Before I was leaving the house I broke the jewelery box that I keep my headphones in it. It is white and ceramic and has a serpent on the lid. The lid didn't break so I took it all as a bad omen. I haven't picked the pieces up off of the floor because I haven't thought of a replacement yet.
When I was walking down the street and writing in my head I thought about how I was not one of those girls that could just write and have beautiful pictures of themselves. No matter how nice a coat is a find or how cursed the thrift shop I am not meant for free give away (at least not of clothing, perhaps of myself) but I think I am fine with this or more than fine with this because I was never that kind of writer.
I miss the way I was writing right before I graduated high school and also the way I was writing right before I moved to New York City. Both in 2003 and 2006 respectfully. I think what came with this was the sense of endless possibility and I don't know what makes the possibility go away or become impossible or if it is even reality at all that kicks in. Jackson says if I don't separate my paragraphs that people don't read and this is true proven fact law of the gods and science of the suns did I trick you yet?
I know I am supposed to be writing about the 'decade' because that's what I told myself to do-- and now already ti's December 3rd. Time, time, time who are you batting for?
I keep blowing out too many light bulbs and now I've gone and broken the jewelery box and I don't remember what the UPS man is supposed to bring today-- I don't think anything, actually. All the books
came yesterday and a new down comforter that is more of a throw and a dark red (I keep buying a lot of that dark red which has a lot to do with Clytemnestra) almost everything has a lot to do with how much I enjoy reading about the Trojan War. In fact, I have never liked reading about anything this much. So I keep getting more and more books of literary criticism. Oh there is one I cannot forget that they mentioned in class yesterday that is not about the Trojan War but they say will help me learn things about the East because across a passage by Euripides I wrote "EAST OF THEBES" because to me it is all Cain & Abel but really it is all Cal and Aaron or is it Charles and Adam? I don't know but it can even be Pentheus and Dionysus. I read for Pentheus but all I could keep thinking about was True BloodPentheus was not as smart as Bill Compton. Nobody was shouting "bring me the sacrifice Sam Merlotte!!!"
The season finale of The Hills sucked and exercise tv on demand is not working.
I wish you knew was I kidding. I wish I knew too!!!
All I do is read about Homer. That's not true, all I do is read about The Trojan War, watch bad television, smile back at strangers, play doctor, go to therapy, go to psychics, go to class & make endless cups of coffee.
The little tea kettle water boiling thing I bought before the start of the summer just looks so elegant in it's shade of blue but it makes me realize the kitchen will never be painted yellow.
I Am supposed to be monitering something about my menstraul cycle but I can no longer remember what it is or was. I keep taking midol even though I am trying to keep acetempatphin out of my body & I don't really need anymore caffeine. There's one more ingredient that must be like some kind of water pill, but I told you, we stopped googling our drugs.
In two weeks I will be in the sunshine state & two weeks after that I'll fly to Portland to meet Alex. Originally I was going to fly to L.A but apparently Nick thinks our friendship is the second half of "Hustle & Flow".
Regardless, we are supposed to drive to California though I don't really believe it as all California promises have been lies. I want to go to San Francisco because the strangers say Id like it.
And I want to go to the Salinas Valley & Big Sur but that's just the destruction of my own brain.
I'm also pretty sure I ran out of money but I will either look into that or take a nap or watch Oprah. Trya Banks gave four or five whole monologues on the subject of why I shouldn't get out of bed today. I watched it on JetBlue on a flight from Long Beach to JFK I was sitting inbetween a married couple who had clearly bought their seats early and calculated things so I wouldn't be there in the middle but I was. I would have cried over the 8 inch monitor and everyone saying they had no choice on the screen but that is rude to do inbetween a married couple that is passing a sandwich back & forth & seems to have fallen into acceptance or they really do love each other. The man has the window seat and uses both arm rests. The woman has the aisle & occasionally gives me a glance that contains pity. Probably because I have to get up & pee so frequently. Also because I've taken so much Dramamine that I cannot walk in a straight line when I attempt to make it to the back of the plane. Men grab my arms and they are very old. I think they are waiting for the rest room too but they are just standing so they can stretch. It is something about veins & legs.
In January both Alex and Ilana will be here which means the apartment will have to look like a home. I think I keep ordering new sets of sheets & towels but all the UPS man gives me is books on literary criticism, I sign anyway, I should tip him soon right? I tell him "Harry, I think I've made a mistake" and he nods but smiles too.
The couple in row 17 does not have any children and I am almost sure of it. Tyra, well, I wish you'd cut her some slack bevause she is doing the best that she can though if this plane in particular crashes I guess she won't side with Penelope or even bother to burst into flames. And that, Tyra Banks --- that's real fuckin rude.
Posted via LiveJournal.app.
I'll have none of it. I know you're up to something.
Before bed I take melatonin and sleepy time tea, I complete the same yoga routine. I talk about this routine like it's been years but really it's
been maybe two weeks. It has been days. I drink the sleepy time tea. And usually I am sleepy to begin with. Haggard almost. I don't know how my eyes can put up this appearance like there is more left inside. But they do, always. They are never those tired or devoured eyes. Even when they are black and blue or I am really high they don't get all beady and red, they are no give away. They are more deceiving as sunglasses. So these last few days I can spend so much time crying and it's not the tears that give it away but the fact that I leave my mouth open without speaking-- as if I have something to say but have become mute. As if I realized this is the wrong film. Usually I have set aside a certain amount of minutes for complete hysteria that by night time, I have worn myself out. I am the toddler that you try and keep up until 10 PM because if not you know it will be never ending. Start giving me pep talks by 7:30 and hope I haven't finished the book I'm reading. If you even believe I exist at all. But maybe you too are now an expert on my patterns. You say "tomato" I say "Judas". I think it goes something like that.
"Say 'I love you'" is an actual sentence that comes out of my mouth. He times it to 3 AM I think. I don't now if he finds it interesting or if it gives him a sense of control or if I am just generally a pathetic woman plagued by nightmares. I don't count on any of the options. I just ask different men to prove it and then if I don't I ask another. I believe him this time. I go back to bed. My fingers sometimes stay awake, my heart used to. He promises it won't be an ambush.
You put all your eggs in one basket and I meant to do that to but instead I made you a souffle. Baby, does that mean I did even worse? Does that mean they can use their teeth after all?
My dreams (bad dreams are nightmares) have never been about men but about wild animals. For a while they were about tidal waves. Mostly there are lions or there are sharks and they chew me up while I am still awake. I don't get to go on Oprah to discuss-- not because these things are not real-- not because I don't understand but because in the dreams I am always a child. I am always very small and I always have absolutely no idea that I ever grew up.
Sometimes I am at the bottom of a large tank and I know there is a shark. I know my father is near by and I know there are three options. The shark will eat me and I will die, I won't be able to swim to the top and I will drown or that my father will save me. I always believe the latter and I wait for it at the bottom in my little swimsuit with memories that have not spanned more than four years and involve toys and grandma's backyard. But if you are one of those people that thinks that you cannot die in your dreams, than you are just lucky. If you are one of those people that thinks if you pinch yourself you'll wake up, you are just stupid.
