I'm growing out my hair, like it was when I was single, it was longer than I'd known you.
Oh baby, if you'd only let me phone you. You'd have your hand in the receiver-- because you, still to this day are not like us. Your phone don't walk around with you. But baby, God, you like me this way. I'm at my best. My hands are flawless and my feet are covered with sand.
For breakfast I go pick a grapefruit from the backyard. I don't remember if I like grapefruit or not. I may or may not like grapefruit. I slice my finger, pour some sugar and sit on a lawn chair. I wait for the bees to come, but alas, the bees do not come. Maybe they told you where they want, you know baby, since you never got all cellular.
I text Randy before I even get to the mall "My whole life is ruined," Randy understands me. Knows what I mean. Knows I probably washed my hair wrong. I stroll into the mall like it's the mall of America and I'm Hannah Montana and this is my big show. Except in this version the Jonas Brothers all just do one big gang bang while I cry hysterically and scream out past Yankee Candle and Spencer's Gifts "Mommy! Mommy! MOM?"
In reality I take the escalator downstairs for an iced latte. I let the boy at the Sprint kiosk tell me how this service could really change my life. I nod my head, I don't hear a word, but God oh God I love the promise of salvation through material goods. I wish he had a catalog where I could circle things with my fingers. I stroll away and ask "hey, how old are you?" he grins at me "18" I grin back-- with that look in my eye, you know the one as I walk toward the escalator I say to him like this is love "I could buy you beer."
If I was more romantic I'd note that 40's are illegal in Florida or that we'd have to drive North to get South but Miss Porscha Phoenix is waiting to listen to my demands. I plop myself in the chair. Beauty magazines and hair spray metals. Who needs Camus when you can have Kenra Hairspray 20 Classic? Ah look at my roots hotel.
We talk like we want to talk and the old ladies just walk away. "I am thinking about having pubic hair again," I say casually, "It'll be ten years before I get my face done, Sugar," Randy, who I will just refer to as Miss Porscha Phoenix from here on out will never need work down. I show him handcuffs I just bought, bed straps, a vibrator that looks like lipstick.
When my hair is under the dryer I read him a short story I've written, if I didn't do this simple thing, you could easily thing I was getting ready to go shoot a porn. He tells me to change the beginning, tells me it will bore the audience. I want to start screaming "WHAT AUDIENCE" but I have to lie back so the color can get rinsed from my hair.
I go to pick out my new red nail polish. I love the names. They mean the world to me. For years it was "I'm Not Really a Waitress" and then I switched to "Got the Blues for Red" today its called "Keys to my Karma". Oh baby, if you had a phone, I'd call and tell you all about it. You always note that my fingers are red. I hope they don't look like they are bleeding. I hope it does not look like I cut off my own hands.
Mom hates it when I talk this way. Dad makes me cry in the gym yet is impressed with how flexible I am. I can't do a back flip Dante, but I can do the splits. I can't really publish a book, Dad, but I can talk about conditioner for forty thousand words. I can ask Baby why he just wont scream into the receiver. I can ask him all day long.
I treat myself to suburban thrifting. All these lacy slips and garter belts and a flask and gold frame. I grab a wad of fake pearls and then quickly think and stop thinking about Nursing Homes. I'll go to the Nursing Home on Thursday. I can't think like that down the hall.
It's been 10 weeks-- what if that woman is still repeating "Help me" what if she really does do that forever? What if it just goes on and on. No, no. I can't. I cannot think of this right now.
I look at an old man next to me, he is going through ties but just wearing a t-shirt. I wonder if his son calls him and if he loves his grandchildren more than his own children. I want to ask him if he has any bullet holes. "Purple or Blue?" I smile, "Pink" he says. Brilliant.
Sometimes looking down at myself, you know at the desk by the keyboard I think "you are beautiful" and sometimes looking down at myself from the keyboard I think "you are not real." And baby, if you'd just learn how to use your voice you'd tell me there is no difference between the former and the latter. You'd say love and humiliation is a matter of semantics and we'd laugh because it's impossible. We'd laugh because we've known the words to far too much.
