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.

A Birthday Rant

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

My Brother's Keeper

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By All Human Measurements

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

The Loneliness of a Body

The Loneliness of a Body

Your arms are a casket

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

from being ourselves

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

I suggest I sit in a saucer of milk

or drag you with a chain

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

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

on your chest --- the stars are wondering

if your piercings indicate slave or

master

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

I am not yours now
and that fact is endless

Killing Dolls--Read by my friend Brendan Sexton

Becky Fisher--Know It All

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

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

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

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

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

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

PAPA, CACA, DOO DOO, WEE WEE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Caroline

Dear Caroline,

I don't know if you can hear me, now that you are dead, but on the thought that I might not know everything there is to know, I am going to take the chance that maybe you can hear me. Your friend Michael wrote to me today and said, "you don't know me, please call me, it's about CT. it's serious." It took me a moment to realize CT was you. CT equals Caroline Thompson in a way that I couldn't quite understand. So, I called the dude. The dude said you were dead. I listened and didn't know what to do. I called to coroner to be sure. I felt bad. I felt really really really bad. Worse than I've ever felt. Then I remembered Romeow. Where was he? Your cute cat. You loved that cat. Was he in the apartment? Did we have to go break in and save him? I didn't know, so I called the coroner back and kept calling back until someone answered. At some point in the early morning I realized that the coroner might have said they had a Caroline Liz Thompson, and on your blog it was Caroline Ruth Thompson. So, I called back, to see if they were wrong or if I was wrong or what. I asked about Romeow. Where was he? Could I save him or keep him and the whole time with all these phones going I knew your parents and your brother didn't know yet. I had already called Matt, your recent ex boyfriend. So recent that he had called me Saturday going I haven't heard from Caroline, do you think she's okay. I was like, yeah, we spoke she seemed cool. You said you were sad that you may have hurt him, but were really excited and happy. In fact, we spoke at 2 AM on Thursday morning and all you talked about was going to this poetry conference and grad school and about shopping with me at Betsey Johnson. (I had told you I put a dress on hold and was too sick to go pick her up..dresses are shes.). You told me you'd buy me the dress, to forget about the sale---the 50 percent off the 50 percent off sale--you'd cover me. You had it handled. I told you I was broke and you told me you'd pay if I agreed to come to the Chicago Poetry conference. We could room together you said.

We talked about our date. The night we went to Beyond Baroque to see poets read their work. You wore your cashmere hat and your lace up knee highs, your cashmere jacket. We shivered outside because the Beyond Baroque people had set up chairs outside. We were bored. It was supposed to be cool, but it bored us. You showed me a photo and told me you were sending it to Matt. You looked pretty, I can't remember what else about the photo---oh yeah--your ass. You sent a photo featuring your world class ass and we laughed to the point of crying. Then, you told me we should go watch him and see him do the comedy. But--before all of this, you and I had our date. Our date at Marmalade or whatever the hell that deli is called near Palmetto---that guy stalked us. He was wearing a white man hat. I can't describe him. Weaselly, like a pinched bunny face. I don't know. He walked in circles around us eating us with his eyes. You told me about your family and I started in on telling you my weird dating scenarios and weird sex fantasies. Then, White Hat man comes over and brings us a chocolate souffle and starts talking about himself. We stare up at him and don't care about him and his stupid story of his wife leaving him and NOW HE WAS BROKEN and did one of us want to pick up the pieces of the broken White Hat man? I made him tell me which one of us he wanted. Just say it, I said. He wrote his dumb name on a napkin---had to get up and walk all over the place to find a pen and we just sat there going, will this man ever leave us alone? Then he came back and set it in the middle of the two of us and then shamefully went away. IT TOOK FOREVER. That White HAT man ruined our date, but only for awhile. Then Beyond Baroque, then laughing till we peed. Then, we went to see Matt--in Hollywood. Matt performed--it was funny, but now you're dead and I'm real fucking sad. Matt became your boyfriend that night. You two became inseparable--it made me happy because I love both of you. There's more, but it mostly was about how talented you were and I'm not in the mood to do it more today. This isn't the end of you. I remember you. How could I ever forget, it's just that. WHAT THE FUCK? I love you and I miss you, that's all. It's rare that I meet a girl that's smart and charismatic and doesn't hate my fucking guts while pretending to be my friend. You were my real friend and i'm sick and sad that you are gone. Remember your Louis Vuitton bracelet? I saw it the day I went to meet your parents and Romeow was there and there was a moment he got out and your dad was overwhelmed in the car and we weren't supposed to tell because it would just have made him stressed. I grabbed Romeow and carried him back through the door and decided I'm getting a cat. So, me and your mom and you brother Jeff made our first secret. I'm getting one just like Romeow. I'm even putting the photo of us up, from when we were freezing. You look cute and I look shitty, but as vain as I am---this is for you. I love you.

