Oh get me out of hereeee or let me stay here forever. Send me the checks in the mail and I'll keep sending you my soul. Don't fret, don't fret.
Dad's out of town let's raise a ruckus mom. Let's pretend this is real life. "In my real life". Because we're dead.
I hang up the phone with my best advice. I say "make it work, if you need to, if you both want to, make it work." I feel like i am giving advice to a younger version of myself. Maybe I am.
I lose the ring. Sometime during the day or at night I lose the ring and even though I don't know it's gone yet, even though I won't realize it until the next morning. And who am I the next morning? That's a good question. He pokes my body in a familiar way. The way you poke a dogs body. The way you wake up a dog when it is sleeping. All my integrity, all my limbs and still I am just another girl in Florida. I am not special. This is a story for blonds, and Randy refuses to apply the dye, this is a story where brunettes are like St.Bernards.
I wonder if they'll find the ring in the grass or months later wedged between the couch cushions. I wonder if he'll keep it in a box or throw it away. "I'm not the kind of person who does those things," he hangs up the phone.
And my fingers-- God, my fingers. How could I have done this to my own hands? My fingers. My fingers. My fingers. I wait for them to break off. I wait for them to break up. I will wash my hands clean of this.
I have mail to send to Oregon. I look at in on a map and it looks like a pretty place. I'm supposed to see Alex there. Alex, I'm supposed to see you there. But what I really want is Paris, Texas.
If I still have fingers. If I still have a tongue to lick a stamp.
Katherine was my favorite out of all of them because she taught us how to Google our drugs. This was before we could google anything-- right at the turn of the century. I was stilling using AOL to do it at all, and I used it with such loyalty. But Katherine was older, over eighteen maybe even over twenty-one but I doubt that. She was older and had a hotmail address and a tongue piercing. She'd say "fuck this shit" and she'd say "hand me a pill" and she'd say "look you don't ever take anyone's word for anything, that's how Cracker fucking died." And no one laughed. You'd think-- or I'd think now looking back that you would want to love because Katherine with a K spelled so poetically as if she'd walked out of Sense and Sensibility had loved a man named "Cracker" and this is how he died.
"Read it to me," she'd demand in a voice that I later on adapted (never giving credit)
"M-Y-L-A-N" I think that's what it says-- I think it's an N, try it"
"There is no 'try it', Daniela, stop sounding so goddamn needy. Put down your cell phone and do not message that boy back.
I listened to her because I thought if I could that it would be like magic. Not like a miracle but like magic. I want you to understand that there was a difference. Like how in the 7th grade we stole all those books from Barnes and Noble the ones about witchcraft or "wicca" and then we cast love spells on all the 7th grade boys and I do not know if they worked. We cast one in the 9th grade too, and sadly it did. But the 7th grade I can't recall, maybe this can be an S.O.S do you still love me Palm Harbor Middle in 1997? Do you still love me at all?
But yes, if I listened to her it would be magic, not a miracle. Not a twenty dollar donation over the phone so some man who was closer than you were to God could say a prayer to God for you and then maybe if you donated another twenty dollars God would listen. Magic. Like how when I was 19 I brought everyone back voo doo dolls from New Orleans and my mom said to me as if they'd work "Oh really" with sadness in her face and how Nick still tells me that I smell like voo doo dolls even though I've explained numerous times that when I gave him his I doused it in Dior Addict perfume-- the only perfume I wear. I also let him cut a piece of my hair off and wrap it around the doll. Nick will love me forever. Really. He may kill me, but it will be with love. It won't be a MIRACLE it will be Magic.
"What are the numbers on the pill"
"It says 3-4-5, kind of in a circle"
Katherine types in "round pill orange 345". I say "I think it's really more of a peach color," she starts crying in front of the computer and I wish her mom would get a cable modem for the house. I want to tell Katherine about DSL but Katherine skillfully gives blow jobs, she is skillfully not shy, she has no idea that there are books for this or that the pill is actually peach color. I know that no matter what it is she will take it. It could be laxative for dogs and she is going to swallow it in front of me.
Once, in another house, with other friends someone worked at a pharmacy and they would get prescription DXM in pill form an we would take it. I didn't bother to Google it and i don't remember if I did or did not know Katherine yet but I took the pills and I watched the whole house turn from side to side. The whole house became slanted and it was so funny. It was so funny that I could have died right there, age fourteen. No one's parents were home. The doctor didn't make house calls.
"So what is it?"
"Valium," she says with a large sigh of relief. Valium. And she swallows. She swallows and lies down on the couch. She tells me that when summer is over she is going to "get the fuck out of this place," and I want to get the fuck out too. I have this light blue Dickies bag that I use instead of a purse. it's small and has velcro and a black strap. The internet is slow and Katerhine's mother is drunk. She is pretty with her name like a novel and I want to tell her. Everyone has just gotten cell phones, we still don't have digital cameras. And I want so desperately to call him. I want so desperately to have my driver's license. I am too scared to swallow Valium, I am too scared to Google drugs.
Years later in a dorm room at Kent State University, I am staring out my window. I am looking at the steps leading to the unfinished May 4th memorial because when I am "this fucked up" I like to go lie there in the snow and think about the massacre. I listen to "Highway 61" for the first time one day in the car and then I listen to it over and over and over again. The boys go to the drugstore-- I wish I could remember what it is-- is it Rite-Aid is it a CVS? Where do they go? Do they go to Giant Eagle? Do they switch it up? Did you switch it up? Tell me now, Terrace Hall, torn down into a parking lot, where'd you steal all those Robutusin cough gells from? They are nothing like the pills that someone stole from the pharmacy and I watch the boys I love take ten pills then sixty and once forty. His heart makes a ticking sound. My eyes go black and I pray to anything htat I will not die this way. That my mother will not get a phone call saying I overdosed on the main ingredient in cough syrup.
