oh but mom, i miss my hips.

u miss me 2?

u miss me 2?

.


.. ..

I .What I really wanted for breakfast was an orgasm but instead I’m on my second iced latte. Happy Bad Decisions Month!

I  will try not to sleep with your boyfriend.


II. for a while I  really cared about hurricanes then I just started fucking idiots. It becomes evident when it becomes fall especially if you have no fall. Keep a strong focus on 2005 and 2006 and remember that we were never kidding.


III. Archives Part One

Yes, I’m being followed by a moonshadow OR my lovely lady lumps

• Sep. 17th, 2005 at 10:38 PM

.. ..        

First of all, everything was ruined for me very early this morning when I was lying awake Thinking I was Going to Throw Up on Myself, and I realized that all things in life lead back to Tupac Songs. The reason I realized this was because Tupac songs kept playing. A Sigur Ros song would play, then Tupac, then Bright Eyes, then Tupac, then Of Montreal, then Tupac. I was trying to explain desperately to Danny that everything led back to Tupac, but all Danny wanted to do is Snore and say “Uh-huh.” Danny, maybe you are bitter because I bit half of your lip off. I do not remember this happening, but I remember Bailey screaming “oh my god oh my god” and Danny spitting up a lot of blood into the sink. Also, the bathroom was flooded. I sort of remember a piece of Danny’s lip being in my mouth. Whoops! Will someone please tell me why the bathroom was flooded?

Other things that I remember in no order: jason and I making up a handshake that involved pouring whiskey on our hands; screaming “bailey hug me! hug me, bailey!”; hugging bailey; giving orders to bailey/danny saying “do not talk until you finish your drink”; jason going to get bailey straws and then standing on his car in the middle of the road maybe he was singing or yelling, i am unsure, this was actually hot though, for the record; danny telling me he would be my boyfriend as i rolled around on the bed screaming that i wanted my life to be normal; NONE OF THIS ACTUALLY MATTERING IN THE MORNING


I am rewarding myself with One Livejournal Entry. I’ve been giving myself a lot of rewards today, for good behavior/emotional breakdown. I was going to say it all when I came home this morning; except I came home drunk. Drunk from our life of fake boyfriends and fake manners. I wish that I could tell this to you in chronological order, but chronological order is not part of my life.

This is how my diet life has gone
yesterday:
two slices of pizza from california pizza kitchen
half bottle of whiskey
today:
strawberry milkshake
piece of bread from sandwich
48 oz regular coke


Today at work everyone asked me why I was covered in bruises and why I had hickies on my neck, they then proceeded to be mean to me and talk to me like I was retarded. I of course let them, it is not my fault that I have not worked as a Beauty Consultant for five years. Maybe I will start lying and saying “when i grow up I want to be a Hairdresser,” I already lie and say “when i grow up I want to be a dental  hygenist.”

I do not know how I have suddenly become a fifteen year old girl, but that is how I feel, I feel like I Am Throwing Glasses Against the Wall. That actually happened too, why did that happen? I do not remember this happening. I remember there being glass on the floor this morning, and the bathroom was not flooded anymore. Bailey and I have learned that sleeping in beds with twins is good for your heart, and bad for your hair. And we all know where our priorities lie.

• Music:RAINBOWS NOT MY FAVORITE COLOR

how many brothers fell victim to the streets

• Sep. 10th, 2005 at 10:57 AM

..                      Bad decisions month continues with
1. Bailey and I on highway 666
2. Semi-skinny dipping in the gulf of mexico at 4 AM
3. Thinking intense thoughts about exorcisms while walking into my house with all the lights off
4. Doing all of this when I have to work 11 hours today also: danny dropping classes
7. Bailey running two red lights
6. 6 AM bedtime, 10:30 Wake up call

you’re the stigmata that i starve for

• Sep. 9th, 2005 at 4:21 PM

..                      Bad decisions month is coming along nicely; three bad decisions a day &a well balanced diet.

yesterday’s bad decisions:
1. not doing sit ups before bedtime; listening to rap music instead
2. jumping in puddles fully clothed w.neighbors
3. arguing/name calling until two in the morning

today’s bad decisions
1. sleeping in until 11:30
2. seeing “The Exorcism of Emily Rose,” in the middle of the day- affirming that I will be completely terrified for the rest of the day/night/weekend/week/bad decisions month. I was quite upset by the whole thing, some people walked out but I am not brave enough to walk out during horror films as it is a guarantee that you will offend demons &they will you in your sleep etc.3. yet to be determined I am now color coding my outfit for work. Work we are allowed to wear 1.gray 2.black 3. white &then “accent colors” today I am wearing white/black with yellow as an accent color. Yellow shoes, yellow undershirt. I think it comes together quite well. Maybe I will get expensive hair products so I can look at my hair so distraught in the mirror and think that shampoos with names like “self-absorbed” and nail polishes called “but i’m not a waitress,” will really do something for me. In sociology we are watching One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, my favorite part is when Chief says “mmm Juicy Fruit.”  I will drink my red bull &do my hair, I would sort of like to go to a party this weekend maybe? I do not even like parties if they are “stranger” parties so this is sort of absurd but I feel it would go well with the theme. You see kids, you have to stick to the theme.

but then she went to cleveland.

• Sep. 4th, 2005 at 8:59 PM

..        

If you keep going South on Alternate 19 passed scientology and before the road with the large McDonalds you can find what I am about to tell you about. We made a road trip in twelve hours and figured we had nothing left to lose. There was a house and it was abandoned, we had been warned about abandoned houses from our time spent in Safety Harbor and everytime we sang “With Arms Outstretched.” I know you know the days I am talking about, whether you acted on them or thought upon them, I’m sure they got you nowhere, too. Everyone (everyone being more than one person in any situation) asked us why we were skipping out on our own lives.
“Don’t you have places to be, don’t you have school?”
It’s summer
“Don’t you have jobs?”
We have all of our lives to get jobs, it’s summer
“Must be nice to think like that”
It’s alright, yeah, it’s nice
“Kids are so goddamn privelaged”
We used to be painters, before we were children
“Are you on drugs?”
No.
“I used to talk like that when I was on drugs.”
Sir, I bet you say that to everyone
“Everyone? Now why would I say that to everyone?”