Lisa

It's Christmas--Time to Feel Shitty

Dear Christmas,
As a fan of you even though you don't really give us as much as you promised from all the advertisements and the sly looks from parents, teachers, friends and wherein we always end up penniless and scrambling to pay rent because we don't want to look stingy and we know we aren't stingy, but WE HAVE NO MONEY THIS YEAR OR ANY YEAR---but still don't get what we really want---we'd like to ask for a raincheck. Can we put off this year until some time in the unforeseeable future years from now when we will be out of school and out of debt with better jobs and a happy cat at our feet---and not barely scraping by? We don't want to be rude because we know you are all chocolate santa-y, furry costumes over fat bellies and we are not supposed to be weirded out that we eat santa, so we don't ever speak about it. We just bite off his head and then ignore the part where we eat his chocolatey insides. Tongues inside eyes rolled back. Are we really not supposed to be afraid if an intruder in our homes FAT and dressed like santa with red and white rascally patches up and down his arms and on his bloated from drinking too much Santa juice on his face (without the gift we have been praying to the lord Jesus for)? WE, as a nation are creeped out and hate those weird squeaking toys that get caught in a child's hair as much as you do. We are not ignorant! We just want to eat our toffee silently on our couches and check out for a while in a sugary coma all our own. We don't want to go to consumer heaven wherein we are applauded for our taste and lack of taste and whispered about as in we are too good to be true or in turns so stuck up that we are the only one on planet earth with such audacity to buy such a perfectly silverlake cool gift that means nothing and does nothing. We don't want to wear sparkly dresses or glittery makeup and pretend not to be sad. This year, Christmas, we'd like to give you the give of honesty. You suck and have always sucked except for that one year where there was an ACTUAL BIKE in our living room. That year where our disappointment was not palpable to our poor trying hard but too poor to do anything about it in the RIGHT way families. Had they just said they were poor, we would have understood--but they were trying to be rich in thought if not in action. So, Christmas, we'd like to break up with you. You don't do it for us in any of the ways we need it from you. You don't ask us out, you don't come over when we tell you to, you are a tease who promises sparkly happiness that never manifests. We are done. You were never as good as we imagined you to be and that makes everyone feel sad and shitty when they have nowhere and no one. What of the homeless---they don't get to go anywhere or the right present either. They are lonely--and Christmas makes them lonelier. So, Christmas, Goodbye and good-luck. As always, we will try to stay away from you because you are bad for us, but you will invade our every waking moment, just like you do every year. We are your whores with our skirts up and no fight in us left. You suck and we all think so. The end.
Signed,
Your Bitches

The Hidden

I am a plastic Mexican Jesus on a dashboard

a cold hard mold with seams where

doubts grow

I am imbued with the faith of a child

with a father who works for nothing

and sits on the couch with sex eyes

I am the daughter Carmen

with swollen lips and see-through dresses

who stays away after school

so she won’t have to play that game

I am the thin plastic frame that 

sits on your bathroom sill

watching what you do when no one is 

around

But I am not whatever you are

and that’s the main thing

Killing Dolls

At night, the man who lives next door makes fires. We can hear him making them and smell the bitter burning of the little green twigs he gets from the kid with the Afro and the comb in his hair. The comb is purple, which my older sister, Renee says makes the Afro kid gay as pink ink. Our neighbor rolls the little twigs in papers and lights the ends of them. He puts them to his lips and chokes them down. He hurts himself on the coughs and we don’t know why and we don’t care why. He laughs and laughs shoving Fire Flavored Cheetos into his mouth and spitting out orange, but no one is there, just he is, the Afro with the comb and the baggies already left so it’s just the dog, Gracie. Renee says she can read the Cheetos bag, but I can’t see far enough to know if she’s lying.

