I. I don’t know how else to say it anymore except in fragments
II. I liked the way he was shaking sand out of my hair with his hands, in a sweeping motion. The tile floor bothered him, the accumulation of dirt, my posture, when I started muting commercials, slamming doors. I’d ask him to leave the room so I could finish stretching because maybe if I could touch my toes for another twenty minutes I’d stride down the hall like a goddamn saint and recross my legs, make it better. He lied about movie showtimes because it was easier than looking at me. I lied about leaving the lights on because since the day I had arrived there I knew I did not live there anymore.
III. A selling point, a moment of reassurance of clarity, of living proof, a reference point. I could write it down on a sheet of paper for you and say “Here buddy, look this up, it’s all there complete with a calendar.” I could have proved to you that I in fact did exist. That I really could remember. It was like those tapes I’d watch of myself as a baby when I was a toddler, so that I think my first memory is maybe something that it really is not. I think my first memory is of being in a crib, being held. My grandmother’s carpeting. My grandfather eating a banana in the kitchen. Being able to measure my own body into the size of a pillow cushion on the brown couch in the living room. Staring up at the ceiling and pretending I could walk backward, upside down across the room into the basement where there were no bedtimes and a party was going on. “Play Baby Daniela in the White Dress” maybe this is when it all started, some kind of narcissism of checking again, double taking myself. But I’ll agree with myself at the age of three, there was always some kind of fear in forgetting myself. “Play the one with baby Michael and the fire truck,” and then there is a proof, something to match up with a memory. Evidence.
Evidence because maybe, for a very long time now I have not been able to trust whatever narrative was provided. There have been photo albums and my collective diaries and journals, stacked in boxes and boxes in my parents garage, in a storage unit in Brooklyn, New York, left somewhere on the West Coast and here too, here like I write down on a sheet of paper. So I can reference myself. Daniela Scrima, were you fine on January 20th in 2002 because you know— that was ten years ago now? Isn’t that crazy. Well that must have been crazy. Well that must have been crazy. And then I will look and see to check on her— to check on me I guess, to see that I am still here (and there) embedded in some words of teenage strife that I have just turned seventeen, that Junior year of high school is better than Sophomore year but I do not like having second lunch. My boyfriend doesn’t have second lunch. I only say “my boyfriend”. And now, I cannot remember who I mean. An entanglement of things since puberty and for so long in writing a series of “him” a series of “that guy” when I am much younger a “boy” and three days ago during a reading about maybe my destiny and is it okay to indulge the parasitic lifestyles of others if, like, well it’s really hard to stop? And faces smiling back at me. It helps so much to smile.
IV.. I had meant to start writing again with the New Year— in here I mean, publicly but then it doesn’t go the way I plan. I plan to say something like “Lately I have been enjoying a plant based diet. I have been eating plenty of raw food, I think it makes me feel better.” But then I will want to talk about the pie I made or the donut I had or that I am not going to stop eating meat or dairy or anything at all because then when I am traveling, I always want to try whatever you are famous for. And see, even when I mean to talk like this or to tell you that I have not yet gone back to New York, I will say many other things instead.
V. All of those videos were lost anyway. I remember how they cut though from scene to scene. There she is and she can crawl. There she is she speaks Italian. There she is she speaks English too. Crawling does not last long. You are walking, you are singing. There, yeah my face, hey, exactly the same, those cheeks did you make that up? I remember you! Of course I remember you. I have been here all the time.
Slam those blocks together baby, slam them against the table and then someday when you grow up it will sound exactly the same as being in your own bones and listening to men walk out of rooms. People slamming doors.
I was just reading about how ![[info]]()
whiskeyface cut off all her hair. Cecilia, it has been so hard for me not to do this every time I throw a fit lately. And I’ve been throwing lots of fits. Not saying that you threw a fit. I think it’s easier for you to chop off your locks where as I usually first decide to leave the country.
I also want platinum blond hair as that is my other alternative hair rebellion. (Pink hair is not about rebellion, it’s about reaching a state of peace of how much I used to love Nirvana) I think the blondness makes me feel sluttier in a sexy way —-but what the fuck I just learned how to pull off red lipstick a little over a year ago and I really don’t need to shake my ass for much of anything these days— so maybe this mentality should go away along with my misuse of punctuation. Here’s to hoping.
