I'll See You Again, Someday

Today would have been my sister's 32 birthday.  Most times, it doesn't bother me.  I remember.  I reflect.  But today, looking back over the last 24 (I think) years and recalling all that has happened in the years since her death - and all that is unfolding - my heart hurts.  She would have been gaga over The Twins - and they over her.  I can so see her and Gabey being inseparable.  We (my siblings and I) are all grown and adults now with our own lives - and she is frozen in a moment in time so, so long ago.  I guess it's getting to me more this year because my own life is in such a state of flux and transition that I have to pause to wonder where her own life would have carried her.  Who she'd be today...  It's almost weird to miss someone you've not seen in over twenty years, and how that longing can bring a tear to your eye even after all this time...  So strange to think of the child I was then, who I became...  And who I am now.

 

"It ain't fair you died too young
Like a story that had just begun
But death tore the pages all away
God knows how I miss you
All the hell that I've been through
Just knowing, no one could take your place
Sometimes I wonder, who you'd be today"

- Kenny Chesney, Who You'd Be Today

[Video after the jump.]

Way Back Wednesday

It's amazing the things you find on your computer when you start cleaning house!  It's such a trip to come across these.  It feels like still from a movie about someone else's life now.

Me in the back; Sister, Layne; Family Friend, Jody; and Sister, Belle

"I hate myself for lovin' you!"

"Thanks for makin' me a Fighter!"

"And now for something completely different..."

You have a certain Brit of Bewildermint and his post on Snickers to thank for this one!

My gosh - talk about a blast from the past.

This one REALLY takes me back.

Free and Easy

"I am sending you
postcards from a place
where I am not.

We’re not tourists, we’re travelers

A tourist is someone
who thinks about going home
the moment they arrive

whereas a traveler
might not come
back at all."

~ Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

to be a traveler again,

Once upon a time...

Was going through some old files cleaning house and came across some photos of some of my old artwork.  Ironically, I have none of the originals.  My brother - at one point - had the painting - but who knows if he got mad at me and either destroyed or got rid of it.  He's good for that.  I really have no idea where it is now - or what's happened to it.  Heartbreaking, really, because it was one of my all time favourite pieces that I have done.  The other two were simple sketches on some old newsprint - they ended up getting stolen when my house got busted into - so I am sure they are long gone by now.  But anyway...

This one is (was?) called "Childhood."  It came flying at me out of nowhere.  It's hard to see in the photo but all that red is handprints.  Scared my poor roommate to death when I created that one.  She came home to that canvas in the bathtub and red paint EVERYwhere.  It looked like a murder scene.

I must have been listening to Tori when I did these.  The first one says "I've been raisin' up my hands.  Drive another nail in.  Just what God needs:  One more victim."

And the other reads "I've got something to say but nothing comes.  Yes, I know what you think of me.  You never shut up.  Years go by will I still be waiting?  Sometimes I hear my voice and it's been here; silent all these years.  My scream got lost in a paper cup."

I really need to start being creative again.  It's been ages since I last actually made something.  A year, maybe...  I think it's time.

Happy Birthday, Sexy Britches

Elvis Aron Presley
January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977

Remembering John

John Winston Ono Lennon

October 9th, 1940 ~ December 8th, 1980

So this is Christmas
And what have you done?
Another year over
And a new one just begun

And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so this is Christmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The world is so wrong

And so happy Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let's stop all the fight

War is over over
If you want it
War is over
Now...

Happy Xmas (War Is Over) - Joh...

Excuse me Ma'am, Your Puddin' is Smokin'!

Inspired by Georgina's post about Odd Family Recipes, I just had to share this one.  It's really not the recipe so much as the cook, but it was hilarious none the less.  Last year during the holidays, KaLynn and I had been remodeling her house - painting, laying floors, et cetera - and I think we were about at wit's end both mentally and physically by the time Eatin' Day got there.  Not that it's all that terribly far to the end of our wits for either of us...  Every time I go home I HAVE to have this gawd awful desert that is nothing but piles and piles of puddin' and cream cheese and whipped cream - it's insane - and I will eat the entire thing all by myself.  Well, KaLynn - being the good mama that she is - was up early the day of getting this mess ready.  We were down to the last couple of layers - chocolate I think we were at now - and she's spreadin' spreadin' spreadin' the puddin' on and gets this horrified look on her face...  She looks at me.  She looks at the puddin'.  She looks over her shoulder.  I thought for a second she was about to cry.  WTF???  With Mom, I never get too terribly alarmed until a wall falls down because she generally lives in her own world universe that has little to do with the one the rest of us reside it.  But there for just a second I almost thought something was really wrong.  I looked at her as if to say, well...  WTF?!?!?  And then she blurted out:

"I thought the puddin' was smokin'!"  And explodes into hytserics.

