While he’s in the bathroom I slam on my jeans and buckle my belt as fast as possible. My shirt is hiding under the jeans and I like the way my body looks in the mirror. Slim. Bent over because there is a cramp in my back. Spinal betrayal.  Cigarettes in back pocket. Hips leaned against a door frame. My hair is a little matted, my make up is half steamed off. My voice has that sound to it I had forgotten about. In a minute I’ll be smoking a cigarette on the back porch with my feet up on the fence.  Ten minutes and I can run away and never look back.
There are other parties to go to. A friend of his is having one a few streets down, in some other connection of his neatly.manicured. neighborhood. A friend of mine wants me to go to a bar with her, but it’s too late now. It’s one thirty.
Why don’t you stay the night? He brings up the fact he has air conditioning and two huge comforters. No- I have to get going. I don’t tell him this is my favorite part of my life. Walking down empty roads that turn from neighborhoods to streets of almost equal emptiness. We hug, I say goodbye – and then I am completely free from any entanglement that I might have gotten caught up in. My body is swaying to the headphones jammed in my ear. Professor Longhair.  The best music to dance to- I think of my favorite memory of dancing with my partner in crime in a Minneapolis apartment for hours on end. Someday I will go back and see the Zooloo King.
It’s two when I get into the apartment. I lie on the floor and talk to my kitty Suzanne for awhile before Jess calls. She’s telling me she got arrested a couple nights ago. It was rough, she says, but she just gave them a sob story and she got out in seven hours. She has the ‘I beat the system’ voice, but I know she’s scared. She’s sitting on a stoop outside of St. Bernard street in West Philadelphia and I can hear the guys come up to her.
“Sam called.” She says in that far off voice and I know she’s talking about the same guy she’s been infatuated with for years. Her first love. And for an hour of heaven, we talk about clothes and guys  we’ve dated and everything that’s changed and everything that seems the same.  While the future may not be rising yet, we do always seem to know what keeps coming around.

Yup, it’s gone. Whoops- thought I had it, guess I missed it god damn it. I tried to get a thought in earlier, but it just wasn’t happening. Force field of skin block.    Not to say that you can’t feel things when you’re this blank. The feelings are there, but the mind is empty. So if the feelings are there, maybe that means feelings are disconnected from  your brain. So where do you feel it? My back. I feel it in my spine.  That’s probably why they give you shots in your spine, because it goes straight to your feelings and numbs them out. I don’t want that.

I think it’s definitely possible to over load on your imagination. I think most people over load when they’re a kid and then it slowly disappears over time. Then you’ve only got it on reserve- for when you ‘really need it.’  But need is a funny word, and you’ll end up perserving it forever if it’s only for emergencies.  Funny indeed. Yup- funny like a paper spine.

Finito liked mice. They were quiet, minded their own business, and generally didn’t cause any problems. People gave them a bad rep, but he knew they were alright. The mice buried themselves into simple living. Cracks in buildings, closet space in some unfortunate woman’s kitchen, and inside ventilation systems. Mice were crafty and could always stay dry, this is what first allured Finito to live with the mice.  They led him to the cardboard boxes in back of a supply store and he saw the sign immediately. Vacancy.

The living wasn’t nice, but it wasn’t bad. He liked the sturdiness of the boxes, somehow the four walls with their straight lines and their definite corners comforted him. Four equal squares. One line connected to the other and then to the other and then to the other. A square of boundaries so one could not easily waft away. Eventually he replaced the cardboard with wood and would stay inside the squares for most of the day. It was safe in there and if he wasn’t seen, he could block out the noise from the city.

One day, Finito was outside of his box collecting food when a man of circular proportion strolled up to him. Everything about this man was round. His belly was as fat as the moon, his eyes bulged with two, round, circles underneath, his hair was in round, thick, tufts that rolled off his circular face.  He had a giant half-circle grin which gleamed and stayed from ear to ear as he talked.

“Have we met before?” His eyebrows jumped off his face.
“Uh…” Finito’s body was young and angular. His spine stuck out of his back like an awkward clothes hanger and his legs and arms were bony and pointed.  “No, I don’t think so.”
The man wore a bright pink polo shirt with an alligator print sewed on the front. His shoes were expensive leather and stuck inside his grin was a fat, round, cigar that he puffed frequently.
“You look tired,” he observed.
Finito looked around, not knowing what to say. Conversation wasn’t his strong point.
“You poor thing,” the man said, sticking his head down against the boys, forcing him to see his eyes. The intrusive staring made Finito’s face burn against the cold and he squirmed, wanting to be left alone. “I’ll call you Alfred.”
“Excuse me?” Finito looked up at the man.
“Alfred’s my name too,” the man put his arm around Finito and led him down a different street. “I grew up a few streets from here myself, but I didn’t stay here. Oh no- the world had different plans for me and I think the world has different plans for you too.”
“What sort of plans?”
“The kind of plans that one takes to be wonderful. I live in a big house and have plenty of income, you can stay with me while we find you a nice job so you don’t have to stay out here in the street.”
“I don’t actually stay on the street…”
But Alfred wasn’t listening, he was directing the boy to his giant house several streets down. The house was one large circle. At first, Finito couldn’t believe such a thing was possible, the insulation would have to be terrible and the supports must not have been as good. Alfred opened the door to the house and instantly they were entrapped in a maze of small hallways that led off into different semi circular rooms.
“Neat, huh?”
Finito didn’t say anything, he felt oddly uncomfortable in this house. Alfred thrust himself into a large lounge chair and sighed loudly. “Gosh, I’m so tired, I’ve been working very hard today.”
Finito didn’t know what this man did, but clearly it must have been greatly important if he was able to afford such an odd yet distinguished home.  “I can’t possibly make dinner tonight, yet I have all the ingredients in the kitchen.”
Finito stared at the man, the man stared back. “Would you like me to make you dinner?” Finito finally asked.
“Oh yes! What a wonderful offer! You may have some too,” the man smiled proudly as he leaned further back into the chair.
Finito found the kitchen finally after bumping into several identical rooms with fancy furniture. The kitchen was bland, no art and no color and looked like it had hardly been touched. The closet however, was stacked to the gills with every kind of food imaginable. Finito could feel a strange pressure building inside his chest up to his throat and then branching into his smile. He was going to cook everything he could possibly imagine.
Dumpling soup. Organic salads. Spiced Chicken. A cake for desert. This was going to be a feast of all feasts.

The fat man appeared in the doorway after an hour to ask why it was taking so long. His sour expression quickly changed when he saw all the food prepared at the table. “Aha! You have found my food!”
At first, Finito thought the man would be angry at his extravagant use of his food. He averted his eyes from the ever pressing eyes of the man at the other end of the kitchen.  The man touched the solid jaw line of Finito’s face and stared at him again until the warmth curled back into Finito’s face.
“You poor boy, this is wonderful.”
Finito moved away quickly and started to eat part of the chicken. “No, no, we must eat in the dining room.” The man ushered him away from the kitchen.

So it went, every morning the fat man would get up and dress in flamboyant colors and go off to work. Finito did not know how to get a job or why he was there, but he stayed in the round house day after day.  As the week wore on, the cooking became his responsibility. On Friday nights several other fat men with round faces and cigars would sit in one of the rooms and roar with laughter and drinks.
Alfred would call for Finito to come in and serve drinks. Finito did obediently.
“Alfred! This is my son Alfred!” The man would say to the other fat people. Finito did not know why he would say this, but he never objected and soon it was as if he were his son. The other men would laugh uproariously at the jokes Alfred made and they would all compliment Finito heavily on his manners or dress.
The next week, Alfred bought Finito several pairs of expensive clothing to wear for these dinner occasions. The next Friday he would be seen as the miniature Alfred.

This went on for months until one day Finito did not want to pretend to be Alfred’s son any longer. “Alfred, how do I get a job?”
Alfred looked startled and hurt. He peered affectionately into Finito’s eyes again and the hot flash of shame brushed through Finito’s skin again. “You don’t like it here?”
“I want to get a job now. I don’t like staying here all day just to cook and entertain people you know.”
“You won’t be able to get a job. I didn’t want to tell you earlier because it’s just so sad- but you will never find work. You just aren’t smart enough to make it out there on your own. I figured if you could never have what I have, I could at least provide it for you.” Alfred’s large smile was still plastered on his face, but his eyes looked sympathetic and yet burning.

During the night, Finito left the round house to make his own future. He hated the fat man and his fancy clothing and his fake care.  Finito crept out of the kitchen window and hurried outside. He would find some place better and make sure Alfred knew about it.

So a few days later he applied for several jobs. He learned to laugh like the friends of Alfred and joke the way Alfred did. He wore his expensive clothes and smiled brightly even if he felt scared or even angry. He pleased people and complimented people and would do whatever he could to get people to like him. And they did! Much to Finito’s surprise and delight, he was offered a job in a hotel made of solid gold located right in the center of the city. He was to be the assistant to the manager. The manager of the hotel was another round man who was impressed with Finito’s modesty, innocence, and charm.

The manager would invite Finito to drink with him at night. They would sit at the top of the hotel and look out over the city while they sipped at their cocktails.
“Look how beautiful this place is.” The manager swept his hand over the city, it was all his.
“Yes.” Finito covered his mouth with the glass.

The next day, Alfred checked into the hotel for a meeting on the top floor. Finito stood in the doorway and smiled proudly.
Alfred did not recognize him so Finito didn’t say anything. His anger fumed inside his chest and while they rode the elevator to the top, Finito cursed him over and over again in his mind. Damn bubble. Filled with air. Doesn’t remember a thing.

By the end of the day, Finito longed to tell someone. The manager had dismissed him and was bored with conversation that wasn’t about him or the hotel. When Finito tried to tell him about Alfred, the manager only glazed over as if turning into a zombie. Finito quit that night and decided to go back to the boxes.

Lines and squares weren’t forgiving, they were statutes.  He thought of the mice, at least they wouldn’t say anything.
A month later when Finito was feeling more solid, he realized it wasn’t a problem to go out and mingle around with people in the city. It was easier to find food while living quietly and comfortably in his square life.   On one of his walks around the city, he bumped into Alfred standing at a nearby street. Finito watched with detached amusement.

“Do I know you?” The fat man walked up to Finito and squinted at him with sympathetic eyes.
Finito frowned instantly and waved his arms in front of him as if to dismiss this image from his very sight.
“No- I am Finito!”

I had a dream last night that I woke up and decided to go downtown to have breakfast and a memosa. I woke up this morning and thought- that is entirely a possibility.

This is pretty nice, I must say. I feel like I’ve something from everything up until this point.  312. Basement. Philly. Mom’s. Dad’s. Nigeria. Tapestries have come from the basement parties eight years ago. The Maryland Terapins body pillow is Phil’s which I stole out of the living room so I can feel like I actually am sleeping with someone.  I’m listening to that song my partner in crime reintroduced me to ‘Deception’-Blackalicious.  The pink milk crates my Mom and I actually had to put together came new. I’ve got the little African table that was from Nigeria.  The blanket Dad gave me when I left for my first apartment. The jewlery box from my Grandmother.  My uncle’s pottery from before he stopped up short. And…I’ve got the wooden cat.

( it’s episode 27 in the link above)

Okay, you need a plan to get you through this week. It’s depressing. You want dope, but you’ve gotten off that for 9 months so don’t keep fucking up now with this couple times a week shit. It’s not worth it. I feel incredibly guilty afterward (as I should) So what if I’m nervous or if I’ve had a crummy past or if I just want my life to be great ALL THE TIME. it’s not reality.

Today is Sunday.  Praise Jesus! Today I don’t have to feel guilty for not doing yoga. Today I can lay in bed and listen to Savage Love and eat cereal. Today I will do laundry, play cards, and relax. I need to CALL MICHAEL about getting tickets to the play Hysteria.  Maybe hang out with Antonio. I need to drink a lot of  cranberry juice. I have a feeling eating healthy and drinking healthy will help me on my placement test on Tuesday.

Monday I will take the subway up to center city and time it. That way I will know exactly how long it will take to get to CCP from my house. I will browse barnes and noble, maybe look for some clothes.  I need to email Dad a birthday card. Of course I’ll need to drink cranberry juice and eat fruit.