I’ve been taking my feelings out on my hair for a long time. Last year someone broke up with me and my first instinct was to cut my hair, my second instinct was to get plastic surgery. My hair is still long. Did society do this to me or did I do it to myself? Do I get to blame my ego or my id? I’ll blame the follicles and myself.
Randy, I still don’t understand why I can’t get a perm. A good perm. I don’t really want a perm what I want is for someone to wash and blow out my hair every day. Like when I worked at the salon. I want fingers running across myself. When it becomes the winter (and to me winter is anything under 57 degrees) I become a beauty invalid. I would gladly let you dress me, bathe me, slip my clothing over my head. It’s much more than laziness it’s some larger exterior manifestation of giving up.
It’ll be so romantic, baby. You can start calling me “Bartelby” and all I’ll say in return is “I prefer not to.”
Every sentence all the time. Then I’ll do it anyway. I’m too tired to fight with anybody. I have a cup of iced coffee (the new kind that is tea bag coffee by Folgers— every time I say ‘tea bag’ I still feel like someone is putting balls on my face— but you should try it out) tea bag coffee, who would have thought.
Today I am going to continue writing my paper about how Homer was a 22 year old Sicilian girl. I mean about how Homer was me. How one line in one book changed my life & flipped my world upside down. But don’t fret pet, that’s all I am ever looking for. One line in one book that makes me question everything. That makes me get it right. That puts the focus on whats hidden deep behind the mop of teased hair.
Mostly I am Cher in “Mermaids”. Mostly I am any female lead who can tease her hair with one hand, sing loudly in the kitchen & reserve special time to cry in the bath tub. Oh universe, if I was only this, if I was only that. Why can’t I get a perm that is a perfect blow out every day?
I am sick of my writing with my fingers, typing with my hands. When will my wrists start to hurt? I don’t want to sit down and read “Death in Venice” today. There is a hair salon opening right around the corner and I want to apply for a job. I never want to actually do hair. I like selling shampoo. I adore selling nail polish. I like washing heads and taking the towels out of the dryer.
In a past life it is a lot more likely that I was just the Avon Lady and not a 22 year old female Sicilian Homer spinning tales like Shahrazad. I am a Mary-Kay lady with a Pink Cadillac and I tell them in the back seat that I am a virgin every single time. And I know you think you can tell the difference, but if you don’t know if you’re a “warm” a “cool” or a “neutral” you don’t know if this orgasm is fake, these tits are real or if the dye has seeped way too far into my brain.
No— I’m just kidding. You can tell the peroxide must have penetrated my frontal lobe.
“The Penetration of my Frontal Lobe: An Essay on Hair Color, Epic Poems & The Whores that let them.”
Told in 3 parts by Daniela Scrima.
If only my eyes were a little more eye like, I could be “That Girl,” too.
& Mom,
How did you get your hair perfect curled like this? More negotiating with the devil? Why not pass that along in my genetic make-up?
Ladies.
I. I’m Leaving Ohio Next Year (these familiar roads)
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The car was hydroplaning because of the snow. He kept telling me it was black ice and I kept telling him I was going to cry— not because of the weather but because of Ohio. I waited for his hand to extend to where I was sitting but instead he changed the track on the CD. I was eighteen so I didn’t understand that time was going to pass the way it would but I knew that these songs were going to be forever. That I could always have them. So I imagined his face all wrong. I imagined his face like a monsters face, because after you’ve seen a real one, you can do it any time. The people that got made up in some kind of movies say to imagine everyone naked and you won’t be nervous, but when I am trying not to laugh I just imagine funerals. I imagine what bodies look like and smell like. I can’t tell the difference between formaldyide, fetal pigs or my dead grandmother, so I deliver all the speeches without laughing. I take turns making eye contact and looking at the back of the room. And all of you are sitting proud because i’m the one with my tits sticking out, you’ve kept all your clothes on.
