar near Urth Cafe on Melrose. my bird-brain is not remembering its name. the actress Lisa was sitting to my left and we were doing shots, i was saying things like, "i broke up with him by never calling back," and she was saying things like, "one day when i was a TOTAL WHORE i met my husband and he didn't ever CAAAAAAAAAAAAAARE." (That-Lisa was very dramatic swinging her arms around and saying worse stuff than even I can come up with and i was laughing and drinking going, "the thing of it is..." "the thing of it is," and she points at me and goes, "That's FROM A MOVIE! You SLUT. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA." "not a movie, twilight zone, the one where the dude is in the giant bank vault, the dude who hates humans and has giant glasses, and then he is ALONE FINALLY AT LAST with all his books and no one to fuck or bug him and then he is GLORIOUS AND HIGH from being alone with the self for the FIRST TIME EVER, and then he breaks his fucking glasses." "OH FUCK TO THE YEAH." she goes and i go: "The thing of it is..." "The thing of it is..."
Then, we drank some more and laughed our filthy mouths off until closing and i drove home.
TWO BLOCKS FROM MY HOUSE i get spied by the cops. I pull over they cuff me and I try to kick out their windows. (when i was a bird i could be very adamant about how it was when i didn't want to go somewhere). then they spray pepper spray in my little bird eyes and i'm choking on the fire air and screaming out, "i have contacts in!! MY EYES. MY EYES." So, they take me to Cedars. At Cedars I'm strapped to a table and they give me an eye wash and cut off my dress (for reasons unknown--i guess it was in the way of the giant Haldol shot they gave me) yes. horse tranquilizer stops bird. So, flash to the next morning. I wake up and i'm in a holding cell my dress is cut off and i get let out and i go running down the street holding up my dress without contacts or a sense of what was next here on planet earth or why i wasn't in my nest calling for a cab. my bird self goes, i hated that dick, but still i kind of missed him and that's why. well---someone always pulls over for birds with their dress cut off and someone did. they took me to get my car out of impound after the bank and i got home okay. my bird home was still there as if nothing had ever happened. that couch from that time period is being taken away from my apartment tomorrow. she saw a lot of things no one should see, but i am no longer a bird, now i am a human person. but, when i was a bird, i liked to perch on branches and make things out of twigs and cottony findings from every gutter in this whole city.

The Other Woman-The Bounty-And P

Well, it happened again. I was the other woman for like five minutes. Some guy, a sorta interesting guy, a guy I thought was sorta cool got my number awhile back. He’s sorta kinda well known in an underground sorta way, but I won’t say what field cause god knows he might read this and then I’ll get sued or some other crap. But cool enough to go to the Oscars. That kind of cool. But, he texted me weirdly, never trying to see me but asking me the kinds of questions a guy might ask if he were interested in you intellectually and maybe even physically, but he was involved with someone else. Not that he didn't like that someone else, just that I provided a little happiness or romantic intrigue between that someone else. Only I didn't know, because I am naive when it comes to men. The ones that tell me the truth or the ones that lie to me, all feel the same, you know? I can't tell which one is really telling the truth or really not telling the truth. Which makes me feel not quite as smart as I really should be. I know you guys think I'm smart, but if you just scroll through this junkstyle blog, you'll see that I'm not smart. In fact, I'm kind of dumb when it comes to men. It's a blindspot. Don't hate. I have that blindspot with cops and shoes as well, so you could say I’m multi-dimensional.

I guess I should consider that any guy calling, texting, writing, might be involved, but since when I am involved I don't call men unless they are established friends, I assume the same morals apply to the rest of the world. Not that I don't flirt. But, there is a certain level I don't engage on and I don't text dirty things to other guys, just nice happy things. Things about birds and my love of graveyards and whatnot. So.. today, I called the person on it and said basically you've been texting me for weeks but are weird, why so weird, you married or something? He goes, if I were married would you stop talking to me? I'm like, do you know the sex act that men do with Oysters? It's super gross--unsanitary and disgusting, but I can't really find anything about it. He goes: Yeah, I'm involved. So? I'm like so, what? I didn't get dirty, text you anything that would remotely go into the direction of a strictly sexual or emotional relationship--I just met you, dude gave you my number because I'm single now. I called him dude. Swear to Jesus. Then, I said, we'll be friends, we just won't be alone in any dark alley up against any walls or anything. He goes, why not? I'm like, you can't be serious. DUDE. P.S.---he’s still texting as I’m writing this, but in a minute he won’t be because of ATT super block.