Every night when we remember to, we watch that coughing guy through our window get undressed and try to guess where his old wife went. “She must be in the crazy bin,” Renee tells me. “Remember when she chased that girl with licorice?” But, I don’t remember—all I remember is —she was very very very old---so old that whatever used to be a woman was now a man----- and sometimes when people get old they get a smell that tells dogs they are dying and I bet she had that smell and now she lives in the deep earth with the rest of the bodies. We try not to think about her underwear or her naked sagging body, whenever we do we laugh and roll around on the floor because you can’t think of old people naked, it’s too much like thinking of god going to the bathroom.             I never tell my sister how the old wife died, because death is one of those things that has superstitions attached and to say it will make it happen. But, I tell Renee about the ghost and how the ghost tells me what our parents do in that bed of theirs. Renee makes me shut up by chucking dolls at me as hard as she can. I hide my face with my pillow, but I peek out and see my Cindy doll’s head go flying. Renee says it’s an accident, but there are no accidents. She kills my dolls on purpose. We are fake sisters. Real by birth. Fake by everything else.

My babysitter comes every week without fail and tells us weird stories about the drugs she’s taking. She talks about boys more than anything else, the ones that like her, the ones that used to like her, the ones that got stolen out from under her, the ones she keeps secret. Today she is wearing a tight shirt without a bra. Her makeup looks like it should be on a teacher, not a fifteen year old. She wears platform shoes and a tiny skirt. I know she is trying to look sexy, but she looks more like a cartoon.  Her name is Maureen McAdams. My mother always refers to people by their first and last names. Jim McAdams this and Maureen McAdams that. My mother tells mean stories about Maureen that we aren’t allowed to repeat. My mother tells us that Maureen got suspended for drinking and blowing on a boy. My mother tells us that Maureen is going to end up dead in a dumpster someday, like the girls we hear about on the 6 o’clock news. My mother tells us whenever someone tries to give us candy to run like hell or we are going to be cut up and die on the hillside like the girls on TV. Renee says, “Then you should buy us candy, mother, don’t put our lives in jeopardy.”

Maureen walks us to Vendome Liquor so we can gorge our faces on chocolate and other things our parents don’t allow. Maureen lights cigarettes and chokes them down with a pose like if she were in a movie you’d think she was about to get run over.  Renee goes inside to steal stuff.  She comes out with way more stuff than the money would buy. Chocolate balls, milky ways, Recees Peanut Butter Cups, Suckers and Blow-Pops. Green flavor is my favorite for the suckers and Renee never remembers and only brings the ones that stain your mouth red.  Cherry, Strawberry and Raspberry. She always makes up a lie that she used all the money when really she pockets it. She always gives me some so I don’t tell.

Maureen cries on a payphone telling it, it doesn’t matter if she’s not allowed, she’ll do what she wants. Renee and I are burning up in the hot sun so hard we take off our shoes. Renee takes off her top because she doesn’t care who sees. She walks around all puffed out like hookers do. I’m embarrassed and pretend I don’t know her, the street is right there, cars see, and god sees. If I stay close to the Vendome doors, I can feel the air conditioning every time they open and shut. So, I do that. It makes a loud sucking noise, I smooth my feet over the rubber mat with the little ridges. I’m wearing my reversible red-bandana on one side denim on the other side halter top. When I get bored of the door thing I go to the sidewalk in front of the parking lot and rub my feet over the little blackened gum circles on the sidewalk and I’m going to myself, I wish I had sunscreen now I’m going to be sunburned and my mom will get mad and yell at me and hate me again. She’ll see my sad and raise it.

Maureen takes forever on the phone, and we’re bored. Life seems to take forever when someone you want to talk to is on the phone. Renee jumps on top of the wall next to the parking lot and pretends she’s in the Olympics—“LOOK, I’m on the balance beam,” she screams. Then she does a cartwheel and Maureen almost has a heart attack. “Don’t do that again!” Maureen says to my sister and Renee just looks at her with hate eyes.

            The fright of it makes Maureen stop crying and get off the phone like a magic trick and Renee puts back on her shirt and we walk all the way to McDonalds to get orange drink and fish filet. She is going against my mothers orders to feed us apples and peanut butter from Quinn’s and I tell her we aren’t allowed but she says I’m a tattle tale and if I tell my life will be stupid and for nothing.

            Later, Maureen comes in my bedroom and takes me to the TV room. She tells me she has a date with a boy and she wants to try something on me. She asks me if I mind. I say, why me, why not Renee. She says Renee’s too old even though Renee is only a year and a half older than I am. She says it’s a special kind of kiss. A French one. She says she has to try it because she has another date and has to look like a professional. Then she puts her tongue in my mouth and moves it around. I am sicked out and think this is bad. I’m bad and she’s bad.