I think of the mother of Sandra Lee Scheuer known to her friends and family as "Sandy" and about how she was shot on May 4th 1970 just walking in between classes. How she died within minutes from loss of blood. They made us watch some video during student orientation and in it Sandy's mother says she called the hospital when she heard news of the shooting
and operator asked her daughter's name
"Sandra Lee Scheuer"
and then the operator, or whatever we will call the woman says
"Your daughter was D.O.A"
and the mother asks all panicked just knowing "D.O.A What does that mean?"
And the woman on the other line just says "Dead on arrival".
I see black and remember Katherine and the memorial and how I have always picked up the cell phone but no one calls my mother because I do not die. Someone takes me outside for fresh air and I get to live. Allen takes me outside but I don't like him the best. He is 21 and doesn't have a Driver's License but instead carries a passport. If he remembered me, he'd love me forever too. Miracles. Magic. Type in exactly what you see on the pill.
Katherine died to you know? I bet you knew that before you started reading. She slitted her wrists in a bath tub because she loved a man named "Cracker". Her mother kept chickens in the front yard and left town soon after.
I tell this story just like I told it to you, because a girl younger than me picks up a pill and asks what she is, and me, I'd stick it in my mouth even if it was estrogen, but for the sake of our heart beats and our lives I let her type in the search engine.
I say in a tone that I had forgotten "will you just fucking read the words already?"
I walk into the kitchen and make "green drink" I guzzle it after pilates. I wonder what my body things of me. I wonder how our brains and our bodies have gone on a quarter of a century.
Maybe we are not like Cracker. Maybe we are not like Katherine.
Do you remember me when we were kids? Did my eyes sparkle differently? When my arms formed bruises did they look better? You say I cry different now, and I wonder if anything if it is more dignified, if it is more solidified. I look toward the sky now when I cry, I look toward the sky like somebody used to look toward heaven. And you tell me I am fleeting-- that I am leaving and I just wish I was already gone. In the fetal position in a bed that is not yours or mine, I wait for all the blonds to make their rounds and I grab my car keys more dignified. I will never pick up that phone again.
I used you & my arms to make the bed & then I tucked myself in & slept alone.
We had already been grown ups, now we had been monsters too.
And that's the thing about this story, I couldn't believe it, I couldn't believe you. I never wanted to write this story like that.
It is almost 4:30 in the morning. This has taken a decade but it's been more of the same and all I really wanted was to say was we grew up, but it's the opposite. I will not write down that we matured. I got better breasts, you got better muscles. You don't gag, I don't swallow. We can do sit ups while we're standing. You know I don't forgive you. You know that I stopped.
This didn't get to be a story about grown ups or men at war or girls who had left to go to big cities because they thought that big cities weren't like small towns. They thought in big cities all men would have fingers. In small towns they just had torsos, in small towns they just had saints.
And what do I have to do to be a liar? Do I need to go West ? Do I need to make your mothers love me more? Do I need to remember that I've spent the better part of my life trying to forget this?
I will count to ten and I will get out of this bed. I will get out of bed with your blond girlfriend in the doorway with my dark hair on the white sheets. She has forgotten: her jeans, her cell phone charger, her hair straightener. I have just forgotten, you, myself & time.
What am I supposed to write in this story? We had already been grown ups. We were so much older then. We were left unattended. You reach for my hands &I'm almost surprised when you grab them, as if I'm waiting for grenades and we're still playing house.
You see, we have already done this in three apartments and two houses and I still get carried away.
when the girls are saying prayers & the men are missing fingers I just know we've done everyone wrong. Not just you, baby. With the bluest eyes I've ever seen. You tell me that they're brown, but I'm the one writing this down. And it's not just you now, it's not a backyard or a backseat or a scary story. It's not a sunburn or first love. It's not true love or our mother's names scrawled like our father's meant it. It's a horror show. It's a slasher flick. I used to be an angel, but now I'm a monster too. I used to believe in torsos, now women just believe in you.
Me? I've been folding this shirt for a decade, I've been phoning 9-1-1 for years. For companionship, for independence. For all those girls that try not to spit when they say my name.
Sent from my iPhone
I. I never meant to say that. Not even for a second.
II. I never meant to do this but I cannot stop doing this.
III. We have all the channels on the television and I am sure-- I am convinced. I am positive that these-- these arent' my real eyes. This is somebody else's name.
Don't tell me you don't see it in your own face, because I see it all the time, in you i see it everyday- don't tell me that your magic friend in the mirror doesnt project how disgusting you really are, the wrinkles or the imperfections, the place where you used to be kissed like you were Christ- there is no difference between the way I look at you, and the way you look at yourself (except for constant vanity &excess hysteria, you quitter). We'd be giants with large heads, all the features smushed together. Physically we were evolving into creations, inwardly we were not evolving at all (or animals, instict started being considered superstition so everyone would pass on it). This could all be summed up in my relationships, facial expressions &mannerisms when in public. The goddamn commies were gonna kills us all. The gays were going to take over the world. The feminists would cause nuclear war &Barney would molest your children (with the help of Pope John Paul).Nostradumus was right and George Bush was right and my Grandmother was right, the papers were right, the dinosaurs were gone- are faces were morphing away, the dyin times would be upon us a preacher screamed at me in new jersey. save your souls children! save your souls! rid your sins! pray your fears! confess your ears! he too, was right. but like everyone else, my fifth grade teacher, she was lying, nature was not going to work with me- it was not going to allow me to grow a sixth finger and type faster, I was just like everyone else, waiting for all the time to run out.