It's like when I went to Super Wal*Mart with Mom. I wanted white underwear in a pack, I wanted blank cds for the car I no longer had, for the city I no longer lived in. I am picking out glasses while my mother gives me a glance I know well. Some people understand the glass of the mother. Most mean "you're in big trouble" or "I am going to smack you in a second" some mean "you'll be sent to your room" but my Mom's look, my mom's look is one of absolutely no recognition it is simply a look of "Did I give birth to you?" I wave to her while she stands in line.
The man in front of me who may-- or may not be drunk wants to ask questions about eye glasses, he tells the girl behind the counter that she's pretty and I can tell she is terribly uncomfortable. He tells a fat woman with red hair that he needs assistance and then hits on or maybe tries to woo a chubby blond in front of me. He's making jokes about pupils and he will probably be dead soon. I am one hundred percent sure his wife is dead and he eats at Denny's alone. He is the man in the corner eating at Denny's alone and you have to stop judging him when he hits on girls at the check out line-- because hey, hey fuck you-- do you have fucking bullet holes? Did you watch your whole family die? Hey fuck you, fuck you, you don't judge him. You have respect for the elderly.
It is my turn in line and I am demanding this or that, talking in a voice that is not my own. I can feel my mother's eyes like twins can feel each others blood. He is making jokes which I can no longer remember and he is just really happy that I am talking back. The lights in Wal*Mart are so bright, he tells me to watch out for falling price and then, and then because there is something or there is not something seriously wrong with me, I let the old man hug me in the Super Wal*Mart. I couldn't give a damn. The elderly in Florida. The children in the camp and the hospice up the street and the middle aged women trying to defy nature-- all we do as women-- try and defy nature, they are buying bras so their tits won't sag. So their husbands won't leave them or so they can at least scream "I did this for you!" when the men walk out the door. But this Wal*Mart story was in December, and baby, all I was trying to do was tell you about today.
It comes full circle because it's not that I wouldn't do this in NYC, hug all the old men that are half dead, it's just that I wouldn't have the time.
Back to present day Miss Porscha Phoenix has left brown dye still on my scalp. I want to text him and say "get real," but instead I pick out a pair of brown flats and pay for my purchases. It is March and soon it will officially be Spring. Friday it is Spring because of the calendar.
I break my camera at the beach. Nick and I stand there stupid. He swears we will be able to fix it and I am sure of it too but why do they keep breaking/ I look for the chapter about it in The Secret but nothing. Lights flash on the beach and Nick tells me the water is "kind of warm" we know it's not warm enough to swim, Nick knows I don't swim well at all, so I take off my jeans and he takes of his sneakers and because we are completely sober this cannot be a scene from Jaws. I don't ask Nick about bikini waxes or how to be a girl again or when I grew up or if the women that got their tits done look better because Nick would just call me a whore, and baby, if I got you on the phone, you'd want to call me one too. But you'd tell me what to do. Not because you have a preference, but because you know sometimes for me, it's the same as hearing that it's okay.
In reality I can't be Hannah Montana or would it be Miley Cyrus-- if I was being gang raped by the Jonas Brothers? Tell me rape is not funny. Look at me like I don't know about my legs. Ask me in a smokey room "have you ever ruined anyone's life?"
If baby would answer his phone I'd ask him and tell him he ruined mine. The phone ruined my life too.
Remember when it was all only a real man can be a lover/ if he had hands to lend us all over/ we celebrate our sense of each other/ we have a lot to ask one another."
Someone asks in my room "Aren't you mad at Bailey? And I just get a straight face. I tell them to keep blowing the air out of my camera-- to get the sand out of the lens. I say "Bailey kept all those cds I made her and she still puts them in the car and listens to them, even though they skip." Bailey says she'll make me a CD before I go even though CD's are only for music reviews these days.
The reviewing business. Reviewing: you, my hair, your body, my body, geography, bands, pornography. Pornography. I forget all about that-- my lucrative career of porn reviews back when Mary Nom de Plume could tell you a thing or two about sucking dick. "No one in porn has pubic hair," and I am not a grown up because I even want to call it something else. Brazilian waxes your whole goddamn life, potions and creams and razor blades and I say to the younger girls "never with the razors-- shaving is so tacky." Until someone looks at me horrified and I didn't know, I didn't know I wasn't okay with faces.
Mom says-- not to be real-- but to be funny "this too shall pass" and we laugh on the stairs. I forget about St.Patrik's day. I tell you on your phone you don't have that you are: the luck of the Irish, the bane of my existence, the soles of my shoes.
