Fantasy Island

yesterday, a cold'n'drizzly New York day, seemed as good a one as any to move on something i'd been thinking about doing for awhile: altering two little letters on the crown/heart tattoo i have on my left wrist. But due to my proclivity for overthinking, combined with a lack of loose change, i'd been for a long while only pondering this move.

I'd been thinking about what the letters on my arm had represented, remembering when he and i decided to get matching tattoos with each other's initials carved into the crown. How somehow i'd equated the marking of our body as a sign of emotional shelter and also an artful ownership of sorts. But sometimes ink is only ink. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but what exists in the soul's eye is even more powerful, and, for me, the action opened me up to the possibilities of a relationship: the wonder, the safety, the trust, the journey and the love. That it didn't last, or even exist as I'd thought it did (or would) doesn't actually matter. It unfolded exactly as it needed to.

I'd always liked the idea that a tattoo marks a specific event in life and, although at one point I may have had the intention of becoming my own visual biography, a cross between Inky and Angelina, I had gotten only one other marking in my life after my first interview for SPIN with the band Primus. I was in their hometown of San Francisco and I had spent the day fishing with them in the harbor. I had been trying to be cool, though i was crazy nervous and after getting a pretty steady stream of monosyllabic answers to my no-doubt standard issue questions, i decided to focus on trying to catch a fish. But also, because i'd had some libations to quell my nerves, I had to go to the bathroom really really really badly, and given that we were on a small powerboat, there was no below-deck loo option available. when I made the suggestion of heading back to shore so i could use the facilities, Les Claypool, the singer with the crazy-squeaky voice, said "Bucket." Uh, come again? "Bucket," he repeated, pointing to the white container that had held the bait, but was now empty. Um, you want me to use the bucket as a toilet right here in front of y'all? Yes, apparently that was the idea. I thought it might be some sort of hazing set-up and i chose to exercise all my kegel muscles to withstand the, er, need.

Anyway, when we got back to shore (and after I'd definitely not used the bucket), Les decided we should all go get tattoos together. Hell, yeah, I thought. He decided to have a larger-than-life mosquito tatooed on his bald skull, i decided to have a parrot fish the size of a dime etched onto my upper arm. Go figure who was the boldest of the two? Mine took 10 minutes. (Though on the random-fact-about-my-tattoo side: the color used was an ink that glowed under black light, so i spent many a moment back in NYC dragging people into the black-lit bathroom at a place called the Sidewalk cafe, which annoyed many many people who wanted to actually use the bathroom for the purpose intended. Latent apologies for that. Also for some reason, I didn't worry at the time that i might someday get some weird blood ailment from this type of ink, but that too has passed, and now I barely remember that the fishy lives there, until someone occasionally asks me if i'm a Pisces or born again [no to both]).

So, although my intention back then was to mark all kinds of occassions with some body art of some sort, it was a fleeting thought, and a decade had passed before he and i were running in LA and the topic of our matching moments came up. (I should also mention that a couple of minutes after we decided to do this, my feet got tangled in one of those plastic bindings they use for bulk newspapers and the like and I literally went flying forward through the air, landing on the sidewalk on my knees, skinning a few things bloody and raw. hmmm. maybe a sign to slow it all down. but, no, in true me-fashion, i got up and pretended all was right with the world and went on with planning more bloodletting.) Here's what I learned about myself that day we got tattooed: I talk like a mutha-fucka when i'm in pain/nervous/scared. i mean, i really go non-stop about anything and everything. "Look, a tree outside the window. Now isn't that funny. Wonder what kind it is? Hey look, a car just drove by..." You get the idea. I've no memory of what I said to mr. tattoo-inscriber, but i'm sure his eyes glazed over within the first couple of minutes. and the more the needle stung, the more i prattled on and on. And at the time, I had no thoughts of what this might mean in the long run. Right now, this was commitment and i'd never done that before in such a permanent-marking kind of way. It was exciting and it was lasting. Until it wasn't, and then i knew it had served its purpose.