Now my mother's laughter is more insidious than many things you will ever come across in your lifetime.  You can not help but to join in, even if you haven't the foggiest idea what on Earth you are laughing at.  Such was the case here.  I lost it.  We were both weeping in laughter.  I had not a clue one why the puddin' was on fire - or so she thought - or WHAT she was talking about.  But damned if it wasn't the funniest thing since Lucy and Ethel's employment fiasco.  (And relatedly, when she and I get together, it is always a bit like Lucy and Ethel anyway.)

Turns out, she was seeing the reflection of the ceiling fan about her in the surface of the puddin' and the fan blades moving undoubtedly (to her at least) looked like smoke.  Hell, I dunno!  Thank goodness this was not a case of 'where there's smoke, there's fire!"  I don't know that Puddin' a la Flames would be the best desert.  Makes you wonder though if there weren't some other kinda smokin' going on that mornin'!

Lawn Mowing Mazdas

Recently, it seems I have created a whole blogging brigade of friends and family.  Fabulous.  However, there's been some story tellin' goin' on that needs some clarification - in other words, it did NOT happen like that!!!

First of which is a blog about my mother's impeccable driving skills.  Somehow her definition of wonderful driving translates into me ruining a brand new pair of Calvin's every time I get in the car with her.  She can offer you a religious experience and a bowel movement with her driving all in the course of one city block.  The story in question (one amongst many) involves us returning home one day after a harrowing trip into town - in my opinion, most - if not all - trips in the Mama Mobile are harrowing, but that's neither here nor there.

I digress...  Since we had been in town most of the day, I was not nearly as drunk or medicated as one needs to be to enjoy a leisurely ride into town with this woman.  I was quite sober, and even more terrified.  Now my mother likes to talk - a lot - almost as much as she likes to drive at Mach 10 and not pay attention to where she is going until we are either there, passing it, or have already passed it 17 times whilst taking what she likes to call "the scenic route."  On this day, we were just about home.  You could almost smell the fish fryin', so I thought I was good.  I had managed to get an actual breath or two in...  I could see the exit.  Moms, however, was NOT seeing the exit.  She was talking.  And NOT slowing down.  I am thinking to myself, "Exit, Ma!  EXIT!"  Just as we are IN LINE with the exit, she realizes that perhaps that might be where we were planning on going.

No worries (to her at least).

At 97 miles an hour here we go!!!  YEE-HAW!!!

Missed the exit!  NO WORRIES!

Missed the City Titties!  NO WORRIES! 

I half expected her to shout "TOWANDA!!!" at the top of her lungs like Evelyn Crouch in the book Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.  I had always expected to die young, but never by Dukes of Hazzarding across an access road and landing on a cow on the side of the road outside of Bubbaville.

Everyone has their time, I guess.

Anyway, across the median we go.  Grass and dirt is flying up everywhere!!!  We miss the big ass sign that says "This is your exit, Crazy Lady" by mere inches.  Had I not been frozen in fear I could have reached out and touched it.  I still have whiplash to this day and a lazy eye that now rotates in an orgasm of fear every time I hear an ignition start up from this ordeal.

Whump-phlunk-BLAM! 

We land on the access road like a giant metal turd shit from the Mothership - screeching and skidding up to the intersection to turn home. 

We finally did in fact make it home.  I fell out of the car and laid in the driveway licking the gravel and weeping in uncontained joy that my life had, in fact, not ended in a dried out patch of grass on Highway 6.

What's that smell???  I think I need to change my britches...

It reminds you what to be thankful for.

Stay tuned for Tales of the Flying Fishstick.  It's a good 'un!

Coming Out of the Pain; Umbrella at the Ready

"It's very difficult keeping the line between the past and the present."

- Edith "Little Edie" Beale of Grey Gardens

My life has never been one of luxury. I have never been one to take the easy route - or even known where that route might be if one such exists. The bulk of my life has been a succession of hand offs from whomever wanted me the least to whomever could stand me for the time being. There was never a lot of effort made to actually rectify the problem(s) as much as it was just "Here, you deal with him." As an adult, I am coming to understand just how much that really has shaped who I am and how I deal with things. Or, don't deal with things as the case in point and truth may be. I just walk away. Let it be and watch it fall all to hell and go down in flames. And always from a distance.  Distance being key.  Next.