Tuesday at twelve thirty I go to CCP for my placement test.  Also go to the meeting at 9th and Federal across from Pats and Genos. It’s at six thirty.

Wednesday is health day. Physically,  I will food shop, do yoga, take a walk.  Mentally I will read, listening to This American Life, read the NYT.  Play Chess, hang out with Beth.

Thursday evening I will go to 22nd and Market and talk to the Library people. Get the forms to fill out so I can work there, and get a feel for the place.

That’s all you need to think about until Thursday when you can plan other things out. Just don’t worry about anything else. You need a theme song for this week to take your mind off the job and school…………Stayin Alive. Bee Gees.

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Coles is also leaving on a jet plane. don’t know when i’ll be back again.

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And so he walked on with his head held high up to the shop around the corner. Destiny. A local shop with wine, cookies, and gas for sale. The shop where he worked from nine in the evening to five in the morning. It was night time, the streets were heavy with traffic and the ladies were heavy with makeup. They were all going fast and he wondered where they could go so fast, but he didn’t ask because they wouldn’t stop.

The shop wasn’t crowded and rarely did they have much business between the hours of one and four. The drunks went home at two thirty and the early birds were the only ones making it into the store for coffee at five. Before the early jobs. Before the bustle of more traffic. These were the quiet hours of life when the crickets were done for the rest of the day.

He slid into the shop, saying hi to the two people who were still working. One would be let out just as soon as he got there, but Frank would still be there. Working quietly in the back, stocking something unnecessary for the need of customers. They would say hello, ask him how his day went, and as always he would say it was okay. Just fine. Nothing great, nothing horrendous.
“No news is good news!” Frank would congratulate him on his welfare.

Frank talked about his girlfriend in the next county. “Next week, she says she’s coming next week.”
“Oh yeah?” He’d say, listening quietly to the hum of the electric lights.
“Yup. Next week she’s moving into the city. The big city. My girl will finally be home.”

Customers would come in occasionally, always bumbling from somewhere unexpected. They never expected to show up at such a place at such a time. Who would be here at such a time? Why would they need anything? They always sounded as if their real lives had gone somewhere else and abandonned them at this particular store. He’d give them their cigarettes and maybe their cheap magazine to go and ring them up with ease. Sometimes he wondered what they were thinking and where their brain was when it left them, but he never asked. He never said anything but thank you and come again.

At four a.m. the weirdos showed up. They were unsettled with life. Angry and shouting. Drugged and wired. Steamed and tired. The ones with beards and uncombed hair stricken by insomnia would stand around admiring the shop like a jewelery case. They would mumble to themselves and point at the gum or candy that they needed to have at that very instant of four a.m. Why didn’t he have Orbit gum? Didn’t he know that people NEEDED that gum!? So what if it was late! They needed something to chew on. Something other than their life to shoot the shit with. This would do! If only he had the gum than they could survive. But where was the gum? He would get it for them and charge them the regular price until they whined or returned the merchandise to a different place. Then he’d have to get the piece of gum and return it back to it’s rightful place behind the never-bought bananas for seventy five cents a bundle.
The four a.m. crowd was haggard and displaced. Their minds had never returned for them and unlike the one a.m. crowd, there was no hope of return for them.

At five a.m. he would tell Frank he was going home. Frank never left. Eventually he had to leave, but no one knew exactly where he went because he was always back at the store with in six hours.

So He’d go back to his house, the dawn would start to rise and the traffic would start to blur together. The early commuters were just waking and the cars would start to move more and more between the stop lights and I95. The women were tired and drained and their perfume stank through the streets back to his apartment.

Tomorrow is another day. The man thought, sitting down at his bed in the apartment above another corner store. He wondered if he’d find any of those nice looking 9 p.m. girls in the store that he worked at. How he wished he had a girl like Frank’s. Frank said his girl always wore nice smelling perfume and little skirts that past the knee all the way up to the thigh. It was never tacky, said Frank. It was always just right.

9 p.m. happened again and again. He went back to the shop where Frank was working, but still nothing had changed.
“One more week,” Frank said, unfolding the box of refrigerated goods. “She can’t make it this Friday, but she’ll get here in another week.”
“No news is good news.” He said weakly.
Another week, he thought. One more Friday.

Midway through, I went out for a cigarette and a guy I used to know, told me he missed hanging out and that I was so entertaining back then. He reminisced about driving me and a few other people in the ‘jet van’ etc.  The weird part is, I barely remember the things I did back then and I keep catching glimpses from other people’s memory. Riding in backseats of cars. Dancing downtown. Cab rides to nowhere.  Sometimes I want it back, I feel like everything was more exciting back then, and it was… but if I barely remember it… what good was it? I told the guy I wasn’t very entertaining now, I like to read most days away. We talked about books… everyone is grown up. It’s a city of faint memories from route 29 to I95.

So I get home now, at eleven thirty, before midnight, and claim my seat next to the fire and get out my book. The beatles are still playing on the stereo downstairs.  Rocky Raccoon. And Niccolo is fresh on the brain.

“Bus drivers could be forgiven if they are confused by New York City Transit’s policy on how to deal with fare-beaters, which tells them on one page to act like Mohandas K. Gandhi and on another page says that they can deny access to the bus to riders who are “trying to put one over on” them.

“We’ve stopped using the word ‘challenge’ to describe what a bus operator needs to do to thwart fare evasion,” drivers are told in the transit agency’s Bus Operator’s Guide to Customer Service [pdf]. “‘Challenge’ implies confrontation, which too often leads to hostile verbal exchanges and even physical assaults.”

The subject of bus-fare evasion has been discussed intensely among drivers following the fatal stabbing of a driver, Edwin Thomas, by a passenger who did not pay the fare, sat down anyway, and later demanded a transfer ticket. On Tuesday, a 20-year-old man was charged with murder.

The guide for bus operators states:

We don’t want you to be injured, or your other customers forced to witness a violent exchange, just for a fare. Instead, the strategy is to let the offending customer know that he or she hasn’t put one over on you. It’s also to let the other decent, fare-paying customers know that you’re not tolerating exceptions. Since they all had to pay, this one offender should not be excused from being asked to pay.

The guide continues with what it calls “some random thoughts”:

The key to your reaction to fare evasion is your tone. In the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., you need to put up some passive resistance. In words spoken evenly and not in a threatening or sarcastic manner, you may say something like, ‘Excuse me, sir. The fare is (GIVE AMOUNT).’ You’ll notice that there is no accusatory ‘You’ or direct command used here.

It adds: “Never just take your bus out of service or argue with the person.”

In a separate section on transfers, however, the guide is vague and appears to contradict the earlier instructions.

It says that paper transfers are only supposed to be given at the time a rider pays a fare. But it says that sometimes riders wait until later to ask for the transfer. In those cases, the guide says, “a bus operator’s judgment is essential when determining whether a customer asking for a transfer in the middle of a trip is asking with the intention of ripping off the system or instead merely forgot to request a transfer while boarding.” It says that riders who make an honest mistake should get transfers but it does not say what drivers should do if they believe a rider is scamming them.”

I was trying to be quiet, so I wouldn’t have to face my roommates with cold sweats and groggy irritation.  Niccolo popped a cd into the dvd player anyway. It was venezuelan and humming with background insturments and a chorus that seemed to progress louder and louder until we couldn’t ignore it anymore. What was this?

We must have been thinking the same thing because at exactly the same moment we started singing. Quietly to ourselves at first – but then we started in louder. As loud as the music. As loud as we could. We were actually singing and didn’t even care that the rest of the house and maybe the house next door could hear us.

‘Mama I ain’t well.’  Track 4.

I want to go back, but not there. I just want the ice cream truck and the public fountains and my Niccolo.
Today is a very neat day. Everything is in order. Dishes are put away, table tops are dusted and squirted with lemon, sheets are washed.  I need some ice cream and a celebration.

hmmm

Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, Oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don’t take my Kodachrome away”

Tonight was probably the best night of my life. When I was in high school I used to look at a slide projector in my math class and wonder if it was as bored and stuck as us students. Even now I’m convinced that objects in life have feelings.
This one guy used to come into my remedial math class late every day. He would slouch against the door way and say ‘Don’ be so mad misses. Y’know what happened to me?” He’d laugh and lean way back in a chair to tell us all a story. “Well, I’ll tell you, but you gotta swear not to tell nobody. ALright, well I was just ‘borrowing’ my sisters car keys this morning when I saw something funny from the window. I looked out and I swear to God, Swear it! I saw two men in dresses and football helmets just looting my neighbors house! I Couldn’t have none of that… I spent all my morning in a grand fight with those queens. Damn i never knew such good looking boys could fight!”
The teachers gave up on him. They eventually just enjoyed listening to his stories and the rest of us had someone to make us smile. No more slide projector feelings for us in math. That guy quit quit high school halfway through the year and no one saw him again.

When I quit, I wrote out my memories of that math class and all the people in it. There was the guy who played with puppets in the back row. The guy who didn’t speak english but knew the words ‘flower power.’ There was the girl with the earrings we all fit our fists into.
I hung the piece of writing on my wall and called it my introduction to life outside the box. it was my certificate of high school education until tonight.

Tonight was a celebration. Tonight was mexican food, margaritas, family.

“Fuck him! Fuck him to death!” A girl covered in long, black, gauze, screamed through an empty hallway. Her wrists were bruised and her eyes were dark with mascara running to escape down her cheeks. She punched the door to her mom’s closet before looking up and realizing I was still standing with her in the empty house of her mothers.

“I’m sorry, let me just take a shower and I’ll feel better.” My friend of two weeks, appologized with a flat voice lingering through the hallway.
I watched her disappear into the bathroom with the antique bath tub that had claws built into the bottom of it and a shower nozzle connected to the back wall. Before enough time had passed, I heard her climb into the tub and turn the water on.
I knocked on the door to see if she was okay. No answer. I knocked again, a little louder this time.

“Come in.” She said in a voice that seemed to waver a little with the water.
I walked into the bathroom to find her crouched in the bathtub with all her clothes on and freezing cold water pouring down from the shower nozzle. Her hair hung in wet, messy, black, strands and her fists were clenched with rage and empty confusion. She looked up at me from her crouched position and started a slow, weak, smile across her face. She motioned her arms around the bath tub and looked up hopelessly to the shower nozzle.

“It’s the only thing that really works for an angry day.”

_

2004

In high school I was at a party with a girl I had known briefly through other house parties and lunch at school. I pulled out a couple pills of ecstasy and gave one to ‘Rose’ so she could enjoy the night that was turning more and more magical by the minute. The boys were dancing to techno music in the kitchen and soon we were in the middle of it all, clutching the fake, white, fur collars we had wrapped around to protect us from winter. It was too hot to care anymore.
Rose and I felt our way to the bathroom so we could slow down for a minute. I fished out a strobe light from the other room and plugged it into the darkness. All we could see were flashes of each others faces and bodies as we sat side by side on the blinking bath tub.
“We should take a shower.” I giggled. “A strobe shower.”
“Yes!”  She switched on the faucet until drops were like glitter, blinking from the strobe flashes every second.

We undressed, not caring about who knew we were in the bathroom or what we were going to say to each other at school the next morning. We danced to the music playing loudly in the kitchen and whipped our hair around to shake off the loose water glitter that fell around us.

Rose smiled, extending her arms to the faucet. “This is perfect.”

.

_

2007

In a dingy house with sewage problems and hijacked morals, I slowly turn on the shower faucet and survey the status of our bath tub. The tub is slowly disappearing through the floorboards and it’s only a matter of weeks before I fear it will slip through completely to the dining room.  I imagine myself naked and sprawled over the slightly moldy tub, trying to figure out why I was in the dining room with all the squatters who stayed downstairs for free.

I hop into the shower for approximately five minutes every day. I don’t want to touch the sides of the bath tub for fear of some sort of cakey dirt or bug rubbing against me. Two bottles of expensive shampoo with a perfumed scent sit slightly opened on the edge of the tub. They aren’t mine, I know they must be my roommates. She’s into hard drugs and lives in the same filth we do, but there is something always clean about her. Even if she won’t dare take a shower in the filthy bathroom, she always smells nice.