For you I would rewrite history (you'd never let me), for you i'd make myself a stranger, for me you'd teach me calculus turn back time to our mothers twins, you'd teach me how to preach on the street corner about jesus christ! about judgment day! about salvation. Oh if I only know you, I would tell you it was true. All the stories that we had forgotten, were just waiting for us to look away. What I mean is "hey kid, the jokes on you".
* Aug. 6th, 2004 at 9:59 PM
The Blessed Virgin would win in the end, she never participated in fornication, adultry or sticking her head in toilets, she was no expert like yours truely. The boys always called her back &she loved the baby Jesus unconditionally, there were no sleepovers, no black alter egos, no impure thoughts for alter boys. Joan of Arc did not shake it for five dollars, she was always raped by soldiers never willing, the Catholic Church &Holy Roman Empire would eventually learn to approve. St.Therese knew how to be a martyr, my grandmother did also &my mother has been known to follow in those footsteps at least ten days a year.The lost generation would be bestowed upon us, yours truely was secretely leading the world into an oblivion (where we did not openly speak of our love for each other). I had ended my love affair with the soles of his shoes, but like everything else it would get me no where. I'd dial the numbers when I was drunk, violently punching the number into my phone as if it to say "Hey lover-lover-lover please-please-please try to stop me".The numbers had been disconnected, as if they were never there, as if The Blessed Virgin Miss Mary was looking down upon me to say "hey, let it go". Like I could ever let anything go, like I could forgive &forget- like I could move on. I would still be myself in the end of it all. With my head in someones toilet, my heart under someones shoe, my name in someone's mouth. My name was always in someone's mouth. It was the only thing that has ever belonged to only me, and everyone else uses it so much more than I do. Like I have no right, like it's not mine. I would lay in my bath tub as if sin could be washed away, as if scrubbing hard would do the trick (like I was told, like I was promised). Boys one thousand miles north of here have used it like an adjective, they've used it like a verb &forgotten about nouns (a person, place or thing).
The Blessed Virgin had it down, my great grandmother prayed to her through all her sixteen pregnancies. Sometimes she prayed for strength, sometimes she prayed for dead babies (there was no money, and there was no birth control- at least have way through). Eventually after pregnancy number nine, my great grandfather, bastard among bastards I've been told, went to see a doctor about his wife's constant pregnancy, about the way she'd been giving birth for fifteen years already, and it did not look like she was going to stop anytime soon. They almost made the woman the patron saint of fertility (until she died of ovarian cancer in the late 1950's). The doctor gave my great grandfather a box of condoms (made from the lining of animal intestines). I'll lift you up on eagles wings. My grandfather began taking one condom a day, with a glass of water. The rubber would expand in his mouth, in his stomach &cause burping.Two pregancies later he realized why the things werent working, but by then he was gambling off the coast of Brazil, sharing his bed with many women, the sperm of a God, his wife back home with eleven children. She'd give birth to five more, a total of fourteen boys and two girls. Wars were being fought, men were dying, the Blessed Virgin Miss Mary was crying over the death of her son, I was not a twinkle in anyone's eye &my great grandmother just gave birth to babies like they were puppies. She often felt like a dog, she had been treated like one. She had bled like one, been locked in a cellar like one, watched German soldiers rape her not German neighbors from the basement walls. She prayed to the blessed virgin for forgivness and everyone was bathing like they could get rid of their sins- like they could scrub it all away.
Fifty years later and you have me running the bath water, praying to la Madonna with my rosary beads, like I could ever be in that league. You have the boys one thousand miles a way uttering my name and wondering why the girl wont be returning back from Florida. The place that was our dorm is finally being torn down, after the hospital it was used for in 1922, after the end of segregation &the deaths of the May 4th Massacre, after the drugs I did on bathroom floors &all the boys who didn't kiss me- after all the lost scholarships &souls, they are knocking it down. Because a war, a massacre and fifty decades of lovers could not corrode a building like Daniela Scrima. Because according to the legend of the town of Sanfrettelo where my great grandmother gave birthing a new meaning, watched her husband swallow animal intestines after beating her with the palm of his strong tan hand (only to die from eating poisoned bread in 1942), the legend says the fertility will run out &if I was born and raised there like everyone before me, this I would know. I'd have a better realization that it was not my fault after all- that I really was born flat out fucked with nothing I could do, no prayers I could say, no boys I could love-love-love that way. There would be a lot of scrubbing and screaming, throwing up and throwing out, but there would never be that forgiveness, in the end I was not married at fourteen, I was not a famous writer or a movie star, I was no ones blessed virgin, no ones shining star- I was not baking cookies for my soon to be dead lover while he swallowed animal intestines, I was just becoming a statistic, going through the motions &losing all emotions, I was turning out to be all I could according to legend, the only thing I had lost in the process was myself.
and i don't know what the author says, i don't think he says anything at all because i fall asleep.
i fall asleep in other languages and i do not wake up in the city that never sleeps. i wake up in limbo. in purgatory. in a place where you do it to yourself and hope for the best.