We had just decided it was in our best interest to flee the scene. We knew the roads well on our side of Florida. We did not understand Florida without strip malls or oceans. We did not understand the day in Florida with cows and farmhouses, with hills and lakes. We had salt water for our wounds and convenient stores for our souls. You may have had clear skies, but we need you to know that we had tourism. All the roads connect to each other. You will pass ten inches of land where you will think everyone is poor. It will pass, like everything. There will be hotels and screaming ladies, and we will make jokes about Jesus Christ. She can quote the bible, it would make you laugh. And if you’re feeling sad, I will capitalize it for you. It’s not an allegory, but it could be tomorrow. What I am trying to tell you is, you have the wrong girls. I know what you’re thinking about “malicious intent” and “homewreckers” but you’ve got the wrong girls. Half of our lives we just didn’t know any better and the other half of the time, you don’t want to understand. But we are not those people, we are not those people that you see on the street. That’s us there, but there’s nothing.

I know you’ll reason with me that there was history, that there was more than this. That there were four hurricanes last year and I am overreacting, and besides you can hit “delete” like a man, or a phone or a song that I only heard when I was in England. I’ll find out that the Crown Jewels are actually crowns, and I’ll walk too fast through all the wrong places.

Someone will be standing there, screaming for money, and I’ll be sprinting because there was a sale to save lives for half the cost, on the other side of town, where it was no longer summer.

Sep. 3rd, 2005

• 9:07 PM

..                     

my dog was lost (Clearwater Public Library)

• Sep. 1st, 2004 at 6:55 PM

..           1) A man at work walked by me &said “you’re going to get fat!” and then walked away, summing up my whole day

2) I’m tired &there are teenagers at the door talking to my father?? I cant see what they look like but they are holding bottles of mountain dew &I would like some mountain dew

3) Tonight should consist of so much driving, except for me not having any gas- following the theme of Florida &Hurricanes. Hurricanes are so much more disappointing than I ever expected &I have the Dawson’s Creek Hurricane Episode to thank. ugh.

in your shell where you belong

• Sep. 12th, 2004 at 11:48 AM

..          With blood and rags &barbed wire mouths they asked “where is my baby”. Laying down in rows of beds &staying up in lines of ceilings we watched them depart their own bodies &we bit down hard on our tongues. The use of showers &the air conditioning, artificial sweetner and debit cards. I kiss my mother’s cheeks before she boards up the airplane because she is going to try &go North (all over again). We won’t stop until we get it right, we wont stop until we see it in writing. With a boarding pass &a wine glass half way down her throat we realize all the women in my large family are either sedated off drugs or the holy ghost &they’ll fly or drive to anywhere to set things right again. We will drive two thousand miles to send apologies to highschool lovers &we will fly across the Atlantic to fix the house in old country.

It passes through a woman in a bar, it pretends to be a hurricane, teaches us to read &gets a twenty percent discount. There are citizens singing on the sidelines they are saying “where is my baby”, and we are wondering if this is rehearsed. Where is the chorus line, Ma? Is there a piano on stage right? Stage right and stage left reflect the actors perspective dear, not the audience- now straighten your soldiers &breathe from your diaphram (it says). It passes through some sadness, stops to say “good bye” we mimic but it is not satisfied- no say it like this- so we try again &again. We end up trying for the rest of our lives to get the words out right. With our mothers in their hospitals, our mothers in their SUV’s, our mothers in their graves, our mothers on their airplanes (flying away to set it right) our mothers drinking their gin &tonics, our mothers talking like men, our mothers raising us &our father’s slapping us &then our mothers fleeing the scene time &time again raising their eyebrows as if to say “Get out while you still can, child”. All the songs were overplayed so it turned off our radios, it closed our schools &said “I’m just pretending”. It passes through a woman in a bar, flips over four cars &likes to watch television. With blood &rags &barbed wire lips we are all kissing on the mouths, victims laying in the streets &schools on fire from the inside, love made it all go wrong &she’ll board an airplane like she could ever make it right.

146: LOL (location Kent, Ohio)

• Sep.1st, 2003 at 2:35 PM

..          Everything smells like popcorn or piss, you walk through the halls &all the doors are open. The girls gather and make out elaborate plans about how they will get boyfriends, and how if so &so doesnt go out with them it will be the end of the world. I’m sorry, excuse me, Um, yes, when did I sign up for highschool with dorms? Wasnt this supposed to put me in my own element? Wasnt I suppose to meet people like me, who get sad &read books &have Elizabeth Wurtzel moments?

I’m looking for attention; so come dig me out.

mall life, pt.7

• Sep. 2nd, 2006 at 9:29 PM

..         Tonight this drug dealer came into the salon to buy prodcut for his girlfriend. She bought two liters of All Soft Shampoo and two liters of Color Extend Conditioner. They had a crying baby in a stroller. He went to pay for her shampoo &conditioner, I observed his hand tattoos, the baby knocked down a basket full of lotion. The tired mother-girlfriend put her hands on her hips and let out long sighs. Between his tattooed fingers he held a stack, a bill-fold of $100 bills, there had to be at least five hundred of them. I swooned calmly &scanned them &wished I got tips instead of comission. They left the store while I am still sitting there, begging to be adopted into their family. I could take phone calls for his cell phone that never stops ringing or maybe just give the baby his bottle &read him Dr.Seuss stories- or just explain to this tired twenty-four year old women that she is using the wrong hair routine regimen after all and for this price range we could move up to Broccotto Cloud Nine &make everyone happy.

In short, I should have left with them.

please pass the mr.t cereal

• Sep. 3rd, 2006 at 3:19 AM

..                     


