JANUARY 13

I often wonder if the reason my love life has been such a massive shit show is because of the fact that: where are my role models?

I remember in kindergarten having a sing-a-long at the long anticipated end-of-year concert. Afterwards there would be “juice and fig newtons for the families to enjoy,” the teacher told me. It was the week after my good for nothing son-of-a-bitch, but not a bitch because I love Gammy K, “dad” took one last final business trip and never returned, and my mom lay like a defrosting fish on the low davenport in our living room for seven days. 168 hours, 10,080 minutes, 604,800 seconds of glassy-eyed, droopy-mouthed nothingness occasionally interspersed by “get me an aspirin,” “fucking good-for-nothing fucker.” I begged, pleaded, prayed for her to come to my concert, probably the thing in my life to date that I had worked hardest for—can’t remember anything since then. And somehow I got the floppy fish off the couch and down to my school where she put on a brave sheet mask where it almost seemed like she didn’t have hanging black garbage bags under her eyes and lines cut using a linographing tool on her forehead. Anyways, she sat in the front row almost like she cared enough to watch me, but I watched her eyes dart like rodents to Darren’s disgustingly PDA parents who are tall and white and have teeth so bright they could shrivel your retinas right into dried black kelp. She eyed the perfumed ladies whose husbands wore them on their arms like Indian bangles, the louder, shinier, more expensive the better. The husbands who were not her rat of a man, no-longer-her-possessive (grammar wise) -but-her-once-possessive (as in his actions) good-for-nothing “jerkmoronnitwitstupidtwittwitassholeduncestarbullypieceofshit!!!” of a man. And after the concert which I’m positive she didn’t listen to, she stuck her chin out and said, “Let's move, Nora,” her shaky fingers wiping jagged star-patterned lines across her forehead when she wiped away the grease and sweat. I remember asking, “families are invited to stay for the fig-newtons and juice?” but I guess it was a sensitive topic because she crouched down and looked me hard in the eyes with two perfectly narrow laser pointers and said “does it look like we fucking have that, Nora” and I said “when daddy get backs from his business trip we will” and she slapped me hardhardhard against my cheek, i cried, and Darren’s parents gasped and Mrs. Johnson yelped and mommy just said, “there was a disgusting bug on her face” which i knew in a heartbeat meant nothing, i was the bug, the disgusting plague, the growth of disappointment like the planters wart which springs on the unwashed toe in a quick, neglected, second. Tears hung on my eyelashes like a flower crown of lilacs which has fallen, broken, suggestively unprofessional.

And that was my earliest memory of familial love. The do-anything-for-her-because-she-raised-you kind of love. Cry-at-her-funeral-when-she-dies kind of love (and so I did).

There was Monty love too. 14 years old, met him on Dauphin Island. Poking starfish with a stick; I would later poke him more-or-less-the-same-but-not-so-aggressively with my tongue in the same fashion. 5 years my elder, 5 times stronger, faster, more brilliant at making foolish teenagers fall for his eagle-swooping-hair and picket-fence-perfection, salty kisses like the ocean and brittle but endless conversations like the sand. That night I took him home where no one was, and we sat on my countertop among the graveyard of beer cans and yogurt containers. We drank frosty corona and melty freezer burnt neapolitan ice cream that dribbled down my chin like the dribbling of yesdontstopharderfaster that came out of my mouth 2 hours before sunrise. He’d hug me like seaweed wraps rice with his words of sweet nothings or sometimes 2 weeks later he’d scream nothing sweet too.

In the morning I woke up curled in his chest while he held me close and bruised my neck with his lips; I rested my jaw on his chest where I could hear the clock-like-steadiness of his 19-year-old-19-times-around-the-sun wish-whurring heart. At the time, I was not sure where my mom was, maybe working, or pretending to? Maybe mirroring my own actions with some arbitrary greaser from the gas station... to a T the definition of uninvolved parenting.