the boys don't change. they still fall through. i hand over a twenty, two fives, and two ones and it's not good enough. i swear to merciful gods as i drive past all the mcdonalds that this will be the last time. that cul de sac where i cried hard-- never again. the dirt road and fake farm, well fuck that too.
it's a conversation i don't even know how to have anymore.
once there was this man i loved and i loved him so much, i can't even tell you what that kind of love was like. i'd beg him to come to new york. i'd beg him to let me go to virginia, to georgia. i'd beg him. and i'd go through other men that didn't know the stories or the songs or what really happened. and i don't know where the love went. we both don't have middle names, we are middle name-less and i don't know where the love went.
i don't know if i stopped loving myself or if i started. i don't know if i am the wife in the car or the girl in the asylum. maybe i am the latter but still it doesn't count. it doesn't count because i have control.
i listen for hours about how miserable the lives are. i listen to friends who graduated with 4.0's and sped through college in 4 years explain that there is a waiting line to get a job at Publix the grocery store. Me? I owe everyone writing. I promise to drag myself to the library but the feet don't move. My body just hurts. I do cardio against doctors orders. I swing my arms around my head like it is my inaugural dance. I hold eye contact too long and I never have respect for the girlfriends. the wives are another story. we all have respect for the wives. we pretend they don't exist.
do you have a phone number? can i call you and wake you? I want to ask this to a man that I will not speak to. i can hear a can of beer and a voice i've never heard and i can honestly say i loved him even after he said he'd go to the strip club to eat his salads. he'd go to the strip club to have lunch but when I was in our nation's capital I wandered Capitol Hill as if it was the Las Vegas Strip.
a best friend tells the story and this time she tells it in my favor. this time she tells it like we are in love.
In the summer of 2009, I learn that boys don't change, they have the same scars on their hands and the same taste in their mouth. I learn that girls turn 21 and pretend to be me when I was 21. They'll say it's different. They'll say it's completely different but the only thing that's different with my Mall Life and my drive south down U.S 19 is that I did it so much better. I named those streets.
I named those boys.
I named those men.
I did that. All the time. Always at night.
At the Super Wal*Mart they have college ruled notebooks that are 70 pages at a quarter each, meaning four for a dollar. I spend five dollars and twenty-seven cents (with tax) on these notebooks. I take a yellow one and write with permanent marker on the cover "LISTS".
There are wide ruled notebooks too, but I don't mind them. I wonder who does and try and recall school supply lists for elementary school. I want to say that they required "wide ruled" notebooks and that as a child I thought that college ruled notebooks were for college but this could be a misrepresentation of a memory.
I do remember accurately and precisely that as a child my favorite part of school was back to school shopping and as an adult my favorite part of college is the paper.
"LISTS: ITS THE PAPER IVE BEEN WAITING FOR ALL OF MY LIFE".
I started using lists as a means to in an end in the 4th grade. I was in Mrs.Shaneyfelt's class which took place in a Portable that had it's owning heating and air, it's own wooden step. There was a white bench and we were all allowed to write our names on it. The next year it would be painted over. I remember seeing the names of the students from the year before and feeling sick. We read a book called "Socks" about a cat and then I feel better. Socks was the runt of the litter. By the 5th grade in Mrs.Uhl's class we read big time adult books (in my mind) like "Where the Red Fern Grows" and I thought I understood and I was a Safety Patrol and I visited Mrs.Shaneyfelt's class and wore an orange belt and screamed "WALKKKKK" at the kindergartners and when I visited the portable I remember acting as if I was making a grand gesture because it was past 2:45 and I should have been heading to the car pool to be picked up but instead I was stopping by to talk to an old teacher.
And she had painted the bench white and a new class had written their names on it and I felt sick again and I new what betrayal was and I didn't care that Mrs.Shaneyfelt made her own salt from the sea or that she lived in a pink house or that she had been divorced or that she had gotten me into the "gifted" program. I knew it all along, the white paint.
"Socks" the cat did not die. Maybe it was even spelled "Sox" but I don't think that could be true. But the next year the hounds died. The hounds died a violent death and nothing would bring them back. Later that year they would shoot a dog that had rabies, later that year I would refuse to read "The Yearling" I would not care that it was written by a women that lived in Florida-- or something like that--- it was something like that and we were supposed to care but I couldn't care because we were going to Enterprise Village and I wanted to be a host on "The Home Shopping Network" which is based in Tampa and replicated at "Enterprise Village" which is a place that you go to for a day and you have a job. You dress like you are going to work and there is a radio station and a McDonalds and a Blockbuster video and an Eckerd's drugstore and there is a manager to every place and you get coupons that you use for your lunch and you get a pay check that you can use at Eckerd's or Blockbuster or I don't remember where else. I bought a Caboodle at Eckerd's with my pay check from the homeshopping network. I guess you could use their paycheck there, too.
But the lists. The lists started before I was "gifted" when I developed my first case of truly confusing the people around me and not being able to write. I couldnt sort through the thoughts in my head and all I could say is that my head felt like it was filled with water. Which it did. Which it does. And I could write no stories, I could form no sentences of what I wanted or needed. My 4th grade teacher gave me a notebook after school one day and had a meeting with my mother and decided that I should be tested for the gifted program and I did not like the idea but she gave me a notebook-- it was wide ruled and purple and I know this because I still have it--- and in white out she wrote "Daniela Scrima's Lists".