And here today, walking down one of my favorite stretches of this island of fantasies. The block that features the studio on one side and on the other, the Chelsea Hotel, where Patti Smith, Janis Joplin, Nancy Spungeon and Viva had rendered their own storied moments, i knew that I needed to walk into the tattoo parlor next door to the hotel and just do it. And so I did. I went in letting go of all the expectations i'd had about trying to come up with something to replace these two little letters. I'd gotten hung up that i'd need to apply something profound. A symbol or word or glyph that would tell the story of growth and strength. But as i stood in the neon-dragoned doorway, I looked across the street and realized that so much my growth has happened in a place of movement beyond the valley of words, i decided to stop pondering and just act. i can certainly be impetuous, but that often has to do with holding someone else's attention or interest. when it comes to sliding into something for only me, I'm sometimes stymied. But not this time. I passed through the door, followed tattoo-guy into the back, sat down in the chair and suddenly remembered, This is probably going to hurt like hell. And I decided to do something different (no, i didn't take a valium...i don't even think they make those any more), i decided not to talk. To instead pay attention. I would only speak if I needed to tell someone that i was going to faint. But that seemed unlikely. so I sat there and stared at a poster of a big, fat buddah on the wall as the sound of the whirring needle and the pinpricks filled with ink covered what had been there minutes before, but what will remain in one way or another forever. And i let myself feel it. It felt like shit. It felt like heaven. It felt like life. Bravo for that.


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about this title: "de plane, de plane." (some of you may remember it...)

ouch

what i have to say about that (the title): Why, i wonder, does some instinctual moment rise up inside me that says in order to smile i must first suffer. Really? what is that about? i'm not even religious (in the traditional way...because i don't think you can count the Cali baptism-by-jacuzzi brand i grew up with as organized fire-and-brimstone religion).

I can't recall as a child being unduly put to the test, and then getting to have all the cupcakes i wanted if i came through it okay. If I remember at least partially correctly, my upbringing was a pretty standard-issue trapeze act between be-naughty-get-grounded and don't-rock-the-boat-get-the-occasional-cookie. And then in teenhood, wham, suddenly there seemed some kind of sweet payoff in the suffering. Or more accurately, i would actually feel as if i deserved the good stuff because i'd gone through the crap. Maybe this change of wiring happened when I felt like i got away with one too many (mis)adventures. The tipping point may have been when I was 15 and my mom thought I was spending the day at a friend's pool, but instead I was at Cal Jam 2 at the Riverside Raceway and my pepsi was spiked unbeknownst to me with some type of hallucinagenic drug (during Heart's performance, naturally). I looked around me, got up and packed all my stuff into my bag, then tried to leave because, C'mon people, this thing is over... I was totally baffled about why I was feeling the way I did until my friend looked in my eyes and said, Man, your pupils are dilated like basketballs. you've been dosed. (I know, he probably didn't say that first sentence using such doctor-like words, but it's my memory.) He gave me a sparkly necklace to stare at, which kept me happy until the guy in front of me threw up on my shoes, at which point I started crying and then soon after that started loving everyone soooo much and then hours later, during Ted Nugent (or maybe it was Montrose), I came down and was just so happy to be alive and not in the hospital and my mom still thought i was at my friend's pool...maybe that was the moment. The edge at which I felt I suffered, then came out the other end and, wow, everything was so much better. The air a little more fragrant, food more tasty, colors a little brighter—or maybe I was still tripping. Anyway.

I wonder if this proclivity for suffering is more the domain of the female? One word: waxing. Anther word: nuns. Or, even better, two words: giving birth. There is certainly no more accurate example of being put to the test physically and mentally and then having a euphoric outcome (then, depending on the circumstances, more testing of physicality and mentality for the next 40 or so years) than the act of bringing a life into this world. Awesome how endorphins work to move us forward, erase bad memories, bring us feelings of joy. I know this is a slightly askew comparison, but running marathons has been compared to giving birth. I don't mean to diminish the experience of any of my friends who've actually had children by comparing a fairly crazy physical endurance test like running to the miracle of life, it's just something that someone mentioned to me once and now i repeat it as if i know it's true. But as far as doing something that seriously flips your lid and makes you feel a little bit insane, i think the two might go hand-in-hand. I thought about this last Sunday as I ran around NYC with a few thousand people. About two hours in, here's where my mind went: I can't feel my knees. Fuck. I'm hungry. Oh, look, a shiny object. Is that money on the ground? If I bend over to pick it up, will i fall over? Hey, why's that man juggling?