            “Was it okay?”

            “It’s just gross, that’s all.”

            “But, do you think I’m doing it right?”

            I didn’t know but it seemed unfair that I had to be the one and it was full confirmation that god didn’t love me. I could see it was really important to tell her something nice so she could be happy like when my mother asked if she was pretty and I would say yes even when she looked tired.

            “Are you supposed to put your tongue in? That seems weird.”

            “That’s the frenching.”

            “Well, I guess it’s okay then.”

            I got back in bed with my sheets with stars and moons and galaxies on them. I couldn’t sleep after that so I tried to see the neighbor if he was up, but all I saw was Gracie outside shivering. 

Try Stuff

Meet Brian behind the pool-house. The one at the lake. Let him kiss you. Let him put his hands up under your t-shirt, but not down your shorts. Tell him not to tell. Tell him you’re too young for him. Tell him you aren’t an object. Tell him you don’t like boys with blue eyes. Tell him you aren’t going to be easy to know. Tell him to write you a note and to put in it the things he thinks you’d find interesting. Tell him he better make it good, because you know a lot about a lot. Tell him to talk about you. Tell him to describe you and make it romantic. Punch him. Grab his hands and put them behind his back. Watch him watch you. Let him chase you across the lawn. Slow down so he can tackle you. Kiss him again. Not know the consequences. Fall in love a little. Tell him, no one has captured your heart yet and you doubt he will be the one. Tell him he’s too tall for you. Tell him you like skinny but not too skinny. Tell him you like his hair. Tell him you like his plaid shirts. Put makeup on him. Lipstick and eyeliner. Hate him for liking you. Be scared. Not know what to do next. Leave. Let the phone ring when he calls. Don’t pick up. See him at school but act disinterested. Flirt with boys you don’t care about in front of him. Write his your name with his last name on the end. Think you’re dumb then cross it out. Tell nobody.

Go find Tami. Lay on her floor cutting up magazines for the wall. Wish you looked like the big nosed model with the giant lips that scream sex. Be mad you don’t look like your mother. Be mad your mother doesn’t care that you aren’t going to be a model and won’t pay for plastic surgery. Be mad that she won’t drive you to Los Angeles to be an actress. Be mad you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere without transportation. Be mad that she won’t come see you be a cheerleader. Be mad she thinks cheerleading is dumb. Be mad she hates high IQ’s because hers is low. Be mad that she is skinny and perfect and your boobs are so big they call you Torpedos behind your back. Be mad she doesn’t understand the pressures of your clothes not fitting  because she is a waif. Be mad you are eating all the time and can’t starve yourself like she can. Be mad tami is sexy sleeping with boys but you don’t even know what blow job means yet. Be mad she returned your khaki skirt with cum on it. Be mad at the world. Consider suicide.

Watch your father eat you with his eyes. Pretend it didn’t happen. Stop wearing shorts so nothing gets too weird. Stop talking to him after that. Be scared to be alone with him. Not know who to talk to about it. Try to be less pretty. Try to be less voluptuous. Buy bras two sizes too small to press you down. Cry in the closet because nothing will close over you. Not know who to tell. Start wearing giant sweatshirts. Be sad you’re fat. Be sad you can’t afford bigger clothes. Be mad your mother thinks you are a bottomless pit for asking. Try starving yourself again. Begin throwing up. Paige taught you how. Try on bikinis. Get on and off the scale a bunch of different times to see if the digital numbers change. Be happy when the numbers go below 120. Read the Best Little Girl in The World. Learn how to starve yourself through will-power. The flesh is dumb. Get your friends boyfriends to ask you in dark clubs if you’d consider making out with them, consider it, but say no, rejecting them feels good. Keep that a secret. Be lonely. Start shoplifting with friends. Get caught for grand-theft. Be scared your parents will find out.

Sneak out your window. Go to clubs. Dance and drink peppermint schnapps. Like dancing more than all the sex stuff. Ignore your friends who are experimenting with it. Be scared. Take pills. Be friends with younger boys hoping they won’t love you. Be mad when they do. Change friends. Sleep on the beach. Pass out in the shower. Curl your friend’s hair in the morning. Kill a giant potato bug with a flip flop. Scream when it screams. Wish someone would hug you. Wish someone would say you are beautiful. Wish someone would be nice.