So the grande finale of questions now is: "What do I do about it?" How do I stop the cycle? It's all I have known - starting with the funny farm; then my grandparents; my sister's father; my mother; my mother's husbands... Nothing was ever permanent. Nothing was ever dealt with. An endless series of shuffle the problem child. If they couldn't beat it out of me or shout me into submission, I was passed off like a hot and fetid potato gone to mush. Even in school they didn't know what to do with me. I was dubbed Gifted & Special (heavy on the special, I think) and handed off to the Retard Teacher(s)... Lot of good that did, too.

I know this now. I recognize it. It has destroyed what life I might have had up until this point and in its wake most of the relationships therein. I just haven't (had) the tools - or even the knowledge of the tools - to begin building something better. I've needed a raft and have been standing knee deep in the river and dying of thirst... Filthy and unable to scrub away the funk. Unable to float away from it all without the fear of drowning in it.

I often feel like I got beat down with the short end of a shit covered stick engulfed in flames. Like it was all denied me before I even got some vague modicum of a chance to have a go at it. I was described today as Gay (which I am - fine - sobeit) as a negative - in contextual comparison to unwed teenage mothers and cutters; and likened to all as being "trashy." It was a big slap in the face - and quite a wake up call. I forget that such is how people view me. Even, apparently, those closest to me. Just yet another in a string of black marks that I haven't much (if any) control over, I guess...

But perhaps, this new found knowledge - this recognition of it all - is my power. Perhaps this is my key. In knowing, maybe I can somehow stop it. No one wanted to deal with me then (not that anything's really changed in that regard). It's a harsh truth. But that was then.

This is my now.

Mine and mine alone.

I needn't anyone to deal with me any longer. I am my own man, standing (or trying to) on my own two feet - albeit a bit wobbly in my stillettos - but hey, you try standing on Size 12 feet in 8 inch heels. I am standing, damn it. (Okay, maybe I am just on hands and knees, and learning to crawl but it's progress.) The Child Called It became The Man Named Dave and he did alright for himself despite it all. He endured horrors not completely dissimilar to my own and came out on the other side. It was a struggle for him as well, but he prevailed. I believe - I hope - that somehow, someday, I can also.

I just don't quite know where to start. I do know now that I WANT to start. I want to begin to end all this horseshit and drama. First instinct, of course, is to start cutting... Break out the knives and start hacking away like a crazed and hungry hunter salivating over a fresh kill... But maybe all those melodramatic razor blade kisses of the past are part of the problem in the first place.

Who knows, really? I find myself in such a vastly different place for this part of the journey - for this leg of the race.

I have followed a hundred and two roads less taken for my entire life.

Perhaps now it's time to put on my waders and big boy britches and start trudging through the ruts that others have made in their own paths to salvation?

Perhaps if I want to get to the other side, the only way to get there is to go through it? Heavens knows all the bridges have been burnt at this point.... And I sure can't seem to get around the son of a bitch...

Perhaps... Perhaps...

Perhaps...

But, I'll tell you this:  I am bringin' my own damn flashlight, though. That tunnel sure looks pretty fuckin' dark to me.

Relatedly:

After a While

by Veronica Shoffstall

After a while you learn the subtle difference

between holding a hand and chaining a soul.

And you learn that love doesn't mean learning

and company doesn't mean security.

And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts

and presents aren't promises.

And you begin to accept your defeat with your head

up and your eyes open,

with the grace of an adult,

not the grief of a child.

And you learn to build all you roads on today

because tomorrow ground is too uncertain for plans.

After a while you learn that even sunshine burns

if you get too much.

So you plant your own garden and decorate your own

soul, instead of waiting for someone else to bring you flowers.

And you learn that you really can endure...

That you really are strong

And you really do have worth.

Please Pass the Acid (or: An Unbalanced Balancing Act?)

More than a decade has passed since those days on the river, with the smell of desperate chance, chickory and ganga in the air. (Jackson Square at its finest.) Though we were fearful and homeless, in those days we still had hope.  The world was smeared out before us for our bleary bidding.  Our cares were minimal.  Our needs, basic at best.  Our greatest concerns were who was holding what that night and what wig to wear with those shoes.  We were tactless and tacky and we wore our own inane - if not insane - brand of five-and-dime fabulosity on our sleeves with pride.