And basically it went on from there until i finished. And the funny thing is, when I met my friend right after and she kept saying she didn't deserve the gatorade (because she hadn't run) or the extra pieces of bread at brunch (because she hadn't run) my response was: Of course you do! Just for being you, you should have everything you want. But I did totally get where she was coming from! So it makes me wonder about this whole suffering thing. For instance, another friend just commented on a prominent social networking site about the bruises she's got from her prowess on the pole. The responses she received back mostly leaned to the Celebrate Them variety (along with some tips on body makeup), but one comment in particular pointed out that at some point the bruises would stop being born because the body would acclimate, to which she responded: So [when you] stop learning new stuff, you will totally look normal again. And she seemed to write it with a bit of poignancy. I'm with her, because personally, I think that's a drag. I don't want to stop learning, though I also don't want to continually get bruised. There's something about the pain of learning that is seductive. And do I think there will be a treat waiting for me on the other side of that? Do I run so I can stop? Do I dance so I can sink my aching body into a hot bath (while eating ice cream)? Did I stay in a sexless marriage so I can look forward to the best romps ever? (oh, wait, sorry, that's another more psychologically involved post altogether) All this to prove I'm alive? and to show how much I can take (and therefore must deserve a little something in return)?

I know not...but when someone offers me a cookie, from now on I'm gonna just smile and take it.

In order to go on my first trip to England, i sold this car, but I lived in Orange County where you really need a car, so I took the bus and walked to where I had to go, which is a thing people almost never do in Southern California. But it made me feel as if I deserved to go to Europe!?!? hmmm.
I was in love with this boy. When my best friend at the time slept with him, i was very sad, but somehow I felt I had to suffer for love...hmmm. I suspect I still feel that way.

I was in the music industry and often felt exactly as this expression expresses. At the time I made lots of money and felt that if they paid me that much, then I must feel the pain. Hmmm. I think I still make that equation.

do you wanna? (i basically didn't have any title ideas here. open to suggestions.)

The trailer for the recently released Runaways movie teases me right back to my teenage days as soon as the interior landscape of my SoCal upbringing circa the mid-Seventies splashes on the screen. I remember so well the avocado-colored appliances, beige nubby carpeting, mosaic-tiled lamps and the burnt-orange crockpot that sat out on our kitchen counter. But what takes me there even more is how the film's camera seems to capture the hazy light of young confusion that seems to float like dust bunnies through the air.

I was 15 when the Runaways dropped their "Cherry Bomb" (a name that's become near-and-dear to me. See entry "Barefoot Dancing" 1/4/10). Perfect accompaniment to a time in my life when I didn't understand most of the emotions coursing through my body&brain: anger, fear, bravado, timidity. A life cocktail shaken not stirred. Memories come to me in shards, but mostly wrapped around musical moments: The Cuckoo's Nest, a club in Costa Mesa that was the nexus of the Orange County punk scene, where stories of bathroom sinks ripped off the wall and fights in the parking lot between the mohawked and the cowboys from the bar next door became mythologized. While I wasn't a punk rocker all-out like my friend T, I was both mesmerized by the extreme energy of the music and freaked out by it's power. It seemed capable of blowing a hole right through all those muted avocado and orange color schemes that stood in for well-ordered perfection. All the things that lay underneath that I didn't know how to express, yet knew scared my parents (and me, too, truth be told) seemed there for the living. So while I didn't exactly fly the flag of punk style outright (I was still tussling with a more California hippie look: beads round the ankle and all), I tried in my own way to exert the attitude. The independence. I snuck my boyfriend at the time into my bedroom while my mom was out on a date, and when she came in to get me for school the next morning, and he was there, she called me out into the hallway where I acted completely entitled to having a boy in my bed. Of course when I went back into my room, he'd climbed out our second-floor window, shimmied down a tree and run off. He had not the punk rocker constitution. I hope I broke up with him, though I don't remember.

I really wanted to develop the hard-edge required to say a big fuck-you to...someone...I really didn't even know who. But I was unable to carry through the entire lifestyle. I had no taste for the extreme. I wanted to be liked. I didn't know how to be strident and smile at the same time. I would often look to my friends to be the extreme that I wasn't and would channel my bravery through them and get my thrills vicariously. (A pattern that would carry through well into my adulthood and was only recently shown the door when I realized I'd replicated that you're-the-exciting-one-i-can-hide-behind persona in my marriage. Boy, that didn't work.)