The second time Monty came over I professed my love to him and the third I showed him that I meant it; I knew those walls were soundproof. He asked me what my name was so he could yell it out like I yelled out Montyyyyy and that question hurt me but not quite like the banana bruises on my collarbone I’d soon be used to—wait those ones were from his mouth, I meant the one under my eye. On Sunday at 7:54pm he shoved me so hard up against the wall that it cracked a little. Paper thin, maybe, but definitely soundproof. Sometimes when he did that it was part of it all, a dangerous devil dance between the two halves of a whole where Beethoven's greatest musical achievements were almost audible, the cool wall against warm cheek was like, the best feeling ever, a bump ’n’ grind body party where, haha! we’re too cool for you, you’re not invited get lost sucker. Sometimes it was the worst—a hell-boy sent from the centre of the earth who called me two halves of one whore, one of those éclairs where they look super good until you bite into it and there’s no cream it’s just air... you’ve been ripped off, and you’re paying more for less and $4 for rest of the plate that you’ve been promised but you never get. A slant rhyme, almost but never quite and most certainly never what you want.

One time I turned into one of the crazy Greek furies: female chthonic vengeance deities only 14 years old, and he may have been Herculesand 19 years old but he couldn’t stop me. I showed him the door and kicked his sorry ass out the door and 10 minutes later felt kind of sorry for his sorry ass which God I hope was sorry. But then I went to the bathroom and opened the gift he had left behind for me: the cut under my eye which hurt like a bitch and I threw up in the toilet, all salty and seaweed and banana shit and I didn’t want him back anymore. Until I was in my bed that night, alone and lonely just like my mom, the only thing separating me from being her clone was gone now, kicked from Earth to Pluto out the door. But Pluto’s not a planet, I guess, just a dog. And I was the only bitch right then and there, so when he called me, whispering, let me home, i miss you, need you, want you, the bruise was just from your clumsy fall, remember? I was quick to shuffle across the sea-expanse of tiled linoleum of our kitchen and open the apartment’s door to his starfish arms. Paper-thin self control for a pretty thick-headed boy-match; open the paper thin door and let him through the paper-thin walls and he’d strike me with his eyes and suddenly everything was on fire. But still soundproof, I tell you. I told myself every night that that happened, I was done with the lies, corruption, fucking all of it. And it was my choice to let him back in, because that’s what love is: it’s second chances and sex and breathing them in like the smell of burger king’s soggy-but-still-good fries when you’re “dyingggg of hunger.” It’s the promises and expectations that have no expiration date, the routine speeches from Monty every morning that I could probably recite word for word if I didn’t even try that hard. On September 5th I made a margarita or two or seven when he was over and when he struck me one final time like the head of amatch and I let out one last guttural cry not from pleasure but this time pain, his naked back began to glow all red and blue and crystal white and he said “you called the fucking cops?” and I said no but on the inside maybe I did but why? I had no reason to know his actions weren’t anything not-okay and my face burnt like I had been in the sun for 5 hours. They took him away and made him promise to never come back, for real this time.

One week later depressing and depressed fish-Mom still wasn’t home so I walked into the hallway and knocked three times on Mrs. FitzGerald’s door. She opened it. I could see my mom on the couch, corpse-like and eyes sunken into sockets melon-balls could’ve been scooped out of. Uninvolved. Non belligerent. Passive. Come here, she said. Are you ok? Let me look at your face.

What? whatwhatwhat: first thought. She knows: second thought. How the fuck does she know: third thought. She said, my darlingidiotstupid child you are just like me, a stupidgoddamn idiot.

“Every cry of love, pain, sorrow, I heard.” Because the walls, they weren’t soundproof, not magical, not a cavern for the LOVE I shared. They were wrapping paper with holes in it, wrapping paper you can’t-use-again-or-it’ll-rip-paper.

My face has never burnt so hard in my life - like pins I could feel the sharpness - sandpaper of shame on skin, rubbing. I cried. Fuck her for being uninvolved, Darren’s parents wouldn’t have let their 14 year old bang a 19 year old stranger, but she would.

I left home 4 days later for good I hoped. Soundproof my ass.