Once in Safety Harbor, when I was smarter by default, I told Toddler Tony that he was the bane of my existence and minutes later Steve walked up to me shirtless and furious, Ashley was lying on the ground-- maybe in her own vomit, maybe not-- and Steve screamed "YOU TOLD HIM HE WAS THE BANE OF YOUR EXISTENCE" and I apologize quickly-- say I was just fucking around. Steve says "Thank God. I want to be the bane of your existence, baby." And then we realize that this is not semantics, this is just all wrong.
When I was reviewing porn we racked up points and got these things called "dirty dollars" so I redeem them after driving past palm trees. Baby, you are unreachable, you are off the grid like I got to be one day in the park. While Stacy was playing Snake and I was thinking about how awful I'd be to turn fifteen because fifteen was almost dead and it was before any song about living for a hundred years had come out, it was about the water, and now I have "dirty dollars" and bad grammar and a hear that stopped being broken, so I buy a pocket vibrator. I buy different kinds of lube. I also buy ribbon for the typewriter. I also don't know if you should even believe me at all.
I think about babies and houses and holding them and I wonder if I'll get the diapers at Wal*Mart if they will be organic diapers, not like an SNL skit but like something that costs too much because you feel bad about the minimum wages and then they are blaming Bruce Springsteen like "how dare you distribute to a company like that?' And I want to say (and Baby, I think you'd agree with me) that he had to do it-- Brue doesn't say this-- but what if he didn't? There are people that arent like us. They don't have that many options, they save up at the Super Wal*Mart, they don't let the old men hug them and they don't maintain eye contact but hell, they sleep through you better than I do.
I am always saying harder, harder, harder until I find myself in some bathroom, oh me oh my, I am a poor Disney movie. A poor man's Disney Princess, gang raped by the Jonas Brothers, I tell the gas station attendant who speaks no English "all he had to do was buy a pre-paid phone" and she hands me a tampon. And then it hits me baby, maybe it all came with the blood. Maybe we will have to keep defying nature. Or maybe you'll take me and my dirty dollars and my keyboard and it will be beautiful. Not like in the movies but like in those times, before we made love with our fingers on flat panels, when we just made love in beds with our bodies. We made love with our bodies and there were no alarms going off
At least there were not any that I could hear. My hands were flawless; my feet covered in sand.
For breakfast I go pick a grapefruit from the backyard. I don't remember if I like grapefruit or not. I may or may not like grapefruit. I slice my finger, pour some sugar and sit on a lawn chair. I wait for the bees to come, but alas, the bees do not come. Maybe they told you where they want, you know baby, since you never got all cellular.
I text Randy before I even get to the mall "My whole life is ruined," Randy understands me. Knows what I mean. Knows I probably washed my hair wrong. I stroll into the mall like it's the mall of America and I'm Hannah Montana and this is my big show. Except in this version the Jonas Brothers all just do one big gang bang while I cry hysterically and scream out past Yankee Candle and Spencer's Gifts "Mommy! Mommy! MOM?"
In reality I take the escalator downstairs for an iced latte. I let the boy at the Sprint kiosk tell me how this service could really change my life. I nod my head, I don't hear a word, but God oh God I love the promise of salvation through material goods. I wish he had a catalog where I could circle things with my fingers. I stroll away and ask "hey, how old are you?" he grins at me "18" I grin back-- with that look in my eye, you know the one as I walk toward the escalator I say to him like this is love "I could buy you beer."
If I was more romantic I'd note that 40's are illegal in Florida or that we'd have to drive North to get South but Miss Porscha Phoenix is waiting to listen to my demands. I plop myself in the chair. Beauty magazines and hair spray metals. Who needs Camus when you can have Kenra Hairspray 20 Classic? Ah look at my roots hotel.
We talk like we want to talk and the old ladies just walk away. "I am thinking about having pubic hair again," I say casually, "It'll be ten years before I get my face done, Sugar," Randy, who I will just refer to as Miss Porscha Phoenix from here on out will never need work down. I show him handcuffs I just bought, bed straps, a vibrator that looks like lipstick.
When my hair is under the dryer I read him a short story I've written, if I didn't do this simple thing, you could easily thing I was getting ready to go shoot a porn. He tells me to change the beginning, tells me it will bore the audience. I want to start screaming "WHAT AUDIENCE" but I have to lie back so the color can get rinsed from my hair.