In the winter of 1980, T and I took a trip to NYC. On the plane ride, T couldn't stop crying. She was in mourning for Darby Crash, the lead singer of The Germs, an Orange County punk band that had played the Cuckoo's Nest regularly. He'd overdosed on December 6 and it seemed like our punk rock was dead. The stewardess, seeing her distress, came over and said, "I know, we all loved him, it was such a tragedy." For a minute we believed that someone cared about our mayhem-filled corner of the world. Of course, when she moaned that now there'd be no chance of a Beatles reunion, we realized that she was talking about John Lennon, who'd been shot the day before on December 8. It just seemed to magnify our solo place in the world. (Although I'm sure I would have been stripped of my music credentials had anyone known when I was in the business, but I never felt the same passion for the Beatles that I did for the raw power of the rock underbelly.)

Back then, being the underdog felt vastly preferable to swimming with the rest of the fishies, but of course I realize now that when you make an effort to be different, it can be far from real. Viewed through the lens of hindsight, I now see that all those muted colors and moments gave me something to strain against until I could raise my own voice in the crowd.

upended

today on my run through the local park, I saw so many trees on their side, completely uprooted by this last weekend's wind fury. Big, fat sturdy trunks with many rings to show their age laying down and ready to become chipped and start their life as some other substance like mulch or a wall or sawdust on the floor of a bar.

Can you still care for something even if it resembles not at all what it used to be? I've been grappling with this as i continue to fully give in to grieving the relationships that i thought were most important to me. The ones i gave my heart to and then chose to take my heart back from, though i know that pieces of me are still held with those people who i've loved and them with me. I realize that i'm okay without them but the landscape really looks different. I'm not sure about the new view, though i do know it is a much much better and stronger one where i feel taller and more sure of myself. What I'm not sure about is whether after all the shape-shifting, i'll be interested in making a connection again. Or will i be fine with having moved on? I've always felt a bit guilty about leaving things, but I'm sensing that sometimes there are expiration dates on experiences for a reason.

The end of 2009 became the year of letting go of all the sturdy things i thought i'd always have to hold on to, swing from, lean on and shelter under in good and bad. That it's been my choice to move away from that is really interesting as I'm always pretty sure that i'll be the one left rather than the leaver. Apparently that is not at all true, which is a both strengthening and terrifying realization to find out about myself. Okay, i made up that terrifying part...it's actually really empowering, and with that comes responsibility, and i could say that's the scary part, but, hell, it's high time to step into it.

I chose to upend myself from California just over 25 years ago and i never had any doubt that i'd find a way to make a home in NYC. I never actually knew what the path would look like, but i did trust that some things would move me forward, and even as I find myself now with the most amazing friends in my life (from here and all along the way to the west coast), the most challenging financial balancing act, the best moments that keep me physically moving and feeling my power, I realize that if I just trust and listen, I'll be fine with whatever shape those uprooted moments take on in my life. If they become the sawdust that sprinkles the floor as I raise a toast, then cheers. I'll get the next round.

on words

I've recently been wondering about the words I say to myself before I go to sleep. Whether I call them prayers, incantations, desires, what I've been thinking about is if they still carry the same depth and meaning as they did when I first began to say them. Have they become a habit? This question in my mind began to form around the same time as when I started looking at all the lists I'd been making and suddenly only saw words on a page, not the unfolding possibilities I'd thought they were. When I really got down to it, it dawned on me that writing these words became too much thinking, planning, yearning, not enough just doing and letting things be or come in their own time. My impatience spilled out onto a page rather than my stillness moving me into an empty space where who knows what could happen.


Someone recently took some photos of me in the studio as I danced and as I looked at them it struck me that I seem as close to a prayerful, quiet place as I've ever seen myself be. I do enter a stillness there and I do bow down to what the experience can offer me. But I also rise up and wrap around something tangible that lifts me off the ground. The letting go of my thoughts is happening more and more, even as my body seems to be bringing up expression that doesn't want to be ignored. So I let it rise in movement which seems to be taking me both higher and deeper. I got so tired of writing out words for things I hoped would happen. As George Carlin said, "I gave up hope, and everything worked out fine." I've always channeled my hope through words as if they were something that, once formed into discourse, might tell the story of my life, especially the parts not yet lived. I could write down how I wanted it to look in some great detail and voilá, it would become...

