to all my friends and frenemies---at least i have the balls to stand for something

to all my friends and frenemies: a note about the human condition. the only reason a frenemy is in your life is to teach you about yourself or to awaken the parts of yourself that are dormant--to remind you of your own dreams your own lack of integrity, your own shady shit---get fucking angry---gossip, do your very worst, cause the brightest lights cannot be diminished--they just burn bright so you can see yourself and remind you of who you really are---underneath all that phony posturing. and you can resent them all you want, but in the end, if you really get that---you'll love yourself more by knowing all the people that bug you and call you out and annoy the fuck out of you--cause they are just mirrors of you. that's all they are there for, so you can love yourself in all your glorious flawed fuckedupery. those are your friends. 

your frenemies are the ones that fake smile at your face so they can be liked but then talk shit behind your back or fuck your dude or jack your shoes when you aren't looking. 

one dude said to me today that i was terrifying to him. he was secretly in love with me but i was in all my uncensored glory, cause most of the time i don't say what i think cause it's too much and people find me to be "too intense." some days i don't care that much. i'm like, oh yeah? like cause i did drugs with dangerous people and i know that they always had my back cause i was for real, that makes me terrifying? and he's like, no man, you say the honest thing. i only said it cause there was a girl in the room who was hallucinating and i wanted her to know i hallucinated for my first two years in the fucking thing that i won't name to not be boring to the rest of you.  my friend is all----you've been to dark places and have no shame about it. actually, i can't remember what he said cause i was thinking of how i was going to return shoes and go to unemployment today and how i was going to start my life over just like the rest of you. but, i was listening sometimes going--most of the time, i edit it down cause i know you don't like it. and that's as shady as fuck to not just be whatever i am and say the real thing all the damn time. but, i gotta exist with the rest of you shut down, dishonest motherfuckers and i get lonely up here thinking all these crazy thoughts all by myself. 

i'm in these self help groups. and i won't advertise or say which one it cause for me it's touch and go. i never know if i'm going to stay or not cause if i decide to stay, i'll just leave. i do that with relationships, once i define it i'm out. so, i don't decide on it, i just keep going there--if i define it i feel trapped and my mind will find flaw with whatever thing it is. anyway, it's kind of a trendy thing to do in LA, but i don't know if using drugs is a disease or if it's just we like to get off. i don't decide that shit. i just don't like how much money it costs going to jail and i don't like how i act. and i don't like how i cut out all the people that love me, which i do a fair amount of drunk or sober. i don't like how i'm cut off from my own heart and have no more voice in the world. so there, we are in this vast movement trying to help others and ourselves, but what we have is an excluding fucked up hipster thing. 

it's like you get invited if you be gay and out. or you get invited if you keep your mouth shut or if you have a famous last name or if you can kiss the asses of the people around you better than i can. you get univited if you don't play by the rules and don't know how to talk to people or are a little bit shy. you get univited if your clothes don't look right or your bone structure isn't blue blood. fuck that. dudes. if drugs kill you, how you gonna pick and choose this shit? i think it's weird. it haunts me cause i have seen people die, kill themselves on purpose and on accident. i have seen dumb people say stupid shit like if you are on meds you aren't sober and then watch a beautiful 19 year old boy hang himself because that dude was under a doctor's care and needed to stay on the meds that kept the voices at bay. listen. i'm no advocate for anything except check yourself motherfuckers. we are in this fucking thing to stay alive. i never like to out myself about it cause i'm not a bastion of anything about it. i'm not all fucking spiritual, cause that shit almost killed me dead. i'm not all social there either, so what? i went back to school and i lost friends when i did it and going back to school was worth it dudes. that shit changed my DNA and my nervous system. so fuck.

fuck gender segregation that was a made up thing back in the day. talk to whomever you want to. you might save a life just by saying to a dude--you might be crazy, but i hallucinated and told someone who thought i was crazy and i don't hallucinate now. and if i OBEYED THE RULES, i would have said, you need to be talking to a dude. what kind of shit is that? plus, stay away from creeps but they ain't all creeps and it isn't fair to judge it like that.