And I wrote lists and won a spelling bee and got accepted into the "gifted" program which meant that you got to paint pictures once a week and go to Nancy Lerner's house after school when there were horse back riding lessons and on Friday's you could paint and there were more field trips and there really was no difference between this and the kids that had "special" classes except that I bet they had a lot less animals and people die in their books.
I was jealous of all the kids who got to go to speech class and because of vocalizing my jealousy I was allowed to see the school shrink. I told her that I felt I would die if I could not live in Ohio and she asked me questions about "abuse" and I remember thinking that she was an idiot. That she was clearly an idiot and that she had no idea who she was talking to. She had no idea that I could make lists.
And lists are kind of like goals, they are like tasks or like promises. You can remember with them in the past or you can use them to remember in the future.
You can grow up and not make your own salt from the sea and not live in a pink house and confuse everyone by refusing to move. By declaring that a month is yours and firmly stating that no one can make you do anything.
I can do that, at least. I can beg anyone that is listening to just let me have my time to myself because my head is filled with water. My therapists says to come back to New York immediately, my best friend sits across from me and I tell her that I cant. We have worked out for hours and I am repeating that I cant. I cant I cant I cant I cant. My mother defiantly walks in because I am more of a burden than a guest and tells me that it's not that "I can't" it's that "I won't" and I want to say "no shit" but instead I say "this is how it is" and I see who will fight me on my last stand, who will allow me not to play the 4th grade.
My psychic says it's been Ohio all along.
At the Super Wal*Mart I buy diet pills, fashion magazines, 4 bottles of 5 hour energy &a box of "pleasure pack" condoms. The total is $65.65 and I pay with $70.70 and do not ask for a bag. My best friend acts like she is not confused and maybe at this point she is not. We accept each others lives gladly and in theory fuck up less than Thelma and Louise as we listen to Delilah in the car and then Marilyn Manson on 98 ROCK during commercial break. We announce what grade we were in when each song comes out.
"LISTS: MIDDLE SCHOOL TAPES"
"LISTS: THINGS YOU BOUGHT"
"LISTS: THE HIGH COST OF LOW PRICES"
"LISTS: MEMORIES THAT YOU DON"T REMEMBER"
"LISTS: PEOPLE YOU LIKE AND IN WHAT ORDER"
"LISTS: BOOKS TO READ"
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In the morning, I'll tell you the rest. I set the alarm for "early". I can't get to bed before 4 AM. I have ear plugs in and the night lite on. I believe purgatory is a living breathing thing.
I am terrified. I am twenty-four years old and I am terrified. I feel like my head is filled with water and I feel like I cannot move. I feel paralysis. I feel confusing. I feel that I am no longer a goal oriented person, that I cannot catch up with a goal oriented society.
"LISTS: THIS TOO SHALL PASS"
and then it does.
I'm in the land of nowhere. Screaming that I need 30 days. That this summer is supposed to be mine. In movie theatres & mall parking lots they were all supposed to mine. Why can't I have nowhere?
Posted via LiveJournal.app.
South of the South I play "purgatory," with my favorite contemporaries. We don't take turns throwing up but we just haven't gotten the chance yet.
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II.
"How does that feel?"
"It doesn't feel like anything?"
"Is that all this is to you?"
"No. I don't know what this is."
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III.
Everyone keeps asking when I am coming home. "Daniela, when are you coming home? What are you doing?" Or they ask when I'm leaving home, making the term completely relative. I like to pretend that they mean me-- me myself-- I am home. Not here, but I am the term. Reclaiming the word. They don't mean where they are, they mean what I am. A physical place called home. Not South of the South or the Center of the Universe, not the West Coast or the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Thunderstorms or snow storms or grey sky 9 months out of the year. You could have a baby without any sun light.
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IV.
"I'll do what I want when I'm ready," I say this like a mantra, I write this like sanskrit. On my knees like I'm taking communion like it's not like clear to anyone that's ever met me that I'll do what I want when I'm ready. Surrounded by my best friends, surrounded by my former best friends we can all remember when the term "they took her away kicking and screaming" was literally applied. Our verbal scores triumphant, we watched a thousand women drown in the name of love. All the boys under 21.
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V.
All of my clothes are falling off of me. I take a belt from my father's closet and instead of hitting my hypothetical baby, instead of beating unborn prodigal sons I pull it to the tightest notch and get my shorts to stay on.
My mother cannot stand this so she takes me and her Gap card to Countryside Mall. I don't know what to pick out so I buy simple cotton t-shirts and denim skirts.
Yes, I buy denim skirts and in them I feel just like Kate Gosselin. They graze above my knees and I won't beat eight babies. And you know what? I love Kate Gosselin. If anyone wants to talk shit about her, they can take it up with me.
I will fight you in the street, in the mall parking lot. In the middle of the Gap.
In the back of the dressing room where I open the door in my underwear to ask for a different size. My mother stands mortified and I realize I am wearing "Jessica Simpson" brand golden sandals. They are encrusted with gold rhinestones. They cost $68.00 which seems a bit much for flip flops and I don't remember who bought them but leave Jon and Kate alone.
I do the Kim Kardashian work-out on ExerciseTv. I use her instead of a gym. Leave her alone too.
Yes, my one last defense will be that of reality television stars. I'll tell you that you really want to be them, I'll fight you in the fucking food court, I'll ask you to call me "home", I'll tell you this is the celibate life and I'll ask for your American Express number like I love you more than I love myself.