I know there are the schools of thought that favor envisioning how you want your world to be, what you want right down to the color of the man's hair in the third row of Carnegie Hall when you play your premiere concerto. And by committing it to paper, it will come. I'd been indoctrinated into that way of thinking from a young age having been brought up by a California mom who used her positive thoughts to manifest everything from parking spaces to checks in the mail. And the power of word has worked for me, no doubt. But, honestly, there's a little something inside of me that now feels as if the specificity of writing it all down keeps my eyes too closely on the page, my mind too tangled with the details.

I just want to admit that I don't know how it all will look. I have no words. And that's better than okay right now.

give it away, give it away, give it away, now

Across the street, down the hall, sitting next to me, right upstairs. I would just hand myself over. I'm not talking purely sexual here, but just all of me inside and out. Like a game of hot potato, I would toss myself to the nearest set of proverbial hands. I was on the cusp of teenager. I didn't know what to do with the power I had that was growing every day. The draw, sexuality, humor, intensity, emotion: I gave it up fast, then slipped away, arms wrapped tightly round myself, feeling I was safer in someone else's more capable hands. I thought all that newly found stuff would detonate me sky-high, so better someone else hold it for awhile.

And there was more: The rest of it had to do with being liked, agreeable. And that, to me, meant giving the people what they wanted. Letting them take up as much space inside of me as they chose, get as warmed by my fire as they needed. But the upshot to all this passing around of smiles&soul was that I wouldn't save enough space and warmth for myself. Funny thing is, until recently (possibly only hours ago), I thought I still did that. Everyone else above and beyond. But I'm learning that I give much less away than I think I do. Even when I wonder to myself why I said Yes to one more (metaphorical) embrace, I realize I decided.

I recently made a decision to do something that I knew would feel good, and I didn't fixate on whether the moment would build into more. I knew I was safe and I literally sank into it knowing I'd find yummy treats, then I walked away smiling. Not caring if the situation ever happened again because this was all I needed and it was good. And it was up to me, and I felt warm and spacious. So apparently, I don't give away as much as I think. It's all perspective anyway. Rather, I find what I need, share what I want and willingly leave the rest behind.

sweet and sticky

The theme for class this week is rock'n'roll (which is why i've attached a picture of waffles!?!?). Yum. This topic makes me hungry. I think about how starving for life-answers and stability I was during my entire music biz career. (And yes, even then I realized that this was not the industry that would offer me smooth sailing into retirement. Book publishing, maybe. Rock journalism, not so much.) I was often sated with tons of fun, mind you, but there was also a sweet-and-sour taste of absolute chance around how my existence might turn out if I made one bad choice (or good choice). And what I got, and continue to get, is that there is no such thing as a right or wrong choice. I mean, I certainly know there were some options that caused me undue pain or that furthered me down a road where my eyes stayed shut, but even in those instances, something of learning came out of the experience.

I actually depended a lot on making choices that required taking chances, even pretending that I knew what I was doing in order to get what I wanted. This was not always wise, but it was often a challenge to rise to a specific occasion. The trick was always to at least pretend that I belonged there...wherever there was at the time: Spin or backstage or on a certain flight. The funny thing was that I was also sure that I'd get exposed any second for not being on the list, or some such. I remember going to the Nirvana unplugged taping with a friend and our seats were way at the back of the room. So when, as we walked in, I saw two empty chairs closer to where the band was set up, I just kept walking to those instead, hoping my friend would follow. He did and when we sat down, I realized that we would need to do a little outer attitude adjustment to give off the vibe that these were our seats. Amazingly, what I expressed on the outside did wonders for what was happening on the inside. I started to believe my don't-you-know-who-I-am attitude even as l was shutting the door on the inner voice that was saying, Yes, you are the person who is meant to be sitting in the second-from-the-last row. Funny thing is, no one even looked at us sideways or came up to claim the seats as their own. Why would they? Whoever they belonged to seemed to just find another place to be. And it made me think that a lot of people around us were scrambling to convince themselves that they belonged just as we were—except maybe the lead singer of Hole and the production crew. I know for a fact that at least two members of the band were skeptical of their own power.