The bathroom door opens hurridly and slams with the same abrupt force. I peer out of the shower curtain to see my roommate eagerly pull out a dish of powder makeup and some eye liner from inside one of the cabinet drawers. With out hesitating to wonder why the shower was running in a supposedly empty bathroom, she brushed the powder on to her face quickly.  I stop the shower faucet and grab a towel that is hanging on a metal rack.

“Jesus!” My roommate screams and spins around. “Christ! I didn’t know you were in here. I’ll get out.” She grabs her makeup from the sink counter and heads for the door.
“No, it’s okay… we’re only in the bathroom…” I try calling after her, but she has already disappeared, leaving only a scent of clean air to linger with the dirt.
_

2008

A girl with brightly dyed hair sat almost completely hidden underwater in her bath tub. A window was built right in front of the shower which seemed odd considering she lived in the city. There was no escaping the window, no curtains, no place to hide, but no real care either. She sat with out bubbles and englufed with smoke that glided from her mentholated cigarettes.

She ashed off the side to nowhere particular. Her knees poked out from under the water as she asked me what I thought. Of what? Of her latest love affairs. Of going to college. Of what another girl had said to her just the other day. Of the hidden meanings and agendas of life outside the bathroom door.

I climbed into the tub with her, self conscious at first. Was my hair sticking to the side of my ears the way it does when it’s too wet to look good?  When was the last time I shaved my legs? Did I bring my cigarettes up too?

“I just want to stay in the tub forever. Sometimes I really think I could….” Her eyes glazed over the window view of a city block with abandoned buildings and children riding bikes.  “I’d just have someone else buy me some cigarettes from the store, I could be all set.”
“Let’s do it.” I said. “We could eat sandwiches in the tub.”
She smiled, making room for my legs to stretch out toward the window. “Perhaps we should.”

-White wine is for chicken, fish, and sometimes pork

-Cocktail hour is at six, sometimes five.

-Boston has cocktail hour all day long

-Bloody mary is for Sunday morning

-Ladies DO NOT smoke on the street

-Pick up a tea pot with your right hand and the tea cup with your left… always at the same time

-walk slowly into a room

-always sip tea, never gulp. First sip is for grattitude. Second sip is for taste. Third sip is for friendship, always leave just a little in the cup.

-shoulders must be balanced with elbows for good posture

-always wear a hat to the horse races

-Corsets ruin the figure

-Never confuse yellow diamonds with topaz

-Never talk about yourself on the first date

- silps are sexy, garters are not

- Men should always come to the door on a date, never ever honk.

I walked into a small grocery store in a ”town” close by to pick up some tomatoes and various vegetables etc. I didn’t know what a certain type of cucumber was, so I asked the woman at the cash register. She turned to me with a great smile and said ‘oh honey, I don’t know WHAT kind of thang that is, but hon, you’ll have to tell me when you come back.” At first I thought it was a pretty big presumption I would be coming back to this store, but then I realized….what other store is there? Of course I would be back.

The wind mill companies are tearing apart communities. Activists against the wind milling (because of noise and the corruption of work and bribery that goes along with aquiring the land for wind mills) have become quietly threatened in the process. One activist found her car windowshield smashed twice since the wind mill corruption.  Land sells for tens of thousands and some people want to get in on it while the economy is not quite booming.

One wind mill activist says that the neighborhoods suspect when someone has suddenly been able to buy a few new tractors whether they have made deals with the wind mill company.  One person helped a wind mill company find land and was seen stepping into a wind company car and recieving a package and then stepping aboard the company workforce another week later.

is it worth it? at what cost?

The guys insisted we come to a rap club in a bar downtown. After rushing to put on layers of intricatly decorated makeup. We dashed into a car on loose sandals and elegant skirts, being whisked away by a busted ford. The car swirved in and out of Main street with loud blasting bass vibrating from under our seats. The street lights blurred into a mix of street stores stocking naked product. Empty. Into the lot across from the bar.

The scene was rich college kids, dancing to rap with beer bottles raised above them. Swaying hips and leaning back into the man behind them.  The rapper spun inside of a dimly lit tent while the smokers stayed outside. I was caught outside. Smiling across from someone I remembered from when I was sixteen.

“Hey John.”

He leans over the elevated bar stool and rests his elbows.

“Hey! What are you doing out here? I heard you…” A hand floats above the table, “moved out of town.”

“Yeah, I’m back for awhile I suppose.”  A ”public” fountain pooled out from the outside bar, no pennies gleaming below.  He told me he would jump in.  Don’t forget the pennies.

I remember the night on bellmont st. in an apartment with pink and red painted walls. The rest had tapestries hanging from the kitchen where the wine was stretched out in bottles and bottles. I was laying on the couch in my tutu, drinking wine and singing along with the jazz.  We hooked up and I disappeared around four. A month later he showed up as my substitute teacher.  John from Millers. Mr. M from high school.

We had a few beers before the sway of people smoothed over the bar. Here was someone from middle school. Here was another person who sold M and I coke. Here was another person from Western High. The shuffle of over played smiles and shrugged hips in the southern country-club way. Yes, and I would like another cigarette.

An over friendly couple of guys remember M. and I from awhile ago and give us long hugs with stretching hands down our backs and sides.

“Can I buy you a beer?”

I used to think city guys were so sleazy because they weren’t polite. M. and I decide to walk back to my house that’s not too far from downtown. We disappear gracefully and cautiously hugging old friends and quickly scurry downtown.

M. says she forgot we were passing the ghetto to get to my house. I look around, but there’s nothing but big houses with color slopped on the side of them. Telephone poles running farther and farther down the street and the city people sitting on their stoops.  We walk down the three blocks while an odd taxi drives past us twice. Once going up. Once going back down. His lights slowly pass with glowing eyes.

I think if you want to be humiliated to be accepted in a social club when you’re in college, that’s your own business, however, when it becomes a ‘team thing’ in high school, that is getting a bit ridiculous.  If the team is supported by a high school, then the coach should not allow this to be going on. Especially when the parents called the coach and told her that this was happening and yet it continues. I understand that a coach may not be able to stop what happens on the girls’ own time, but to condone it or look the other way is not only sending the wrong message for high schoolers, but it also allows this kind of humiliating behavior to exist at an age where acceptance is extremely important. The most important thing in the world is not acceptance and as we grow older we understand this, but to impressionable teenagers (and sometimes college kids or people in their early twenties) this is a struggle to understand.

What do you think about initiation? for it? against it? kids own decision? parents should be more involved? ….

This year the fair offers contests to amuse city dwellers and country cousins alike, from hot dog-eating competitions to husband-calling contests—-The Daily Progress

I’m not sure what a Husband Calling Contest is exactly, but it sounds like Virginia’s county fair has come to town again. If carnie’s and large women in tube tops are your thing, than bring all the funnel cake you can find and come on down for more.  The county fair made front page headline for Charlottesville’s newspaper, The Daily Progress.

Farming and living ‘off the fat of the land’ may be more of a thing of the past, however it is not extinct in the rural hollows and counties surrounding Albemarle. Many people still farm and abide by the small town living style. Some of the highlights of the fair this year consist of:

A ferris wheel

An educational talk about bees and their special spot in the food chain

Petting farm animals

Funnel Cake (of course)

Country music and Blue grass

Carnival booths

and family fun!

Do you remember the county fair when you were a kid? I’d love to hear of some memories from it, I always had lots of fun with my sisters and friends. If there’s not a lot to do where you live, a fair can be somewhat magical when the sun sets and the tilt-a-whirl is glowing neon.

miss greene county fair

Among several different kinds of practices, the one most speculated about would be The Mormon Fundamentalists.  One of the most common practices associated with Mormon Fundamentalism is ‘plural marriage’ meaning, polygny.  In some groups, it is acceptable for the men (sometimes much older) to marry a girl as young as thirteen.

A large majority of Mormon Fundamentalists have separated from most civilization to live in ‘sects.’  Rural areas are a common place for mormon fundamentalists to live considering it is away from publicity.

Warren Jeffs has been ”president of the priesthood” which made him the ‘ruler’ for Mormon Fundamentalist communities. He also has numerous arrests and convictions involving rape, and incest.

I thought this website was very interesting if you would like to learn more…. http://www.lds.org/institutes/home/0,8473,768-1-36-61714,00.html

The miminimum age for the Olympics as of 1997 is Sixteen. However, there is some debate in China about olympic gymnastic star He Kexin is under the age of sixteen. There are mixed reports, some saying he is sixteen and passports are being examined as well, but other reports show he may be fourteen. Another gymnast, Jiang Yuyuan also may be as young as fourteen.

“An advantage for younger gymnasts is that they are lighter and, often, more fearless when they perform difficult maneuvers,” said Nellie Kim, Olympic medalist.

I thought this was very interesting and also true. Even those two years between fourteen to sixteen can change in self courage.  More information comes from: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/sports/olympics/27gymnasts.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

What are your thoughts? Did you have any moment you can remember when you were younger where you would not have done something at an older age.

Vines attack the humidity with tall plants and flowers scattered around little secret sections of her lawn. It’s like the secret garden with tables hidden among the jungle and just when you think you might be lost… Oh! A little sitting chair and some stray glasses.

it’s a wild jungle out here folks

Late night hope still clings on to fun. A few pocket dollars and a rude hour. No one will see. Color drains. From the bath tub to their faces. The night still sucks sweet.

A jungle of houses depart from the ground. Lifting up, up, and away like a pigeon trying to fly. The stoop is still planted and the vertical apartment houses sway with the wind. Almost. Railings throw their arms up to the red city sky. Begging or praying for something above. Windows gasp and cough to breathe the fresh air. Hoagies. Stumped cigarettes. Plastic bags mistaken for tumble weeds.Everything keeps rolling in a  siren silence. Drifting down broken streets with thoughtful names.

The large woman across the street escapes from her children with white, wild, eyes. Laughing loud and shrill. Frantic and alone, but not for long. The moments can barely be counted when stray cats are the only company. Her hair strings out like wire on an electrocuted sound. She looks fast with darting eyes. Wider. Wider! Wild!

Traveling down empty power lines, every lonesome window can be heard. Howling. Crazy laughter from somewhere off in the distance. Houses roll by in a slow dilopidated depression far from the screaming children of fire orange and silk purple stuck in between a licourice mood.

Today we heard the crazy crack head next door might not be as crazy as we thought. For an entire year she has been knocking on our door, telling us there are people outside our courtyard during the night. We figured it was the crack. Matt came in to my room today however, and said he heard there really were people who would climb through our courtyard so they could have sex in ‘Miss Patty’s’ courtyard. Apparently the woman is cheating on her husband. A few nights ago I heard people near our courtyard (the courtyard is in back of my room) and son of a bitch, she might be right. So Matt rigged a boobie trap for the couple if they come trampling through our yard again, we’ll know.

Recently I bought the magazine ‘cosmo’ just for kicks. I was skimming through it in the shower with jess (that’s usually the time we can gossip) when I found myself more disappointed. Has Cosmo become tame or has it always been on the conservative side? It disguises itself with racy issues about ‘what men really want in bed’ and sex moves etc. but when you actually get right down to it, it’s mostly about how to please your man. How to do your hair the way most men like it. What kinds of food guys like. How to treat your guy like a king. How to be a good decorator. How to talk to his mom. Yada yada yada. I remember the thrills of reading it with katie in high school. We were among the few who had sex in 9th grade and that allowed us to go lingerie shopping and buy cosmo’s to read in public. Unfortunately, I’m starting to notice that the articles never change and the secrets that guys want in bed, is all the same. Which is sadly, nothing you can read in a magazine.

We walked in with our jeans hanging off our ass and tight shirts only to find data rock jumping around on stage. The drinks were way over priced so we watched A bunch of high school kids in front of us   jumping along with the music. Data rock was okay but their show was kind of long so they had to keep reminding people of Ladytron by telling us they were playing. Everytime they mentioned Ladytron the crowd would get enthusiastic because we all thought it was datarock’s last song. denada.

Ladytron finally came on after a long set of d.j. songs and waiting in the dim light with a bunch of people dressed up in either goth clothes or short dresses. I started to feel out of place. The two girl singers in the group looked like they had taken the H train to get there. Their eyes were all dim and the expressions were lifeless. we figured heroin, who knows if anyone else thought so. They played a good set, but we couldn’t really hear their voices too well over the booming electronica that fuzzed out the speakers.