Lately I've liked to hear them say what their favorite lie I ever told was. Does that statement confuse you? Maybe it should. But there are some good ones. It makes me desperately miss my friends, my friends that knew the difference. But it's almost interesting to hear what they think lies are or what a liar is. I think they've confused liars with women because they are not real women. I'd like to tell them about their pain bodies but I have to be like a duck flapping my wings, knowing all the people that just want me to feel real bad will sit here day after day and year after year and hit "reload". They will refresh the page to see if the lie is different.
But the routine is new, repetitive slightly. He doesn't care about me for most of the day, I am a trip and not an experience, I cry in public bathrooms or in front of anyone who is an official and men stop me on Broadway to ask what's wrong. What's wrong is that my headphones are in and I can't hear them. Don't I look more like a college student and less like someone that needs a cab?
A professor tells me that I look tired, asks if I sleep. "Yes, yes," and I do. I believe so. Except for my weaknesses in the middle of the night where I have to wake-up after being dead. Where I have to touch my limbs to remind myself that they are still there and then someone can say "hey baby" or someone can say "You don't know what Daniela is really like". And they say it in this voice like they've written gospel and I wonder, falling asleep on my hardwood floor when it should be meditation and I wonder drowning at the bottom of that tank during a time and place that never occured-- whoever you are, wherever you are-- could you not call me by my name please? It is mine and I don't see why you get to use it out of your mouth. Your mother never even put soap in your mouth.
I can't recall if mine did either, I won't bother to say she did because she will respond to say she did not. But my Aunt-- Dino's mother-- and my grandmother on my maternal side both did. That's why my teeth are really so white and my soul is really so connected to keyboards. Don't you get it now, don't you understand?
I am happy for you and I am happy for me too but just for slightly different reasons
See,you're just learning that the only thing that feels better than loving me is hating me & I have already known that my whole life. You have no idea what your favorite lie is that I ever told, you can sleep on that.
I must be making that face that I make the one that is very horrible. Different academic advisors & professors keep telling me that I am well read in the same way that doctors and psychiatrists tell me that I seem to be quite sexually active. Always some little jab from an asshole holding a cup of Starbucks coffee, talking to a paperback whore that is really into Folgers coffee tea bags.
Just add hot water.
Posted via LiveJournal.app.
ENTERPRISE VILLAGE OR THE GAPS IN BETWEEN
you'll get a raise
"Best Life Ever Week," is over. Oprah tells us how to make the most out of 2009, what kind of vibrator to buy, why she gained sixty pounds, the cure for credit card debt. In it's aftermath, we are left with just the pieces. I am not the target audience, but I don't really give a shit this. This is all for me, all for me, all for me.
Still sifting through ancient artifacts of my own life, I scan photographs from age 10-17. Someone next to me points out that I looked older then-- in some way, at sixteen I looked older than that I do now. And I did really, it was like my face had aged too quickly, or my body had developed too early. I want to say how I was older then, how we were fending for ourselves, how at one point we were almost literally raised by wolves, but I don't say anything-- I just shrug, laugh a little, keep eye contact, you know sometimes stories are not worth telling unless you can start from the very beginning. Unless you can say "In 1985, I was born in a blizzard," unless you can say "In 1995, I was more reasonable than I had ever been," unless you can say "2005 really was 'The year of virgin sacrifices' until you've run out of decades. But who has twenty years? Who has twenty minutes?
The 5th grade was like magic. There's this sign on one of the subway cars that says something like "You remember your first grade teacher's name- who will remember yours?" My 5th grade teacher was Mrs.Uhl. In her classroom we read Where the Red Fern Grows and Old Yeller and all I wanted was a dog. If I believed in God during the fifth grade, I would have prayed for a puppy. But I was so practical at this point, if I recall correctly I either tried to reason with- or black mail my father. This could have been the most practical part of my whole life, the most reasonable year ever.
We went to Enterprise Village- this place the size of a shopping mall where you spend a day, have a job, get a paycheck and train your 10 year old body that this is society. You see, in the fifth grade I went to work with my classmates. I had the career that I had been pining before- being on television on The Home Shopping Network. I didn't care that the person who got the manager position for my store made fifty cents an hour more than I did, because I was going to be a star on the big screen. Or, I guess the little screen, in a simulated society. I was smug about the whole thing as I passed my classmates who were working at Blockbuster or McDonalds, I did not make eye contact with them, because ah, I had arrived, I had arrived and they had not. We went through a day of tasks like balancing our checkbooks and cashing our pay stubs( I spent most of my paycheck at Eckerd's Drugstore on a Caboodles make-up kit.) We were all grown up, this was the real world.
And I remember thinking, "you know- this is really great, this is really awesome." And in you know, in 1995- I could get out of bed in the morning, I could go to work &balance my checkbook. I could excel in society, no matter how simulated it was.
Still sifting through ancient artifacts of my own life, I scan photographs from age 10-17. Someone next to me points out that I looked older then-- in some way, at sixteen I looked older than that I do now. And I did really, it was like my face had aged too quickly, or my body had developed too early. I want to say how I was older then, how we were fending for ourselves, how at one point we were almost literally raised by wolves, but I don't say anything-- I just shrug, laugh a little, keep eye contact, you know sometimes stories are not worth telling unless you can start from the very beginning. Unless you can say "In 1985, I was born in a blizzard," unless you can say "In 1995, I was more reasonable than I had ever been," unless you can say "2005 really was 'The year of virgin sacrifices' until you've run out of decades. But who has twenty years? Who has twenty minutes?
The 5th grade was like magic. There's this sign on one of the subway cars that says something like "You remember your first grade teacher's name- who will remember yours?" My 5th grade teacher was Mrs.Uhl. In her classroom we read Where the Red Fern Grows and Old Yeller and all I wanted was a dog. If I believed in God during the fifth grade, I would have prayed for a puppy. But I was so practical at this point, if I recall correctly I either tried to reason with- or black mail my father. This could have been the most practical part of my whole life, the most reasonable year ever.
We went to Enterprise Village- this place the size of a shopping mall where you spend a day, have a job, get a paycheck and train your 10 year old body that this is society. You see, in the fifth grade I went to work with my classmates. I had the career that I had been pining before- being on television on The Home Shopping Network. I didn't care that the person who got the manager position for my store made fifty cents an hour more than I did, because I was going to be a star on the big screen. Or, I guess the little screen, in a simulated society. I was smug about the whole thing as I passed my classmates who were working at Blockbuster or McDonalds, I did not make eye contact with them, because ah, I had arrived, I had arrived and they had not. We went through a day of tasks like balancing our checkbooks and cashing our pay stubs( I spent most of my paycheck at Eckerd's Drugstore on a Caboodles make-up kit.) We were all grown up, this was the real world.