Ah, self-possession. A friend of mine was in town recently whose confidence in the face of strange social situations is epic. I once watched as he convinced Snoop Dogg at a Grammy after-party to make an ice-cream sundae for him by pretending that they were old friends. And it was because J acted so natural with him that Snoop actually believed that they were pals from the past, and there is no more unlikely person that Mr. D-to-the-G would have been friends with than J. It was incredible though how for one full hour (or so it seemed), this paragon of all things tall and high thought J was the man. Other people were hovering and acting nervous around the entertainer, while my friend J was telling the Snoopy Dogg Dog exactly where they were going to go next and what they were going to do. It wasn't until the tall one was spooning rainbow sprinkles on J's sundae that he seemed to snap out of it, looked over and said, Hey, man, who the fuck are you anyway? Then my friend stuck out his hand and officially introduced himself. This kind of brash confidence was an amazing learning curve for me. Not only in a business where what you seem to be is oftentimes the exact sum of what you are, but as far as life itself was concerned. Confidence begetting opportunity more often than the other way around.

That's not to say that there weren't uh-oh moments where a less disruptive choice could have been made instead. I mean, J and I did inadvertently lose one of our coworkers at a downtown NYC sex club that we thought would be a fun place to take a band that the label was trying to sign. The band, who were from the great pacific northwest, took one look at the name (begins with a V) and location (the pre-Jeffrey meat-packing district) and never even stepped inside. For some reason, though, the three of us thought it would still be fun to enter. A nanosecond after we'd entered, I was ready to flee. That was when we realized that we were one human short of what we'd come in with. I trusted that J could perform a rescue mission without me and left. Our coworker was found in a back room, having wandered through the wrong door on the way to the bathroom (which, to begin with, is somewhere you should never think of going in a place like this) and ending up in some kind of all-male crisco show. (Don't even try to put visuals with that.) J made like one of those tarmac guys who wheels the planes in and out (see visual) and led him to safety a few shades paler than he'd gone in, but not altogether damaged. We never discuss the situation. But even then I realized that this could have been much worse if J hadn't had the absolute confidence that he would find our friend and deliver him to safety. Plus I knew that it would make for a good story in future (like about a day later, actually).

Now I find that when I call on my inner rock star, I can rise to many occasions that may otherwise terrify me. It's all in the knowledge that there is no wrong way to go. Kick out the jams, my friend.

Does anybody remember laughter?

"Fun doesn't mean empty."
A wise friend passed on these words to me this week and boy did they resonate. She also asked me when was the last time I just moved with joy in my dance. And I honestly couldn't think of an answer. Although I often have a mental image as I enter the studio of really flying, catching air and laughing out loud while I'm moving, for the last little while when the music starts I've been so focused on dropping down inside of myself, moving into and through lots of stuff in my head and heart that I've forgotten the part that has to do with pure fun. A little bit it feels like I'd be cheating on the serious part of me that's doing the work, but that's oh-so-boring after awhile. I know that the deep end of the pool will always be open to me, it's the ability to float into the shallow end and just hang out for awhile that I'm sure will open me up to some light and necessary moments.

And that reminds me that I'm prone to either/or choices, as if I either have to be seriously probing my psyche or I'm choosing frivolity, but I can't exist in those two spaces at once. I'm pretty sure this is not true, but it does speak to a decision I made way back when I was in junior high school. I remember watching how the cliques were being formed and there seemed a definite dividing line between the laughing-in-the-sunshine girls and the introverted-seemingly-cool chicks. I decided that since I didn't look that good in pink and because I not only knew all the lyrics, but could play the opening chords to "Stairway to Heaven" (but really, who couldn't?) that my choice must be the latter. Not that I felt particularly cool, but I could mimic like a mutha-fucka. I carried this idea all the way to graduation where photos of the day reveal all manner of bright and sunny dresses and I'm the one wearing...brown.


Now the interesting thing about taking this stance was that I realize how isolating it was. While the girls in pastel would be falling all over each other with giggles, the cool contingent were usually quietly contemplating their navel supposedly thinking deep thoughts. But here's the really funny part: all the cool boys seemed to be mostly interested in the sunshine-y, pastel-wearing girls. And because I was apparently a good listener(!?!?), more times than not a boy I had a crush on would tell me all about it. Especially this one boy in my class named Casey.