But in the midst of this, I was reminded about the time I'm about to tell you about, a time when I was much younger and very drunk most of the time, bumping around Hollywood with crazy people who I can't even picture now. Some of those people I knew, because I drank with them and some I didn't and those were the ones that haunt my dreams. 

One night, a guy--I shouldn't say his name in case one of you can track him down. It's funny that I always use names, but I am going to tell something about this guy that is kind of sad, not embarrassing sad, but call your mother the next day and cry to her sad. This guy, we'll call him P---P drank with me at Molly Malone's and we drank there a lot. So P calls me and goes a group of us are going to Koreatown to do Kareoke, but we're hitting the Bounty first. I had just had a DUI so I said, I won't come unless you drive me. So he went for it. Picks me up with three people in the car--they are guys and girls and I can't remember what anyone looked like. Just that we went to the Bounty and the guy in the suit, not P, but the other guy, liked me and paid for all my drinks and maybe other people's drinks. I wasn't paying attention. I was wearing these sex shoes and cargo shorts that tied at the knees. Guess made the shoes, they had stillettos and tied around the ankle with tiny leather straps. Fuck---wait. Going to the car to see if I still have them. Scared fuckless. OH THANK YOU LORD. They are still there. If they weren't there all would be fucking lost right now. I was thinking of eating a mound of cotton and have that big cottony feeling in my stomach soaking up all my acid-sorrow if my whore shoes were gone, but alas---at Goodwill last week I must have known about this post. That is why you don't donate shoes, yo.

Anyway, P and suit and me and a non-pretty girl were all drinking fast and furious. Acting out little skits right there in the middle of The Bounty---greatest bar in L.A. 'cept for the lights. Too damn bright in there. But, we were drinking so after a time we don't notice anything. I'm sitting in the booth next to a girl and P and I'm holding P's hand under the table and we are pretending to ignore each other while me and the girl make best friends. Girl gets prettier and prettier and at one point I think she has the prettiest lips and her nose is the kind of nose I’ve always wanted but then I don’t know, I just go back and forth. Then, we go to some Kareoke bar and I'm in there and we are singing and a beautiful Korean girl walks in and P goes pretend you don't know me. Not like I was with him in any real sense, but I had to pretend not to know him. She comes in things get awkward and we all decide to bail and go eat. She is staring at me like I did something horrible. It was a group of us, but I was guilty in the mind of the pretty girl. Let’s call her Cindy. That seems safe and unlikely. We are eating some fried intestines and drinking more and I can't tell you where we are only that it's like 3 am or 4 am at this point and P is sitting with the pretty girl and I am sitting next to this guy, I turn to him and I'm like, gosh you are the most cutest handsomest man I've ever seen and I start kissing him. Right in front of everybody. He was in shock, the restaurant owners had kept it open for us and they were incredulous. Who is this fucking girl kissing our "his name here" but I don't remember his name.