there's this dude standing outside this morning this program of altruism. he is just learning to read and he was reading the other day and all these people were like--why the fuck are we having to wait while he reads---well---because he is changing his life--he is learning to read---no one speaks to him---no one says hi to him cause he doesn't look cool and he has two bags with him----and a fucking hope in hell that glows outside of him that his life can be different and he is going to make it so---that shit breaks my heart. he is full of love---last night when i ran into him he said he is learning to read by reading comic books and the little bubbles and i said---fuck the haters dude--you are doing it--you're doing great--don't give up. he is trying. shame on you for that shit and shame on you for hating anything that you don't understand. ain't we all just people anyhow? just be authentic. if you authentically hate a dude who is learning to read or do you hate him cause he don't look cool? or cause he's a little fat? or lives out of two bags--that dude has more class than the rest of us cause he's willing to look like he is, not a pretender---just being real about it, yo. go do something you can't do and let yourself be humiliated. that's why i go to dance class---to be lame out loud and to sometimes be brilliant and either way my spirit is happy---i'm not in a writing class to be the best in the room either. my ego gets enough food. fuck all that. do something you are totally fucking scared to do today and i will too.

i know i know, we're all scared of each other and it's just easier to talk to the people you know. i swear this is just cause that little dude today made me cry at my own lack of humanity. my own fucking lack of humility. my own lack of actually noticiing him today and saying hello. i'm yelling at me more than at you. 

why is it so easy to like the good looking successful people but not one person was talking to this sweet dude? i'm embarrassed for all humanity and embarrassed for my little tiny problems that are all made up anyway. fucking hell. there's my rant.

The Christmas That Everyone Forgot But Me

I had a dream about you. You came to my door wearing a giant bunny costume. No one spoke to one another. You sat on my couch and we both stared forward. You told me the story of your childhood crush on a boy and how you thought about him still. You told me you kissed him in the closet and it made you scared and happy all at the same time like crushes do. I didn't care. Everything was supposed to come as this giant shock to me, only nothing in dreams ever are. You spoke as if the secret was weighing on you, but I just left you there and made us hot chocolate. We were silent while we drank the cocoa. Me holding your giant bunny paw. We sat there in the godlessness of a state where you cannot let the person you love into you and I played us a playlist that another boy had given me---someone I blew off because I didn't feel like being owned---and we fell asleep, you on one side and me on the other, just like in life. In the morning you had taken off your bunny head. I told you, you are perfect. Love is love. I don't want anything from you and you don't want anything from me and that's the only reason you are here. I made crumpets covered in maple syrup and powdered sugar and one of us was crying. I can't remember who.

While eating our crumpets you told me you didn’t know if liking boys the way you do meant something bad. I tried to tell you human sexuality isn’t bad, it’s just bad if you do something you don’t want to do to make a person like you. You told me that many lifetimes ago, when you were a little boy in school, people made you nervous, but sometimes it was a girl and sometimes it was a boy. I’ve had many people tell me I make them nervous over a lifetime. I’ve had gay boyfriends. I’ve been conflicted about my attraction for gay women whom I always feel safe with. I never understood why regular girls didn’t like me. Gays are more real. They don’t lie. I’d rather be running up a mountain and climbing a tree than having my barbies play dress up and cook. Who wants to cook? Not me. All my boyfriends cook. I just ate a fig or a handful of nuts rather than have to cook. I’d rather be writing things that might change the world.

You looked stricken. You told me that you judged yourself for being pretty. But, boys are supposed to be pretty, I tell you. Boys are supposed to be prettier than the girl. Look at the animal kingdom. Plumes of feathers attract the female for example. But, no one tells you what to do when you are human. When two boys are pretty, it’s just normal. Sometimes a girl with lots of testosterone and no reason to identify herself as a heterosexual or a homosexual or even a bisexual gets thrown into the mix and then everyone wears costumes cause they just can’t handle that kind of thing. How can you handle someone who doesn’t claim to be anything? How can you exist if someone refuses to identify themself in a way so that the rest of the world can then categorize them? Maybe that’s why I make people nervous.