1. recieved $800 phone bill from time spent in Europe
2. purchased matching cupcake necklaces with heather michelle
3. i know you are but what am I
4. convinced heather to apply for the victoria secret credit card, the sales lady looked at me and said “you have one dont you?”
5. deciding to neglect all of our friends to have a sleep over. age thirteen, welcome back.

baby hold on a second, look, it’s the best of all possible worlds

• Sep. 5th, 2006 at 10:01 PM

..         Sometimes it wasnt anything at all. Not your million dollar jaw line or the way you crossed state lines, the way I’d confuse words like “phase” and “face” when spelling but not speaking. Your instructions to slow down. I’d pretend it was all the fall of some empire, to get north to go south. The little acts of desperation we all throw out on airplanes, being reborn without religion, being unwashed without chlorine, like a long joke or your favorite swimming pool. There is a story you told me and I wish I didn’t remember it, the way I remember everything, from before when I knew you. We’ve known each other since we were five, swimming underwater our eyes open before we ever met. We fought on the playground until their was blood in our mouths &blisters on our tongues, yeah, before I ever knew you. Sometimes it was everything, when we were seven and we never saw each other, a long speech I delivered with chlorine in my eyes and half the world in my hair. And you’re standing there, stuttering, because you have never been sorry- no sir, not one day in your life, because they will sort this out for you &then slice your bread so you can sit down smiling while I try to place it out on a timeline- remembering a quote you once said, in the desert - miles from any oasis staring at my picture, wondering when you’ll know me. And it doesnt matter, because we remember it differently and our feet are always falling asleep. In your favorite shopping mall, on your favorite airplane, I am wiping chlorine from your eyes &spitting on your shoes, you explain blood flow &we nod our heads with all the passengers, I tell you about an airport that I once went to, after I knew you, but it is not a story or a quote that you can memorize, or remember.

• Mood:pt. 1

Voice Post: count yo money

• Sep. 15th, 2006 at 11:43 PM

..                      ….VoicePost
1000K 4:55
.. ..

“dear livejournal we were counting our money and we wanted you count your money with us, “you better count your money, you better count your money, you better count your money” x50 
various rapping from various man
“woah nelly”… i am still listening but now i’m going to comment.”

Transcribed by: hatsuchi

the devil &daniela scrima

• Sep. 17th, 2006 at 4:12 PM

..         I am moving to NYC on January 4th, it seems. I would say that it feels surreal but I really have no right to say that about anything anymore, I mean honesttttly. When I was in middle school and I finally came to the realization that I had breasts &life would be miserable from there on out I would make lists in my notebooks, belly down on the bed about life would be like “when I grow up,” and when I grew up I was going to spend my summers in Europe and move to all these different cities in the United States and write stories that would be made into movies so that thirteen year old girls could lay in bed, on their stomachs, not realizing that life was quite ruined &watching the films playing in the corner of the room- and they would say “that is how my life will be.”

From the time I was eight until the time I was fourteen my parents and myself (no siblings, no pets) would spend a week in North Carolina, or Virginia or anywhere where there are mountains. Once in Fontana, once eating boiled peanuts. We would always stay in some secluded cabin, in the middle of nowhere and while we walked I would imagine a bear jumping out &eating all of my insidies while my father tried to fight to save the family. When I would lay in my mountain bed at night, I would think “this is how things should have ended up, I should have grown up here.” And I would imagine my life in one of those towns, population three hundred, so my boyfriend could pick me up in his pickup, drive me to the tasty-freeze &let me wear his jacket.

I always had this fixation of some life that I was missing, some perfect town on the other side of the country (Nebraska playing on repeat) that I of course, was missing out on.


I know deep down that has to be a huge reason why I moved back to Ohio the week after I graduated highschool. So I could set up my life the way I thought it should be. And there it was Kent State University, a place so paralyzed by the May 4th Massacre that the students still walked around like there were bullets flying. I sat in my dorm room, looking out the huge windows, staring at my American Politics note, knowing that this was exactly how life was supposed to be. All my new friends would take me on drives through these little towns (with only one restaurant, only one donut shoppe) and someone would tell me about a factory that used to be there- sometimes, but not always there would be these big signs hand painted “THE MAN STOLE OUR JOBS,” or “GIVE THE WORK BACK TO THE PEOPLE.” I was fixated, flat out obsessed.
My cousin Michael, who was my best friend at the time, helped me convince my uncle to take us to one of his friends home two hours south of Cuyahoga county- we spent the weekend behind the bar drinking beer out of cans &liquor out of mason jars, feeding Jefro the donkey &watching people play “Cow Bingo,”- don’t ask, I mean really don’t ask.


But the funny thing about all of this was, this culture of the working class that I had become so obsessed with was something that everyone I met was trying so hard to escape. Beautiful blue eyed boys would sit at the corner of my bed while we laid there, watching the snow fall &they’d ask with so much sincerity “Daniela, why would you ever leave Florida?” me- I had no idea where to start answering, with my long speech of “No one is really from Florida the whole state is completely transient, it’s not Disneyworld- it’s not like you think,” but sometimes, I’d shut up, I’d shut up like it was the first day I had ever worn a winter coat and I would look them- I would look at them born and raised here, bleeding to death outside of the hill I could see so clearly from my spot in a self made coffin, and I would smile at them, at whoever was sitting there- take their hands into my hands and I would say, “well, I don’t know.”

Things didnt stay like that at Kent State University, before we fled for California before we ran back home, there was a series of third nostrils, of stomach ulcers, “the university’s quiet today, we didnt clean we just talked in the bathroom,” and all the songs hit too close to the heart- with the snow falling out the window &me explaining to anyone that would listen “I am freezing to death! I am freezing,” and our professors, who we thought were our lovers, drunk on somebody elses bourbon, banging down our door. Then, then you cannot remember, no you cannot remember why you drove to a town to read a sign about an emotion you once felt.