Which I always have, I have always loved you more than I love myself and that--- that not any of this is the problem. That is what is wrong. That.
Poor Girls Blues - Jolie Holland</div>
"The Summer Without Sephora"
1. Tomorrow is July 1st, and July 1st is full of many experiments. First of all, I am in Florida and near no Sephora. Forty five minutes is too far for my forty dollar mascara so I am conducting an experiment. No fancy stuff. Lots of generic beauty products. I've stocked up on generic body wash, dollar store shampoo and put the Dior on the back shelf. I'm going to stay true to this for a month and let you know how it goes.
When my ex-boyfriend was doing my taxes he also blessed me with counting how much money I had spent at Sephora in one year. Basically I could have a Prius, instead I have a great selection of eyeshadow
2. Tomorrow I am hitting up the suburban thrift stores with my fashion guru mega buyer Miss Ilana Bresky.
My mission: Create a wholeeeeeeee wardrobe for under $400
Now I'm talking jeans, shorts, skirts, purses, belts, jewelery, etc
Every Wednesday in July with a budegt of a $100
I am THEN going to try and ban myself shopping for 4 months. This is mainly out of boredom, suddenly being broke, staying at my parents house, utilizing Ilana's eye for what looks good on my ass &I think it's fun.
(Wednesdays are also half off days at most thrift stores in the 727)
3. I have many other little July projects. I will share them with you tomorrow
4. I have stopped crying. One sedative, one hour &one bottle of gatorade later.
I can't give some poetic definition of what I am. On pilgrimage a 12 AM beauty call, on house arrest a homesick Barbie Doll. "Dress me up Daniela" an eighteen inch waist, some nice tits and utter disdain for what is and what was.
I want to watch "Paris, Texas". I want to read the e-mails in my sleep.
There's been a tornado warning all afternoon and most of the evening but the tornado still hasn't come.
- Music:in effect all evening
"Now I aint got no oxi clean
I aint got no orange glo
No No No"
Okay, I have to stop watching television. First Hef and Holly break-up. Then Jon and Kate file for DIVORCE. Next thing you know Jim Bob Duggar is going to get me pregnant with twins and I'll have to come up with more J names. But beyond reality television real celebrities start dying.
I wake up Thursday morning and my mother is telling me that
Then Michael Jackson steals her death* with the death among deaths. Dead at 50. I watch Jackson 5 videos with my friends in their condos near the water. I truly can have no concept of reality if this is reality.
And now....now...less than half a mile from where I am sitting Billy Mays is found dead in his home. I didn't even know he lived in Clearwater. WTF.
"
Police: TV pitchman Billy Mays found dead at home
June 28, 2009
TAMPA, Fla.---- Tampa police say Billy Mays, the television pitchman known for his boisterous hawking of products such as Orange Glo and OxiClean, has died. He was 50.
Authorities say Mays was pronounced dead Sunday morning after being found by his wife at home. There were no signs of a break-in, and investigators do not suspect foul play. The coroner's office expects to have an autopsy done by Monday afternoon.
TV pitchman Billy Mays poses with some of his cleaning products at his Palm Harbor, Fla., home.
(AP)
(AP)
Mays' wife, Deborah Mays, says the family doesn't expect to make any public statements and asked for privacy.
Mays was also featured on the reality TV show "Pitchmen" on the Discovery Channel, which followed Mays and Anthony Sullivan in their marketing jobs."
I truly prefer the summers of the alligators, hurricanes, you &me, or sharks.
I wanted to write this story differently. Everyone would grow up and get it right. Everyone would prove to me what I couldn't prove to myself. In words I'd forgive all of them. I'd scribble their names in hearts stating that they'd really changed.
But nothing had. Not even the weather.
I spend the better part of 48 hours in a complete fever haze. Something is "going around" and clearly, I've caught it. I take my temperature and drive one of the left over Kung-Fu vans to CVS. Gatorade is buy one get one free, so I stock up as if my body is the hurricane. Climbing back into the van it is pouring outside. 100 degrees and no visibility. I'd be a bad liar if I told you I didn't like this. Me and the left over Kung-Fu van are really just visitors in this parking lot. Neither of us have a functional purpose on the parameter anymore.
For those of you who do not know what I am referencing when I say I am driving "a leftover Kung-Fu van"-- I will clarify. My father owns a large Martial Arts school and for years one of the largest and most lucrative parts of it all was the after school pick-up. A series of white vans were purchased. This must have happened over a decade ago, I think it was in 1998 when the large school was built. There were cargo vans and mini-vans. All white. All with decals made from real life men, holding swords &striking blows. The particular van that is left over now has a giant Yin-Yang on the hood. Part of it is peeling off and often Christian missionaries or Jehova's Witnesse's will leave pamphlets underneath the windshield wipers. Now, you can argue and tell me that they do this to everyone. I would tell this to my mother when she drove one of the vans for a few years (maybe when I was in high school? maybe when she lived in Ohio for 6 months?) But now that I drive the van myself while visiting my parents--- now that they sold the blue Toyota Corolla I got when I turned 16--- I know the van is a target. I know they want me to have the body of Christ in this CVS parking lot before the rain starts to really come down, before I crawl into a bed that is not my bed.
To missionaries and men alike, with my fever and my fashion magazines I just think "bring it, fuckin bring it."