And I remember thinking, "you know- this is really great, this is really awesome." And in you know, in 1995- I could get out of bed in the morning, I could go to work &balance my checkbook. I could excel in society, no matter how simulated it was.
Back in the classroom, we got ready to start the DARE program. We received bright red t-shirts with black font on them (years later I traded shirts with one of my high school boyfriends, opting for a black shirt with red font.) We went to the school cafeteria where speakers came in and told us the woes of doing drugs.
We watched a cartoon about doing LSD. Apparently, if you did this drug, you would be very likely to jump out a building because you thought you could fly, or maybe you'd even kill a loved one.
It seemed terrifying. We went once a week and took some kind of pledge, swearing to remain drug free.
You see, when I was 10 years old, when i was 11- I wasnt going to drugs. I was going to go to Enterprise Village and sit in Mrs.Uhl's class and write short stories about road trips with my family.
That year our class song was "Ironic,' by Ilanis Morisette. We were allowed to listen to it in class- it was a big deal. We played it the morning that special guest speakers were coming in. Two high school students, a boy and a girl. They were there to talk to us about abstinence. I remember wondering if they had sex together, then imagining them having sex. For years I had no idea that sex actually felt good for women- I thought it was something you did to prove something or make someone happy. And they talked to us about STDs and how they were waiting until marriage and all of these things.In the 5th grade, we were not having sex. But I wondered what it would be like with the boy from Blockbuster video, with the boy from Time Warner cable in class. The things we could do at Enterprise Village.
So you see, this is where society tried to prepare us. We would graduate high school in 2003- but we would be abstinent and drug free in 1995. Brilliant.
And then comes middle school. My parents decide at some point-- while mending their own marriage, that it would be best if I went to Catholic School for the next three years. But that's another speech and another story. My mother who denounces God; my father with his four hours of meditation a day and they are sending me out to place the Body of Christ on my 11 year old tongue again. I am furious, but mildly interested. Perpetually bored.
All of the kids at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School have gone to school together since kindergarten. They have formed this bond- "my mom drives an SUV, I am devoted to Christ." And I had spent the last few years with monks straight from the Shaolin temple, with liberal teachers in public schools, the kids in my neighborhood &their mother's who were on welfare &a Jewish couple that had just arrived in the United States after living in a commune in South Africa. I look older than I am at this point, some kind of transformation is starting and something inside of me is just not having this.
And at first I fit in okay, but within a few weeks I become enemy number 1 of the girls in the 6th grade. They made fun of me a lot and I would try and stare at one object in the room, and sometimes it didnt hurt my feelings because I kind of knew- "who are these kids anyway?" but eventually they just ruined my day. I didn't care for the nuns that taught the classes and I missed Enterprise Village, I missed hearing the word "condom", how was I supposed to care so much about Noah's Ark?
At first I fit in okay, but within a few weeks, I become enemy number 1. It starts when I ask a question about Noah's Arc, and it ends a year later. In the beginning I handle being made fun of very well, part of me knows that this does not really matter, but eventually, probably fairly quickly, it just starts to ruin my day. I feel ill very morning, I have no idea how I can make it through another day.
So, I start faking sick. I fake an elaborate stomach flu for weeks, maybe months. You see, I started writing because I started lying. It was as simple as that. It was easy to find an escape. So I'd have my parents drive me to the emergency room in the middle of the night, I'd look at my grandmother's face and I'd wonder about heaven and hell. It's all I heard all day long. We'd walk over to the church. We read no novels for children, no novels for young adults.
The girls in my class actually sometimes talked about how horrifying the idea of any sexual interaction seemed. I'd overhear this, and it of course made me hate them. By now I had developed breasts- not even boobs, but I mean these same things I walk around with today. And I started getting a certain kind of male attention. If a boy in my class made fun of me, I would just stare back at him. I would hold my glare pretty firmly, I don't know what I was doing, but I was doing something.
The 6th grade is a long story, but it ends with my parents allowing me to go to public school for 7th grade. I faked sick for one year and when the summer came, I was a new person. Something happens the summer between 6th and 7th grade- I become very self-aware. I do sit ups in my room. I buy a lot of magazines. Or I guess, I had my mother buy them. I start preparing for something bigger, deciding that this is all just a stepping stone to something else. I wear low cut tank tops and I am pretty boy crazy. By the time the 7th grade starts I make a new boyfriend a week, I still really didn't have friends, I started making a few Toni Bergold &Rachel Tipton, Leigh Sams and other alliances. Prinda and Heather and this whole group. We painted our nails black, we listened to Nirvana albums and 98 Rock and wore flannel shirts with terribly short shorts. I don't remember any academic achievements in the 7th or 8th grade other than Mrs.Rapoli's art class- but ya know, we only had interest in that because of all the boys.
All those idiot boys. That's how it was then, a lot of hopelessly devoting myself to thirteen years old. And somehow, elementary school did not prepare me enough for their raging hormones. I don't know if this is a Florida thing, but all of my first sexual encounters happened in backyards. Maybe we hung out there because someone's parents we're home. But the first time I willingly decided it would be okay to let a boy stick his hand down my pants was in a shed, in his backyard. I remember having no reaction to this, really feeling nothing. And the funny thing is that I wouldnt let him kiss me, I felt that if I was actually going to have to be responsive or do something it would be too much. This was my skateboarding boyfriend, who was basically an asshole, but when I was 13, I really enjoyed this. We would listen to the album Nimrod and in 1998, this was the most profound thing I could think of. I always listened to this song on repeat, I don't even remember what it's called but the lyrics went "the world owes me so fuck you," and my parents heard it on repeat so often from beyond my bedroom door that my father could recognize Greenday playing on the radio.
And for me, the best part of all of this was that I looked older. I would look at all the other girls in the locker room during gym class, and I knew that I could go into the world and say I was 16 and get away with it. I didn't know that this almost directly translated as: trouble. I learned how to fit my body through anyone's bedroom window.
I started out high school with "Nobody broke your heart/you broke your own because you cant finish what you start," and I let that turn into fourteen year old boys. I met a boy who actually lived on a street called "Alameda" and I knew it was a sign from God, I knew it was going to be true love, it was going to last forever.
The year 2000 was coming, and I kind of wanted us all to die. The books I read did not help, and middle school had not prepared me for any of this. I did not ask where the transition was, I didn't even think of it. I met Danielle and Ilana and Stacy and Mikey and Kyle and Ian and I formed this huge world around them, around us, I was ready to let out everything. In high school, on my teenage self.
I would have said "fuck you," to The Home Shopping Network. I would have eagerly tried to give the abstinence boy a blow job. You know, in the 9th grade I told a whole lie about a blow job. It was a very elaborate, manipulative thing. The months leading up to the time I actually had sex in- you guest it- a backyard were very scandalous. But you know, I cant tell you if it was natural, if it was some organic process or if we made it that way.