Tin soldiers and Nixon’s comin, we’re finally on our own this summer I hear the drummin, Four Dead in Ohio I know this is true because I’ve asked, but when our parents dropped us off on campus they all sang this song at some point- to remind us that we did not remember 1970 and we never would. I don’t think mine knew that they were spilling out self-fullfiling propechy to me, but they should have, because here we are, back from there, stuck on the beach all over again.

Everywhere you go they are talking like it’s the center of the universe, they are kissing like they’ve created and goddamnit just let them. When you are driving in your car, when you are flying on your plane &you see all of these people around them &you realize “I will never know all of these people, they all have their own lives, I will never know about it.” My grandmother used to tell me, in italian- never english, “remember, Daniela, today is the worst day of somebody’s life,” and I would nod, because hell, hell, hell- of course it is.

So yes, I too, am moving to New York City because it now too, just seems like another right of passage. One of my olf boyfriends used to tell me how amazing it would be if we jsut went, how I would love it, and I would shake my head, “that’s what everybody does.” And so it is, because that’s what it’s like now- you spend your obligatory summers &semesters in Europe- I stand next to Stonehenge and let someone take my picture, I attempt to drown myself in the Roman baths “heal me water- heal me” I walk through the ruins of Pompeii and I stopped to buy an ice cream cone- and I talk to my friends half way across the country, who are auditioning for The Real World, because we already have a drivers license and we’ve already been to all those cities and hey are you listening to me- it still doesnt feel surreal enough- it still feels too much like my life, it still feels like I am laying in my bed age thirteen cursing God or whoever else, saying “WHEN I GROW UP,” oh you just wait- when I grow up.

i’ve been less &i’ve been more

• Sep. 2nd, 2007 at 1:44 PM

..        
September started.
Wandered with Gregg and Octavio into a church on Havemeyer that has a large collection of Patron Saints. You could light a votive candle for $1 and say a prayer, but the candles werent real, instead, you pressed a button and a light came on. I did it anyway. Put the dollar in, pressed the button, said a prayer. I dipped my fingers into holy water, I really know how to make the sign of the cross. So I said I prayer to God and the gods of bad decisions month. I’ve been biting my lip too hard; my head hurts.
I’m allergic to cats but I’ve been petting them all week. I think they can tell, I will sit in a room and theyll jump into my lap as if to say, “just deal with it.” There is a big barbeque in Dollywood as of September 14th. I am allergic to barbeque sauce also, but maybe not in Tennessee.
I dont think that Rufus feels bad for Chuck but maybe he does. I don’t know what the package is, and you probably do not know what I am talking about.
I miss Johnny 99 and even Arthur Dexter Bradley. I miss breaking the law; or having rules to break. What are you supposed to do when there are no responsibilities and no obligations? No babies with palindrome names to feed, to quiet. No mothers to come home to, someitme before 3 AM. Instead it is just us, here, acting as if we have finally called it quits.
My head still hurts. I want to go for a car ride. I like a boy, day two. Laura and I had grilled cheese sandwiches for supper but I forgot to tell her about it. I will tell Tanya. My cycle of female best friends, all complete with names ending in vowels. Y will have to be a vowel like in the Letter People. In tradition of Terrace Hall Revival Meetings, we are also going to be millionaires by midnight. I wish I could tell you more, internet, but like everything else this is one big stupid secret.
September 2nd, I have a new bedroom. In the same apartment. It is so big, do you see the 3 windows?

http://public.fotki.com/ohadhominem/200….7/september-bad-decis/day-1/

(great hair)






coonfire

st.therese

the most comfortable bed in the world. there is nothing i love more than collapsing onto a pile of cold, clean white sheets


do u like my room

moving is a mess



oprah

country love record. so good.

i collect heart necklaces (owls, virgin marys)

i want my room to look like 1962/time travelling/french brothel

it will look so much better in one week. i promise. flowered wallpaper. more cracked mirrors. lingerie collection. cigarette holder. nyc city condoms. a down comforter.


i have 2 bottles red wine
1 bottle hairspray

i’m going to a town that has already been burned down.

• Sep. 6th, 2007 at 10:01 PM

..        

i don’t feel like being a human.
problem #1 i don’t feel like being a human
problem #2 i will take care of it tomorrow
problem #3 my hair
they should be in reverse order. someone tried to break into our building. tomorrow morning i’ll be hungover, maybe? construction across the street starts early/i sleep through nothing. fashion week?
the piece of glass in my hand doesnt hurt too bad except i keep taking my finger and pressing down on it. it is in the very center of my palm, right above my life line.
tomorrow lets paint the apartment. my room is half french brothel. by monday, september 10th, it will be a complete french brothel.
i don’t know what shoes to wear. “open bar”
maybe i can meet a palm reader. i have met them many times before, but this time it will be different. this time they will have so much to say.










IV.


I’ve been down hearted baby, ever since the day we met.





V.

what was it I saw in New York?

• Sep. 4th, 2008 at 12:28 AM

..                      I’m not the same no more.





……………………………………………u

how can you run when you know?

Katherine was my favorite out of all of them because she taught us how to Google our drugs. This was before we could google anything— right at the turn of the century. I was stilling using AOL to do it at all, and I used it with such loyalty. But Katherine was older, over eighteen maybe even over twenty-one but I doubt that. She was older and had a hotmail address and a tongue piercing. She’d say “fuck this shit” and she’d say “hand me a pill” and she’d say “look you don’t ever take anyone’s word for anything, that’s how Cracker fucking died.” And no one laughed. You’d think— or I’d think now looking back that you would want to love because Katherine with a K spelled so poetically as if she’d walked out of <i>Sense and Sensibility</i> had loved a man named “Cracker” and this is how he died.

“Read it to me,” she’d demand in a voice that I later on adapted (never giving credit)

“M-Y-L-A-N” I think that’s what it says— I think it’s an N, try it”

“There is no ‘try it’, Daniela, stop sounding so goddamn needy. Put down your cell phone and do not message that boy back.

