do you like American music?

May 11

do you like american music?

I. MIDDLE NAMES

I know everyone’s middle name because I ask them. Some people ask about signs, siblings, birthdays, years. I ask about middle names. Especially if I note that your left handed. I prefer long first names, manipulations with fingers and men without middles. I like left handed lovers because it is some kind of concept of symmetry which I believe that I alone noted. In fact, I must have invented it.

I have no middle name. I was supposed to pick it myself when I turned 18. I wasn’t supposed to have a “confirmation” I was not supposed to be surrounded by real Catholics. I turned eighteen and I couldn’t think of anything. “Dan-yell-ah Scream-ah” what could go in between that? Everyone’s middle name was “Marie”. I had nothing to work with.

After I graduated high school, after I had come up with my brilliant plan of moving to Ohio to watch the dying, I was in the back seat of a car. It was Amanda McCarthy’s car and Kris King was in the front seat. Amanda will be a successful lawyer; Kris will appear in the face of every tree, every man, every nun, every child. I will lie in the backseat of the car while we drive East down 60— a straight shot from Clearwater to Vero Beach. It turns into a two lane road, you are surrounded by orange groves. The smell, God, that is a wonderful smell. You know why? Because that’s where they make all of your orange juice. They make it on this stretch of road, and I am eighteen, high out of my mind in a back seat.

I am high off of prescription strength DXM— the common ingredient in cough syrup. I’ve taken it in pill format- probably fifteen or twenty capsules that someone stole from a pharmacy. I am high off of the main ingredient in cough syrup because beggars can’t be choosers. I give Kris a bunch of pills too. I am a bad influence. Amanda is on the academic team, and maybe technically so am I. I am a bad influence. We take them in a Publix parking lot. I don’t remember if we get anything from the grocery store. I feel like we may get energy drinks, because in all of these Florida stories, all of the ones where we stay up all night, there are energy drinks.

In cars, in Florida, I like to smoke Newport Cigarettes. I cannot inhale, but I can blow “o’s”. Exceptionally well, even in the wind. Sometimes I tell men I can blow hearts and they believe me. Sometimes I say I can do it in the wind and they believe me. Since turning eighteen (or thirteen, or twelve) I’ve learned that you should not tell people that you do not believe cigarettes are addictive.
You shouldn’t say to someone “I really don’t think cigarettes are addictive”, because they will become furious. Unless they are Nicholas Antonio Velasquez the III and it is New Years eve (2004) they will become furious. If they are Nick, they won’t be able to get addicted either. If they are Nick, they will try too. And everyone will say “how stupid are you?” And you will say nothing but in your mind you will ask “Why did your parents make your middle name ‘Michael’?” in your mind you will say “You didn’t know me when I was 12” because whoever you are talking to, they clearly had it easier. They don’t make jokes about rape and they sure as hell don’t read the paper.

Now— back to the backseat of the car, back to being high and eighteen because beggars can’t be choosers and nothing sounds good between “Daniela” and “Scrima” and Amanda is driving and Kris is saying he can’t feel anything yet. I keep saying “just wait, just wait.” I think I am asking him questions about masturbation. Amanda is stone sober, driving. Amanda has a good head on her shoulders. I swear to you— but this could be a lie— that at the time her favorite band is Matchbox 20. I want to jump out of the car while it is moving, but I swear that’s her favorite band. Everyone’s middle name is Marie; Everyone’s first name is Amanda.

I am begging her to drive to the east coast of Florida, and she has agreed. By the time we get there, to the other side I want to be brought to the water. It feels cold, I remember this. This could be what happens from a poor mans high or maybe there could be a strong breeze. Or maybe it’s because 60 degrees is straight up cold in Florida. But I must go into the water. We get lost, go in circles. Stop at a CVS and park at the ocean. I wade in in a white skirt. If I could go back now, the only thing I would do differently is wade in farther. I would disrobe. But it is the east Coast and the waves are large, the tide is choppy. We do not experience these extremities on the Gulf Coast unless it is hurricane season. But back then it was always hurricane season.

On the drive home, well, I don’t remember much. But I come to a decision. I am lying in the backseat of the car and i am imagining boys from the 1920’s, children actually at a baseball game. And they are all saying “there she goes— look at her Aurora Borealis” and then it hits me. That should be my middle name. Aurora Borealis. How did I not think of it before?

I do not know how I did not think of this sooner. How could it have taken me so long to find a name that would fit?

Let me stop this story for a second. Years later I am living in Brooklyn. I am talking to my friend Skye who is also from Clearwater. I have always thought it was so cool that her name was Skye. In Clearwater we once we saw a band play— I cannot remember— it was a girl singing and she had a beautiful name and we got sushi from Publix and I was jealous of her name and well— let me top this story, because years later in Brooklyn she reminds me of her name.
Her birth name was Ashley. Not skye. Ashley. When she turned thirteen she had her name legally changed to Skye. You know why? Because everyone is named Ashley.

