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.
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