You started to cry. I see you cry all the time. You wipe your tears away and when I ask you how you are you say fine. But I can see it. You aren’t fine. You will never be fine. I know the type. I am that type. 

I hope you're always a mess. That's the best compliment anyone ever said. Your messes makes other people's success look so ordinary. I don't know if you'll survive it. The way you feel stuff. 

The crumpets bored us--I mean they were there but we didn't care about them the way we should have. We wanted to pretend we could draw each other close and not push each other away, but we knew that would never happen. It made our souls sick. I told you I’d wear a blindfold and you could stay as the bunny and we could kiss. I could be a boy or a girl with your eyes closed. And we could see if we liked it. I told you I was a pretty good writer of love letters that made no sense but STAYED with a person. I told you I’d write to your childhood crush, the boy you loved. I told you that we’d find him on Facebook first to see if he was still good looking and if he still had bee-stung lips like you remember and an interest in Poe.

You hugged me then. You didn't let go. It was the only time you've ever done it and I doubt it will happen again. The way you can love a thing but you know it will die someday. That sentence hung in the air like a fog killing anything real and replacing it with fear.

How can you trust someone won't hurt you, when that's all anyone ever did? You know and I know we won't be able to help it. 

But, we looked up your crush and it couldn’t have been him, because this person didn’t look the same. They were old now and fat with the weight of the world on their face. Not like us, we keep the weight of the world in our hearts, that's why no one can ever tell. You never got old. You were still very handsome and very pretty. I told you I’d help you find another guy in this city and you could try it out. I don’t care if you’re gay. Everyone is gay at some point. People always try to argue me on this point, but that’s cause they lack the thing inside themselves that allows them to be ridiculously honest even if it embarrasses everyone.

In dreams you don’t have to lie, I tell you. We can be naked or with our clothes on. We can go deep emotionally and one of us will wake up and be in denial it ever happened. There is nothing to fear in the great big world. You can love someone openly who will never love you back because you are the wrong gender. You can date a gay man like I did because you were in love with their mind. You'll want to communicate it physically at some point. You should just do that. You can push away your feelings but once you let them out, you will simply stop crying so much. I will hold your hand. I won’t leave. We will be what they talk about in books. Soul mates who are real friends.

I tell you in dreams is the only time you don’t avoid me. I don’t know the reason cause you say you don’t know. No one is honest in dreams. I tell you that I lie to people to not hurt their feelings cause I think they like me more than I will ever like them and I don’t know how to say that thing.

We build a fort with my couch pillows and we light a candle in there. We say a prayer to a god who most likely can’t hear us and even if he could would find our prayers too routine too ordinary to answer. We don’t want to bore god, so we build an effigy to the boy you want. We make him beautiful, but not too beautiful to not be sexy. We make him smart. We put a tiny tie and tiny shoes on him that we stole from the Barbie set your sister had. We name him Norman after a photographer I know who is so cute and messy. We write a love letter detailing your love to him. A person who doesn’t exist.

I ask you, “Are you incapable of feelings?” You don’t seem to like the question so I pet your head and let you cry in my lap. There’s a record player and I put on my record from my last boyfriend that was kinda smart and kinda break your heart emo radical. We listen and are amazed at how such a skinny kid can make such smart music. He is our hero for at least 30 minutes. I remind myself that his courage to scream out the rage in his heart was just in music, not in life. And that part made us both sad. The effigy burns and you don’t see what I see. That you are trapped. Beyond where I am. You keep yourself away from me because to let someone in only means disappointment. We don’t even talk. I crawl out and get a pad and pencil. I want to draw something I’ve never seen  before. A magical creature that can keep our secrets. Someone we both can talk to.

