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.