I listened to her because I thought if I could that it would be like magic. Not like a miracle but like magic. I want you to understand that there was a difference. Like how in the 7th grade we stole all those books from Barnes and Noble the ones about witchcraft or “wicca” and then we cast love spells on all the 7th grade boys and I do not know if they worked. We cast one in the 9th grade too, and sadly it did. But the 7th grade I can’t recall, maybe this can be an S.O.S do you still love me Palm Harbor Middle in 1997? Do you still love me at all?

But yes, if I listened to her it would be magic, not a miracle. Not a twenty dollar donation over the phone so some man who was closer than you were to God could say a prayer to God for you and then maybe if you donated another twenty dollars God would listen. Magic. Like how when I was 19 I brought everyone back voo doo dolls from New Orleans and my mom said to me as if they’d work “Oh really” with sadness in her face and how Nick still tells me that I smell like voo doo dolls even though I’ve explained numerous times that when I gave him his I doused it in Dior Addict perfume— the only perfume I wear. I also let him cut a piece of my hair off and wrap it around the doll. Nick will love me forever. Really. He may kill me, but it will be with love. It won’t be a MIRACLE it will be Magic.

“What are the numbers on the pill”

“It says 3-4-5, kind of in a circle”

Katherine types in “round pill orange 345”. I say “I think it’s really more of a peach color,” she starts crying in front of the computer and I wish her mom would get a cable modem for the house. I want to tell Katherine about DSL but Katherine skillfully gives blow jobs, she is skillfully not shy, she has no idea that there are books for this or that the pill is actually peach color. I know that no matter what it is she will take it. It could be laxative for dogs and she is going to swallow it in front of me.

Once, in another house, with other friends someone worked at a pharmacy and they would get prescription DXM in pill form an we would take it. I didn’t bother to Google it and i don’t remember if I did or did not know Katherine yet but I took the pills and I watched the whole house turn from side to side. The whole house became slanted and it was so funny. It was so funny that I could have died right there, age fourteen. No one’s parents were home. The doctor didn’t make house calls.

“So what is it?”

“Valium,” she says with a large sigh of relief. Valium. And she swallows. She swallows and lies down on the couch. She tells me that when summer is over she is going to “get the fuck out of this place,” and I want to get the fuck out too. I have this light blue Dickies bag that I use instead of a purse. it’s small and has velcro and a black strap. The internet is slow and Katerhine’s mother is drunk. She is pretty with her name like a novel and I want to tell her. Everyone has just gotten cell phones, we still don’t have digital cameras. And I want so desperately to call him. I want so desperately to have my driver’s license. I am too scared to swallow Valium, I am too scared to Google drugs.

Years later in a dorm room at Kent State University, I am staring out my window. I am looking at the steps leading to the unfinished May 4th memorial because when I am “this fucked up” I like to go lie there in the snow and think about the massacre. I listen to “Highway 61” for the first time one day in the car and then I listen to it over and over and over again. The boys go to the drugstore— I wish I could remember what it is— is it Rite-Aid is it a CVS? Where do they go? Do they go to Giant Eagle? Do they switch it up? Did you switch it up? Tell me now, Terrace Hall, torn down into a parking lot, where’d you steal all those Robutusin cough gells from? They are nothing like the pills that someone stole from the pharmacy and I watch the boys I love take ten pills then sixty and once forty. His heart makes a ticking sound. My eyes go black and I pray to anything htat I will not die this way. That my mother will not get a phone call saying I overdosed on the main ingredient in cough syrup.

I think of the mother of Sandra Lee Scheuer known to her friends and family as “Sandy” and about how she was shot on May 4th 1970 just walking in between classes. How she died within minutes from loss of blood. They made us watch some video during student orientation and in it Sandy’s mother says she called the hospital when she heard news of the shooting
and operator asked her daughter’s name
“Sandra Lee Scheuer”
and then the operator, or whatever we will call the woman says
“Your daughter was D.O.A”
and the mother asks all panicked just knowing “D.O.A What does that mean?”
And the woman on the other line just says “Dead on arrival”.

I see black and remember Katherine and the memorial and how I have always picked up the cell phone but no one calls my mother because I do not die. Someone takes me outside for fresh air and I get to live. Allen takes me outside but I don’t like him the best. He is 21 and doesn’t have a Driver’s License but instead carries a passport. If he remembered me, he’d love me forever too. Miracles. Magic. Type in exactly what you see on the pill.

Katherine died to you know? I bet you knew that before you started reading. She slitted her wrists in a bath tub because she loved a man named “Cracker”. Her mother kept chickens in the front yard and left town soon after.

I tell this story just like I told it to you, because a girl younger than me picks up a pill and asks what she is, and me, I’d stick it in my mouth even if it was estrogen, but for the sake of our heart beats and our lives I let her type in the search engine.

I say in a tone that I had forgotten “will you just fucking read the words already?”

I walk into the kitchen and make “green drink” I guzzle it after pilates. I wonder what my body things of me.  I wonder how our brains and our bodies have gone on a quarter of a century.

Maybe we are not like Cracker. Maybe we are not like Katherine.

HSN &Why I Love You

Do you see the infomercials for “the snuggie” I mean I see it….which may have a lot to do with my lifestyle or television shows i.e: KENDRA and DENISE RICHARDS. Oh, you know, my role models. Anyway, I still think if Holly Madison and Oprah Winfrey had a baby it would look like me.

Kendra, why are you getting married at the Playboy Mansion? The Girls Next Door meant so much to be.

I have also taken Esteban’s Guitar out of father’s room and I have been fake playing it. you! can! play! these! strings! with! chords!