Back at my parents house I sleep. I sleep the sleep of the dead. All day Friday and most of the day Saturday. I wake up at awkward hours to wander in the kitchen. I give myself large glasses full of crushed ice and I pick my beverage by color, favoring purple and blue. Each time I wake up I have to process where I am all over again. I'd like to tell you that I wake up a tourist. That I wake up with a distinct knowledge that this setting is temporary, but it doesn't go quite like that.
Nothing in Florida is permanent. It is all transient. The power goes out and in their hotel rooms they wonder if this is a hurricane. But Christ, I know it's not. I know that it's only June. I know about the way the storms when I left. I know that I think this show is all about me. I know that this is not a hurricane, the pressure isn't low enough, the water isn't warm enough. The locals have not depleted the shelves of Publix Super Markets, leaving grocery stores and outlets alike waterless. This is just rain. Some upset sweeping over Cuba. A fever that will be gone within 48 hours.
Although I am not a tourist, I cannot truly register myself as a Native. I was not born here but I have gone through dozens of rolls of polaroid film within a ten mile radius. I was not born here but I've come here with more reason than just to escape from the streets of New York City. I did not board the plane when I should have. I wonder if someone on stand by took me seat on the 22nd of June. I wonder if it was good luck for them to catch a flight into LaGuardia airport before noon. I will not know. No one can tell me.
My friends-- the ones that are not my best friends-- speak to me with a great sense of urgency. They are assuming I am here for five days or two weeks at best, but this is not the case. I am here recovering, I am here writing something. Something. Something that takes place ten years ago. Something that starts before that. I am writing it in the same way that I went through puberty, with the same reckless abandon, with the same helpless adoration. There is no difference between this and a tropical cyclone. You go ask your weatherman, they re-use those names more than I do. They keep re-using those names, recyling them until a storm really has impact, until the category goes beyond 4 or the death toll beyond 5 and then you don't have it again. And I am doing this too. I am putting the real names down on paper. My best friends--- the ones that are much more than people I used to be acquainted with-- they know exactly what I am doing. They do not bother to ask when I am leaving.
They don't ask when I am leaving because they watch my write checks to my landlord as if I am sending out hush money.
"That's a lot of money Daniela," someone says I sign my name. As I try and explain that it's really not. That truly anything under a grand is a steal and that there's a backyard. I explain this to someone who pays three hundred dollars a month to live in a house or to someone who lives for free, paying utilities seldom rarely. Seldom rarely I pay the cable bill for an empty apartment. Seldom, rarely I send out a check instead of getting a subletter. I don't say it aloud because then what kind of person would that make me--but when it comes down to it I'd rather shell out a thousand dollars a month than allow someone to sleep in my own bed. I'd rather write the checks then explain the rules.
I spend the better part of 48 hours in a complete fever haze. I shower at 2 AM. Throw up at 9:30 in the morning. Watch the rain from the window. And get out of bed at 4 PM on a saturday. My parents have made dinner reservations for just the three of us. Still sibling-less, an only child, a made up word for a made up world, I put on a black dress and heels. I apply blush to go over my cheek bones. One of my father's students owns an Italian restaurant and we will go there. I wil try and put out a less jaded version of myself, because truly, I don't know when I lost the concept of money or time or what it means to be sincere. Truly I am not sure when I became less myself and more my signature. I tell my parents often to adopt a child, and I still stand by this statement. They want grandchildren and twenty-four was supposed to be old.
Twenty-four was supposed to be old but it is not. Not in the way I thought it would be ten years ago. And really, that's what I am here for, for myself ten years ago. I feel ike Drew Barrymore's character in Riding in Cars with Boys parading around town with a series of waivers. "Let me use your real name and then don't sue me for money later," I ask any guy who put his hand up my skirt. Everyone signs on the dotted line. Literally or metaphorically, they do it all the same.
If you're wondering why I haven't presented you with a sheet of paper, why I havent told you why I am here or why I am not-- please don't ask me directly. Just know that your real name wasn't good enough for this one. That I left it on the list of names just like it was a hurricane. I will recycle it in four years or until it has enough impact. I only use your real name because I cannot write fiction. I only use your real name when your category was more than four or your death toll more than five. It will be just like the time I really loved you, it will be just like the time I really left. It will be in defense of ourselves at another age. When I was fourteen and twenty-four was old. It will be just like that.
1. Did MJ crash LJ? WHY WHY WHY? I CANT!!! There was a rain storm and I thought everything was fineeeee. I went suburban thrifting and I thought everything was fineeeeeeeeee.
I stood in "Last Chance" thrift store for over an hour. I found the perfect dress for the 4th of July. I found little figurines for that apartment that you know, that well, I'll eventually return to.
"Last Chance" had two signs on the door
YELLOW TAGS 50%
and
NOW HIRING M-F
I took it to heart.
2. I hope this happens tonight (to me):
3.
Today I was in Target with Bailey and then CNN texted me that Michael Jackson had a heart attack so I ran across the store (from shoes to swimsuits) to tell Bailey and at this instance everyone's cell phones started ringing and in Target Michael Jackson was dead. In Clearwater, Florida we stood with his housewives, I bought a USB cable, stared at self-help books. I talked to a young boy behind where they sold the cameras and I said "digital cameras are so cheap now." I don't know what "now" was. I mean I don't know what "now" is. But the way I said it man, I said "now" like it had been a million years.