I go to pick out my new red nail polish. I love the names. They mean the world to me. For years it was "I'm Not Really a Waitress" and then I switched to "Got the Blues for Red" today its called "Keys to my Karma". Oh baby, if you had a phone, I'd call and tell you all about it. You always note that my fingers are red. I hope they don't look like they are bleeding. I hope it does not look like I cut off my own hands.
Mom hates it when I talk this way. Dad makes me cry in the gym yet is impressed with how flexible I am. I can't do a back flip Dante, but I can do the splits. I can't really publish a book, Dad, but I can talk about conditioner for forty thousand words. I can ask Baby why he just wont scream into the receiver. I can ask him all day long.
I treat myself to suburban thrifting. All these lacy slips and garter belts and a flask and gold frame. I grab a wad of fake pearls and then quickly think and stop thinking about Nursing Homes. I'll go to the Nursing Home on Thursday. I can't think like that down the hall.
It's been 10 weeks-- what if that woman is still repeating "Help me" what if she really does do that forever? What if it just goes on and on. No, no. I can't. I cannot think of this right now.
I look at an old man next to me, he is going through ties but just wearing a t-shirt. I wonder if his son calls him and if he loves his grandchildren more than his own children. I want to ask him if he has any bullet holes. "Purple or Blue?" I smile, "Pink" he says. Brilliant.
Sometimes looking down at myself, you know at the desk by the keyboard I think "you are beautiful" and sometimes looking down at myself from the keyboard I think "you are not real." And baby, if you'd just learn how to use your voice you'd tell me there is no difference between the former and the latter. You'd say love and humiliation is a matter of semantics and we'd laugh because it's impossible. We'd laugh because we've known the words to far too much.
It's like when I went to Super Wal*Mart with Mom. I wanted white underwear in a pack, I wanted blank cds for the car I no longer had, for the city I no longer lived in. I am picking out glasses while my mother gives me a glance I know well. Some people understand the glass of the mother. Most mean "you're in big trouble" or "I am going to smack you in a second" some mean "you'll be sent to your room" but my Mom's look, my mom's look is one of absolutely no recognition it is simply a look of "Did I give birth to you?" I wave to her while she stands in line.
The man in front of me who may-- or may not be drunk wants to ask questions about eye glasses, he tells the girl behind the counter that she's pretty and I can tell she is terribly uncomfortable. He tells a fat woman with red hair that he needs assistance and then hits on or maybe tries to woo a chubby blond in front of me. He's making jokes about pupils and he will probably be dead soon. I am one hundred percent sure his wife is dead and he eats at Denny's alone. He is the man in the corner eating at Denny's alone and you have to stop judging him when he hits on girls at the check out line-- because hey, hey fuck you-- do you have fucking bullet holes? Did you watch your whole family die? Hey fuck you, fuck you, you don't judge him. You have respect for the elderly.
It is my turn in line and I am demanding this or that, talking in a voice that is not my own. I can feel my mother's eyes like twins can feel each others blood. He is making jokes which I can no longer remember and he is just really happy that I am talking back. The lights in Wal*Mart are so bright, he tells me to watch out for falling price and then, and then because there is something or there is not something seriously wrong with me, I let the old man hug me in the Super Wal*Mart. I couldn't give a damn. The elderly in Florida. The children in the camp and the hospice up the street and the middle aged women trying to defy nature-- all we do as women-- try and defy nature, they are buying bras so their tits won't sag. So their husbands won't leave them or so they can at least scream "I did this for you!" when the men walk out the door. But this Wal*Mart story was in December, and baby, all I was trying to do was tell you about today.
It comes full circle because it's not that I wouldn't do this in NYC, hug all the old men that are half dead, it's just that I wouldn't have the time.
Back to present day Miss Porscha Phoenix has left brown dye still on my scalp. I want to text him and say "get real," but instead I pick out a pair of brown flats and pay for my purchases. It is March and soon it will officially be Spring. Friday it is Spring because of the calendar.