Do you remember the scandal years ago when father was convinced that I soled Esteban’s guitar on E-Bay for thousands of dollars? Does anyone know what I am talking about when I say Esteban’s guitar? Well look, okay, I don’t know who this guy is but he sells guitars on The Home Shopping Network and Nick Scrima (google alert- hi Dad!) decided that being a Kung-Fu grandmaster was not enough— instead he would play the guitar!  And Esteban would be the man for the job:

This was right before I moved to New York. I was working at the hair salon and I was interning for the author Lisa Unger. It was OPI nail polish &New York Time’s bestsellers. I was sending out mystery novels &telling you what color would make your face match your hair. Baby, life was complicated. Probably three maybe four days had gone by when father gave up guitar lessons so eventually I dragged the thing into my room.

I photographed myself in Pea Coats and looked at apartments on craigslist. I thought New York City would be all about brownstones and oh you know my perfect little lifestyle. I tried on fake furs with high heels because fuck it man, I was going to be the poor man’s Carrie Bradshaw. If Carrie Bradshaw wrote about the Home Shopping Network and spent time stealing guitars.

You see, I did not steal the guitar but father had started training for something— was this when he was a judge at the Olympics? Was there a tournament in Las Vegas— I don’t know— but while managing this he confronted my mother in the hallway

“It’s Daniela” he said, somewhere between a rock &a hard place

my mother not phased by this statement listened in and was pleasantly surprised to hear my father’s theory

“Daniela has sold Esteban’s Guitar on E-bay— I KNOW IT”

I was untold of this rage for days—- maybe weeks because well, I was moving to New York &anywhere I go my father decides that they have the highest crime rate in the country.

When I was considering going to college in D.C, Dad told me in the car: highest crime rate in the country

When I moved to New York I was told I’d be mugged within three weeks.

Last week I was saying how New Orleans was probably the city for me if I had to live in the United States and my father informed me that they too had the highest crime rate in the country.

Naturally, since I am living a life of crime it only seemed logical to my parents that I would have taken some acoustic guitar that had a retail value of I don’t know three easy payments of $60 and some how managed to sell it on e-bay for thousands (I have never been able to sell anything on e-bay, not even my virginity or my soul) and then apparently I would take this money to go to NYC where I would sell crack while attending class at Columbia University.

Perfect plan. If only parents, if only it would have worked.

Regardless, I would like to be wrapped in a snuggie with my reality tv. Please forgive me, I love you, I do, but it’s been all thunderstorms all summer and I’ve taken Esteban’s guitar back into my room.

Sadly, years have past &I have learned that when it is November or December or hey even April! it doesn’t really work out so well wearing four inches heels, sporting bare legs and wrapping myself in a coat that accentuates my figure. I’ve learned this the hard way not from being mugged, selling crack (or my virginity— but let me know if we have any bidders) but I sure have busted my ass walking down Broadway. Columbia University lasted just about as long as that look &my mom still thinks that it was in upstate New York because I once said “I am taking the train uptown”.

Father learned in between throwing punches that I didn’t go down to the pawn shop.

But Esteban, if you’re reading this— it’s not over yet. I still have a few days left in Florida. I can still make millions off of you. I take my tips from Kendra Wilkinson and Denise Richards, I am the child of Holly Madison and Oprah Winfrey— how is that a force that you reckon with?

Baby, call now. This offer won’t last forever. These prices aint goin cheap.

.....

not my rhymes, just my life

• Jul. 12th, 2009 at 9:00 AM

I. I arrived bandaged on the Gulf Coast of Florida. I’ve come first from New York City where I live, then to Panama where I am vacationing and finally to my parents house where I have declared that I should be left alone for a month. I am not a productive of divorce, I am not an issue of abandonment. Among all things I am an only child, above all things I prayed equally to man &God alike for cheekbones &a way to get out of anywhere.

My body is wrapped in bandages &I can feel the fluid moving around my neck. I push down at the part that hurts, you know— South of my shoulder and West of my spine. I declare that I can exist in July among the locals. I can attend their house parties &I can say that is a beautiful ocean and my apartment a thousand miles North will wait patiently for me &my plans to go 3,000 miles West will wait to when I give them no option.

I am a woman who will utilize her resources. I will scratch with my fingers, lie with my telephone, beg with vocal chords &carelessly ask for favors. Somewhere—-here— in the land that our fathers (&naturally your grandparents) marked as paradise, I purchase a small white bikini &dozens of spiral notebooks. I check out thirty books from the library &vow to watch all the classics.

I spend a lot of time swearing never to do things again. And during these times, I lie on my back in an RV &let someone tell me I am beautiful, I lie in my parents bed vowing that I have no hands to remove my own shirt &let someone tell me that I’m fine.

I check my voice mail to delete the messages.

I cry consistently the way a child cries. When they can only get words in between breaths because they’ve exhausted themselves greatly.

II.I am in the Sunshine State where I serve no functional purpose. I’ll get the car, I’ll get the camera. I’ll continue to leave places like I leave people, because that is what we are built to do right?

I am a product of technology, of the egos that are formed when someone calls you a whore via your Twitter account. I am a product of fingers glued to the keyboard, the sun or souls burning through the ozone layer I wait for my skin to burn. Talk for four hours, maybe five. Insist on doing nothing else. Order imports first from England then from Japan.

Wondering the whole time when I became less of a person and more of a Facebook Status.
Not being able to answer that question. I blare the same songs my mother blared. I wait for things to come full circle and they do.

They do come full circles, we get fucked in backyards &we drive our cars in circles. We are under our parents watch &we say into the camera, as if on cue “I was just taking a rest.”

We say to the audience crossing stage left “I’m just on vacation.”

III. It could be a lie or love or reality television. It could be a phone call about my finger nails or genocide or how I’m a piece of shit for grouping it all together. “I am a product of——-” I say to no one in particular, because no one’s faces really register.

Except that man in the kitchen, that girl in the front room. I swear to you I have saw them before. I think that they are my siblings. I think that maybe I made them up.