I ask you to be my friend but not in that fake everyone lies to each other way--that kind of thing kills me over time. The most important thing to me is just to see whatever it is that makes you hate yourself so badly, I remember in life when we are awake, no matter what I ask you say no. You have built a wall to keep me out. I don’t know why it’s there and you say you don’t know either. But, I think it’s there cause I can see you. It’s like I can read your mind. And I don’t care. I will keep your secrets. YOu can lie to my face, but I still know. You should stay away from me. The fire inside of me is intense and I will never back down or let you be mediocre. You know this to be true.

When I wake up the couch is there and there is a bunny costume, but you are gone. I realize no matter how long I wait, the thing I want, which is to just know you, will be withheld and the sadness of it makes me want ice cream. In the middle of winter. Ice cream seems dumb. So, I heat it up on the stove and I sit in my jammies on the couch and I don’t turn on the TV and I don’t look at a book and the computer is closed. It’s just me and my heart. Alone. On Christmas.

Boo

i was thinking of halloween. i was wondering if i spelled it right. i was thinking of the rage of man. you wouldn't understand it unless you were in my head. my heart was open last night, i had a long talk to her about it, i said, girl don't be foolish, love can't exist. and here we are. you and me. we can't be what we wanted, that's obvious. can we get into daddy issues now or should we wait? we could tear each other's clothes off or laugh until we cried, but instead we pretend we don't feel it.

i had a boyfriend once. everytime we made love i thought of my father. he is the only man where that happened. i had to break up with him right away or i'd be some kind of perv and i'm pervy enough all on my own.

do you remember sneaking up to a girls door and putting a flower on it? before stalking existed?

you told me you were suffering, but does that mean you are still talking to somebody? i hope you are. like in my dream where no one is talking but we are still communicating while lying on our pillows in our separate houses, thinking no one can read our minds.

in one dream, you were on a video screen talking to me. i think it was from this story you told me where the person can write into another person's thoughts. you were talking to me quietly, you were being held prisoner, but somehow managed to tell me things. it was good to see you. it had been too long.

then later. i was drinking trying to make the drinks not be drinks. but they were. this guy who asked me to marry him from across the pond was sitting there and was telling me how i was some kind of fraud but i was cuter than in my videos. i just knocked the drinks back and back and back. i called you. i asked you what was a number between one and 100 worth remembering. what was a feeling worth remembering.

you didn't answer the way i wanted you to. i wanted you to say, listen, come over i'll rub your head while you sober up. i'll read you a story. the one i told you about where the kids live in a village and they learn about sexuality but in a purer way that we learn in the village called America. but, instead you just say something that requires no answer. it wasn't even a number. i made it sexy cause i wanted that, but it wasn't like that. it was like saying CANDLE and then making that into DO YOU WANT ME TO COME FUCK YOU. it is the way my brain works. i had forgotten you were a prisoner and not allowed to say whatever you wanted. i had forgotten our code CANDLE meant god, i miss you.

it wasn't the guy calling me today saying, please tell me when i can see you and me going, soon. soon. soon. but, really?

i don't know how to do anything. i'm afraid of hurting him. he promises i won't hurt him, but i'm still afraid i will. i hurt people. on accident. if i get naked in his bed and we exchange our hearts we will be hurt. so just roll in leaves and crush them and say you like it and forget people. people cry when they crush. leaves just make a crackle then it's over. people take longer. the first cut, then the second cut, then the third cut, then the realization that this isn't going to last. then it keeps going. sometimes for months. sometimes it never stops. sometimes it stops in a day and fucking was all that it required to make it stop. but you can't count on that. can you?

stop doing that to people. open. shut. open. shut.

the last guy did this didn't want to be friends, but i tried to. i guess it was insulting to him when i said, if you are scared to fuck me at least lets be friends. our brains and hearts like one another. but he didn't want to. he just wanted to be mine. and i couldn't do that. or he couldn't. all i know is someone couldn't.