I break my camera at the beach. Nick and I stand there stupid. He swears we will be able to fix it and I am sure of it too but why do they keep breaking/ I look for the chapter about it in The Secret but nothing. Lights flash on the beach and Nick tells me the water is "kind of warm" we know it's not warm enough to swim, Nick knows I don't swim well at all, so I take off my jeans and he takes of his sneakers and because we are completely sober this cannot be a scene from Jaws. I don't ask Nick about bikini waxes or how to be a girl again or when I grew up or if the women that got their tits done look better because Nick would just call me a whore, and baby, if I got you on the phone, you'd want to call me one too. But you'd tell me what to do. Not because you have a preference, but because you know sometimes for me, it's the same as hearing that it's okay.
In reality I can't be Hannah Montana or would it be Miley Cyrus-- if I was being gang raped by the Jonas Brothers? Tell me rape is not funny. Look at me like I don't know about my legs. Ask me in a smokey room "have you ever ruined anyone's life?"
If baby would answer his phone I'd ask him and tell him he ruined mine. The phone ruined my life too.
Remember when it was all only a real man can be a lover/ if he had hands to lend us all over/ we celebrate our sense of each other/ we have a lot to ask one another."
Someone asks in my room "Aren't you mad at Bailey? And I just get a straight face. I tell them to keep blowing the air out of my camera-- to get the sand out of the lens. I say "Bailey kept all those cds I made her and she still puts them in the car and listens to them, even though they skip." Bailey says she'll make me a CD before I go even though CD's are only for music reviews these days.
The reviewing business. Reviewing: you, my hair, your body, my body, geography, bands, pornography. Pornography. I forget all about that-- my lucrative career of porn reviews back when Mary Nom de Plume could tell you a thing or two about sucking dick. "No one in porn has pubic hair," and I am not a grown up because I even want to call it something else. Brazilian waxes your whole goddamn life, potions and creams and razor blades and I say to the younger girls "never with the razors-- shaving is so tacky." Until someone looks at me horrified and I didn't know, I didn't know I wasn't okay with faces.
Mom says-- not to be real-- but to be funny "this too shall pass" and we laugh on the stairs. I forget about St.Patrik's day. I tell you on your phone you don't have that you are: the luck of the Irish, the bane of my existence, the soles of my shoes.
Once in Safety Harbor, when I was smarter by default, I told Toddler Tony that he was the bane of my existence and minutes later Steve walked up to me shirtless and furious, Ashley was lying on the ground-- maybe in her own vomit, maybe not-- and Steve screamed "YOU TOLD HIM HE WAS THE BANE OF YOUR EXISTENCE" and I apologize quickly-- say I was just fucking around. Steve says "Thank God. I want to be the bane of your existence, baby." And then we realize that this is not semantics, this is just all wrong.
When I was reviewing porn we racked up points and got these things called "dirty dollars" so I redeem them after driving past palm trees. Baby, you are unreachable, you are off the grid like I got to be one day in the park. While Stacy was playing Snake and I was thinking about how awful I'd be to turn fifteen because fifteen was almost dead and it was before any song about living for a hundred years had come out, it was about the water, and now I have "dirty dollars" and bad grammar and a hear that stopped being broken, so I buy a pocket vibrator. I buy different kinds of lube. I also buy ribbon for the typewriter. I also don't know if you should even believe me at all.
I think about babies and houses and holding them and I wonder if I'll get the diapers at Wal*Mart if they will be organic diapers, not like an SNL skit but like something that costs too much because you feel bad about the minimum wages and then they are blaming Bruce Springsteen like "how dare you distribute to a company like that?' And I want to say (and Baby, I think you'd agree with me) that he had to do it-- Brue doesn't say this-- but what if he didn't? There are people that arent like us. They don't have that many options, they save up at the Super Wal*Mart, they don't let the old men hug them and they don't maintain eye contact but hell, they sleep through you better than I do.
I am always saying harder, harder, harder until I find myself in some bathroom, oh me oh my, I am a poor Disney movie. A poor man's Disney Princess, gang raped by the Jonas Brothers, I tell the gas station attendant who speaks no English "all he had to do was buy a pre-paid phone" and she hands me a tampon. And then it hits me baby, maybe it all came with the blood. Maybe we will have to keep defying nature. Or maybe you'll take me and my dirty dollars and my keyboard and it will be beautiful. Not like in the movies but like in those times, before we made love with our fingers on flat panels, when we just made love in beds with our bodies. We made love with our bodies and there were no alarms going off
At least there were not any that I could hear. My hands were flawless; my feet covered in sand.