Dave and I cut out a couple songs early. Jess took her friend to the subway station so he could get home and my partner in crime was off finding water ice or something. We sat on the stoop waiting and watching as a crowd of sixteen year olds (most likely) stumbled out the doors ass drunk. They fell over each other and had to sit down on the curb to wait for a cab. Probably the most adventurous night they’ve ever had. who knows….

On 05-29-2008, at approximately 4:00 AM, a woman was walking in the 1500 S. 21st Street when she was approached from behind by an unknown B/M. The male grabbed the victim by the neck, punched her in the face and then forced her to the ground. At this point, the offender pulled a condom out of his pocket. The victim kicked the offender and she fled on foot. The male ran after the victim and began pulling her hair. The victim continued to fight and scream causing the offender to flee the location on foot.

Officers stopped the male at 21st and Tasker Streets based on the flash information. The victim was able to positively identify the offender as the male who had assaulted her. The offender was placed under arrest by officers from the

17th District.

There is a sense of pride as people talk about the 17th district. It’s not quite in West Philly, but close enough for me. A neighbor comes in sometimes to sit in the living room and chat with my roommate. He is constantly talking about some kind of violence and with a smile, he always tells us about the times he wins the fight. Rarely will he tell us about the times he got mugged or punched in the face.  I hear kids playing with toy guns on our block. The parents laugh and pretend to arrest them as they squeal with laughter.

Late at night the district rolls over. The kids are asleep or crying in their cribs and the parents aren’t so different from the alley cats. I find dark faces creeping along the alleyways, hidden in doorways, asleep in a corner. People watch guard of their corner as big drug deals come in. The men playing dice on the corner laugh loudly and whistle at the girls walking by.  We shut our doors and roll over.

I’m often times annoyed at how much other people’s comments actually get stuck in my brain for awhile. Not just lingering for a minute, but festering until a million cigarette time bombs go off.  I realize the NA group is much like a cult and it annoys me that most of it is ‘ra ra NA’ but what if I’m not a cheerleader? What if I just want to be clean with that bunch of people in the meeting. What if I don’t want to say the prayer at the end or agree to being ‘powerless.’ Isn’t that a little reliant on religion of the program… I am my own person and I don’t think being powerless really helps anyone in the long run. IT’s just what we want to hear so we can justify our actions.

Nic stayed at my house last night. He thinks the NA thing is bullshit. He doesn’t have to tell me, but I Feel it in the snide smiles as I bring up a ‘home group’ lingo that no one else knows except members of NA. ‘members’ or addicts.  Language changes everything.

I took this in the bathroom at a coffee house on thirteenth…thought it was interesting.

Yesterday I continued my adventuring and ended up at Jen’s house of all places. She was this girl I knew in Charlottesville. She lived in Philly before and moved down with Lexx (her boyfriend I ended up sleeping with.) She wasn’t so happy when I came into her life. She was gorgeous though… this tall, bright red hair, long legged, beautiful woman of twenty two. She partied. She was confident. And everything I wanted to be.

A few friends of mine from Charlottesville called me yesterday to say they were staying with her and I should come over.  As soon as I entered the Urban Outfitter decorated apartment, I was introduced by Jen to her socialite friends. One of them laughed and said “I remember you telling me about her. I didn’t know you guys were FRIENDS!” To which jen nervously laughed and I sat down to drink my wine with Ejipt and Kristin. I still admire her in some odd way.

Kids from the basketball court were climbing over the fence to look down on my slouched body, clinging to a book for entertainment.

“This way is easier!” One girl screeched from the perch of plywood leading to further her adventure over the fence. The others scrambled to share her wealth.  A man stood next to me with head phones plugged deep into his ears as he blocked out the kids playing with out adults. Every so often I caught him glancing down at the words turning fast on my book.

This district is separated from the hustle of Center City. There are few fancy cars speeding by with tops down and upper class women with fake tans and makeup. The cafe’s and occasional trees are non existant and children run around like wild cats. Families live here.  People who have known each other for decades grill bar-b-ques outside and call Washington Ave. ‘center city.’ A twinge of guilt stays with me as I sit outside admiring the district that I have intruded upon.

The man across from me is only seen from the wrist down. He’s pouring himself  a diet coke into a mixed cup of ice. I’m wondering why people need ice in their soda. It’s cold enough when that cute guy with the blackish hair  pulls it out of the fridge.  Orange telephones rest on the computer’s neck. Why are they here? Emergency social cafe. That’s what this should be called. Just incase you NEED to call your friend to tell her that Madonna is in concert in Philly in NOVEMBER. I really want to go.

Mysteriously, a copy of South Philly News was scattered across my stoop this morning. I perused the newspaper in search of something interesting when I found a photograph taken of  a special ed class. I know this really shouldn’t be funny, especially since I WAS in special ed in high school. Just somehow, the goofy faces brought back fond (enough) memories. Next to it was a photograph of a few girls with balloons smiling under the headling ”raising money for fire in south philly row home.” One girl looked as if she was posing for Americas Next Top model. She stood half sideways in that curvacious way that women can pull off. She stood not smiling and staring deep into the photographer’s glare. Yes. This was a ‘smoking look.’ ho ho ho

I overheard a conversation the other day that went like this:

“I like catty girls.” Girl number 1 says

“No one really likes catty girls. They’re obnoxious. I think rude girls are atleast more direct and easier to deal with.” Girl number 2 says.

“Cattyness is rude with more wit. It’s smarter.” Girl number one says.

I personally think the only way someone could like cattyness is if they were still feeling as competitive as they did in high school and need to feel a part of the ‘mean girls’ popularity clique. What do you think about wit?

Because America is considered the new world, Native Americans rarely exist anymore. The real native Americans are almost extinct. We are the mutts of this world. Everyone has come from a strong family in another place and somewhere along the way that family has broken apart and moved to America in hopes of a better life.
While America may be more prosperous than a lot of the world, the values are very different. When American’s think of success, most think of college, good jobs, money, material things, and perhaps a family or a working marriage. Since these things are more easily available to us, it seems like a shame to waste them and our goals revolve around what we can aspire to.

Family. Honesty. Trust. Responsibility. These successes usually get put on the back burner or traded in for stocks on Google. America has no family. The families we have are less strong and less in general. Our roots do not go back as far as those from other countries. America’s familiy sometimes falls more into the people we know at work or our friends. With out the strong background of family, we are often trying to grasp that ‘thing’ that we are missing from our life. We look for that void in other places.
Internet
Work
Casual flings that may bring us the butterflies of early romance
Parties

Americans cease to know who they are a lot of times. It’s not a wonder that our stock is not faithfully placed in marriage. Even though a lot of families do succeed (especially in the past) our heritage is shrinking generation by generation and our sight is growing farther and farther away from what is really important.

America is lonely and is it really any wonder why we have migrated to the internet as a source of familiar comfort? The computer is a way to look productive and hide behind the prospect of work while really connecting to other people through such sites as myspace or other social communities. Our need for acceptance spirals into teenage girls posing in underwear on profile pictures. Our need for love is hidden between the lines of less thoughtful letters turned into electronic mail. We are more and more lost between the advertisements and wants of media as we surf into our actual wants and needs.

Is High Speed really what we want? Do those commercials even make sense anymore? Who are we?

Today is my tenth day clean. I hate today. There’s nothing more that I want to do right now than go down to 5th and washington.  but no.

Yesterday (9th day) I went to a different meeting in center city this time. There were a lot more younger people there and I felt like I could relate more to them.  A guy named Jack picked me up before the meeting and we got coffee at the old cafe steph/eric/I used to go to.  Jack lived in south philly his whole life. He used to live in the same area as I do. “Back when there was a baseball field and not a basketball court.” Apparently things were safer then than they are now. It surprised me. Everyone I’ve talked to in NA can identify with where I’m living in some way. Most of them say to think about moving because it’s a real hot spot. Needless to say- I don’t walk around at night.

Jack is one of those big Italian Catholic men who has the accent. He talks a lot, which I like in a funny sort of way. He’s charming in an honest way. He plays hockey and he was wearing his jersey to the meeting.  He told me to find my higher power and rest assure that this was not a cult. I could hear my mother’s voice in the back of my head saying “Rebecca, you’re not dumb. You can be kind of naive, just remember to stay away from all those cults.” I smiled, fading back into the leather of Jack’s big SUV.

The speaker was really good last night. A lot of times they get really animated and into what they are talking about. (Rightfully so) This one was a tour guide and had to put up with cranky old ladies. He was going over the sixth step which is something about ”personal defects”. I don’t like thinking about my shit qualities as defects. It makes me feel like some sort of robot that is supposed to be perfect and ”illiminate the defects.” or something like that. We all have shit qualities. We can tone them down, but they’re never going to disappear.

So far–I’m doing what I should be doing. I need to stay clean for about a month before I can start working on the 12 steps. I feel so ridiculous going to this stuff. Hugging. Talking about higher powers. Chanting prayers. It’s weird.

This morning I was so close to calling someone for dope. I got out my suboxone medicine instead. I don’t know if that’s good or not. Suboxone is to help get off heroin and I was prescribed to it by my doctor, but I had been on it for four days and decided to stop. The past couple of days have been nightmares though. I get these wicked cravings. My doctor said I should stay on it for two months, but I don’t want to get addicted to suboxone. What’s the point in that?

any suggestions?

The stars are losing their electricity. I notice it late at night when I look up from my courtyard or window and stare vacantly into the black sky. Dark grey with the prospect of morning. They are dimming fast until the inevitable day when they will completely turn off.

Earth is falling. It’s falling down into the black hole of infinity. We don’t realize it because the world is spinning too fast for us to feel the drop. Faster and faster every day until everything is so far away we can barely see life beyond our fingers. Our myspace. Our personal profile of oblivion.

I’m building a bridge to the moon. Enough shit about space shuttles, it’s time to indulge. I’m building it out of shiny tin foil so the stars will see it. Maybe if they think the bridge is a friend, they will help us find the moon easier. Everyone wants to be on the moon. Everyone.

Being a model or a porn star is  the kind of job any girl thinks of having at least once when they are fifteen. Something glamorous yet intriguing and tough.
She came with a pink polka dot suitcase and approximately sixteen boxes of shoes. They stacked to the ceiling of the third bedroom of our row house.  For years I had heard about her from my roommate, the excitement, the parties, the catty sophistication of something different. So naturally I was nervous.

One afternoon my partner in crime, the porn roommate, and I decided to go on an adventure. It was one of those days where the air was just starting to get hot, but the public fountains were just right. With round, tall, sun glasses, we headed off into the sunlight to promote her newest movie.

She held a bundle of rolled up posters in her hand as she walked into the first adult store on Chestnut.  I stood from the window, peering inside to see what was going on. I pulled at the hem of my skirt, wondering if anyone thought I was a prostitute smoking outside the sex shop. A large man with baggy clothing sat in the very back of the store with a drink clasped in his hand. I walked into the store.

“I could just leave them here?” She held the poster of cheerleaders spread open on the desk.
“We don’t hang posters.” The man looked annoyed at her smiling face. He muttered something about handing them to his boss, but he was just going to toss them out.

She left a poster and we headed off toward the gayborhood. All the artistic stores who knew where it was at, all resided there.  We passed a few construction workers, whistling at our outfits, to my surprise we stopped walking. She showed them the poster and gave a flirtatious smile. Their slow accent hovered over the street and into our ears. I kissed my partner in crime on the cheek. No. I wasn’t on the cheerleaders poster.
After promising she could get in touch with them through e-mail, they took her business website down on the back of the poster and we were off.

At last we found the store of all hope. It was a red painted building located on a side street between two major ones. Little Richie was heard playing on the radio from outside.

“Hello?” We admired the knitted bikini’s hanging from the wall. Instantly a tall woman with a huge smile greeted us from behind the counter. She noticed the un-rolled poster and shrieked, “Oh My God! Dave, get out here!” She shouted someone in the back room.
A sign with a joint painted on the top read: No Smoking of Any Kind

A big, red-faced, man walked into the room with his trousers pulled bellow the paunch resting above the belt. He instantly recognized my roommate from the porn awards hosted the previous year. He had the picture of her with so and so. Did she remember so and so? No, she didn’t, but he has a camera with the pictures still on it.
The manager comes back with his digital camera and shows us a few photographs from the award show. Sure enough, so and so IS with her.