Our parents brought us home books like "Go Ask Alice," and "The Best Little Girl in the World," and I don't know how they expected this to have a positive result, we read these books and we just wanted to emulate them. I wanted to run West to California; my best friends wanted to cut themselves or starve themselves. We all wanted to fuck the neighborhood, but luckily we did not.
When I started high school, it was 1999 and everyone just had just gotten instant messenger. We still talked to boys on the phone, but now we could also talk to them on the internet. I made a livejournal and if you read the original entries they are all about how I hate high school or the things I am doing after school. I desperately tried to smoke cigarettes. We desperately wanted to try everything. We eventually put Sublime on the stereo and then we started to calm down, the advent of Bright Eyes and Saves the Day and other things we could put on mix tapes or sing in unison. It was gradual. It was very gradual.
And if you're wondering why I am telling you this, why I am telling a stranger how I went from being the smartest girl in the 4th grade to wanting to dissolve next to the yellow lockers, it's because I am trying to tell you about the center, the formative years the middle ground that let's us be fine now. I sometimes meet girls who have just moved to New York City, and I watch them do the things that I did when I was 14, I watch them go through the same motions and I kind of feel like I lucked out by purchasing Nevermind 5 times on CD and cassette before I could even have a drivers license. I feel that I lucked out about being in a sense, reckless, before there were major consequences. By the time I was driving, almost all of this had flushed out of my system and I wanted to be the same girl I was at Enterprise Village. My hair might have still been pink, and I can guarantee you that my away message probably left me crying about some boy for years to come, any boy some kid on the street corner who I wanted to turn into salvation. Maybe I saw him on bike or skateboard and wanted to give him my feelings on Jesus Christ- but maybe not.
And maybe if I ever teach any grade, I'll teach middle school. I'll try and put together some pieces about how you're supposed to go from being a child to a teenager. How you go from being 5 to 18 in the 3 years. I remember all of my teachers names- I remember them a lot better than any of the boys from middle school. The ones from elementary school &high school they stick, but when I first grew breasts, when my legs got longer, there must have been a blur. Maybe if I thought it was magic, it was not and maybe if you tell some things, it just doesn't make any difference at all.
Comments
( 2 comments — Leave a comment )
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
nickswastedlife (75.142.100.200) wrote:Jan. 15th, 2009 09:35 am (UTC)
I love you.
In Enterprise Village I was the Journalist. What a twist.
December 2009 feels like it should be a history lesson because December 1999 I just waited so calmly for the world to end. Fourteen was too old and the computers were going to crash and all month long I thought long and hard about the apocalypse.
But December should be about history lessons. The kind of history lessons you make up in your brain after blogging for ten years. After giving the better part of yourself into the expression of something else, some other form, other place.
There were whole relationships just for blogging and there were whole friendships that came just from livejournal. And then there were extended incidences that I never typed a word about, never posted a picture. And I can scroll back and see what happened December 1st 2000, December 1st 2003, December 1st 2006. And that is a strange feeling.
But it's also a feeling like I didn't run out, like the world didn't end. Like I made a time capsule and shoved it down my throat and gave myself to teenage boys and then to men instead of to glory or to God but once threw up hard and changed my mind about that.
And for the first five years of the decade I did the better part of begging into telephones but now I can type my heart in my sleep. I can almost connect point A to point B.
My best friend says he doesn't know how I do it, and my other best friend I don't think she ever bothered asking. She just knew I guess, or knew enough or let it slide.
It's funny because people like to read into things and they like to think "this sentence is about me". They like to think it so damn hard. And they've been thinking it for so long man.
And the stuff we say in therapy, I don't think you even say it in your nightmares. But of course I'd say that, I'm very selfish.
I'm waiting for an advising meeting. It is more like a negotiation meeting. It is more like if I have to read "frankstein" again for any class ever I will have some sort of break-down. You know, since I've never had an academic break-down before.
I keep smiling with the strangers but it's giving me a headache. Head pains. Migraines. Maybe I have lice of the brain.
Posted via LiveJournal.app.
whiskeyface cut off all her hair. Cecilia, it has been so hard for me not to do this every time I throw a fit lately. And I've been throwing lots of fits. Not saying that you threw a fit. I think it's easier for you to chop off your locks where as I usually first decide to leave the country. I also want platinum blond hair as that is my other alternative hair rebellion. (Pink hair is not about rebellion, it's about reaching a state of peace of how much I used to love Nirvana) I think the blondness makes me feel sluttier in a sexy way ---but what the fuck I just learned how to pull off red lipstick a little over a year ago and I really don't need to shake my ass for much of anything these days-- so maybe this mentality should go away along with my misuse of punctuation. Here's to hoping.
I've been taking my feelings out on my hair for a long time. Last year someone broke up with me and my first instinct was to cut my hair, my second instinct was to get plastic surgery. My hair is still long. Did society do this to me or did I do it to myself? Do I get to blame my ego or my id? I'll blame the follicles and myself.
Randy, I still don't understand why I can't get a perm. A good perm. I don't really want a perm what I want is for someone to wash and blow out my hair every day. Like when I worked at the salon. I want fingers running across myself. When it becomes the winter (and to me winter is anything under 57 degrees) I become a beauty invalid. I would gladly let you dress me, bathe me, slip my clothing over my head. It's much more than laziness it's some larger exterior manifestation of giving up.
It'll be so romantic, baby. You can start calling me "Bartelby" and all I'll say in return is "I prefer not to."
Every sentence all the time. Then I'll do it anyway. I'm too tired to fight with anybody. I have a cup of iced coffee (the new kind that is tea bag coffee by Folgers-- every time I say 'tea bag' I still feel like someone is putting balls on my face-- but you should try it out) tea bag coffee, who would have thought.
Today I am going to continue writing my paper about how Homer was a 22 year old Sicilian girl. I mean about how Homer was me. How one line in one book changed my life & flipped my world upside down. But don't fret pet, that's all I am ever looking for. One line in one book that makes me question everything. That makes me get it right. That puts the focus on whats hidden deep behind the mop of teased hair.
Mostly I am Cher in "Mermaids". Mostly I am any female lead who can tease her hair with one hand, sing loudly in the kitchen & reserve special time to cry in the bath tub. Oh universe, if I was only this, if I was only that. Why can't I get a perm that is a perfect blow out every day?
I am sick of my writing with my fingers, typing with my hands. When will my wrists start to hurt? I don't want to sit down and read "Death in Venice" today. There is a hair salon opening right around the corner and I want to apply for a job. I never want to actually do hair. I like selling shampoo. I adore selling nail polish. I like washing heads and taking the towels out of the dryer.
In a past life it is a lot more likely that I was just the Avon Lady and not a 22 year old female Sicilian Homer spinning tales like Shahrazad. I am a Mary-Kay lady with a Pink Cadillac and I tell them in the back seat that I am a virgin every single time. And I know you think you can tell the difference, but if you don't know if you're a "warm" a "cool" or a "neutral" you don't know if this orgasm is fake, these tits are real or if the dye has seeped way too far into my brain.