how can you really? when you have that kind of chemistry? you can't. so, i keep checking in with myself going, is there a tree with a fruit and a name of a fruit that i shouldn't have eaten and is that tree you? and can't we go back somehow to where our bodies didn't know what it would be like?

he told me he writes, but i wasn't allowed to see any of it. he told me we'd be friends but then didn't tell me anything. i realized he wasn't what he was those thousands of pages on IM.

i want to see inside of your heart. to me, that is friendship. to you that makes a bond or makes you nervous or whatever. or create a deep disappointment. i crave you to disappoint me.

everytime i see you i want to fuck your lights out on the floor. right there and i have to act cool and i'm not feeling that. i'm feeling. fuck this thing. fuck it.

can i say all this without you gettting mad? you wouldn't be nervous if you just acted normal. like if you'd just let me see whatever dark thing it is. it won't scare me. i've lived a life of dark things. i've fucked my boyfriend seven times a day because we were on lots of drugs. i've locked the door on people because we'd go dark and i only wanted light. i've hated birds because their songs were too loud. can you imagine hating birds? they are beautiful. how can someone with a real heart hate them. well, i have. drugs do that to you.  i've been happy when bad things happen to people who hurt me. you think you are purer than me because i admit these things to the world. but you aren't. you are way worse. you think sex is bad. when only lying is.

do all guys only like you because of your tight vagina? or because you were a dancer? or because they think they'll get sprung. nobody likes a sprung dude. that just seems backwards.

someone will ask me about why i am not using capitals and let me say, it's Halloween or Holloween or the harrowing of the hallows. don't ask the mundane on this day or you will be cursed.

back to me--you are too shut off. i am too open, like as per usual.

i told you guys from a certain continent don't like me, or like me too much or hate me. that doesn't matter, i'm in love with somebody else. also from that certain continent and he's been showing up lately. he isn't handsome  like i remember or even tall. but we'd kiss and laugh until 7 in the morning. he was the last person i had chemistry with.

he looks great in photographs.

we were like children. he told me everything. he told me about the girl before me who had a pound of cocaine in her freezer. he was the last person i fell for. i'm still in love with him, so you don't have to get any crazy ideas. want to know why? he was honest. he opened himself up and showed me what was in there and he told me, "if i fall for you, i will run and you will think you did something, but it's just what i do." he wrote long letters to me on the daily. this guy also said i made him nervous. nervous about what? i would be sad if things didn't work, but i'd want to keep him as my friend. he was my smartest most funniest friend. i loved him. i know that isn't cool to say. but i love people and once i do it just gets stuck like that.

he ran. then talked shit and like that. i did think it must have been something about me. three of his friends came after me. it was world-class asshole-ville but LA-style.

but god, i miss him. i miss his words. i miss him telling me his stories, even though he was too scared to let me read any of them.

before that there was a guy. i was engaged to him. our bodies fell in love. then he started using drugs again. he's doing that now. we aren't connected anymore, so it doesn't hurt like it did when we were together.

do you remember being open? and how you could tell the whole world anything? that was before you were going to die. do you remember knowing that you could die and you'd never see the people you loved again? do you remember being scared as fuck that you'd lack the words to communicate what you felt in your heart and your girl would be so sad or a girl you left would be too sad and they'd be dead before you knew it and all you would have had to tell them was you were too scared or insecure or liked somebody else?

you and i met. you came to me and were open. you told me your fears and how hard it is for you to get close to anybody. i wasn't banking on anything. i had seen you for months and you were too surrounded for me to talk to.

i'm not like the other girls. that's  the part i keep forgetting. part fairy dust part i'll fuck you up.

so you shut me out. not only out of who you are, but out of all you do. i get these one sentence texts from you sometimes. i watch you fall in love with every new girl you see. but i don't care about those things. i care only about your heart. but, since we aren't going to fuck and we aren't going to cry in each others arms and we aren't going to be normal friends where i make a costume for you and make you wear it.

instead i'll tell a story.