He takes a few pictures of her holding one of the store dildo’s before the woman behind the counter rushes to give us some free merchandise. I am with a celebrity. I watch with fascination and a confused sense of high school awe as her picture is snapped a few times. My partner and I move out of the picture as the woman behind the counter wants one of her too.

The adventure has awaken some of the more honest thoughts that have been musing around in my head. While feminism and femininity aren’t the same thing, they can often be perceived as it.

It kicked in after twenty minutes. My goosebumps disolved and the jimmies are gone. The twitching and joint aches are almost completely gone and the best part is, the cravings aren’t there!!! It’s crazy. I know there’s no such thing as a magic pill, but this comes pretty damn close. I know I can kick the habit for good now.

I don’t feel high. I don’t feel bad. I have a normal amount of energy and I can walk around with out a lot of pain! After the doctors office, I filled the script and decided to walk home in the bright sun of two p.m. I bought an apple for 89 cents at the rittenhouse market and talked on the phone to Mom. She is excited for me too! Nic and I are doing it together.

Currently he’s dancing to Michael Jackson with me. We are so cool. I totally thought I was going to feel like shit for the rest of my life. Like it was never going to get reversed. I was so scared I was going to take the medicine and it was going to be just like methadone and I wouldn’t be able to quit. Or worse, I would just realize that there wasn’t anything to live for, but I remember. I remember what it’s like to be sober and happy.

I’m doing good. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You know when you hear that song that you haven’t heard in god knows when, and you know something really strange is going on. You can’t pin point it. You just turned on the radio and the song might be over in a matter of seconds. You’ve got only a split second to live.
Jamie’s crying.

Last night was the last. Friday dirt in my yellow room. No more yellow, I’m telling you. We were all stretched out on the mattress. the canope. the floor. packed in like sardines with drooling happiness. Jesse was telling a story, but I can’t remember it for the life of me. Jessica was trying to ignore danny with out his feelings getting hurt. I’m off in some other place all together, thinking about my sideways window. Thinking about Michael Jackson. Where did he go?
And then it becomes an obsession. Something I have to find. No, push it away, it’s not important.

An image of one of the Mike’s from high school flashes into my head. He’s moonwalking across the club floor with disco lights flashing around in unison. We’re clapping and moving like animals to Thriller and he’s drunk. We’re drunk. Thrilled. Definitely.

The flash is over and my yellow room has turned to twlight of Saturday. I wake up and songs are pounding in my head, I can hear them through my radio mind until I’m singing them. Humming them. Typing them. Smiling. Not quite ready to let them go.

The basement was flooded with sewage. The toilet wouldn’t flush and the corner stores did not have public bathrooms. What was one to do? I waited for as long as I could, but when nature called there was nothing I could do. Peeing was not an option.

I walked next door to the woman who often sat on her stoop. She would joke with the neighbors and say hello to everyone that lived in our house.  I found her sitting on her stoop, drinking lemonade.

“My bathroom doesn’t work and I hate to ask you this, but do you think I could use yours?” I had only said hi to her a few times and she didn’t really know us. Her smile flashed broad and white as she nodded her head with a knowing smile.

“Of course honey, these old row houses always have plumbing problems.”

She led me through the front door of her identical looking house. The outside was a mirror to our house, but from inside it was a different world. The furniture was mostly broken and the floors were half way ripped up with un-finished wood pannels. A narrow stairwell led upstairs to the single bathroom.

“Just don’t flush, I have to jiggle the handle afterward.”

I didn’t know how to explain to her that this wasn’t going to be a pretty sight. The bathroom was a small room with only a bath tub and a small toilet with a metal chain attached to the handle.  I sat and looked out the window into the back courtyard.

“Thank you,” I said again as I left the house.

A few mintues later I saw the woman throwing my shit out her window. Her toilet didn’t work either apparently. She must have not wanted me to know that it was broken. How long had her pipes not been working? Her smile was big when I asked if I could use her bathroom, she never hinted that she had the same problems and maybe a similar money situation.  Through pride and manners, she never said a thing to me about it, not then, not ever. I am eternally grateful.

________

Dr. K called me the other day and reffered me to someone who is willing to prescribe me suboxone. I’m ecstatic. I called him today but the earliest time he has for an appointment is two weeks away. God give me strength.

“Oh I miss my wife.” He met his wife two years ago but they deported her to Albania a year after. This june was supposed to be their anniversary where he visited her in Europe, but his mother died and he had to stay in the U.S. this year. Do I work? He wants to know because HE works all day and night to get some money for his wife.

“She tells me that she loves me and she knows how men have….” he looks in the rear view mirror. “needs. so she says to me that I should go out and get a girl.” he laughs weakly as I watch the chinese food stores roll by. Wet people loitering around the laundromat held their heads to their shoes. Pacing.

I smile politely and the driver continues to tell me that he is a romantic. His wedding anniversary was now on  Valentines Day.

I finally re-appeared on Opal street where I found the jem house with the missing box.  I was lucky.

Randy newman was playing on the radio. I still can’t get it out of my head. That stupid rednecks song wouldn’t even make it to NPR. Not yesterday. Not in the future. (We’re still rebels with out cause.) Mother’s day was yesterday and I left a message on the machine. Ma called this afternoon. Her roof is leaking, but she got some duct tape so ”everything’s okay for a little while.”

“Back on my feet again.”

The mexi-mart down the block has coffee cakes for fifty cents. The little debbie kind, but I don’t care. I tore off that wrapper right there on the rainy street and gorged. Hungry. greatful. two dollars in my pocket, for a bus ride to nowhere. somewhere. anywhere. tomorrow i’ll go.

Purple smeared all over her gapped up teeth until embarrassment was rouged on everyone’s face. What to do with such a situation? Grow up. Stand up. Pick up your knees if you can’t use them. Away she slipped as our bodies bruised in the heat of color.

toast? you bet. internet? you bet. Happy gilmore? yup.
I think I’m going to own my own ranch one day. Out in the west with tons of lizards. They’re the easiest to maintain, you see. None of those chickens for me. No thank you. But salamanders, now there’s some quality meat. I could sit on my steps drinking beer and eating oranges until the sun came down. portable radio next to me. My friend for the evening.
Sometimes I think I don’t even need anybody. No one. Not a one. I could be out in the desert completely isolated and as long as I had my books, I might be alright. Who knows. Maybe better than alright.
Sometimes I wonder what the hell I’m doing in the city.
Living off of frosted flakes and ego waffles forever.

The corner stores though. That’s where it’s at. They’ve got that salsa music that just keeps beating. Right through to my speakers until I reach home. And it’s still there.

White lace turned to silver. As says the woman who refuses to color her hair. No denial for the strong. They’ve already faced the space for face. Bushy legs for the laughter that haunts gym class girls. Hitching up their jeans just in time for the no-razor policy at home.
She sneaks one in from a friend only to have it yanked from the shower a week later.

“They stole my clothes when I was in the shower.” She protests but strength is stronger when women are older.

An old man told me the answer when I asked if it ever gets better.
‘Only easier.’
Strength is curious when the pull isn’t hard. Falling flat isn’t the option that anyone looks for when their pressed against the shiny floor. Reflection is the only saving grace when embarrassment steals it from us.

The antique jewlery stayed hidden in a dusty box on a forgotten shelf. Trinkets become alive. Discovery becomes real. Gold and jewls decorated in thick chains of social events still remain in tact. They decorate the memories of old and forgotten, but still saved. Still saved.

Light orange walls with the paint peeling stayed hugging the sheetrock. They’ve been making love since the fifties, but no one looks anymore. Their secret is safe with me. The evening crickets understand when background noise becomes white with pale intentions.

“I’m never going back.” The little girl says to her mother in a heap on the floor. Naked as she is, her clothes were found. Wrapped up in disaster, her eyes are pleading for the shaving razor.

White lace as she was, the hair color remains untouched.

________________

So today was one of those days that was the best it could get before everything went downhill. Niccolo and I spent the day together. He took off work, we hung out listening to techno and talking to the roommates.  We had the BEST sex ever. Aggressive, fun, daring.

And then came the diner. As we were walking to the diner fifteen blocks down, things took a turn for the worse.  He started talking about how he wasn’t impressed with my trying-to-get school in progress because I wasn’t there yet. He said I was dependent and also warned me he would not be around as much since he would be attending school. He kept talking and talking and talking in this snide way that he does that I consider not only patronizing, but demeaning.  I said that I agreed with everything and that he was right because after a half hour I couldn’t argue anymore. Then we got to the diner.

He said I was starting to act like Jessica. He told me that Eric told him I lied a lot when he reconciled with his dope fiend friend who has an anger problem and blamed me for his GIRLFRIEND stealing 200 dollars outof his room.  Nic kept insulting and insulting me until I finally walked out of the diner and didn’t speak to him. I told him to leave me alone.

And that’s where the night ends.

A small girl was dancing in the electric moon outside my porch. A boy followed her presence with stumbling feet.
Don’t get to thirsty. I thought to myself, but lifetimes only last forever.

In years past, I have had the following heros:

*The guy who dresses up like Flavor Flav. on South Street and rides his bicycle with a viking helmet

*A man who danced at the Dawning just like Seth Green from Party Monster

*The woman who used to pretend she was pregnant by wearing a pillow under her shirt

*Someone who dressed up as Ronald Mcdonald and sat on a park bench drinking beer on week nights.

If you would like to be my hero, there are a few requirements:

You must be interesting.

You must have some sort of odd talent worth writing about

You must have a sense of humor

You must not mind being stalked or having random photos snapped during odd hours.

If interested, please send me a photograph and a paragraph on why you should qualify to: Nosika13@aol.com

PLEASE serious inquries ONLY

Yup, when I’m rich and famous I’m going to leave the city. No more mad-mouthed city folk for me. I’m heading straight home to Louisiana. Catch a train somewhere and won’t stop until I’m satisfied.
I imagine I’ll come across some pretty odd people on a train to Louisiana. Probably some illegals, looking to find a place away from the law. I’ll say, ‘hey, you heading where I’m going?’
They’ll say ‘yes ma’am. Soon as I’m done with this wine, I’m going to float my way back home and never head back.’

We’ll start a posse. A group of odd balls from all over the place.
One Electrician for obvious reasons.
One blues pianist for drinking reasons.
One geek for entertainment.
And a small Italian woman to cook.
Yup, we’ll be friends from the beginning and right up to the end.

Some people might ask, why go to a flop house if you’re rich and famous? Well, I’ll say, It’s been a long time coming for some place I can relax.
What with all the book signings and tv interviews, a girl can get pretty tired. NYC isn’t for everyone you know.

I’ll eat off the fat of the land and avoid religion at all costs. Some paranoid catholic comes into my field, I’ll set them right in their place. Across the property.

Extravagant parties will be thrown. Invitation only of course. Writers, painters, musicians, photographers, people with real personality.  Accents included. Boston, Louisiana, New York if it has to be. Hell, I’ll even let Canadians come. Gawty dresses, feather costumes, no clothing at all. It doesn’t matter. Me and my posse will charge at the door, five dollars each. Bourbon and pipe tobacco flowing free through out the house.

If someone comes into stop us, we’ll woo them with our stories of wit and adventure until they too are partying with the rest of us.
“I must say, I was going to arrest everyone of you all, but I finally realized, there’s no other place like this on earth.”
And who knows. Maybe it would be true.
________________

It’s as if the air is sighing with out so much as a breeze. Deadened branches pointing to the once dramatic fall and the flirtatious spring. What a tease.  Running around with summer’s swimsuit body and blond ambitions, she falls short to a hot day.

Today can only hope for a taste of what tomorrow might have.

Slow cars for small roads. I was riding in the passanger side accompanying my mother on an adventure to the James River. We were headed toward the ferry, picnic in brown paper bags, sunglasses, pressed against the pits of our eyes, camera in the purse.