Everyone is named Ashley or Amanda or their middle name is Marie.

But the best part of the story is that weeks later Skye (formerly known as Ashley) is listening to a song called “Hurricane” and she realizes at the age of thirteen that she has made a huge mistake. She should have not changed her name to skye, she should have changed it to Hurricane. Shes lies on the ground in Florida, her mother goes and returns orange drink to Wal-Mart, and she should have stayed an Ashley

Back to the car with Kris King and McCarthy. Back to 2003 and being 18 years old. I have baptized myself in the Atlantic Ocean. I will go to the court house in the morning. I have to pee and Amanda pulls over. I am willing to use the side of the road. I will squat next to all of the oranges. And then I see that there are signs— I swear to you that there are signs that say that there are cougars crossing, cougars. Black cougars or something like that. I imagine being mauled by the animals, pulled into the orange groves. My blood splattering the trees, the fruit. Pulp or no pulp? Do you like it with pulp or no pulp?

I like it with no pulp. For the record. Just for the record.

I hold it until the next gas station. I move to Ohio and tell my grandparents. I don’t go to the courthouse because I am still deciding. I turn 19 and my grandmother dies and I loved her more than my own mother and they take out Jackson’s liver and I don’t get a middle name. I don’t get a middle name and I smoke in a car and I wonder if my transcripts will ever be fixed. If anyone will ever have me.

Maybe I all in love, I don’t remember. I could tell you more about cough syrup, about it getting worse. But I won’t.

I will tell you this: I still have no middle name.

I will ask you this: What’s yours? What is your middle name, baby? Tell me. Please tell me. It’s perfectly fine. You can tell me your middle name. You can tell me “pulp or no pulp”

I can lie to you. I blow hearts. I was twelve. I was born. I was in a car. I can you tell the truth. I blow ohhhhs. I was eighteen. The main ingredient in cough syrup. Fiber glass in cigarettes. Someone drowns himself in the ocean. The weather man shoots himself in the face. The hurricanes stop.

What’s your middle name?

I am right handed. I never went to the court house. I turned 19 and it was too late. Are you left handed? What’s your middle name?

I was born too late, you were born too soon. But every time I look at that ugly moon, it reminds me of you. It reminds me of you.

if you wanna be happy for the rest of your life

I was just reading about how 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.

let's get a silver bullet trailer & have a baby boy

I loved them because they were always talking with their fists. They were always slamming their hands through walls. They were slamming their hands through each other, and I guess through me too. Sometimes I would cry so hard that I was just screaming my head of on the side lines. I'd rip out anyone's hair because then still, then when the boys were going to jail and we were crying in backseats-- then we still had everything to live for. We had everything to live for but we didn't look at it like that, instead we just thought we'd live forever. And I loved them because. And I loved them because.

And now I don't remember how I loved anyone like that. I can't feel that way at all. It was the most hopeless thing, the most dedicated thing. And now I can't even understand it at all. No part of me wraps my head around it. No part of me raps about it, because we're not even funny more.

I loved them because they meant it, as much as they possibly could have, they meant it. They meant it more than I could ever mean anything now.

I'll just get myself to sit in a back seat and I will talk to all of you like your lips are bleeding too.

I wont dance

she said you're giving up, your folks tell me you should be left alone.

• Nov. 18th, 2009 at 11:53 PM

I'm writing everybody break-up e-mails because you can't text message break-up.

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.

• Leave a comment
• Edit Entry
• Edit Tags
• Add to Memories
• Tell a Friend
• Track This
• Link

lol

• Nov. 18th, 2009 at 5:19 PM

"She dyed her hair dark and it looked real nice," he goes on about her "she looked real beautiful tonight and was worried about getting wet on her way to the car". I keep reading because I know this story isn't about me. Maybe I'll dye my hair really light so I can prove points about good and evil. Maybe then she won't poison Faye in the whore house and instead she'll return to her son. Maybe, but probably not. Definitely not, because I have read the book over and over again and I know damn well what the ending is like.

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.

Don't look back in anger.

Don't look back in anger, I heard you say.

• Nov. 25th, 2009 at 2:28 PM

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.

double double

Street rat! Riffraff! I don't buy that.....

• Nov. 27th, 2009 at 12:25 PM

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

Tags:

• i had lost my mind

smile your on candid camera

but I should.

• Nov. 29th, 2009 at 8:27 PM

I don't know how I suddenly attracted all the wrong kinds of pathological liars. It's making me want to have violent confrontations which goes against the power of positive thinking-- oh and in case you are wondering, there are better kinds of pathological liars. At least ones that I prefer.

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.

my baby says "it's a lie, it's a cop out"

I. I'm Leaving Ohio Next Year (these familiar roads)




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.