When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez &it’s eastertime too, and your gravity fails
and negativity don’t pull you through— dont put on any airs when you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue;
Theyve got some hungry women there &they’ll really make a mess outta you

Now, if you see Saint Annie, Please tell her thanks a lot; I cannot move my fingers are all in a knot
I don’t have the strength to get up &take another shot— &my best friend, my doctor won’t even say what it is I got

Sweet Melinda, the peasants call her the goddess of gloom, she speaks good English
&she invites you up into her room &you’re so kind &careful not to go to her soon & she takes
your voice &leaves you howling at the moon

Up on Housing Project Hill, it’s either fortune or fame. You must pick one or the other
though neither of them are to be what they claim. If you’re looking to get silly you better
go back to from where you came
Because the cops don’t need you and man, they expect the same

Now all the authorities they just stand around &boast how the blackmailed the sergeant into leaving his post. And picking up Angel who just arrived here from the coast, who looked so fine at first, But left looking just like a ghost




I started out on burgundy, but soon hit the harder stuff. Everybody said they’d stand behind me when the game got rough, but the joke was on me, there was nobody there to even call my bluff.

I’m going back to New York City, I do believe I’ve had enough.

Panama

I will find my way through, the sun will be my compass when I hit Peru

• Jun. 4th, 2009 at 9:17 AM

1.I am looking through my passport, sorting through the stamps. I am holding broken phones and telling my father that when I am in Clearwater, I’ll walk to the T-Mobile kiosk. For some reason I am sure they will still help me at Countryside Mall.
I get a subletter for the apartment, I give a tour and she hands over a check. I am less cheery than usual. Everyone keeps talking about how it’s so humid out. But I don’t feel it. I want to tell you I don’t feel anything, but it feels like a morning where I can prove myself wrong in a matter of paragraphs.

2.We’re on the phone with plastic surgeons and foreign pop stars, so I’m not going to try and fool anyone.

3.You can see where I spilled coffee on my passport, in Dublin once, when I was 19, or no— I guess I was 20. We had beans for breakfast.


4.People that don’t know me well ask if I’m excited and people that know me well enough tell me it will be “fine.” Ilana (freshly turned 24 on tuesday) who I elaborately threw a “Panama Never Again” party for tells me that the outlets are the same when I ask. The electrical ones. I don’t ask her about the driving because what does it matter.

5.I go to read the news because I want to show Alex a link I thought I saw but all they want to tell me is about the wreckage in the Atlantic Ocean. I sort through the stamps on my passport like each was given to me with all the love the world had at the time.

6.I make a to-do list. I copy a writer, a famous one. Probably Joan Didion. And I tape a list “to pack” next to my closet. I leave the day after tomorrow but I have yet to drag the suitcase out of the storage room or drop the laundry off at the laundromat.

7I talk to strangers about checks clearing. I tell Jerry at Citi bank that we are going to pretend he is my CPA. He laughs and corrects me. “Jerry, that’s why we’re pretending.” This is what I will do: I will literally find a place or a man where I don’t have to talk to the tellers. Where I sit face to face across from someone. So I can pretend that CitiField is there in the background while I’m not internationally overdrafting.

“Jerry, is this card going to work?” I make him pinky swear, I make him promise. If you go open up an account with him we will both get $50 in 3 months. You and I. That we will. I should have learned about banks from my father, I should have learned about banks from Ashley Konrad’s father

I should have listened to men with red faces screaming at us (freshly turned 18) that there would be “not another red cent” and that we could “go rob somebody else blind”.

Instead, darling, I learned about banking from Jackson Davis.

That you can have more than one account.
That you can write a check in a gas station

8. It’s Bailey’s suggestion, her idea really. She’ll never understand why I had a “Panama Never Again” party because I think the SUV had just flipped over and nobody spoke.

But she says “stay home longer”. I don’t stop to say that I am home right now, in my apartment where I live in New York. Where I talk to men ages 30-35. Where John walks out the door and I do not see him ever again. Where everyone moves out and I’m happy because I can clean the kitchen. I am home where the police are called.

“Stay home longer,” Mom says it’s okay. Whatever it is in my voice at this point has created 2 responses.
The first is from people that don’t know me that well, that don’t know the kind of shit I like to pull.
The second is from people who know me all too well.
The former likes to say “Are you excited about your trip?”
While the latter just tells me like it’s the lecture of my life “It’s going to be okay.”

There is no middle ground. It’s raining and it’s cold. But it’s June. Everyone talks about the humidity.
I daydream about hurricanes.

9. There are other to-do lists taped on the walls. I turn the 727 number back on and it’s like everyone knows. Randy calls promptly, tells me to find a Phoenix in Time Square. He doesn’t know yet but on the 19th he’ll be washing my hair while I tell him how horrible it was or how I coudlnt believe he even had the nerve. I will show him photos of dicks that dudes send me on my cell phone.

We will wash rinse and repeat.

10. If you fall into the former category— of course I’m excited and about the party, I only threw it so I could have the Cookie Store write that on a cake.

I only had a party so I could ask anyone I’d ever met (universally or internationally) not to leave me on a cake.

• Music:Casados- Panama

now you're scared &you're thinkin that maybe we aint that young anymore

And I never heard from him again. That’s how the story ended. Just like I wanted, I guess. I wanted to slam the door. I wanted names to mean something and in the end they did not. And this summer just like any other, I’ll hide beneath the covers &study my pain, I’ll make crosses from my lovers &throw roses in the rain. I’ll change my phone number, leave the country, break all the telephones &cause all the light bulbs not only to burn out, but to explode. waste your summer praying in vain for a savior to rise from these streets.

someone will call on one of the broken telephones and tell me how easy my life is or how familiar the phone number sounds. Someone will say that I’ll like the rain forest and someone will say that I’ll like the west coast. I’ll ask a stranger hopelessly if apartments are less expensive in New Orleans than in New York. The stranger just stares back, probably wondering why I want to speak at all.

I’ll get a job scrubbing tile floors and everyone will take it as metaphor. I will burn all the love letters and tear the pictures off the wall because I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to hear how anyone’s face looks kind of like mine but prettier. Keep it to yourself, can’t you see I’m cleaning up dust?