Now we just had to roll through the sleeping towns of Dollar General, Video Store, (actual name) the Grocers Market, one restaurant, one bar, and several concrete houses. The towns that didn’t quite make the map. The back roads with back woods people lazily strolling down a dirt road sidewalk. Burly men with open beer cans out in public. Sun burnt February. These were the villes.

“I wouldn’t mind living up here.” Again, I was surprised to hear Mom say such a thing. “It’s funny, when I moved down to the South I was so suspicious of everyone. Why ARE these people smiling… I guess you’re finding out the opposite up North.”

We drove past a couple more no-map villes and ended up under the clouds. Trespassing onto the Ferry boat and skipping stones into the river. Sandwiches never tasted so good. Water never felt so cold. We were home grown into the jungle.

The last part of the dream was me looking out the sliding door at night and waiting. I knew they would find me and bring me back, but I had no other place to go and I didn’t want to leave anyway.

I can’t stop crying. This is terrible. It’s valentines day and I want to call my mom, but I know if I do, I’ll end up telling her everything and she’ll get worried and I just wanted so bad to be alright. I wanted to move to Philly and prove that I could hold my own.  I hate myself. I hate every part of me.  I hate my hair. I hate my shoulders. I hate my brain.  I hate everythig. every goddamn last thing.  I don’t think things are going to get better. I thought about ending it. I always fuck that up too. I thought about going home.  I fuck that up too.  There’s nothing left. nothing except a house underwater.

No, Rebecca. Remember the first day was worse.  It was colder. You were sicker. There was less to eat. Now you’ve got to get up. Put on your makeup. Brush your hair. Clean yourself up. I know no  one is home now, and it may feel like you’ve lost your support group, but this is the time to prove that you can be alright.  It’s valentines day. You’re going to make it.

I hope so.

I know so.

Cold sweats. Hot flashes. Aches. Vomiting. Depression. Coughing. Dizziness. Exhaustion. Confusion. And just an overall unpleasant feeling.

From two p.m. I staggered out of bed naked from last night. I desperately wanted to use the bathroom but to my luck, our pipes broke and the toilets don’t work. I grabbed a thin bathrobe and made it to the shower. My first success. About twenty minutes later I hobbled back to my room to try and turn on the space heater, but it sparked off (which means I have to unplug it and wait for a half hour to turn it back on.)

So then I cried for a little while. (The space heater was a big upset as you can see) I tried sleeping but dreams consisted of a whore house with flashing lights leading to mine and a friend’s arrest for using dope. After that I didn’t really feel tired.

Upstairs to Joe’s room it was. This was the second success. I couldn’t find the hair brush under all the filth in our room so I just left it wet and tangled. I listened to MFDoom and Michael Jackson records with Matthew and Joe and Joe’s new girlfriend. I smiled when Matthew started dancing to ‘PYT’. That was my third success.

Someone asked me why I was so sick. I told Matthew what was going on and he was really really supportive. He wasn’t upset at all and it felt so good to have people that knew and were really genuinely concerned let me hang out with them. That was my fourth success.

Then. Came the unimaginable. Matthew suggested we go out for pizza. The weather must have been negative with wind and I was already cold, but I knew I had to get out or I would start feeling worse. After about an hour of procrastinating and listening to more records, we left the house. It was bitter frozen. The winds were hitting the alleys like boxers. Mad boxers. Maybe as mad as Mike Tyson himself.

At a slow group pace, we gradually defeated Mike Tyson one step at at a time and made it to 7th and Carpenter. I bought a a big pizza for everyone and ate about half a slice before throwing up. We talked about the stupid news that was on the pizza parlor tv. I laughed when we all made fun of the chickens that were ‘running ramped in a PA middle school.’ That was the fifth success.

We ate and talked for a long time. I got to use the bathroom at the pizza place. Sixth success. I bought something to drink and as Matthew and the gang went to the library, I made it home with out any lurking pedestrians asking me if ‘I was good?’ Seventh Success.

I was approaching the stoop when a terrible thought crossed my mind. What if the door is locked. Now, I did have my keys around my neck, but I am a frequent worrier and one of my problems is opening locked doors. Sure enough the door was locked. It must have been a test of God. I finally found the latch to my necklace (were my keys safely rest) and with frigid fingers got the keys to miraculously fit in the door. Eighth Success!!

With an adventure accomplished and a small amount of food still in me, I went upstairs and lied down to watch cartoons for an hour. I went back downstairs to socialize with the roommates and watch a movie later on tonight. Ninth success.

So far, it’s eight thirty p.m. The vomiting has subsided and although there is no toilet, I think I can wait until tomorrow.

Today is the first day.

Tomorrow is the last day.

Wednesday is a break day with two lines.

Thursday is the first day again.

Friday is the last day.

Saturday is break day with two more lines.

Sunday is the first day.

Monday is the toughest day.

Tuesday is the last day.

Wednesday is sanity again with two lines.

I can do it. Today was a success. Tomorrow comes later.

Two days ago was the start. This was the look of things.

Who were these men in flannel and berets? They were smoking pipes out of an era that was lost more than fifty years ago. Jungle juice, vodka, and lots of smoke was traveling around with a grey cloud of people. Bands that sounded badly out of tune with the prospect of angsty anger toward romance sang with their guitars and drums in our basement.

I pushed past crowds of people clustered together in their own private groupings so I could reach the front basement area. Past the grungy carpet I used to sleep on I felt the cold through barefeet among a sea of boots. Finally. A familiar face. Mr. Mustache is standing with his leg stretched out and a beer clasped in his hand. Chain smoking with the other.

The eyes of others were monsterous. Largely focused on the hope of a nearby fame. Could it be? There eyes were large enough to eat the drumset. Engorging all the people and the publicity of myspace photos documenting the evening. Eyes were everywhere. Lurking out of the corners of sofas. Darting between lines of drugs. Flashing flirtatiously at the concept of dare-we-think one night stands?

I sat down onto my mattress after some time had passed. Wrapped around the curl of constant cigarettes, I could feel my face fading. Only ten thirty? How could that be?
With the flash of untying robes into the night life of toilet papered bathrooms, I liked the feel of silk. In an instant, it might be gone.

________________________
The Social Orchestra

I hear people in the bathroom…
from Nic’s bedroom.  I think there’s a small group of people smoking pot in the shower.
Someone Nic works with by the name of Keith, bought some dope from us. While we were sitting in the room, he started to talk about all the old things I have heard just like everyone else, a million times over.
- his adventures of warrants out for him in three states.
-his girlfriend is annoying and out of line talking about his dope addiction.
- mentions casually the word ‘addiction’ as if it is in fashion.

Keith is the kind of guy who likes to think of himself as breaking all the rules because he hates the fact he sucks up to get where he is. Probably the kind of guy who would be ashamed by family wealth. He likes flirting with the idea of a scene in heroin. He looks for danger in office buildings.

College girls are in the next room…
“It’s funny how South Philly is so different from West Philly.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s so much more laid back here, but I don’t know.”
“Yeah, I mean I guess these are like, what happened to those people our age that didn’t go to college.”

I was fixing up the dress above my breasts. Tugging at the straps and constantly ‘checking’. Oozing sex, I felt the eyes belonging to long shirts and leggings of nervous chatter. Aware of small, awkward moments, thoughts contained of;
A red lollipop licked and sucked between Mr.Mustache and I.
Barefeet in the basement of bands.
Sitting cross legged with a cigarette tucked between fingers of a rouged lifestyle consisting ‘pure funk.’
The girl who said nothing but kept sitting very closely with cigarettes going both ways.

The satin sensations faded early in the night, but music was still breathing safely from downstairs. I can hear them now singing drunk from the social symphony in awe.

Chain smoking we made it to the Planned Parenthood building a few minutes too late. Closed. My shot at the morning after pill has been denied. I don’t think I’m pregnant, but now I’ll have to wait until I can take a test. These types of things always make me nervous.

Jessica told me little jess sent her a plane ticket for her 21st birthday out to LA so she could visit. She’s excited and wants to sit in at Little Jess’s work and watch the porn business spin into action. They’re going to a few clubs since she’s old enough now. I told her to make sure and take lots of pictures.

She said Shakti was very nervous when she came up. They were walking around on our block when two ghetto guys approached them and asked them if they wanted to go to a party. Shakti was scared, but Jessica handled it with ease. She’s good at standing tough in nervous situations. Nothing like that ever happens in Charlottesville. Shakti’s very pretentious. She likes to talk about fashionable poets from the 19th century and drink tea with perfect posture. She’s more conservative than she thinks. The city would eat her alive.

The glitter in her body is what attracts people. Jessica has it too. Something shiny and mysterious that comes out loud from their eyes. Sparkling so bright that people can see it from a mile away.  They talk about astrology, haunted houses, herbal tinctures and cultural mysteries that are half believable and half magic. They are very feminate in a loud presence. Tough victims. Shakti’s eyebrows curl upward in a ‘you’ve hurt me’ way that catches people into sympathy where as Jessica is more flirtatious. Swirling like smoke they trickle soft through people’s eyes.

I’ve been called the quiet mysterious type. I don’t talk loud and my words aren’t tough or interesting. Magic for me comes out too blunt and accidental. As if I’m stumbling through mistakes that seem to fall into place in unusual circumstances. I sit quietly, usually curled into my thoughts with rounded shoulders to protect me from something cold and expected.  You can’t see me a mile away and my dark clothes make me invisible. A hopeful invisibility that comes with imaginary justice. I pretend to glide through town in scarves and boots, hovering close to windows so I can people watch. Waiting to find those people that glitter over me so I can sit and stare in awe.

Today I was with the shiny. Our reflections bounced off one another and for a second, there were no accidental circumstances.

I gazed a thousand miles away at his New York Times that he had sent to the room. The king sized bed with bland, white, sheets matching the walls and hotel art stood blankly staring back at me. Mahogany wooden shelves and dressers with his fancy looking cell phone and keys placed on top. The black suitcase was walked up to our room by a black door man all-too-eager to open the door. I couldn’t help wondering if these were the people on our block. The ones people could buy ten dollars worth of dope from. The cologne said no.

Dad walks in an air of happy oblivion. So far away from what really goes on in skanktown basements of night crawling cities. He likes it that way. Pillow Chocolates and fancy dining with taxi’s as far as the eye can see.

“You like this camera?” I smile proudly, pulling out an expensive looking, tiny, digital camera from a hidden pocket. “I found it in the back of a cab one night.”

“Oh yes, that’s the exact model I was thinking of buying.”

I remembered last years Christmas present I saved for him. A digital camera. I said nothing as we were miles away in room 903.

Sometimes I think he’s too quiet. A boy with his mind shouldn’t sit in too much silence. It floods our room until it’s too much to see. Creeping through the crack below the door- it dances down the hall. Into the living room and filling the entire house with a strange type of silent curiosity. White. With all the colors constricted into a bland sheet of paper. Hammering away at it until the secrecy is unfolded online.

Today we were adventurers. New friends for an afternoon.

-One with a suitcase filled with stolen goods from the magic shop.
-Another was a roommate with a Jewish afro as tall as the brothers johnson.
-The third was a feminate black man by the name of Gum Drops.

They all had on hats out of the 1940s.  Complete with checkered jackets made of tweed and brown loafers. We went to a gentrifying coffee shop where people of the same attire read the papers with a look of concern folding in their eyebrows. Let Me Tell You a little something about those democratics. Worry  has lept so far down their media loved throats that fear has become a trend far worse than the common conservative.

We bumped into Erick and Stephanie planning a futuristic ice skating trip to Penns Landing. Conversation floated to childrens cinnema and ET and Star Wars. Jobs were discussed as a friend of a friend got gyped on his pay check. A common occurance.

We then strolled in a pack of pale dressed bougie’s back to our humble abode on Washington Ave.  I could feel the eyes lurking behind section 8 buildings as we tried to hide our rich shame from catching up.  Gentrification Association. And we WERE the neighborhood watch.
We returned to the living room with a mysterious wooden coffee table newly purchased a few days ago. Lit incense and talked about the shopping cart people. People we didn’t know who had slept on our couches the night before. People with attitudes. People with friends. Fight at bars. Music. Records. Comedy.

After a conspiracy movie on what Really happened on 9/11 I walked brisk to the questionable Chinese Food store and bought my humble 2.75 cents cheese burger. Nic and I cleaned and took a shower.

