Neighborhood Watch: A story of two voyeurs

He had photos of Betty Page on his wall, he opened car doors for women, and he slicked back his hair. He did this with a wide-tooth comb and clear gel that he bought at the corner barber shop, that was almost out of business. He drove a standard, loved the smell of his authentic, vintage brown leather jacket, weathered from, well, weather, straight off of his grandfather's back, and he whistled while he worked. The funny thing was, as old-fashioned as he seemed, he loved technology.

He blasted oldies in his state-of-the-art headphones, as he tinkered on his computer, which was of the highest quality. He used electronics as though they were second nature to him. Plugging in and plugging out, turning on and turning off, staring at the blaring neon screen, animating figurines, turning numbers and codes into visual structures. Larry was a conundrum, a juxtaposition; he was a perplexing puzzle to those who knew him.

He puffed on a cigar, as he twiddled on his i-pod, marked his schedule in his i-pad, and calibrated the colors on his mac monitor. He was stuck between generations - intrigued by the fast-pasted, numerical, coldness of the age of technology, and held together by the warmth and simplicity of the 60's.

I don't know much about Larry. I can safely say my assumptions about him are correct though. I tend to be good at reading people. But I know he is only my neighbor. Sometimes I peer through my blinds, and I see him pacing around his room, or lying face up on his bed. I assume he must be thinking or listening to the radio - sometimes I hear voices coming from his speakers. I press my ear up against the glass, but I can't discern what they are saying. Sometimes I see him laugh, and his entire body shakes and his smile takes up his whole face. Sometimes I see him cry. I don't think he'd like that.

Once I came home from work, grabbed a bag of potato chips out of the cupboard, and stared out my window. Larry was huddled in a corner of his room, hugging himself, and sobbing. He kept fogging up his glasses with tears, taking his glasses off, cleaning them, and putting them back on. After about 10 minutes, he stood up, with a quiet calm, and punched his closet door. I dropped my bag of potato chips.

Larry was aggressive. I hadn't known. He smashed a huge hole into the door, and he shook his hand, and pressed his knuckles into his lips, because the blow was harder than he'd expected. But his expression was soft. I wanted to run over and ask if he was okay and tell him to settle down and to take a sip of water or maybe a walk or a cold shower and to clear his head, but then I remembered that I'm his neighbor, a girl he's never met. I thought I should respect him, so I walked away from the window.

Larry's outburst got me worried, so I decided to take a walk myself. I grabbed my keys and my walkman - I still listen to cassettes, myself, and I left. As I was walking along the pavement, counting the cracks, reading the graffiti, and tree-engravings scattered along my street, I heard a noise.

I turned around, and, of course, it was Larry. He'd fallen on the ground. I was paralyzed - this was the moment I had been waiting for, and yet, I couldn't move. I slowly approached him (after much personal coaxing).

"Are you alright?" I asked meekly. He nodded, ashamed. "Just stubbed my fucking toe, and tripped like an idiot". His language was vulgar. I kind of liked it. I had expected him to be charming or dazzling, like a Fred Astaire or maybe a strong, silent, intense type like Marlon Brando. But he was neither of those. He was just a kid. A guy who'd had a rough night, went for a walk, and stubbed his toe. He was real.

I was going to ask if he needed help, but I knew that would insult him. I didn't want to laugh for fear of mocking him. So I just stood, towering above his broad, manly body, and smiled. "Okay," I said. I turned around and starting walking.

"Hey," he said. "I know this is a stupid way to meet someone. But I've seen you. You live across from me, right? In that building?" He pointed directly to my apartment. I nodded, and blushed, hoping he couldn't see my red cheeks in the dark. "I'm Larry. Nice to meet you, Sh-". He stopped himself. He had started to say my name. He knew my name. He knew my name.

He knew my name.

Yellow Chalk

Yellow Chalk

She dropped her chalk on the classroom floor. It ricocheted off the linoleum. The white flecks sprayed into the air in slow motion. Her heart pounded through her chest and splattered onto the board. Her heart smatterings displayed for all her classmates to see. 

She wanted to dance. She imagined the light fixture, that Bobby always said looked like a “titty” becoming a disco ball. She pictured all her classmates in 70’s outfits dancing a choreographed piece, her afro reflecting specks of lights.