No-- I'm just kidding. You can tell the peroxide must have penetrated my frontal lobe.
"The Penetration of my Frontal Lobe: An Essay on Hair Color, Epic Poems & The Whores that let them."
Told in 3 parts by Daniela Scrima.
If only my eyes were a little more eye like, I could be "That Girl," too.
& Mom,
How did you get your hair perfect curled like this? More negotiating with the devil? Why not pass that along in my genetic make-up?
Ladies.
The car was hydroplaning because of the snow. He kept telling me it was black ice and I kept telling him I was going to cry-- not because of the weather but because of Ohio. I waited for his hand to extend to where I was sitting but instead he changed the track on the CD. I was eighteen so I didn't understand that time was going to pass the way it would but I knew that these songs were going to be forever. That I could always have them. So I imagined his face all wrong. I imagined his face like a monsters face, because after you've seen a real one, you can do it any time. The people that got made up in some kind of movies say to imagine everyone naked and you won't be nervous, but when I am trying not to laugh I just imagine funerals. I imagine what bodies look like and smell like. I can't tell the difference between formaldyide, fetal pigs or my dead grandmother, so I deliver all the speeches without laughing. I take turns making eye contact and looking at the back of the room. And all of you are sitting proud because i'm the one with my tits sticking out, you've kept all your clothes on.
----------------------------------------
II. In Florida, you were mistaking busy signals for seasons.
They used to shoot us with bullets but baby said they got bored. Told me I didn't know history, didn't have the right kind of books--- the right kind of reading. Baby, always said I had the right kind of writing. Bang, bang, bang but all we wanted was to be anyone. Do you know what dress up is or are you just happy to see me?
He said he'd break my sentences down and correct all the words that I mixed up. He'd name the disorder.
It wouldn't be like any hotel room.
Honey says I gotta stop making lists to safe myself. She puts the coffee on in the morning and when I cry it's under the covers, when I cry it's in the shower.
"Dignity," someone says. You know the voice-- that one from years ago coming from down the hallway. Someone's mother talking through plates and shards and covers. I knew they wouldn't ask me why. I knew they wouldnt ask me how. I understood damn well after years that you just try and leave it with as much dignity as you once had.
I try and remember their faces but I can't. The director on the phone says it's a minor detail. I ask him what the difference is between a hotel room in D.C and a hotel room in Long Island and he pauses, corrects me-- tells me I'm reading the wrong script. Really I'm just tricking my brain. Telling my brain it's all tempurpedic mattresses and soft hands.
It's all sleep number beds and fresh towels.
You learn how to call 911. I know you're thinking that everyone knows how to do this, but it's not true. When there is blood on the ground, when there are the men with guns or the cars flipped over or your best friend cut up in front of you-- a lot of people forget. Me, I can remember. I can remove myself from myself. When something really goes wrong, you should want me there.
I will cry over spilled milk the same one someone would cry if you had spent days cutting them open. If you need me to get you an ambulance, I won't shed a tear because then I don't waste minutes.
I kept reading about the tragic heroes. We got so good at them-- remember? We got find them anywhere. In the epic poems and in the Lifetime movies.
I don't know who those hands belong to but I am not even awake for this part.
I can stare down that hallway and hear his mother talking and it doesnt matter what she is saying because I am bleeding into what is basically a diaper. I have spent six hours in a room with other girls, other women and because we all knew better and did not do better we are placed here and we are bleeding in our diapers. I am screaming to be let out of the waiting room. A nurse explains that it is a "holding area" but I take this as a "holding cell". I know he is in the next room and he was good enough to hand over the three hundred bucks like that could be the same as loving someone for that long. For once I wish it was the day after Christmas because I think I've been waiting since the fourth grade to relate directly to this song.
I put it on a mix cd and I play it in the car but he doesn't get it. For some reason he is trying to be stoic and it's too cold for Florida. You may get it, I'm a brick and he's drowning slowly. See, we're off the coast and we're heading no where.
And then a long time goes by and I am in my diaper and I hear his mother talking and I let her say all those things about me. What else should I do? I don't want to defend myself anymore.
You can bring better attorneys in and I still remember how to do CPR but I don't have a defense anymore. I'm a fucking free for all. I'm a wedding cake-- my favorite kind-- and I want you to take a big slice and have it. And I hope you don't throw up. I hope the sugar high is just right, that the digestion process goes well and that you remember somewhere inside me there was icing.
But I have no defense.
"What's the difference between Washington D.C and Long Island"
He tells me I have the wrong script.
They don't know about seven inch maxi pads or the gods we pray to. I try and tell him that Homer was a woman, that he gives me 15 minutes or 10 pages I'll prove it. But then I remember I am done with proving anything.
---------
III. Lover boy threw meat at me cursed the day we met/street freaks, bedbugs/ New York City's what You Get
Once when we'd gone driving we continued to pass the same large stretch of grass. and I looked at you from the passenger seat and thought that this was infinity. I could see the end. It was at a fence. But I thought it was America and I thought it was forever. I thought it was right. I thought it was all I'd ever wanted. I turn to you and I said I'd write about it. And the sun was warm on your face so you nodded at me. You nodded at me because even though I had broken fingers, even though I lost half my jaw, you know I'd manage to masticate my favorite baked goods, to grab your hand and squeeze it tight.
When we were half blind and dying I knew you'd go on forever.
I won't start a street fight.
Do you want to see some photos:
food, faces & the development of the office.
unbreak my heart, say you love me again.
he likes it.
I will have a working office. I will be a human. I will exist.
- Music:Esther Hicks and Jerry Hicks - The Processes: Ask and It Is Given, Volume 2 (Unabridged) Part 1 of 2
I asked him to stop beheading all the queens and told him that I could be a virgin every single night without even talking. At fist he didn't believe me but I squeezed my legs and said "baby, feel this, feel this it's so tight." Since my virginity was neither here nor there, I'd have to keep talking too. But I couldn't. I was in a different place. I had to focus on Ulysses but for the sake of the class and the sake of the Greeks we kept calling him Odysseus.
"Daniela, how can you even claim Penelope was a whore?"
"Look, I'm not claiming it. I'm suggesting it."
It's Thanksgiving break and I spend Thanksgiving alone. I like it. I feel like it means something. Nothing. Neve rmind.
I was trying not to look at faces, because I had to walk the dog and there were many people on the street but no matter what I did the faces would morph and turn and twist into different shapes. Why do you have to have a monster face? Why do I have to see your body crossing the street? I want to poke your stomach with a stick because you are a liar, and then the last thing I want to do is ask you how it feels. It's not just that your parents should have hit you, it's that you should have learned to shut the fuck up.
"You know if she could have told all of those stories then a woman could have made up a Trojan War."
"No one made up the Trojan War...it's just that they don't know everything about it."