4. Last night Mikey and I got 3D classes in order to watch My Bloody Valentine IN 3D!! it was actually a trick and then we watched some movie about a war or soldiers. Frances Farmer will have her revenge on Seattle, nonetheless
5. I just met Ilana's boyfriend. His name is Brett and he is tall. Meeting best friends boyfriends is always nice and strange because it's kind of like you already know each other. Or maybe I have gone insane--- doesn't it sound like that slightly? I mean, why am I so upset that Michael Jackson is dead?
They will make the Neverland Ranch into the new Graceland except there will be no dead twin buried there and there will be rides.
6.Also in latest updates-- Clearwater: The Mental Collapse--- I am watching The Sisterhood of Travelling Pants sequal movie thing. I have no idea what is going on. They are in Greece and well, it's pissing me off.
Luckily, Ilana brought me the 1950 film Sunset Boulevard. I am to call her as soon as I am done viewing it. Apparently it will be that profound.
I watched one on TMC the other night called The Bad and the Beautiful and it was real good.
My life the television. My life the Target breakdown.
Oh, soccer moms, didn't you get knocked up or at least felt up to one of these songs???
7. I need to learn how to put my hair in rags where you sleep in it and then it is curly. Hannah Metz, this was your job for my head. Fix it.
8. I am still coming back to New York, friends. The game plan is the same.
I want to go to Portland and Paris and Texas also. Did I tell you? Maybe. Isn't there also a movie called Paris, Texas?
There is a Paris, Ohio.
I made love there once and damn, I wish I could tell you it was different. But I felt nothing from the waist down.
Before the Death:
little treasures:
these familiar roads
friends
3 dollar jewelery box
my new savings account
the calm before the stormmmmmmm:
We watch a movie called Wendy and Lucy because I want to feel better about "things". Michelle Williams can have better cheekbones than I do, she can win the heart of Dawson Leary, she can depress the hell out of me for an hour and a half &i can say about the film (in the same way that people say about my writing) that it was lacking in plot.
We watch a movie called The Lucky Ones because I want to watch My Bloody Valentine in 3D. ti
I don't feel well. I'm supposed to be resting. I'm supposed to be drinking more gatorade and talking less. I get to pick the flavor (purple, not grape) I get to write the middle parts because everyone forgot them, and I get to (for the most part) dictate how to waste a few hours before sunrise. It's just as exciting as it sounds.
I get myself out of the bed in the morning. There is an alarm set but the television in this room--- this guest room that is not my childhood bedroom but resides at the same address, this room has a TV bolted in the corner of the wall. Just like in a hospital. It safes space and adds a modern look and then in so many ways this could be my childhood bedroom. I could dig up old mix tapes and bawl my eyes out. We could all play "mental institution" which is not a song or band but really a game. I am sure that without much warning, I could still start screaming at the top of my lungs.
I feel like I should write hand written notes to anyone that's watched me tear my own hair out, but it all grew back, never even fell out &they did too.
After the alarm goes off I deliver a fifteen minute to a sleeping body about how this is essential--- no! no! this is crucial. This is for me.
"The summer is mine," I repeat in Publix grocery story, picking out organic almond butter. Making breakfast for a girl I didn't love enough who stares back at me in the mirror. My best friend comes over and we do yoga and talk about how we hate our hair. We laugh because this is proof that time travel is possible. Another best friend comes over and we drive down the wrong streets to get South. I am not asked to dinner, I am not asked into the house. I sit shotgun and I dance.
I sit shotgun and I dance and I pretend in this story everyone loves me. They love me so much that they wash my hair. They love me so much that I do backbends. They love me so much that this is not a cautionary tale. This is not a two dollar rental from Blockbuster. This is not a universe where no one uses Netflix anymore. Where I forget to say "excuse me" in shopping malls.
The television set is bolted to the wall & the sun is bolted in the sky. I sit in the front seat and dance, I sit in the backseat and sneeze. "The summer is mine," I say to passing the road. Not getting that it's passing. The road that is, not the summer. You'd have to do a lot--- a whole lot my friend--- to change the season. And even with years of practice, I don't understand why I can't come inside.
I'll keep a straight face in your mirror, I keep a straight face in mine.
but if you can tell the truth when they ask about a lie
and you can mean it when you ask for thirty cents
then you'll feel that growing up was good enough.
&sometimes you'll know you've know them well enough, when you're worth fifteen cents a piece
no one else has to get it. spread across the globe like your best legs ever, getting it all along.
when you're worth fifty cents a piece and you're in this town? well, honey that doesn't take no ten thousand hands up ten thousand scars
even before the doctors cut you open, you knew you were worth a million bucks.
(ohhhh how I wanted them to remember me like I remembered them--- by hurricane
instead we threw aside metaphors for toppings--- they remembered me by blizzard)
No suburban thrifting was done. Instead an hour and a half of Kundalini Yoga, forty-five minutes on hold with AT&T, one trip to the dairy queen drive-thru, one brownie batter blizzard, one stop at Starbucks to use public restrooms, one venti iced lemonade passion something beverage purchased with somebody else's gift card. One student loan application. Two references numbers. One doctors appointment. Three fingers to touch my tonsils. A note for "Lori" written by "Michael" left on a scooter put in a car put in "my" hands. Meetings, the misuse of quotations, an album called "The Miseducation of Daniela Scrima," lawsuit pending. Fifty beauty magazines. "If throwing up is feeling it." A freezer full of ice packs where popsicles should go.
Nothing better to say. The best thrift store left in the city closed. There was rain but it aint a hurricane.
Nothing better to say. The best thrift store left in the city closed. There was rain but it aint a hurricane.
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