But this was not the disco era. It was the 90’s. And her overalls were covered in urine. And her hands were covered in chalk, the remnants of her embarrassment. She didn’t remember the words, she didn’t remember where she was. And all she could see were the faces. All the faces. And the mouths. Endless, gaping holes – dark, black holes laughing maniacally. Opening and closing.

Miranda remembered what her mother used to tell her. “If you fake it you can make it.” “Fake the confidence.” she thought. Pretend you meant to pee your pants. Pretend yellow-stained jean is chic. Walk to the nurse’s office like it’s a runway in New York. Act cool. Pretend you are fine, and you will be fine.

She got dizzy. And then she did something she didn’t expect. She started laughing. She started laughing so hard, that her mouth mimicked the rest of the classes. It was ridiculous. A 10-year-old girl, peeing in her pants, because she forgot how to spell omniscient. That was a hard word. She had to be kind to herself. And so she laughed.

She laughed at giving herself bruises after her father left. She laughed at being jealous of Sandra for her long, blonde hair and her beautiful smile that all the boys drooled over. And she laughed that she cared so much about winning the class spelling bee that she peed herself.

She looked at the floor beneath her sandaled feet. They stuck to the yellowed ground, wiped the tears from her eyes, looked at the still faces, took a deep breath and walked out the door. Then she started running. She ran so fast. Faster than she’d ever run before. Before she knew it she was in the playground, she sprinted past the swings where she almost had her first kiss with Jimmy, the class “geek” but she turned her head, past the foursquare where she skinned her knee and got her first scar, past the handball court where she learned what sex was, and past all the trees leading to the forest, where she realized she was different.

Miranda stopped at the bench. She heaved in and out. Her breath couldn’t catch up with her chest. She grabbed onto the splintered wood that made up the seat. She didn’t know why her feet brought her here. This was where it all happened. Where she ran after him on that steaming day in July. She saw his suitcases, leathered and worn, and his hand. It was deafening. Like a long tone. She couldn’t hear any other sounds, she couldn’t even hear the silence. She watched his hand and the bags disappear as the bus doors closed. And she never saw him again.

She blamed herself. And her mother did too, and her sister. She was the closest to him. Her father. And if he left, it had to be because of her. Because she wasn’t good enough. Because she didn’t beg enough. Because she did something wrong.

She sat on the bench, clenching her fists, closing her eyes. She wanted so badly to understand the world around her, why she was here, why people did what they did, what things happened. But she knew the answers would never come. She wanted rain to come and wash away her pain, and then the next day could be new and clean, and the air wouldn’t be covered in smog the way her head always was. Everything would be clear. Everything would make sense.

Miranda reached into her pocket, and pulled out the piece of chalk, and winced. 

The Plagued Seeker

Why am I always the seeker in Hide and Go Seek? I want to hide and I want someone to find me.

It must be because I am too impatient. I cannot wait, and the seeker always looks in the silliest places - places where no human could even fit. So as the anticipation builds, I, with much excitement, jump out of my hiding spot, which is dark and cold and lonely and frightening, and I say "here I am, here I am!" and then the seeker gets angry and says, "That's not how you play the game" and storms off.

I never was keen on rules.

cheeto puffs and cigarettes part II: they met indoors

Who she wanted to be

Who she was

She met him in a room. She didn’t remember which room, but she remembered the meeting took place indoors. He wore glasses that made his eyes look bigger than they were, which also made his capacity for listening, a sense of eagerness, appear magnified as well.  This was misleading, she later found out. He was not very much interested in her or what she had to say at all.

He did introduce her to a life of petty crime – stealing gummy worms out of the jar at Tug’s Candy Shop down on Main Street, pocketing small items as big as her palm at vendors on the Venice Boardwalk, and swiping bags of Cheeto Puffs off the counter at, well, any drug store, really. Cheeto puffs had become her vice now. They reminded her of something, but she wasn’t sure what. It was just a feeling - a mixture of excitement and comfort, the perfect combination. She smiled every time she saw that overzealous, egomaniacal cheetah staring back at her behind his big black shades. She smiled because she had given something ordinary, significance. And she felt quite profound whenever she did that.