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II. In Florida, you were mistaking busy signals for seasons.
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They used to shoot us with bullets but baby said they got bored. Told me I didn’t know history, didn’t have the right kind of books—- the right kind of reading. Baby, always said I had the right kind of writing. Bang, bang, bang but all we wanted was to be anyone. Do you know what dress up is or are you just happy to see me?
He said he’d break my sentences down and correct all the words that I mixed up. He’d name the disorder.
It wouldn’t be like any hotel room.
Honey says I gotta stop making lists to safe myself. She puts the coffee on in the morning and when I cry it’s under the covers, when I cry it’s in the shower.
“Dignity,” someone says. You know the voice— that one from years ago coming from down the hallway. Someone’s mother talking through plates and shards and covers. I knew they wouldn’t ask me why. I knew they wouldnt ask me how. I understood damn well after years that you just try and leave it with as much dignity as you once had.
I try and remember their faces but I can’t. The director on the phone says it’s a minor detail. I ask him what the difference is between a hotel room in D.C and a hotel room in Long Island and he pauses, corrects me— tells me I’m reading the wrong script. Really I’m just tricking my brain. Telling my brain it’s all tempurpedic mattresses and soft hands.
It’s all sleep number beds and fresh towels.
You learn how to call 911. I know you’re thinking that everyone knows how to do this, but it’s not true. When there is blood on the ground, when there are the men with guns or the cars flipped over or your best friend cut up in front of you— a lot of people forget. Me, I can remember. I can remove myself from myself. When something really goes wrong, you should want me there.
I will cry over spilled milk the same one someone would cry if you had spent days cutting them open. If you need me to get you an ambulance, I won’t shed a tear because then I don’t waste minutes.
I kept reading about the tragic heroes. We got so good at them— remember? We got find them anywhere. In the epic poems and in the Lifetime movies.
I don’t know who those hands belong to but I am not even awake for this part.
I can stare down that hallway and hear his mother talking and it doesnt matter what she is saying because I am bleeding into what is basically a diaper. I have spent six hours in a room with other girls, other women and because we all knew better and did not do better we are placed here and we are bleeding in our diapers. I am screaming to be let out of the waiting room. A nurse explains that it is a “holding area” but I take this as a “holding cell”. I know he is in the next room and he was good enough to hand over the three hundred bucks like that could be the same as loving someone for that long. For once I wish it was the day after Christmas because I think I’ve been waiting since the fourth grade to relate directly to this song.
I put it on a mix cd and I play it in the car but he doesn’t get it. For some reason he is trying to be stoic and it’s too cold for Florida. You may get it, I’m a brick and he’s drowning slowly. See, we’re off the coast and we’re heading no where.
And then a long time goes by and I am in my diaper and I hear his mother talking and I let her say all those things about me. What else should I do? I don’t want to defend myself anymore.
You can bring better attorneys in and I still remember how to do CPR but I don’t have a defense anymore. I’m a fucking free for all. I’m a wedding cake— my favorite kind— and I want you to take a big slice and have it. And I hope you don’t throw up. I hope the sugar high is just right, that the digestion process goes well and that you remember somewhere inside me there was icing.
But I have no defense.
“What’s the difference between Washington D.C and Long Island”
He tells me I have the wrong script.
They don’t know about seven inch maxi pads or the gods we pray to. I try and tell him that Homer was a woman, that he gives me 15 minutes or 10 pages I’ll prove it. But then I remember I am done with proving anything.
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III. Lover boy threw meat at me cursed the day we met/street freaks, bedbugs/ New York City’s what You Get
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Once when we’d gone driving we continued to pass the same large stretch of grass. and I looked at you from the passenger seat and thought that this was infinity. I could see the end. It was at a fence. But I thought it was America and I thought it was forever. I thought it was right. I thought it was all I’d ever wanted. I turn to you and I said I’d write about it. And the sun was warm on your face so you nodded at me. You nodded at me because even though I had broken fingers, even though I lost half my jaw, you know I’d manage to masticate my favorite baked goods, to grab your hand and squeeze it tight.
When we were half blind and dying I knew you’d go on forever.