I laughed as he serenaded me with his dancing. Not ashamed of our bodies underwater. Unshaven legs. I bent down to kiss him and found his voice stutter to groan from laughter to pleasure. The Silence had been broken.

“Do you know who the Ghost busters are?” He asked with enthusiasm.
The man shook his head, glancing around for a parent in sight.
“Are you a Ghost Buster? You look like one. Is that why you’re going to everyone’s house? To make sure they don’t have any ghosts?”
“No, I work for the post office.” The man smiled awkwardly.
The little boy did not believe this. “I think I have a ghost. Mama just yells at me when I tell her, but she doesn’t know.”
“Do you think it’s invisible?” The man asked.
“No. I see it sometimes. It races from under my bed to out the window when it gets really really late at night.”
“What do you do about it?”
“I scream. But now that you’re here, you can fight it for me.” The little boy looked up at him with a strange sort of hope glittering from inside his eyes.
“I don’t have my equipment.” The man finally said.
“That’s okay. You’re bigger than me. Maybe you could come over for a slumber party.”

I watched as the little boy followed the postal worker down the block. With each door the postal worker knocked on, the people seemed to over look the little boy. It was as if they must have known him to do this quite often. Maybe like a stray dog that they all feed every now and again to keep him full.
The postal worker got to the end of 7th street and looked down to the future of row houses to come.
“Little man, I have to go now. I’ve got a lot more work to do.” I could hear him as he squatted down to the height of the little nose pointed up.
“I can follow you. We could be friends.”
“No, little man. You should stay on your block. Your mom might start to wonder.”
“It’s okay.”
The man gave him a little smile and shifted the mail bag onto his right shoulder. He waved and then disappeared further down the street.
Little boys shouldn’t be so eager to talk to strangers. I watched him as he mosied back to his stoop, slumped along the steps with another lollipop. Waiting for the Ghost busters.

I was slung over a summer chair enjoying the fresh cigarette smoke filtering out of a cheap pack of 3.74 cents. Draped arms and crossed legs, I felt rich inside a gigantic jacket.  Perhaps I’ll just glance through this free magazine as I pretend to be on lunch break too.  I thumbed through the future as my friend gazed off into the distance. Messy blond pig tails and jeans that frayed around the edges. She looked a bit out of place, as if stumbling through thoughts in one of those graceful trances where stumbling is dancing in disguise.

“Do you always stumble through the door?” A man with messy facial hair had asked me the night before last.

It’s as if everything I do is half by mistake and half by constant thought. The kind that wraps me up in it until every detail is faulted through the expectation of the next. My legs lingering mysteriously through the starch of black jeans that need to be washed.

Something about messy beginnings  to graceful afternoons reminded me of the sunny seventy degrees. If only it would stay this way forever…. but ladies from all over are slithering their way back to work.

go go dancers

starving artists

goth/independent/diverse modeling

‘independent film’

etc.etc.

The show proves hilarious and actually has a real myspace. However, I get the feeling the people who are target audience are going to be inevitably the anti-hipsters who are basically the same thing as hipsters. (Incredibly opinionated snobs)
I don’t think anyone can stop the gentrification going on with our current economical situation. People are poor. People are going to get more poor. Trust fun(d) kids or not, I think the best we can do for now is just make fun of it.

The Mummers Parade traveled northward on Broad Street in Philadelphia for decades. black face paint was once a traditional part of the parade. Growing dissent from civil rights groups and the offense of the black community led to a 1964 official city policy ruling out blackface.  Because of the large number of clubhouses there, South 2nd Street (Two Street) often serves as a party location after the parade, with the epicenter being South 2nd Street and Mifflin Street. Local residents and others in the area for the parade crowd the local bars, clubhouses and sidewalks, sometimes joining in the unofficial parade. With the parade they spent months preparing for over, the Mummers let loose and celebrate. This multi-block party continues well into the night or early morning, with some Mummers not sleeping for 24 hours straight.

______________

New Years day was the mummers day parade. The Mummers day parade is basically a tradition carried on in Philadelphia which consisted of marching racism. Black painted faces. People dressed as Mexicans. Drunk men and women with their children watching as free bottles of alcohol were distributed from elaborate costumes.

That was only the beginning. Around eleven p.m. Mr. eyebrows, a few others, and I walked down to second street where the after-party was lingering. I figured it might be a group of people drinking and chatting on their stoops. As we approached second street however, we were greeted by several policemen in knee high patent leather boots and shiny leather coats. They were standing in a line in front of thousands of empty beer bottles littered across the street. It was like nothing I had ever seen.

Jesters getting drunk and screaming with Italians everywhere you looked. The perfume of beer was so strong if you weren’t drunk- you might as well have been. Bars were packed on every corner with blasting music that could barely be heard over underagers scarfing down 6 dollar beers. People sold blinking lights and face paint while most people were still in their costumes. The streets glittered with aluminum. Though the police looked strikingly similar to Nazi’s – no move was made to stop what was seemingly a riot of loud, pushing, screaming, Italians, neighbors, women, kids, everyone. Filling streets for miles into the night.

The first fire is the kind that’s burning out of control. You’re not sure where it’s going to end up or what damage it could potentially do. You haul the furniture out of the way and make room for this explosion because when it comes, it’s there.  The kind that attracts your eyes so flamboyantly that your body feels it. Bright. Quick. Sharp. Despite the spark that let it begin, there is a madness to it that can’t easily be escaped. It’s an attraction that you might be fooled into thinking will be there forever. You could be having a fine time when all of the sudden you are sucked into something so beautiful that by the time you take your eyes off it, you could be burned up in the commotion.

The second type is one that’s kept in a fire place or wood stove. Little bits of paper are saved up from the Sunday New York Times and stacked neatly in the living room for special occasions. You wait all year for fire weather to begin, and if it’s not quite there by the time you NEED a fire, than you crank the air conditioning or roll down the windows, and light a match anyway. The firewood has been stored in bulk from last year, ‘just incase.’  There are fire pokers, fire prongs, sawdust, wooden stakes, boxes among boxes of matches, and plenty of supervision. This is the kind of fire that takes timing. It takes patience and lots of care. Perhpas you are sitting around drinking cocktails with family or friends while one eye is always watching, ‘just to make sure.’ At night, when you pry yourself away from the glow, you can still hear it crackeling downstairs as if it’s calling to tell you ‘I’ll see you in the a.m. Don’t worry.’

The last type is probably the most quiet. The kind that is decorated in an upscale house with fruit paintings lined ‘just so’ on the mantle. Guests may come in and out and on such an occasion you might need a fire to keep some sort of entertaining image glowing. These are the times of fake logs. The twenty-somethings or the money holders with out experience and patience. It’s the paper kind that you don’t even have to peel off the log before setting a match to flame. They burn for a few hours, it’s a rich glow with out much sound. There’s nothing to it. Ease comes fast and no work is required. As the hours grow longer the fire starts to dwindle. ‘It will last longer’, you think to yourself, but the crackeling was never there to begin with.  When all the guests have left the house, you see yourself rearranging the pictures on the mantle and blowing out the candles. The fire is almost out. You don’t have to pour a bucket of water on it. You don’t have to poke it with a fire stick. You know that there is no sound to tell you it will be there in the morning. It wasn’t really there in the beginning.

Dad called me a few days ago to make sure I would be at my apartment at one p.m. today. He stresses this point FOUR times. He says he is going to pick me up and drive me back to Virginia so I can see family that same day. My sisters on my mother’s side are only going to be in town for tonight.

Today Dad calls me and says he is going to be an hour late and is not going to drive me back on the same day. Ordinarily I would understand, it’s a lot of driving. However, since my sisters live far away and I only see them on the holidays, I am upset because now I will not get to see them. Four hours later when Dad has still not arrived- I call him to say I am upset. I will not see my family like we had planned and he has continued to lie about the times he will meet me. I say that I do not want to see him tonight and I will call him tomorrow morning.

With this, he says he is incredibly disappointed in me and I will have to call him tomorrow and he MAY pick me up in the morning or May pick me up in the afternoon since he is so upset that I am being ‘rude.’ I say that is fine and I am incredibly disappointed as well. Now I will not be able to see my family which I was planning on seeing for months now. Dad gets angry and says now he’s not even sure if he will take me back to Virginia at all since I’m being so rude.

I have every right to be rude. He expects me to kiss his feet for picking me up after I had planned on taking the bus. He is late. He is not taking me back on the day we had planned so I could see my sisters. And HE is disappointed in ME? Apparentlly I don’t have a justified reason to be mad. I think he was the one that was sensationally rude. I am now not going back to Virginia and spending Christmas alone. Mom is pissed at me. Dad is disappointed that I’m mad. I am furious.

Worst things you can do on a phone:
-keep talking when you are at a register or in a meeting
-arrange to ‘buy forty for five’ in anywhere public
-continuously say the word ‘yeah’
-leave that awful rap song ringer singing way past the 3 minute call.

Phone Facts:
*A cell phone operates at a maximum power level of 0.6 watts. A household microwave oven uses between 600 and 1,100 watts.
*People in the UK apparently change their phones every ten months.
*In Europe 100 million phones get thrown away every year.
*Recycled phones have valuable metal (such as gold) that is taken out.
*Around 300 million cell phones are used in the U.S.
*The first car phone was marketed in 1982.
*An average cell phone user owns 3 non working cell phones.
*Only 2 percent of Americans recycle their old cell phones.
*Cadium chemical in one cell phone battery can contaminate 600,000 gallons of water.

A woman with red, withered, hair got off on Market Street clutching her ‘hamster coat’ as Dave put it. The tufts of different shades of brown fur were looking a bit ratty pulled up close to her teenage white-trash effect.  She looked vaguely familiar, but I’m not sure why. I thought about Natural Born Killers.

Off to search for dads gift.

My partner in crime and I were skirting the edge outside in the designated smoking yard.
”say something.”
”my it’s a nice night out. We can almost see the stars.”
A guilty laugh was shared as we stared around the clothes line and lingering backside of row houses. True adventureres. I must say…. through my awkwardness, I was pleasantly reminded how Niccolo and I seem to think the same things at the same time.

Highlighting points of tonight:
Our friend puking on the walk over.
A singer talking about his cathader
The blacklit kitchen (I thought was cool)
The typical drug talk outside.

“Favorite quote“: Our friend is the guy with the plaid shirt and sideburns.

A man with sideburns and a plaid shirt came out and I was about to introduce myself to the friend when I realized it wasn’t him.

I left around eight feeling totally stupid and snobby. Rebecca….. it’s going to be okay.

I arrived in town at my grandmother’s house on Thanksgiving. Greeted by the heavy-New York accent my uncle defines.  The skinniest girl (being his daughter) was pointed out fairly early into the conversation. New York Accent included.

Tradition is very important in our family. Not in a traditional sense though. A few good qualities passed along include:

 Snorting when we laugh.

Not being able to carry a tune.  

Talking with our hands. 

Perhaps the most shamed upon would be smoking. Every woman in the family excepting the most pure, smoked cigarettes. And no one wanted to be that pure except one person. Our Princess. Queen is what really fits her, but Mom already called that title.

The Princess is the one we all look at with hope for ourselves. A healthy dose of jealousy. A huge amount of respect. And a giant feeling of awe. Everyone has one in their family, our’s is my younger cousin, Sarah.

When I arrived at my Aunts house Tuesday morning, she immediately informed of the news. Thankfully the tumor was ”normal” and sarah was not going to die.  Then, the religious part.

Sarah had found a church group.

Religion is not a big ‘to-do’ in my family. In fact, it’s more of an opposite tradition, (a threat some might go so far to say)  so when Sarah joined the church group, she was definitely the first we had heard of. One of us? Going to one of those? Don’t be silly. We’re too strong for that stuff. Give us a pack of cigarettes and let’s call it a night.

As the week progressed, I met a friend of hers from the church group. Intrigued, I stayed to watch this turn of events. Anyone that could be involved with the church had to be at least watched for a little bit. (just to make sure nothing strange was going on here.) I curiously gawked as a small boy of probably sixteen, pulled out a collective bout of James Bond knowledge. (Accompanied by a video)

Though the conversation seemed a bit forced (mostly from my end) he was so tame, I couldn’t find a thing wrong with him.  Fun? Camping on a retreat. I wouldn’t even have the heart to ask him if he had used drugs.  Not to say I didn’t try.