His name was Pete, and he told her a story once – about how he had stolen a bag of Cheetos, the regular kind, when he was 10 years old. This immediately bonded them in a way she could not describe. Who knew that some chemically enhanced, metallic orange snack food could bind two vastly different people together?

Unfortunately, for both, the crunchy treat proved insufficient, and was not the glue that kept the two lovebirds together. She had wanted to play the role of Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon. Luring the suave detective to her. But that was all a pipe dream that never came to fruition. According to him, she only shared insanity and intensity with Astor’s character. She lacked the intrigue, the seduction, the power. All qualities she could easily acquire and maintain if she wasn’t so damn accessible and desiring of love and attachment and warm embraces underneath the pier and cotton candy kisses and tender touches and giddiness about silly things and...oh femme fatales are not romantic! She had to remind herself. The femmes are cold and cruel, that’s how they get their men. She had to accept that she was not like that. And maybe it’d be the true crime to change. She could not eat her mate after sex. No. She could only cuddle.

She sat out on her grand-mother’s balcony, inhaling the nicotine, feeling it pollute her lungs, the disintegration of her whiteness, the impurity escape and transcend through her. She was staying with her grand-mother now, in the apartment she had once called her home and now called her celestial palace, with much sarcasm. The apartment was blue and that’s all you really need to know about it. She looked up at the stars and back down at her shaking, trembling fingers attempting to grasp the cigarette in a “cool” way. But it wasn’t cool. It was desperate. 

Looking up at the sky, however, made her feel strangely calm. Listening to the silence that wasn’t silent, all the quiet sounds suddenly became illuminated. The snicker across the street in the neighbor’s yard, the sexual panting next door, the typing of a keyboard, a distant bicycle whizzing by into the late night. But it was the moon. It was the moon that really soothed her. No, she didn’t believe in God. But she believed in Him. The man in the moon.

He watched her, looking down from his pasted position in the blackened sky peppered with salted stars.  He smiled at her sadly when she was in despair, wishing she would just hush. He was always gentle, always there, always watching. Always sympathetic, it seemed.

The balcony felt cold and claustrophobic. It kept closing in and in until she filled the entire rectangular space, the entire block, the entire town, the entire world with her thoughts and her feelings that she couldn’t rid herself of even when she talked it through with her grand-mother, her therapist, her friends, her former lovers (why did she fucking tell them?). Why wasn’t talking it through enough? GET OUT OF MY SYSTEM, her mind cried. But her system remained full. At all times. Like a beat boy’s blaring boom box – straight out of the 90’s.

She stared at the white circular pattern outlining the balcony - the barriers, as she saw them. Preventing her from coming and going, from leaving at will, protecting her through entrapment. She remembered how her cat would carelessly slither his body in and out between the circles, as if the two-story fall was non-existent. She missed her cat, Bowtie. His purr used to lull her into a rhythmic sleep. She envisioned his small grey face nuzzling into her armpit, and his tail swaying happily as he strutted along, owning that balcony – his very own runway.

Trying to erase this memory and all the others that made her stomach sick, she chomped on her cheeto puffs, ironically, smoked her cigarette, and pretended. She was calm and not claustrophobic and not scared out of her mind and agitated and antsy and sad and yearning and disappointed and stuck in a daily purgatory.

She pretended lots of things. When she was little she played psychologist and would make up stories for invisible patients and write down prescriptions to their problems on a legal pad. Now she pretended to be happy and stable. I suppose they tie into each other quite nicely.

She was fine, just fine. At least that’s what she told the world. At least that’s what her painted veil of a face said to strangers when they first met.  That’s what she told Pete, when they met indoors, in the room. But when he told her to be honest, it was like a lie detector test, and she couldn’t lie and the words came out and her skin came off and he saw her skeleton and her bruised bones and her imperfections and he did not embrace them like they do in romance novels or the movies. He said goodbye. And she cried because she was worried they always would. All she wanted was to hear hello, instead of goodbye. But maybe that was too much to ask. 

Five Fingers, Five Friends

Five Fingers, Five Friends.

Thumb was rotund and short, with crooked teeth and a furrowed brow. He had thick hair, baby blue eyes, and a sniffing nose. He liked to brood and take control. When a conversation went a way that didn't please him, he said so, and changed the subject. He had little man's complex and puffed up his chest to show that he was strong. Deep inside, underneath the layers of skin and cells, he was soft, or so I thought. Who is to say really?