Someone will call me a liar and I’ll nod my head respectively. I’ll nod my head because there is no use in arguing with anyone anymore. I asked you to call back and you didn’t, I asked you to love me and you couldn’t. I marked days off of calendars and no one knew why. A man sits across from me and tells me he just finished a thesis or a paper or that he’s doing research on people that read self-help books. He describes it as a disorder, but I’m telling him he has it all wrong. I watch his head almost graze my ceiling and I don’t tell him to look out, watch out for the lightbulb. I let him stare blankly at my reading material puzzled as to how it all adds up.

He wants me to offer up an explanation. A stranger wants to know why I care about the first of the month. I want to tell someone that things come full circle, but then I don’t know who I wanted to tell.

I listen to this song sometimes because I do not know what else to do. Sometimes I listen to a song until I can move. Sometimes people think scrubbing floors is a metaphor for something else, but it’s not. At least not anymore.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

but baby I will, you love me like a dollar bill.

• May. 31st, 2009 at 1:52 PM

1. Today I hate New York. I look out the window &I hate it. I walk down the street and I hate it. I wake up in bed from nightmares that I’ve stopped decoding & I hate it.

2. I thought June 1st was going to be today, but really it will be tomorrow.

3. On Saturday I arrive in Panama

4. On the 16th I arrive in Clearwater.

5. I don’t understand how no one is looking for a sublet in Williamsburg

6. I don’t understand how I go from having business cards designed to changing my phone number & not giving it out to anyone. Changing my face & not giving it out to anyone.

7. None of my shorts from last summer fit so I put the belts on as tight as they will go. Last summer my mother bought a scale and had me weigh myself “for my own good”. This winter I bought a scale and I weighed myself for god-knows-why. And wondered if I was becoming “one of those girls” I don’t know what I mean when I say “one of those girls” because I am sure I have been one of those girls for the majority of my life.

8. I will dye my hair brown before I leave. I will have it be a solid color in airports so I can blend in. I will blend in like a spy without a mission. I will put the heart glasses on the shelf and revert back to black. “Back to black.”

9. It’s okay about the hair, I will have Randy fix it while I’m in Clearwater. In Countryside Mall, I will realize that I do not hate New York. In some bar in Dunedin or Safety Harbor I will note that the drinks are so cheap. I will use a tone in my voice like somewhere along the line I accomplished something.

Maybe I will bring graph paper with me on the international flight. I will tuck it in between my passport and the sedatives I am not allowed to take and I will chart point A to point B. A business man sitting next to me sipping liquor out of a small bottle or a cup with airplane ice will stare through my window seat and If I am sedated I will most likely tell him that I am trying to figure out

a) if I accomplished anything
b) the exact dates of one things went wrong
c) the importance of leaving the country
d) the importance of writing it all down
10. I let them know (anyone, everyone) that it’s all meaningless, that’s it all a facade. That there is no girl with a middle name. There is no elaborate life story. That they are characters molded into other characters like silly putty.


And because some things are just too good to make up, I leave you with:

2009 Hurricane Names
Ana
Bill
Claudette
Danny
Erika
Fred
Grace
Henri
Ida
Joaquin
Kate
Larry
Mindy
Nicholas
Odette
Peter
Rose
Sam
Teresa
Victor
Wanda

---------

they never stopped to think that maybe we did not tell them the truth because it would have killed them.
if it hadn’t killed us we wouldn’t have to lie about it.

i finally made it i made a glean get away

It’s not that I expected something different. I knew no one was going to beat down the door with their compassion. I knew that I was acting out. I acknowledged that it was more my fingers than my brain with this voice pleading down the hall I hate you, don’t leave me. And I never would. I was never one to give up on search parties.

I wrapped grown men in blankets even if I should have let them freeze to death. I promised myself come Monday (any Monday) that I’d change things. Breathe through my own lungs, take the train, forgive myself.

I wrapped myself in sheets that I should have washed days before hand and sometimes when I rolled over I expected a certain face to be there.

“Some men think you’re a pup, and others think you’re just a goddamn dog.”

It wasnt about facts or opinions. Was it about coincidence? The exact timing?

A professor lies in my bed and tells me we are all just the dust from stars. He explains this to me— tries to explain it in a Biblical way and I want to tell him that I heard it before (because maybe I did) and I want to tell him that I believe it (because maybe I do) but while I’m staring at the ceiling trying to find a mirror the reflection of myself is a bit more like mold.

My best friend says “trust no one”
My best friend says “I got fat”
My best friend says “get in the fucking prius”
My best friend says “we could have lived like kings”
My best friend says “I feel like I’m talking to a 12 year old”
My best friend says “do you need anything from the bodega?

And because none of them are the same person, I look for dust and read Negro spirituals over the fun. I ask “can you marry me this way?”

And I may sound like I’m kidding, but I’m telling you if they can kill George before they can kill Izzie then I can be made out of dust like black holes in the earth.

Kendra will get her own show and the professor will say he is impressed with the Kierkegaard on the shelf. I’m trying to get out of my body out of my brain. I’m tryng to float through the sky and have a man hold my hand on a mountain side.

They say “sell the jewlery, the computer, the banjo,” and I say I’d sell myself before any of that.

I’d sell myself and I’d be marketed well, I could look any stranger in the eye you know? I’d look them in their face with all the maturity I could muster—“Baby, I used to be a star you know, I used to be way up in the sky.”

And when I get to bed (sunday-monday) I say that it will be better in the morning. At least every time I wake up, I know it wasn’t real life.

I will lie and say I’ve never been to knowledge. I will lie and say I’m a dental hygienist. I will lie and say I’ve been waiting forever. I will try my best to explain reality television because I gave up on physics and facts. I want movie stars and reality television moms. I want their tummies tucked and their tubes tied.

I mean to call someone and say “we used up all the names” but my phone is broken and I can’t remember yours anyway. Tomorrow, not today.