"So were those people real?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean...were they real...or like as real as people in the Bible"
He starts being condscending without realizing it. Doesn't matter. He's not here. If he wanted to be here, he could be here. But he's not, so I won't cast him as the hero of the story. Instead he can be the guy at the beginning of the cartoon movie. He doesn't know what I'm talking about--- I say repeat after me:
"Oh I come from a land, from a faraway place
Where the caravan camels roam
Where they cut off your ear
If they don't like your face
It's barbaric, but hey, it's home."
He's so educated that he doesnt' even watch Disney movies. Fuck this. And who sings that song? That little shop keeper? What's his name?
All the boys that think theyre men got too tall. Did they get to big for the britches? Is this my favorite show after all? In my sleep I say "fuck that" to any long distance relationship. I have all your faces spread across a map but I can't remember what they're supposed to feel like.
He is screaming "I'm a solider. I'm a man." And I feel bad cause he could have had his legs blown off. I change my mind and agree that he is. But he's the same age as me. We aged a thousand years in the last decade, what did you do, stare at your hands?
When I was little I'd sometimes forget what a face was and while I was trying to sleep I'd try and get the image in my head. I'd try so hard and then I'd feel so sick that I had to get up and look at a picture.
What am I supposed to say, Mom? They don't even really look like humans to me anymore. They don't look like souls or saviors either. No, I am sorry but for once in my life I am going to need really solid proof. I am going to need it right now-- the easiest thing to say is still "that's it! I quit".
But it's even easier to do.
Baby, well, he burned up all the maps anyway. When he was making his world tour that stayed within the continental United States. His French fires did me know good and now I don't trust any babys about where they are going and when. The girl on the phone keeps asking Where are you going? Where you have been? And I like that she is obsessed with story titles too.
I agree that I would get in the truck and drive away too. That I would put down the phone and stare at the stranger.
What about when the old woman gets killed?
Oh. Oh that's a different one. I tell her to say it back to me and she whispers like I'm her worst enemy A good man is hard to find.
"You're half an idiot anyway. Not a whole idiot. Just half"
"You don't have to talk to me like that, you are being mean."
"I told you to leave me alone and I told you I wasn't going to do this anymore. Not for anyone. I want proof. Prove how the telephone works. Prove all those maths."
"Why do you always do this? Why can't you have believe in these things like you believe in the universe? Like you have believe in gods?"
"Because that is FAITH. See! This is what I mean. It's not even noon. It's not even noon. Do you even LOOK at clocks. It's not even noon. I am glad I do not have a sister. That is faith. I have faith in the universe I do not have faith in this phone!!!"
"And you don't have faith in men, either?"
"Rachel, I've been trying to tell you since before I went out to walk the dog that I don't know any men."
"Look, I'm trying to help you-- but this is just the Wellness Hotline. If you feel this is an emergency you need to hang up and call 911 or I can connect the call for you."
"I am just calling to talk, isn't this what you're here for? Don't you understand that I am feeling LONELY and no one is understanding the point I am trying to make about men or virgins or whore or my ancestors???"
Poor Rachel. I figure at best this is could practice for her. I mean, she wants to save girls, or women or the world. I bet she wishes she would have retained some dignity, not fucked that frat boy and just became a cashier.
They all turned into soldiers. Or became forty but not actors. Or lied with their mouths full of food and their teeth so yellow. I'm watching the food drop out and I want to ask "do you really believe this?" I really believe this because he wont return my calls and he is the one going bald. If he had hair I'd rip it out of my head. If he read this he'd get a restraining order.
I want Nick to be here so he can explain the difference between a story and a lie. I want Nick to be here so he can knock out all the yellow teeth. I don't think he can hit that hard, but we could practice. And if you're reading this the way you're reading it right now, then you don't even get it. I am not saying he is superior to the rest of them, I am saying that he understands why the faces are melting, and if he didn't he would tell me he did. And if he didn't mean it he would mean saying it for my sake. So would poor Jackson. But he doesn't have a face either. He doesn't like it when I start to say it's his fault about the maps. But hey baby, look at my fucking body, tell me that's not tangible. Run your fingers across the monitor and play house.
"Rachel, I have to get off the phone. I'm afraid the dog is going to eat the Sweet Potato pie."
My landlord tells me from the front porch that I don't have any friends by that name and I let him know that my first cousin's name is Michael but now he changed it to Fred. He adopted his middle name, which may actually have been his first name, and he didn't do it for our dying grandfather, though we like to pretend he did. I like to pretend, I mean.
"Daniela," my landlord must still be talking, "Didn't Frankie come over and tell you that the plastic goes in the clear bags..." and his voice trails off because Frankie smells like cigarettes and he stands too close to me when he talks.
The dog is licking my hand to say I love you and the dog is the most human one here. I'll leave the country. I'll run screaming across the Atlantic. I'll write my thesis on Homer being a woman and that woman being me and I'll say that, I'll say that.
I knew a dog named Frankie once. Ashley was lying on the ground naked, screaming at a Kermit the Frog poster screaming "Nick Scrima fed this dog steak!!!"
Frankie is a cat. Felix is a cat. There are not cats in America and the streets are filled with cheese.
"Look, I have to get off the phone...but you know what? I think Scheherazade--- I think she is the same kind of woman."
"Daniela, I don't even know what you're saying". I am talking to my mother now.
"You know mother, from Arabian nights."
"No."
"Yes. Yes you do. I even had a VHS tape when I was little-- there was cheap version of Aladdin and then Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves."
"Oh. I remember that. There was no one in it named Sherezia."
I Ask her to put my father on the phone.
I am going to write my thesis on Homer being a woman from Sicily that was unmarried and really educated because I read it as a line in a book."
My father approves. He likes my papers about the wars. My mother sincerely believes that my father is the reincarnation of a Roman general. See? None of us are kidding.
There are all these men and boys I am supposed to love so I keep losing my virginity and I keep making up new stories. But this next part is true.
Ashley and Nick and I were driving to Kansas and it was raining very hard. Everyone must have been drunk and we played many Disney soundtracks.
"Why do you get to be the virgin, Daniela?"
"I don't know. Nick will clearly be Aladdin. I'll be Pocahontas---"
Nick reminds me "but Rachel said she was too ethnic."
"Fine then can I be Cinderella?"
"No." Ashley is objecting. "I want to be Cinderella."
"You should be the little Mermaid because you have no concept of reality."
"Nick could be Tarzan."
"No he is clearly Aladdin."
"Fine," Ashley is tricking me into thinking I win
"You can be Princess Aurora because you enjoy sedatives and will probably let a prince sleep with you when you are unconscious."
"I hate Dino," I tell her.
"Okay, so Ashley is Cinderella, Nick is Javar because he keeps speeding and I am Princess Aurora."
I make one last point because no one can tell me the truth about the Bible.
I say to no one, out the window:
I want to be the prostitute from the one story-- where the Prince won't sleep with her so she calls out rape. And then some dudes are going to kill him so the seven viziers each tell a story to say why the woman is lying. Why she is unreliable.