Thumb and I met for drinks. The red candlelight enunciated his bone structure and his eagerness to get over his craving for Spanish rice. He licked his lips and talked. I was surprised because I thought he was a good listener, but maybe not tonight. He tried to kiss me underneath the moonlight, but I was hesitant. It could have been worse. It could have been better. But I did feel like I knew him for years.

Mr. Pointer was scrappy and intense, with deep sunken eyes and hair of amber. His face reminded me of a delicate skeleton's, harsh and vulnerable, bare and angry. Small nose, long lashes. Time had changed my range and motion with him. Began as a budding flower, then opened to reveal the pollen, and now the falling, browning petals. More like egg shells and shards of glass.

Mr. P and I spoke over the phone. His voice always sounded different, and thus I constantly forgot who he was until I heard the gravel on the other end of the line. Agitation and exasperation hung on his lips like dried saliva. He had a way of ending things without ending them. He'd slowly stop responding, give a curt reply, or spit out a sarcastic remark - all which shut me down. The seed was no longer a seed, but I wanted to keep the remaining petals from wilting. Not sure how, and he won't tell me. He thrives on secrets, though he claims not to keep any.

Mid was goofy and lanky. He towered over me and the other minions like the jolly green giant, except not green. He looked stoned, though he wasn't, technically. He was against the reefer, against alcohol, against chemical enhancement - this turned me on. We could talk for hours, but it was only a conversation after I asked it to be. He was kind and that was clear. In his touch and his hesitation to touch.

Mid and I met for a movie. It was the only time we could meet, because he lacked motivation and was stuck in a rut, literally. He lived in a pot hole, on the side of the road. The flick was fun and we laughed and I put my head on his shoulder and he awkwardly tried to put his arm around me. It was uncomfortable and he could tell, so he removed it. This was sweet, and I enjoyed the gentleness of the giant.

Ring had green eyes engulfed in blue and strong, yet feminine hands. His smile lines told the story of his heart, and made him incapable of having a winning poker face. Ring was chivalrous - he opened doors, paid for meals, checked in every day, gave practical advice, and genuinely cared.

Ring and I sat in the park. He wiped the black off my face with a damp touch. We laughed after time, but he was simple. In darker topics of conversation he got silent and giggled nervously and changed the subject. But maybe this was good for me. Maybe I need the ring without a tarnished jewel.

Pinky was short and disarming with round spectacles and a piercing nose that went well with his bright eyes. His openness, his experiments frightened me. He loved life, that was clear. He was an amalgam of movement and senses and sight and sound and touch. He would talk to a random stranger, and feel as though he were talking to God. Maybe he wasn't cynical enough for me.

Pinky and I danced together. We bobbed our heads to the beat - the only two on the dance floor. We sipped our bubbled drinks, encased in flutes, letting the glass clink together, but not our bodies. We stepped outside and the night went from light to dark, from fast to slow. The world stopped spinning and I hoped he kept his distance.

Those are my five fingers. They are connected to my palm. Each one different, with a separate purpose and function, some more necessary than others. And yet they all have wrinkled knuckles, painted nails of the same chipped turquoise color, blue veins, callouses, and tremors.

I think I'll cut all my fingers off with a sharpened knife, let the blood drain out and the bones fall to the ground. Without my fingers, I can still feel, I can still touch, my palm grazing against surfaces and skin.

I won't be able to attach, because fingers cling and hold and grab and pull. Without them there is no latching on, no tugging, no pushing away. Just touching.

But, I think that's all I need. Because if you don't attach, you don't have to let go, and then it doesn't hurt when there is nothing to hold on to but air.

Jar of Poisoned Memories

Inspired by Adele's song "Turning Tables" and also inspired by life and the subconscious, per usual.

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Next time, I'll be braver.
Next time, I'll be my own savior.