This was in the days of Highland Grounds and I said. I want to see you again come meet me at Highland Grounds and we will be lovers or at least a proper non-drunk date because its dark and maybe you won't like me in the light or I'll think twice about dating you because of your Asian hair or some obnoxious thing. He laughed and then we held hands. P got pissed, but was too drunk to drive me home and I was too drunk to call a cab so he said, you can sleep here but don't say anything when you get inside. I'm like, what would I say? He brings me inside and puts me in his bed or on it or whatever and he goes off to sleep on the couch. I'm like what was up with that girl, she your girlfriend? He's like, we were or are, or on again off again. Whatever. I said, who was that Korean guy I was kissing, he's famous or something, I've seen him on the TV. P was like, yeah. yeah. yeah. That was some show, you kissing him---real class act, you are. And we fall asleep---Here's the part. The part I shouldn't tell you. I have never ever been sad about telling a thing to you no matter how low people sink, no matter what I've seen and done, no matter what my friends have seen, and been and done---I'm no judge. I'm not. But... when I woke up P's place was a disaster like the disaster in A Beautiful Mind--anyone see that movie, where the guy cracks up and has clippings everywhere? In the morning  when the light hit the place I saw whatever he didn’t want me to see--- This guy P had clippings everywhere---and I mean everywhere---up every wall on the ceiling on every surface. Clippings of cartoon strips. He was a cartoonist or something. Can't remember. Anyway, I was like, holy fucking jesus P, you need some help. You can't live like this. The rest of the place was dirty. Like layers of dirt, like you would see on that Hoarders show. I said, sweet P, please, I'm happy to come help you sometime. I kept shaking my head and he said, you swore you wouldn't say anything. I go, I'm sorry, but Jesus man. Come on. I can help you---we're friends. I started to cry. Weeping. Please let me help you. P was PISSED and dragged me out of there and  took me home and never ever ever ever ever spoke to me again.

A short time after that one of the bartenders at Molly's took his life. His girl found him hanging from her tree in the front yard. We all met at Molly’s to celebrate his life and to kill the pain of being a human. P didn't show for that party--he never showed his face again as far as I could tell. I felt bad, I knew his secret. He looked exactly like Ralph Fiennes. A few weeks after the event, I was at Molly's and the Korean actor dude came there looking for me and he was the handsomest man I had ever seen in a long dark coat and he was tall and had shiny eyes. I pretended not to be myself. Like as in not-Lisa. Not that I didn't like him, I just didn't feel good enough for him and he saw me pretend to be not me and he smiled and shook his head and went away like I never happened. I felt ashamed, but I was too scared or something. I hope he didn’t think it was his fault. I really loved him for that one moment and no one can take that away from us. 

Carter

When I was sixteen I used to got to the mall with my friends---I had been going to the mall with my friends since I was younger, but I can't remember how young. 14 or 15, most likely. To tell it straight,  my sister used to say, "Sometimes you are the prettiest girl in the world, the prettiest I've ever seen and other times, you just look weird." That might explain my teenage years best. I used to be super skinny and then I got these giant boobs, I didn't know how to dress anymore--nothing fit and my mom wouldn't really help me---I think she just thought I was fat, but I needed new clothes and it was embarrassing to ask for clothes cause I would get a lecture, etc. etc. I started shoplifting at that time to get around my family's weird money issues and because it was fun to get away with something. I still have to go back to those places and say--I'm sorry I stole a lipstick but I was a messed up kid with very little supervision. I know the giant boob comes up in my blog again and again and when people look at me today, they think I am delusional, but they were HUGE. Too big to be comfortable and people stared at me a lot and I got followed, I thought they were why I got followed. Not because my face isn't pretty, but my mom told me I wasn't pretty enough to be a model (she had been a model), so I never thought I was unique, I thought I was only average.

I had one guy follow me once and tell me I had fat boobs and that I had the kind of face people jerk off to. He told me to take up jogging to be thinner. I don't remember what I did. I think I must have told him, "Look, old man, get the fuck away from me or I'll scream." But, I was really polite to crazy people and I probably said, thank you or something really wrong for the situation.