But before I can finish the air from the window says back to me that I am already an unreliable narrator, I already am a woman and I've already confused too much. I am unreliable and just because I have convinced them all I'm a virgin doesnt mean it's dramatic irony, the audience knew from the get go and everyone in the story knows too.
The problem is that I still want to write that he wasnt an old blind guy but a young woman. And the other problem is that there is a man on the other side of the country and I can't get out of bed. But I don't remember how Sleeping Beauty ends. I can't remember the ending of the story.
And when I was little-- you know what I always hated? The choose your own adventure books. You'd pick the page and get a different story but you really had no choice. There were about three options. It was the onset for everything that is unrealistic about life.
But if I don't remember how this story ends, that is what I am going to have to do. I am going to have to choose my own ending.
For now, I remember this:
- Music:gee I think he's rather tasty
Ashley is chain smoking more than I have seen her smoke in years. It's been two hours and we've been sitting at the same picnic table with the same group of girls. Our fathers put us up to this. Her father in particular. He decided her life long dream was to be a 2nd grade teacher and because we are tired now, because we turned eighteen and then twenty one and then kept turning ages, we nod our heads. My father has agreed to this because I am in general a disappointment. Both of us are disappointments to our parents but we are good with kids, we are good with the youth.
It's the first day of activities and we were twenty minutes late. We had breakfast with Nick first, which was probably a bad idea. He looked handsome because he was driving a truck.
"Where do you think he got that?"
"Not fucking his. That's for sure."
I am thinking about a dinner I had at my ex-boyfriends. His husband had prepared a meal more elaborate than I could cook. I was twirling the ring on my finger. Why were we in Florida? I thought all roads led to Rome.
Some voice in my head that is maybe my own says "They all lead to U.S 19".
I text Jordan Scott that the paper will be late. He doesn't respond because he probably knew already. I want to call Jackson from a pay phone, but I havent seen one in an over a year. I want to call him because I stopped writing him back. He could still look at me that year, when the rest of them couldnt.
We don't ask when we climb in, we just pretend, and I sit in the mail. Ashley is going through cigarette after cigarette but Nick and I are at a loss. Despite lack of trying we could never become addicted, the best we get is half a pack between us when we're drunk. It's summer and we're returning from our respected places of living. Nick is the only one that graduated on time so I try not to beat myself up because of his advantage. And he had his fair share of shitty jobs. I hated it when he worked at the movie theatre, and I didn't really believe in him when he worked at the bank but now he is a legitimate journalist. Press pass and everything. Sometimes the three of us get to cover things together, but mostly we are seperated across the country. Somehow-- not because we are fortunate-- just because we are aligned, we still end up in the same cars during the summer. We are going to save the youth and he is going to write it down.
I don't know why Nick is better at filling out forms than I am. I can't decide which one of the three of us is a better writer and that makes me really happy. It makes me really happy because we could all argue both rationally &in fits of hysteria on who does the best job. And in this one case we wouldn't say "me"-- I mean none of us would use the word for ourselves. We would give the credit to someone else.
I order a really sloppy breakfast at the drive-thru. I wonder why I never married Nick and I don't know if it's because he really didn't love me or if he loved me too much. Ashley is wiping napkins down my blouse which my best friend designed but did not sew herself. I keep wearing these tops because finally something is named after me. I look at Ashley's face for a while and for a minute it surprises me. Her cheekbones are very defined, parts of her face are hollowed. She has the thinnest she has ever been but at the same time she doesn't look different to me. We kind of all look how I always saw us.
I text Ilana
"Cheese on blouse- dry clean?"
She responds to tell me her mother is throwing a fit, flying cross country for the millionth breakdown. We are all older, we have all become something but the fundamental things are not different. Nick tells me I look beautiful and I wonder why I didn't marry Nick.
To get to the building we have to keep driving and driving and driving basically to the center of Florida.
"It's not the center, it's the panhandle", Ashley is correcting me. She has her feet on the dash and I tell her in one breath that she will both break her legs and that her toes look really good.
She says "In Ohio, we were chased by dogs," with a big smile on her face. But she is not saying it as the start of something. She is saying it for solace. The story became a novel and it sold. Really, really sold. So many things started selling that it all became surreal. None of us knew the difference.
"Shirt is ruined." Ilana texts back and I am just happy that she has a blackberry because she's always had the shittiest phone. She still refuses to get anything with a touch screen.
I remember writing once that Nick kissed the same way that he drived. I think I was disappointed.
"Can we look at the GPS?" The middle seat is making me uncomfortable, and I don't know if its going to be twenty minutes or two hours before we are at a picnic table of teenage girls.
It surprised me when my father didn't want me to be a teacher after graduation. I figured it was a safe bet and something I liked. It excited my mother too. I think it excited her mainly because she thought this would somehow lead to me having children earlier. Which it would have, before everything changed.
I guess I don't want to get into that year. The year that everyone just stopped talking or left the country. Most of them couldnt look at me in the face. I couldn't blame them but I looked at my face all the time regardless.
When we got there, we were late. I tried to explain to the girls at the picnic table that the feeling wears off but they didn't know what I was talking about. They were young girls and they believed that they knew everything. They believed that this was all a brand new thing, the music, the sex, the boys, the abandon. They believed it was a new thing and well, to them it was. We understood that. Nick was off on a different group and I whispered in his ear that he would have no advice for sixteen year olds beyond "Mariah your on fire" and he just said "yep. yep. yep." I don't know what he did tell them.
Ashley and I passed out the surveys and some of the girls knew who we were. Some of them cared, were excited about it. This alarmed me because I knew if they did like us. They liked us for all the wrong reasons.
I hate when people name their children names that are just words "Destiny" and "Hope" were sitting at the table. I scribble on a 3 x 5 card "is this irony?" to Ashley she scribbles "You want eleven dollar bills Daniela Scrima," breaking the silence and the whole exercise I laugh "but you only got tens??" No one understands.
"Okay girls, I know you don't want to be here. I know that it's the summer and that it's a Saturday and that you are only here because you have to be here. So make the best of this for yourselves. You don't have to trust me right now, you don't even have to believe me. Pretend this is like getting a drivers license".
"I'm fourteen," says a girl named "Autumn". I say with my eyes to Ashley that seasons as names piss me off too.
Ashley goes on, because she is not a 2nd grade teacher and she is better at this
"If I was you," she goes on "I'd start by writing 'I clearly fucked up and this is why' or 'I like the jail where they serve grap jelly."
Nick brings me a Diet Coke which I don't want. I don't feel like we are helping.
I say, "You know when we were your age, we didn't have to write any of this. When we were sixteen and pregnant we had enough goddamn common sense to have an abortion."
The three of us are hoping we won't be asked back. The three of us are forgetting that we don't have a choice either. In the car on the way home I know why I didn't marry Nick. I get the window seat and Ashley accidently burns his arm because she forgets she's holding a cigarette.
Patrick Dempsey Fragrance
Staten Island-- The Movie
yesterday on campus. the usual. McDreamy was there. And you were there and you. And Staten Island and the little dogs too.