I had a dream that I was strong. That I belonged. To myself.
I dreamt that the waves crashed over me, covering me in a bath of clean, the crests white and frothy like a cappuccino, and you caressed my skin as though it were a baby's. I dreamt that we dipped our toes into the sand and it was wet and grainy and felt delicious. We laughed. I pinched you so hard you bled and tears collected in your eyes. It made me excited.
The next day you didn't call. Or I didn't answer. I won't know which, because I had tossed my phone into the toilet, or was it the ocean? I'll never speak to you or anyone again. I'll just skip in the grass garden of my heart, where leaves fall from the trees, and flowers smell like flowers, and honey summons the bees, and I feel serene. Then dark shadows came. I ran for shelter, but there was none. I saw you lurking, you wore a hood, and you didn't have a face. But I didn't fear you this time. I ran to you and scoffed into the dark, cavernous hole where your head should be. I laughed so hard I fell onto the ground and I rolled down the hill.
The day after, I sat alone, on a cloud. Or was it my pillow? I don't know the difference. When I am strong, I lose focus. I forget who I am and where I'm going, because I try so hard to be brave and to fight and to forget. I forget to forget. Remember to forget! I say it, over and over. Then I forget what I'm trying to remember to forget. I do remember I was sitting on white. I held my pencil to my lips, the eraser felt like a piece of bubble gum and I had to scold myself when I tried to chew it. My journal was empty. You were gone and so were my words. I tried to write, but the pencil had no lead. I felt you behind me. I breathed you in, smelled your scent, heard your beating heart. When I turned around, you slapped me. With your words, of course. So I stood up, and I took my pencil and I wrote hateful things about you, in capital letters, across the walls and the ceiling and then I bit off my eraser and spit it out so it could not be used. Then I remembered the pencil had no lead.
The following day, I sat Indian style, with a jar of jellybeans, searching for watermelon, with the fleshy pink insides - the way you liked it. I let the watermelon beans collect in the folds of my dress, and then I picked out all the good flavors and left the ones you hated: cinnamon, buttered popcorn, and being nice. The next time I saw you, I was going to give this jar to you as a passive aggressive present. It made me giddy.
The next week - for days had passed of nothingness and so much that I can't recall any of it - I waited impatiently in the rocking chair. I rocked so hard, I fell right through to the wood floor. I stood up and paced around the room. You told me you'd come. You'd left a note on my door. A little yellow post-it  that said "I'll be there" - I had assumed you'd meant today. I thought I knew you. I thought you'd be here by now. But you weren't. But you're not. I guess you were only there when you wanted to be, not when I needed you to be.
A month went by and I was dry and bare as a turkey bone at the end of a big Thanksgiving meal. I wandered off the plate looking for my meat, but it had been eaten by the fat uncle who always sat at the end of the table and demanded the leg. It was swallowed and digested, and I had to accept that I was a mere bone now, about to be tossed to the dog. I scampered off the table, or I suppose I fell off, and succumbed to my fate of entering a slobbering mouth. This wasn't very brave, this wasn't very strong. I had failed.
A year's gone by. That's funny. It makes me smile. But when I look in the mirror, I look like I'm smelling a bad smell, because the smile looks forced and my nose is scrunched and my eyes water. I guess it's not funny. A year of trying to be a man, a pirate, a warrior has gone by, but I'm a withered, unwatered fern leaf. I'm brown, not green, and I've fallen off the plant. I wonder what's happened to you. I only imagine because we don't speak. I thought we were connected, so I guess. And when I see your hands, and the way you walk, and your feet under your sheets, and your blinking eyes, it feels very real, but it's not. If you were a figment of my imagination I could control you. But unfortunately you're real. I think. So I have to let you go, and free you. Once my budgerigar, Sky, was let out of his cage, and his wings weren't clipped so he flew out and he never came back. I thought he loved me. The next day it rained. I was certain he had died. He didn't know how to survive. My mom told me he probably flew off to some exotic tropical land and was eating banana chips. I cried and cried and felt abandoned and angry. We should have clipped his wings, but we were trying to spare him.

Next time I will inflict the pain.
Next time I will know better.

Left-Overs

This is funny. And it's happened before. I opened my old creative writing folder on my laptop, and found this gem - this heart-wrenching love splattering that I wrote over a year ago. It's funny because since I have written this, I've felt the same thing about 4 more times with 4 other people. I just find it slightly amusing that life is a cycle, where we are constantly putting ourselves into similar situations (whether it's conscious or not, I don't know) or repeating actions over and over again. It's a sad kind of observation, because these aren't necessarily good actions. This passage is about feeling like left-overs, about feeling like I've been discarded for something better, about feeling unwanted. I've felt this over and over again. It's funny...but it's not. 