I was at the mall with my mom, back before I knew what it was to be self-conscious and this man came up to us and told us he was a photographer for playboy and he thought I was very pretty. My mom looked at him with hate and of course I thought she hated me because of the way I looked so I stopped wearing shorts. I stopped all the way until recently--I was scared of her hatred. Looking back I can guess she hated him and didn't want me to grow up, but it was a hard thing walking around with my mother or with my friends and bunches of guys walking up to me giving me their numbers.  I came home with pockets full of numbers--I had a drawer of numbers, but still didn't think I was pretty because I had fat boobs and all my friends were way skinny. I also didn't feel pretty because of my mother's reaction. People affect me and their reactions affect me and I shape my reality according to that stuff, so, if I'm around someone who really doesn't like me then I stop liking myself. What a long tangent---and boring to to get us into the story and I'm really sorry, but this is how it comes out and I can't help it. I was stalked a lot. The first stalker I ever met was named Carter.

On the day I met Carter, I was at the Thousand Oaks mall, I was wearing a red dress and I was with a friend. I was awkward but still boys like awkward and as I grew up I realize boys also like crazy. Crazy fucks better, they think. Crazy won't get boring cause they make their stuffed animals talk and then give you a blowie and then get you arrested. I have always been labeled as crazy or different or weird. I like to break into houses and places on Melrose, but more on that in another blog entitled, ways to do weird stuff without getting caught.

My friend and I had been walking around and Carter followed us. I guess I was driving at the time, because at some point, Carter and my friend and I all went to my car or maybe it was his car and I made out with him on the side of the car while my friend waited for me. Soon after this incident most of my friends stopped coming with me to the mall, cause I was looking for ways to feel better and they got bored. Sometimes my friends and I made out with each other, but that was only special super hot friends.

Anyway, Carter didn't live in Los Angeles and I gave him my address and phone number and he started sending me love letters. Long love letters. I had only met him once and he was super cute, but I just kind of remember flashes of the day. My friend and I laughing and making fun of everyone and laughing and laughing and then trying to pretend to be older than we were, then trying on makeup and trying on shoes, then Carter. We most likely drank something too, but how can I know? I also remember asking her what she thought of him, it was always important that my friends thought the boy I was about to get into a car with was the cutest one we had seen that day. I didn't say I was well.

Carter's letters kept coming and the day I met him he had been wearing a necklace that I said I loved, it was Saint Christopher or some other saint and it was gold. I complimented it and being inappropriate as I always was, asked for it. He promised to send it to me when he got back to South Carolina or North Carolina or wherever he was from. One day it came in the mail. I wore it, but I knew I couldn't remember Carter or see Carter in my mind or think of Carter and as I'm writing this, there was another Carter who came to visit my friend Blair at the lake where I grew up, and in the midst of memory the way my memory works is maybe I've conflated the two Carters into one Carter, but I can't ever tell. I just do my best to tell you what it was like knowing Carter, having this weird power over him that I never wanted and getting these love letters from only one meeting. I still have the necklace and was going to take a picture of it, but it's too early and I can't go through my closet, so we'll all have to wait.

There is a point. I was telling my friend recently that I had never been in love, I was telling him that I date people but can't fall in love because only some of the pieces are there and I try but it doesn't happen and someone always gets mad and then I want to be friends or they want to be friends but no one really wants to be friends with someone who doesn't want to fuck them who used to want to fuck them but now doesn't. But, I don't know if that's true. Sometimes I lie because I'm trying to convince you of something. Sometimes I lie to myself and I can't help it because I'm hiding the real pain of myself from myself so I can walk around on planet earth and be okay. Sometimes I can't remember the story, just that if I told it straight--there was a guy named Carter, he was 15 or 16 and we made out at the mall. Then I got letters for the next three or four years. I have love letters somewhere I hope. I'm too scared to look. One time my mom and sister broke into my room and read all my journals and all my letters and then I tore them all into tiny pieces so no one could have any information about me unless I wanted them to. I stopped writing for years because there was no safety from prying eyes. I couldn't even talk to my notebook and say how hard things were at home and how I liked a boy but then got scared and disappeared because I didn't know how I was supposed to be and I know it will just end with one of us sad anyway, so why try. Then of course there's sex. So, the why try when you are uncomplicated and innocent becomes very different when you just become and animal and still have to pretend you aren't one.

If anyone knows what Saint Christopher does please tell me, so we can look back over my life and see if he's done his job.