- Music:Eckhart Tolle - The Power of Now (Unabridged) Part 2 of 4 | Powered by Last.fm
All of you, you should all break up with me.
Today I am feeling tired. Loopy pieces of metal floating in dark water tired. I have so many Metro Cards and now I don't remember which one is the monthly metro card. It takes me a long time to pick which bag to take with me to class every day because I always have too much to carry. My professor said she may have jury duty but I am thinking she will get out of jury duty and I will turn in my paper and everyone will know that what I think about The Odyssey is basically a lie.
Sorry Penelope, I hate you. I hate you so much.
My favorite activities are antique writing desks, different kinds of pens and paper, books, Gossip Girl, smiling at strangers, talking to therapists instead of my friends &working my arms out until it hurts to type.
I have had 4 cups coffee 0 cups life
Despite lack of trying, the decade was coming to a close and no one had even bothered to steal our identities. It's not a joke, so I understand that it is not funny.
Nick, do you remember when you lived in that one apartment-- where was it Lutz? Land O'Lakes? Brandon? Bradenton? Some place somewhere. And we drove straight down the road to watch everyone getting out of church. And the roads became bumpier because the terrain became rural and it didn't look like strip malls or parking lots. And we wanted to get out of the car but instead we turned around.
Nick, do you remember in England when we got on the bus even though we had ninety pounds and we could have lived like kings?
I liked you best when you were a mess. When you threw them on the bar and yelled "coins! they are just coins!"
And only Chad looked concerned, but he still drank his beer.
II.
Someone tried to call it a "manic episode". Some idiot. Some girl who was a psychology major. Not as bad as that half way whore who was majoring in "Education". Whatever, I don't care, I still told them they were useless. I want to be a teacher too, but I'm not going to major in you, Buddy.
I am not going to major in the insides of absences of you sitting on some pier pretending this is fucking Dawson's Creek and the song is for you.
It's not like in the movies, Dawson.
And she picks Pacey in the end.
And the dumb cooze never wrote back.
III.
I shouldn't have marked this with roman numerals. It's not even what I meant. I've had too much coffee. I had Jackson explain "antebellum" and then he just had to start saying "before the Civl War". Angel and Spike remember the Industrial Revolution. Do you capitalize the industrial revolution?
I am late to brunch because brunch was at 1 O'clock. But just at the diner. And it will be crowded.
But I am being social, hey do you see that? I have answered 5/10 phone calls. I have used highliters in my notebooks.
I agreed to be part of a study group.
I got asked to be a tutor but then I just started staring.
Yesterday in therapy I cried so hard that I couldn't remember why I was crying. And everyone agreed that this was not a manic episode. That all I wanted was for someone to steal my identity when I was driving with Nick on that road.
Because Nick liked the O.C-- you know the show. And then I think he moved there.
But none of us visit each other anymore. And where did Byron go? Tell me Joey Tribbiani?
Aeneas would have but technology had not yet allowed it so he just walked away and turned to board the fleets. He should have said "see you in hell, bitch" but I guess he didn't think of it at the time. He saw her there anyway--unhappy Dido. Like the rest of us she thought it was a marriage bed. Even Odysseus made the return for the wedding bed. Swatted the suitors away like flies on your prized birthday cake rotting at the picnic table. This doesn't mean that epics have happy endings. This doesn't mean that all heroes are tragic. But there of no use to my reading list unless I can underline their fatal flaw. Shew fly don't bother me. Shew fly don't bother me. They arent break-up words anyway, that's not what I want. It's more like negotiating with terrorists, except I'm the terrorists and the hostage and you have to be the negotiator. You have to convince me to give myself back to myself while meeting my demands.
You can hate me for saying it, but I'm not writing it for you. I'm writing it for the gentleman with sparkling eyes. I'm following the soles of their shoes because they did the greatest job when tearing pieces off my dress. They made the scraps of fabrics into robes and they promise to where them some day soon. They promise to this and they promise to that but it doesn't matter because they don't read this. I don't even have to make them swear. I don't grab their pinky fingers, the ones that I can wrap my whole hand around. I stopped asking anyone to put their hand on their heart.
I say "are you going to fight for me?" I scream "can't you paint my kitchen!" Unhappy Dido &now all she has to is understand destiny and watch cable television.
We fall on the floor in another country. We've made a world wide tour of locking ourselves in bathrooms. Barricading the door as the line pounds from outside and I scream "fuck you! we are dying!"
And he screams "fuck you! we are dead!" And the men who say they mean it, well they don't scream at me at all. They stay rational, they keep their voices steady.
I'm the bad kid in class and you're the teacher that has all the proper training.
I'm the tumor that your doctors can't seem to find but that doesn't mean you get to feel better anyway.
I think our cycles of human interaction are like the phases of the moon. I want to print out the calendars and hang them all over the apartment. The one where it tells you what time the sun rises & sets. Or the one with a joke-a-day. A joke a day calendar on my desk, with my light hair I'll have the world laughing. They'll be slapping their knees saying "you can ask me anything, gorgeous." And I try and remember when the word meant something.
Knock knock?
Who's there?
Can I take out all of your insides?
Can I take out all of your insides who?
Can I take out all of your insides because I already did!
And he just laughed and laughed and laughed.
Different doctors started approaching us, and all for different reasons. One said the disease was in my mouth, the other my fingers. One took out a camera & I spent the better part of four hours asking a paramedic about the lines on my palms. Will I live long? Will I live long? He does that thing that men do when they smile at you and frown at the same time. Knock knock.
Go to the movies and check your e-mail in the kitchen so I can pretend I know the difference between twenty and two hundred dollars.
They're filming a movie across the street. I didn't realize it at first, that the bystanders were extras looking at a car crashed in at the gas station. The men with their cameras and the big white screen. The abandoned gas station which is for me to look at and Buddy to shit on and here comes a crew thinking they are going to make millions.
I am glad it felt real good. I am always glad to hear it. I can hear anything. I leave my ear plugs in all the time now. It's softer that way, I'm not alarmed. I don't jump.
I want them to be better because they are older. I need them to be better. I need them to be better than me. Much better. Whole. Whole humans. I am sick of men missing limbs, men missing souls.
The book tells the men that I'm not a gymasium but I swear that's where a rib used to be-- give me your hand-- that spot right there. Tell them I'm not a gymnasium. Tell them it can't always be me on the air planes. Tell them I have to learn to be good here, I have to learn to be better than I am now.
I kiss them & they've never heard of breathing lessons. They are gorgeous swimmers. Beautiful men.
The gods made them & they made me too. Unhappy Dido who has stopped her sulking & wants to say a lot more than "I'll see you in hell".
Posted via LiveJournal.app.
How am I supposed to learn that kind of transportation?
Everyone has an opinion and I thought that I did too.
But in my heart I cannot tell if I am making a mistake. I know it will go one way or another, that despite trying or negotiating I never make a middle ground.
Syndicate