We were The Young Ones.  We were the Lost Boys (and gurrls) of the Big Easy:  Livin' it hard, burnin' it up, and tearin' it down.  What ever it was.  Our stage was The Streets.  Our cast, a cacophony of Gutter Punks and Drag Queens; High Rollers and Hookers; Poets, Potheads, Vampires, and Waitresses; Runaways and Royalty.  We were addicted to the gutted and glittered glamour that was the tourist's Bourbon Street.  We were addicted to the rough trade in the back rooms of Rampart.  We were addicted to everything in between, never realizing it was all one and the same.

Looking back now, as what passes for an adult, I often wonder how we survived.  We were kidnapped.  We were drugged (irony, I know).  We were held at gunpoint and raped over the hood of a beat up Chevy, only to learn the gun wasn't loaded.  We were arrested; we were released.  We stole.  We drank.  We partied.  And eventually, we all turned on one another...

I guess it's all part of the process.  It became the journey that brought us all to the crossroads at which we now stand - good, bad, or indifferent; for better or worse.  The destruction was the creation (or was it the other way round?) that destroyed us all, and created the monsters we have become.  We are our own end result in whatever medium we now choose to exist...  Looking out at yet another smeared world and its own hot mess of possibility.  Of promise, perhaps, even?

Are we really any more the wise now than we were then?  Did all the bloodshed and tears and accompanying battle scars really leave us any wisdom in its wake?  Or are we just stuck in an obligatory purgatory of all that is expected.  In running from that life, did we run headlong into this one - in a losing game of tit for tat???

I really don't know anymore.

The most disconcerting aspect of it all, though, is that I don't know which is worse:  this life, or that one.  In this new world, I feel caged.  My spirit feels bound and gagged; tethered to a life I don't understand and can not seem to make a go of being a part of.  Inversely, who in their right mind would long for a world of park bench amenities and laundry mat Christmases just so their soul felt free?

Surely there has to be a balance in it all somewhere...  Or is She Who Holds the Scales just as tipsy, fucked up, drunk, and crazy as we all once were.

Someone please pass the acid...  And go ask Alice.

I think she'll know...

Of Tigers and Dwarves

I knew in that moment that I was done for.  I felt it in that single, solitary instant like some cosmic blast from an unseen flamethrower...

"Who is he?" I asked.

"The big one?  Or the little one?"  She countered.

"The tall one that looks like Dopey..."  I replied.  "I want to meet him."

Her eyes lit up with all the trouble-making tenacity that made her her.  "Are you gonna bring him home?"

I chuckled.  Bring him home, I did.  And for years following, there was seldom a night that he wasn't by my side.

We lived fast.  We loved hard.  We fucked harder, and partied the hardest of all.  We dug our nails into each others flesh and held on for dear life as the angry tides that were the world around us tried like Hell to beat us down and tear us apart.  We were having none of it.  We were two warriors without the weapons needed, fighting a battle I think we both knew, in our hearts, that we were destined to ultimately lose.  We were our own private Waterloo.

I can recall telling myself one night towards what would become The End:

"Remember this.  It's fading."

And it already was.  We were like a still-developing photograph exposed to harsh light.  Our shadows were dissipating and washing out what was left.  Gone - or going - all too soon for us to even cherish were our wanton ways and wild whims.  I knew this.  I saw it coming.  I think he did too, but he refused it with all the bravado and fuck-you of the teenager that he still was.

Not surprisingly, it all came crashing down.  A falling house of cards...  Dominoes tumbling...  Bubbles bursting...  My realities and his recreations could no longer coexist within the same hearts.  The hands that once held each other so close against the world now throttled the voices that once whispered forevers, hurled daggers so vicious that perhaps not even time could heal.  The carousel had spun wildly out of control and thrown us both on our asses in vastly different directions.

The only thing left to do was walk away while there was still some semblance of something to walk away from.  It was one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make.  But the fight for it was destroying it faster that anything else that could be done.

Bags were packed in virtual silence.  A fairytale divided into cardboard boxes.  Princes became Ogres.  Apples became Poison.  And suddenly, it was over.  He was standing on the front porch, his ride waiting...  And the last thing he ever said to me:

"I always loved you, Mama."

And my heart shattered into dust.  I didn't say a word.  I didn't dare.

He turned away.

I shut the door.

I've never wept so completely.  Never known the meaning of mourning as I did in that moment.

Never before.

Never since.

Never again.