it was halloween. the ghost was following me down vermont saying things like, why don't you just get a job already, this is boring. i said---and please listen, because i am not a ghost, i am a human. my soul isn't like yours. i need human touch and companionship. i die working for the man. i don't have a solution yet. i'm working on it. "work on it when you're living in your car, whatever happened to acting?"

the ghost was laughing. remember me telling you that ghost laughs are totally fun? they lift you up and out of your body where you feel like a balloon. you float up and out and look down and you go, what the fuck. i don't need humans. not when i have a ghost.

halloween is supposed to be all ghosty, but my ghost goes, halloween is like amateur night, like as in if you drink a lot or party all the time so is New Year's Eve. these ghosts that don't know what they're doing come up and they lurk you so you get all scared. but, they aren't adept. they are just players in a great big game no one has an answer to. oh, and like you're the ghost who has all the answers? and then the ghost stops me, i don't know how something made of vapor can do that. i guess it's the same with thoughts or love or a feeling. the things you can't see are the most tangible.

do you remember when you were engaged to that crack addict? the one from ireland? he lived with that giant fat lady and he'd fuck her and not you because the emotional risk was too much for him? but you'd get drunk and he'd read the bible to you and tell you how you couldn't suck his dick unless you were married cause jesus wouldn't approve and you just sat there going, this guy is going to die an awful death and i'll say yes just to fuck him but it won't matter in the end cause he looked so sick the last time you saw him you were glad you never touched him even though at the time it was the REAL DEAL LOVE?

this ghost had been around during all the fake engagements. during the real ones. during the guys who lived here, during the guys i said, i don't love you anymore. i never loved you, i just needed you and now i don't. sorry. the sex was fun. you cook great. i don't cook, so it's good someone did or we would have died. i loved you and now i don't.

ramblings about a human without boundaries in a world where everyone is closed.

But what of fairies? Do they grant wishes. Fingers on a keyboard, a devotion to notes. Or do they remember your mother for you, when all your brains are focused on whatever life you are trying to build. You play until your fingers bleed, but do you remember the bunny shaped pancakes she made for you on Easter? There was a woman and it came close to love, her chemicals inside of you, her skin was too white but you fell in deep. It was back before the Superdome. A homeless guy with a blanket stole her from you, but you can see how that happened. We all went hungry beyond just food.

In a flash your mind is blank. We are covered by clouds, these actual feelings. We put them in boxes. Safely away where no one calls you on it. But there was one girl, who always seemed confused. She didn’t have the heart to tell you how you hurt her and in the same way you never visited your father---always a justification—he was mean when you were only eight. You tell her, you just need time alone--not to ever worry, but the answer is clear. You like somoene else better. You straight up ghost her whenever there's something else to do and call that friendship. You keep all your secrets because that's the way to keep things peaceful. No one wants to hear about other naked bodies if they aren't you.  Just look up, they tell you. The people you avoid are suffering, but you don't care, you suffer too. You think love is relegated to the mind and forget that people die without human touch. You are touching everyone else, so at least you are doing your part. There's soul in it, but not the kind you thought there would be. You just don't have the guts to tell the truth. You have never been an outcast. The answers aren’t where you are looking. The answers aren’t relegated to the heart. Or the limitations of the mind. They are beyond the clouds. Beyond human understanding. Beyond what you once thought was cool indifference. The answers are in the bodies and in their ability to communicate. 

One day you leave. You are older now, but not too old to obey the blood in your veins. An old tired black skin look on your face. Your teeth were white. But, now you just rely on your wit. You kept the good ones away. You took to the ones that kill hearts. Just like we all do. In the lines of the road, your car chalk, the road chalkboard, you see a future. Something to look forward to. But in the distance is a cloud. It contains all you’ve done to the people you love. It is jagged and not going to produce sound so loud that the whole world will be free. It will produce something unthinkable and it will open you like so many people tried to before. You will be open and you will pull the car over and you will ask yourself where are those people who loved you now? Are they with a new lover? Someone not so shut down. You tell yourself you warned them. But, you never tried to let them in. Letting them in could have killed you, that’s what you never say.