I caught myself wondering if this was real. Could someone really be that generally nice? Then I looked over at Sarah who was laughing hysterically at the side comments to James Bond.  Oh yeah. I guess he could be.

I decided to lay low after invading her movie time with a boy. A boy. She shouldn’t be seeing Boy’s alone.  Maybe I shouldn’t have intruded in the first place, but you never can be too sure with the strong opinionated type.

 As we sat down to Thanksgiving dinner, Sarah and I faced the skinny-model looking cousin, but were too side tracked with Aunt Deborah’s snorting laugh and Uncle Mark’s flamboiant hand gestures to really notice. 

“Should we tell her about our excitement?” Deborah asked Sarah. Sarah didn’t seem to know what excitement had happened.

“Well…. Sarah was just napping there during lunch at school when all of the sudden someone tried to wake her up and she just wouldn’t come to. So they called the principal, he couldn’t wake her. They called the police. They couldn’t wake her…”

I look toward Sarah, to see if she’s at all nervous about the conversation, but like some sort of strange miracle, she is laughing.

“I named it Teddy the Tumor.”

Oh my dear God.

I couldn’t help snorting when I heard it. I wanted to laugh harder, but I was trying so hard to keep it in.  Why should I keep it in? It struck me why I didn’t like the religious idea. No way would I want to lose Sarah to anything that could be stronger than our family. That wasn’t going to happen. Teddy and I were going to be just fine.  

At the risk of sounding cheezy, I knew I wasn’t in the dark anymore.

Stripped. Into the shower with the fluffy white tissue sponge that reminds me of a flower.  Organic soap.  Baby shampoo- not used. I turned one of the knobs in the wrong direction and couldn’t figure out which knob was the hot and which one made it colder. Low spray until someone flushed a toilet.  Is fifteen minutes too long for a shower? I thought about twenty, I tried about ten.

The window facing the shower was steamed up so no one could see (or at least I hoped it that way.)  As usual, just as I finish hooking my bra, someone barges in. I scream. It’s Stephanie.

oh wait.no.it’s okay,I didn’t know it was you.

Lipstick is pressed onto my face. I should really remove my makeup at night. Acne never felt so painful.

She giggles, says it’s fine and closes the door on her way out.

wait.come back.I miss you and I didn’t even know you.

I can hear her loud laughter and playful screaming at Eric from the next room. “You would PUNCH your girlfriend?” The way she says it makes it seem like ‘gurrlfriend’ instead. I smile hearing them laugh as the wall is bounced against.  I knock anyway. My excuse is to let Stephanie know I’m out of the shower. No answer.

The flowers I bought Nic didn’t last too long. There was a show in the basement and one rose fell out of the vase and seemed limply on it’s way into death. I hung it upside down to dry on Niccolo’s ceiling pipe. Today it was on the ground. The greenery was still hung on the pipe, the rose had fallen plump to the floor.  I picked the petals off and scattered them over his carpet.  I feel a little like Mrs. Bridge today.  Desperately trying in insignificant ways and knowingly putting myself in ignorable situations.

I didn’t knock loud enough when I was locked out of the house this morning. Maybe I should have knocked louder on eric’s door.  onemayneverknow hiding out in the basement garden.

I left the row house just as the sun was starting to come up.

“Don’t go out in the fog! You’ll get mugged!” My much concerned roommate could be heard from her bedroom, but alas… I was too cool for safety.

Past Dickinson and several half streets I can make out the bus stops along the way but not much more than a block ahead of me can I see past morning. Several un-charmed large ghetto-looking women sat on their benches and stared as I stuck out like a ghost. I can only imagine what they think as some skinny white girl clunks along in her boots, hopelessly smiling because ‘hey…. everyone should be polite, right?’

Up to the main street I slink into a corner store and drop all of my 89cents onto the counter. Two ”tastykake” doughnuts. Success.

The woman behind the counter looks at me funny. She turns and says something to the two guys behind the deli stand, apparently they agree. Catching a glimpse of my reflection in the window, I notice my hair is slightly damp from the fog and my once gothic-applied eyeliner has smeared heavy into the mascara. Why haven’t I gone to bed yet? The question still lingers.

I’m waiting patiently (meaning grabbing my coat collar every few seconds and checking the electronic clock bill board with the other few seconds) when a group of boys in dirty jeans and faint mustaches riding in the back of a pick up truck, turn and start shouting. I can’t really hear what they are saying, a lot of whisteling. I nervously dig through my pocketbook in hopes of a distraction. No such luck. Unfortunately the hooker appearance is roaring it’s ugly head.

I finally get on the 47. Safe. Now I only have roughly ten blocks on a city bus until I am in the clear. (so to speak) For five thirty in the morning I have never seen a more packed bus. Sequined pollyester rubbing against fake jewels and afro’s with ‘phillies’ baseball caps smooshing the look. They were all pressed up against everyone standing, grabbing, poking, holding on to whatever possible as the insane Septa Bus driver sped through the empty streets.

Lurch. I’d fall forward. Poor grade school kids with their backpacks are trying not to fall out of the sliding door.

Lurch. I’d fall backward. Sleezy guy in back could be felt poking below.

Lurch. I’d grab on to the rail. And then suck in as grandmothers with their matching suit jackets would scramble off on 15th street.

The whole thing was rather exciting and deathly frightening. I clung onto my pocket book the whole time until it started to clear a little and I could get a seat.

Through out the ride, no one seemed to pay much attention to the crowd except one man who got on when the road started to narrow. We were all sitting down when he got on, said hello to the driver, tipped his brown top hat and said in the nicest,most upstanding way possible,

“Good Morning Folks. Sure is a nice Wednesday morning out there, ain’t it?”

He gripped his walker with a reassuring ease as he sunk down in a seat near me. His suit was entirely made out of nice brown linen and it looked like it had been ironed. He turned to the woman who was now smiling sitting next to him, and asked her how her kids were doing.

I got off at the next stop, but it made me wonder just where they were going further and further down the narrow foggy road to nowhere. Another adventure. Another morning.

By six I reached my destination but my savior in the living room, Joe, did not answer my calls. I called several times. I called from the window. I banged on the door. I rang the doorbell 8 times in a row. After twenty minute incriments I would do the whole routiene over again. At eight thirty I was let in by another roommate who had a salary job at 9 a.m.

Thank God for people who have it together.

 Today sitting in the java co. on south street, I found myself pulling down the lace in the black skirt I have been wearing for four and a 1/2(?) days. Long black coat drenched around me like rain with pockets pissing. holes jabbed at frayed edges and where were those jeans again?

Slouched into the booth seat with the curve of plastic that holds you in. 

Plain bagel and orange soda for $3.43 (including cream cheese)

The old man that has been staring for a few grimy minutes walks over in his leather chain jacket and silver chain buttons.

“Hi, have I met you before?” His hands are shaking due to the fact he could be 65.

I’m not sure. Probably not. I don’t get out much.

“Oh well, you looked real familiar and I’m a photographer so I thought I might have seen you. you know.”

no. not really.

‘yeah, well it was nice to meet you.’

“Yeah, I’m doing a model shoot. You know, something real artsy.” His hands wave around theatrically shaking still. “Can I sit down?”

oh jesus. no get away, with the propoganda.

‘um…’

“Well yeah, I’m doing this shoot, right?” He pauses. “I love bagels too. It’s with seven really pretty girls, oh by the way,” a sleezy smile. “you Are over 18 right?”

No. i’m actually fifteen. maybe fourteen. actually, I want to go home and ask mom right now.

‘yeah.’

The leather on his hands match his jacket. I can’t help, but wonder if this is how it always started.

“well, you know, I’m doing this shoot about seven girls who have exceptionally nice legs and its going to be all the way up, but you know, modest and really neat- like a magazine style. Of course we pay the models and any trade-for-portfolio pictures that you might want to you know, show other companies you have had experience.”

ok. well, i’m going to finish my bagel and i’ll get back to you on that.

‘do you have a number?”

The man scribbles down a ten digit telephone number onto a slip of paper. First three numbers are jotted with great hesitance for rememberance.

“Oh gosh, after the first car crash my hands were okay, but when the third one hit in ’99 I got the shakes.”

a smile.

“well, here, can you read it back to me?” The leather jacket passes me the slip scribbled as he holds his cell phone up to the paper.

Looking at the screen.

‘yup.  I got it.’

I scarfed down the remaining bagel and bolted. Out of annoyance perhaps. Or maybe the fact that just because I look self conscious and ‘not-from-around-here, are you?’ tips people off. Maybe because the slip of paper felt nice inside ripped expensive coats.

Much to my annoyances, I found myself locked. Barracaded. NO- not litterally…even worse… (physically). With the throws of PMS. I was wallowing in my heating pad when I noticed… there was nothing to read. No, not anything. Stuck in bed and NOTHING to even scan. My sixty four dollar tomato book was just that. Cooking books (Reluctantly tossed aside under the kitchen counter) My Sixty nine cent vintage porno book? Not holding captivity. And the only piles of books that were stacked were ones of only old notebook paper.
Then it came to me. A small red plastic covered book with the words enthusiastically painted on the front ”the most beautiful woman in town.”
(Engrossed by the thought) I quickly snatched it up and read the first chapter. hey—not bad.

The jacket cover was flipped. Defeated! Charles Bukowski had won.

After a few more stories/chapters I am hooked.

tastefully yours,
in two hours

“This Product Contains Olestra. Olestra may cause abdominal cramping and loose stools.”= Actual Warning Label

January 4, 2006,Frito lay was sued by a massachusetts consumer who was not happy about the ”Light” potato chip marketing. The thirty year old woman experienced ”severe gas”.

  Today was marked as the day.  Cab company called. 

Satin shoes. photography of Virginia cinder block houses with old women in there screened in door way.  Craigslist job hunting. Black framed spectacles. Sitting in a wedding veil watching saved by the bell. Priceless.

“So how’s life treating you, it’s been a long, long time.” I look up past the front seat of a yellow taxi. He’s not wearing his usual cowboy hat, it’s raining and his hair is sticking wet.

“Yeah, I’ve been around. What happened to the hat?”

“Got too old.”

- A gentleman should be the one walking curb-side to avoid any traffic water splashing on the woman.

- The person who does the asking out is the one who should pay, especially on a first date.

- Always ask when given a blow job where you should orgasm.

- Never have sex before your 3rd date.

- Do not have loud sex in a thin walled living space. Or on your roommates couch (no matter the comfort.)

- Though you may have fantasized over your cousin during those teenage years, it is not a good idea to act upon it.

- Men should still pull out the chair on a dinner date.

- Wearing high heels over four inches is cheap for any date.

Cues your date may give (according to AOL love)

- Is his hair extra disheveled? Assuming it’s not a fashion statement or your date isn’t an artist or poet, this signals he didn’t take the time to comb his hair. That says you’re not worth even a minute in front of the mirror. Be careful!

- Is your date acting too cocky? If so, it’s a sign that he’s insecure. You decide if it’s endearing or annoying.
(when would that Ever be endearing?)

I also found this tidbit of information on good old AOL

“Women beware if your husband talks about spending “quality time” together. More than anything else, this is the hallmark of a cheat.

Men be concerned, be very concerned, if your wife suddenly demands more sex, seems unusually attentive to you, and wears her wedding ring more often than she did before. And, men, this should really scare you: Women are far better at deception than you are.”

This online Study actually goes into detail about the precautions of not getting a yeast infection:

Apparently masturbation and oral sex are a ‘no no.’ My question is, why don’t more people have yeast infections? Instead of directly touching a woman’s vagina during sex, this article suggests doing other things that might turn her on (such as having a good conversation.) Or trying a physical activity (it suggests an obstacle course.) Middle school gym class really turns me on.

yellow skin with the green tint of a bathroom mirror. she was burning on fire contagiously wailing. 

help, I’m burning. “That’s what she said.” and her loins were guarded close by the woman who told her to. 

“no.” nose tipping to shoulder she presses her eyes quickly to the ground. slightly smiling or blushing out shame. i’m making love to the way you talk.

ears rang silent.