The first time we started talking after math class I was practically nauseous with some emotion I'd never felt before—and would soon come to know as deep, passionate like&confusion. (As I remember him, it was all about his shaggy hair and lopsided smile—though it might have been a grimace—I got a little queasy when he'd come toward me down the hall.) One day he asked if he could talk to me and I thought, Yeah, he's recognized that we're fellow outcasts. Instead, just like an ABC Afterschool Special, he asked me about Stacy, whose sunny color combinations were awesomely busy even by Southern California standards. After that I remember watching his mouth move, but had no idea what words were coming out since my brain had checked out after the phrase "she's hot. maybe you'll put in a good word for me." (or something along those lines.) So when he finished by telling me what a wicked-good listener I was, I grabbed onto the compliment as if it were the last life raft on a sinking ship. I think right then I decided that if the only way I'd get to hang out and know the cute boys was by becoming their go-to talk therapy, well, I could handle that. not. so. much. Nevertheless the raft bobbed along and I settled in for awhile.

I feel like that was the pivotal point when I decided to perfect the friendship that can only exist between a boy with questions and a girl with secrets. It was a safe place to be. And now, carrying that idea into the future, I realize that I've set up this construct air-tight. I've often chosen friendship thinking it might turn into something more. And sometimes it does. sometimes it doesn't. But regardless, I do know now that it's less about the boys and more about how to find the merge between two extremes. I think I'm getting closer to recognizing the depth in joy, the lightness in dark, the laughter inside tears. I even open up my lingerie drawer and see how happily the pink panties mingle with the black bustier.

beyond the yellow brick road

When I look at this picture, I experience a shuddering flashback to my pre-and-into-teen years that I wouldn't return to for all the free dance classes in the world. There was such a confused symphony of emotion going on in that brain/soul of mine. (Though apparently the symphony I was enjoying on my stereo were the sweet sound-stylings of Elton John circa 1973 as seen on my t-shirt, no doubt purchased from the back pages of either creem or Circus magazine, both of which were my music bibles at the time...wish I still had that shirt.)

I seem to be telegraphing such a blankness here, though I know that just the opposite was really roiling around inside of me: what am i doing here? am i going to be abandoned? who actually cares anyway? At the time this was taken, my mom and dad had just split up and I specifically remember being worried about my dad's being lonely living without my mom and I. My mom had started dating and I know I was unfairly harsh to her about that. For her, filling in the loneliness that she was feeling was something I, of course, couldn't understand. There were times I'd wake up and she wouldn't be home and I'd be convinced she'd be gone forever and I'd just lie there, thinking, What will I do now? I'd never say anything because...actually the only reason I can think I didn't say anything is because I didn't want to rock the boat, have her get mad at me and give me away. Of course she would never have done anything like that, but such was the irrational pattern of my adolescent brain.

And what I remember is that I just wanted to be told it would be okay. To be assured that someone would be there to hold me, care about me. I'm sure I was told this all the time, but for whatever reason I didn't really trust it. I felt like I was sending out smoke signals constantly that weren't being seen. For instance, there was a boy who lived down the hall that was about a year older than me. When he came to my door and asked if I wanted to come over and listen to his new Alice Cooper record, I was pretty sure no good would come of it considering his parents weren't home and I knew he'd try to kiss me and I really had conflicting feelings about the whole kissing thing. I wanted my mom to say No, and remember making some kind of head shaking, eye-rolling movement meant to convey to her that I didn't want to go, but she said, Sure, go ahead, just be back for dinner in an hour. Noooooo. I felt powerless somehow to express my own opinion and desire at that point in my life. And, yes, we went to his apartment and he kissed me and the only thing I remember is looking at the Billion Dollar Babies album cover and thinking it looked like a snake.

Today I obviously realize that the how and where of my body and emotions are my sole responsibility, but I wonder if I could have dropped some wisdom on that earlier me, would it have made any difference? Told her that she had a voice to say what she wanted, to do what felt right to her and not let anyone else dictate that. Every part of who I am today is rolled around in all that I've known, seen, felt, done and while I find my confidence of self still seems to be growing stronger, it does no good to think of any other way it may have been. I do set my sights on being more gentle with my mom, realizing that she was doing the absolute best she could at the time, while still living her life and being fulfilled. But really nothing was as it seemed: I may have known that Alice Cooper's real name was Vincent Damon Furnier and that the boy down the hall wasn't a particularly good kisser, but it would be a while before I'd really know and understand how much I could choose what I wanted and what I didn't in my own life.