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.