Les Plesko--This will not do you justice, I'd rather stay silent, but I'm doing it anyway.

On Tuesday, I got some shocking news that my friend and long-time teacher, Les Plesko had died. Amanda Copeland posted it on my wall. I didn't have her number, she didn't have mine. That's the way it is sometimes. You know a person but don't have their number. Anyway, I pulled over and she called me to tell me my friend and mentor had died yesterday----this last Monday, September 16th. I posted something on Facebook immediately as I'm prone to do because I know lots of our mutual friends see my wall. I said something about Les listening endlessly to my suicidal ramblings. This is before i found out he took his own life. What I want to get across here, is that no matter what I say, or what I am feeling, it will not do proper justice to the impact this person had on my soul and heart. In fact, my life was quite aimless before I met Les and probably changed its course because of his encouragement and support of my writing. He was my friend. He listened to my tragic boyfriend choices, my suicidal tendencies, my total self-indulgence with rapt attention. Les was a person who liked me as much as I liked him---he found me interesting during a time that was an extremely important thing. He didn't want anything from me and I didn't want anything from him---and in any setting that is a rarity.

We are meant to write something for our friend and teacher--a booklet is being put together, but everyone has already turned stuff in and I'm late because I'm not doing great in my head about this. A backward swan dive off a building? I guess there's a romance to it, but it wasn't supposed to happen to him. Not our Les. The reason I am late is----How does one write a thing for a person who was the most influential to them as a person---how do you write something for someone who maybe gave you the courage to be the type of person you have become--a person with balls and opinions and an I don't give a fuck if you like me or not attitude? I have no fucking idea. So, I'll tell a story or two. Tell you how we met and how like all people I meet that I have an instant affinity for, Les Plesko meant something to my heart. We looked at each other and knew. You know how that is. It happens with lovers and friends. A bond is made and it is permanent even if you don't know why. Like you just know the person as if maybe if souls are energy or chemicals last lifetimes, that you might have known them before this. It was like that.

This next part is boring, even to me, but it seems like you might want to know it. So, I'm saying it for you and to honor Les.

I was just starting out writing again after years of not doing it. In fact, I had been doing other stuff, stuff that didn't inspire my soul--stuff that kills the soul, inch by day, by incredible inch. I took a class and the first thing I wrote got published. It was a short story about me and my friend getting picked up by this old lady who had cocaine and Les was not my teacher at that time---Les was my second teacher. For anyone who knows me I have the sheer blind audacity to apply for the advanced novel class, novel 5 wanting to skip the other classes.  I think and Les told the administrator that his class was full but that my writing was good and to try next time. I am a jaded cynic, full of innocence at times but mostly I just think everyone is lying to me. Whatever. I still applied again and was allowed in.

I was writing a book of short stories about my life doing drugs with trust-funders and with trannies. It was boring but flashy. A total cliche, but Les liked it and like he does told me what was working which was my sentences not the stories. One day, I came in with something else. Les told me to abandon my book and work on this thing. It was called No Tell Motel. I trusted him but was mad because i had 200 pages of the other thing. Les said--fuck the other thing, those stories will always be there. This is special. Then, I won an award for the first chapter of that book. Then I got the first chapter published---all before it was even a book. Whatever. I told you this part is boring.

Lets get to the meat.

The only time I have ever cried in front of a man is during sex or after sex because of the beauty of it, not because someone touched me funny when I was little. But, I had never written a sex scene. It seems too intimate to write down, you know? But, as an exercise, I remember writing this sex scene where this dude fell in love with this girl's asshole. It was worded better, but to tell you now seems too trite. The thing is, is there was this dude in class it really upset. And everyone thought it sucked, but Les LOVED me for it. Because I was brave. I was being brave enough to suck openly on the public stage in a class of people who might have judged me. Some people told me that my bravery helped them, but there was one dude in particular who would say mean stuff and throw tantrums--eventually we got along, but it was long after my sex scene phase. So, a few times after class, I drove home crying. The point was not that someone stared into someone's asshole and fell in love there. The point was not the cottage cheese ceilings, the point I needed to learn by failing. And I needed bravery to do that. Les was safe that way. I felt like I could try things and he would laugh, but still find the shining thing inside of the clot of dirt.