Regardless, I like the rhythm of this piece, because it was raw and it's the way my brain works - constant and punctuated and on-going. I am assuming and some-what hoping the subject of this passage is a universal feeling, which is why I will post my vulnerability for all the world aka my mom and the 3 other people that read this blog (ha). If nothing else, hopefully I will come across this later in life and have a soft pity for my old self. The future me, having experienced true care, will smile with withheld tears and compassion for the old me who suffered so when it came to love, knowing that it got so much better, and so much easier with time, wisdom, and age. Let's hope. Fingers crossed.

WARNING: This piece get's emotionally intense and depressing. But we all have those moments right? Yeeeeesh. 

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I saw her today. It was jarring. I didn’t expect to see her. I didn’t want to see her.  I didn’t know she’d be there. I was caught off guard. Unawares. I didn’t know you still felt that way about her. Whatever way that is. I didn’t know you still felt it. I didn’t know that feeling, whatever it is, still coursed through your veins, like tobacco on your lips after a cigarette. I thought you’d given up the addiction, if that’s what it was. Who knows. What do I know? I know nothing. So I’m forced to guess, to estimate, to guestimate. I’m left to analyze, to wonder, to scrounge for details. I’m left searching my brain for memories and words and bits and pieces so I can put together this puzzle that doesn’t even matter. I’m racking and ranting and reveling over you and this girl. Why? I saw her today, and I didn’t expect to, but I also didn’t expect to feel anything. I thought I was over you. Maybe that’s where the shock comes in – not that you are not over her, but that I’m not over you. I feel like left-overs. The kind you don’t eat the next day, but that sits in the refridgerator for days, until the whole kitchen starts to smell, and finally someone throws it away, like you threw me away. I was her left-overs. I was your left-overs? Whose left-over was I? Regardless, I meant nothing to you. I was just some distraction. I was temporary, momentary. Like a blink, a wisp, a breath of air, but an inconsequential one, like a sigh, an unnecessary one, like a gasp. Not even a gasp. Gasps are too momentous. It hurts. I won’t deny it. It hurts to not feel wanted or needed or desired or thought about. It hurts that you could have me, but choose not to or don’t want to. You did have me, but you didn’t like it. It wasn’t your thing. Me. I wasn’t. I wasn’t your thing. I was just sort of there, for amusement. It was nothing. I guess I knew it was nothing and thought it was nothing too. Until now. Now I’m reveling and racking and wondering and pondering and analyzing and questioning and fantasizing. What are you two doing now? I bet you’re making love. Is it sweet or sour? Do you like it or is it out of habit? We are creatures of habit, you know. Since I’m pessimistic I bet you like it. A lot. I bet you are so happy. With her. I bet you never think about me. Some girls aren’t like this, I realize. Some may find ways to make themselves feel better – may think you are unhappy or feeling neutral with this other girl, this “other woman”. But not I. I don’t. Why do I make myself unhappy? Why do I choose to make myself unhappy? I think I’m being realistic. But maybe I like being miserable. Maybe I like feeling “bad”. Who knows. Who cares. Who gives a fuck. You certainly don’t. I bet you haven’t thought 2 seconds about me since we last saw eachother – since that fateful day when I gave myself away to curiosity, sex, and you. Since I gave myself away to temptation, and destruction, and self-loathing. Since I gave myself away to someone who didn’t even want me. Good thing I didn’t give all of me. Good thing I didn’t fall in love with you. Now that would have been disastrous. People say things are more complicated than they seem. That we never know what goes on behind closed doors, and we never will. But maybe we do know, but are too scared to face it. Maybe I face it and that’s why I’m left feeling empty inside. I don’t think this is more complicated, though I wish it were. I think its plain and simple. I’m thrown away left-overs, that you haven’t thought about since you took the trash out. You’re eating at a fancy restaurant now, your favorite restaurant, the one you’re a regular at – and you are loving every minute of it. Well guess what, I still exist. I’m still in the garbage can, right where you left me.