Les was the type of person you could tell anything to and I am the type who since I knew Les had a swat team with guns drawn on me at my door combined with a terrible loneliness that comes from not being able to tell anyone that would understand the story or why it happened. Les heard my stories and he told me to write them down. But, to lose the self-indulgence, cause someone had to eventually read this crap. If I could lose the self-indulgent emotionality, I could be good. I took that note to heart.  The writing comes first, put your suicidal thoughts into the writing and it will heal your soul or at least you'll have something you are proud of.  But don't write about it cause that would be boring. Write about almost anything else. Which is what i did.

At the time, i thought i was the only one who wanted to kill myself. i wanted to so much of the time most of my friends thought i was crying wolf or lying. But, i wasn't. Les knew this because he was like me, he felt that way too. We had a pact that if i was really going to do it I'd call him. If he was going to do it he'd call me.  But, obviously that didn't happen.

My friend Patricia reminded me once that we all talked about the ways we'd off ourselves. I had a broken heart at the time. We laughed and joked, but i was really hanging on by a thread. We told each other the ways we'd die.  Not to be selfish, but to get rid of the intense pain i was feeling that i can barely articulate, but that I feel in my bones. Many people feel this way at times and no one ever says anything. But, I am that annoying. I'll call people and cry to them and make them talk me into staying here. I'd tell Les him how bad it was inside of my mind and he'd say, "Who cares? you're a pretty good writer."

Les had the sensibility of a well tuned junky. The kind that can get anything they want not by asking but by not asking. He and I were similar in that way. We liked our independence. Les wasn't fancy. He was cool. He'd say totally inappropriate things and eat a ton of chocolate and say stuff like, "Who needs teeth, anyway?"

Les told us to write everyday, but i didn't. I was in UCLA trying to get my degree. I was a mess, trying to hold a relationship together. I'd write my ten pages that day, like an hour before class. Les never judged me and he heard a LOT of my bullshit. My sadness. My self-pity. My crap. But, here's the thing, he knew what I know, that while we might want to, no one can actually understand the depth of another person's pain. We can lie down in churches. Make snow angels in the dust. We can hold hands. We can be a silent witness to each other. We can press our bodies together wherein our skin tells the story that our words can't. Humans are hobbled this way. Hobbled by language and its limitations.

We knew stuff just by looking into each other's eyes. When i could find his good eye-- a constant thing he made fun of----"Look at this one!" he'd say, but I couldn't remember which one i was supposed to look at.

As for what happened. Les made it into my dedication for my thesis for grad school and I didn't tell him. Janet Fitch told me I reminded her of him when I met her at Squaw and that we should meet. But I didn't tell him either of those things. At the time, I was too depressed to think of anyone else.

Les made it clear this was his choice and I will honor it as I honored everything about him. It might seem heartless to not say goodbye, but goodbyes are so fucking hard aren't they? Les was close to the soul and in my estimation one of the smartest people I have ever known and one of the most inspiring. He was a hero to many of us in life and will remain so in his death. If he couldn't go on, it's okay. I understand. I miss him and I'm mad but just because I think I could have talked him out of it doesn't mean he wanted to be talked out of it. I'm sad I won't hear him laugh or make fun of things or say how much he loved my writing. But, he is out of pain and for that I am happy.

I love you Les. You gave me some kind of direction to an aimless life. I will never forget you or the last words you spoke to me even if I can't say them out loud.

Take care and don't be a stranger. Amen and goodnight my friend. I'm deeply sad that you left us. Your friend always, Lisa.