I’ve been gone. I’m sorry. I’d tell you where I’ve been, if I knew.
I’d like nothing more than to know where I’ve been and what I’ve done. I’d like to pull my brain out through my ear, pop it in the VCR, sit on the couch with you, a vodka and a bowl of popcorn and see what happened; see the things my brain is busy blocking out. Or maybe it’s the vodka that blocks it all out. There is no way of knowing.
“The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.” The movie in my head that we’re watching has been edited by a monkey, but not that Shakespeare monkey. I have a shit-tossing, public masturbating, screaming howler monkey. He’s collected random outtakes found on a barroom floors across the city. Blasts of dialogue. Seconds of music. Bits of light. Sound and vision run sideways, backwards, not at all, skipping, skipping, skipping. Some things look familiar. A flash of a foot, cut to a hand holding a glass of vodka – it could be mine, there is no way of knowing. Jump to nothing, nothing, nothing, an unidentifiable horizon. Pan to darkness, nighttime, maybe the lights are just off. Maybe none of it’s real. Maybe all of it is. There is no way of knowing.
I never talked about the Big Man again, I know that. I never report him to the police.
Police don’t take care of people like us. We take care of us. Except when we don’t, and then you’re on your own.
I was on my own, I knew that, too.
Remember and know are different animals.
I know I was born. My mother remembers it.
Here’s what I know: You can’t see the bruises and burns for the welts my own body has created. From my collarbone to my pubic bone, and every inch of skin in between, I’m covered with hives. My face has cracked open. My cheeks, my scalp, my eyelids, even the tender skin under my eyes, dried and cracked like a desert floor.
Here’s what I know: Rape is trauma. If it happens to you, you should see a professional, you should see several. Police officer. Registered Nurse. Social worker. Trained counselor. Trusted clergy. Medical doctor. Lawyers. Therapist. Psychiatrist. Maybe a support group.
I consulted a dermatologist who said I’d developed an allergy to commercial soap. I never use soap on my face again. Ever.
Here’s what I remember: Being raped did not affect me at all.
Thirteen years and 100 men later I will finally take another man into the same bed I was raped in. Although I will not notice it at the time, he will be look exactly like the Big Man. It will take me weeks to make the connection, despite the fact that the next morning my body is covered in hives.
Two years after that I will write about that night for the very first time. And once again, my body will be covered with hives.
Twenty-nine years after the fact, just the thought of writing about that night will send me into a depression that will swallow Thanksgiving and everything in its sway until some time around St. Patrick’s Day.
But that’s the future, none of that has happened yet. Today, like a shark, I move forward because there is no other choice. I leave the Lollipop and think, I’m going to start over, make a fresh start, a new life. I’m fine, I just need a job. And a cocktail.
This entry was written by , posted on March 11, 2010 at 3:25 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1982, Lollipop Lounge, Paul's Mardi Gras, rape, the abyss, Times Square. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Nothing was ever worse than that week in 1979, the week I would use to measure and rate all other weeks and incidents in my life, for the rest of my life, even today. Nothing was ever worse than the week my husband stole all my money and tried to kill me by beating me to death with a Bible, I got fired, Lightfoot locked me up in a roadside motel with the intent of ‘turning me out’, my apartment got infested, infested I tell you with cockroaches and I was on the back of a motorcycle as it crashed head on into a parked van.
Even I could see something was slightly askew. Something was always slightly askew. The bottom line was that I was still alive, albeit a little more banged up, a little broker than when I started, but alive.
I took a few days off at my parents house to get over the very worst of the accident, then headed back to the East Village. Lola got me a waitressing job at the Italian restaurant where she worked and I tried, I really did. I tried to make a go of it with a straight job for almost a year.
1979 October
I tried on those boots with the red suede stars. They looked great, but they’re $160 – so it’s back to selling drugs for extra money. I can pick up 100 Black Beauties this week.
October
Granma Helen called. “You’re not a princess anymore,” she said. “Nope, too many frogs,” I thought to myself. I wish she’d stop calling.
November
I’m nothing but a lowly waitress and I’m drinking again. Luckily, it takes less and less to get me drunk. I don’t do anything very well. Except give head. I’m not sure if that’s depressing or not.
November
I go to the 50¢ photo booths every week and study the four small black and white impressions of me. I don’t really recognize myself in these photos.
December
Wednesday : Crashed a private party at Great Gildersleeves for the Hell’s Angels and got as drunk as I could.
Thursday : Had a tooth pulled out.
Friday : Stayed in.
Saturday : Took Laurie to Bellevue Hospital after Havasha beat her up.
December
Winter is here and I’ve started drinking at home. Not to worry, but it’s a change.
1980 March
I’m sick and not even a cat here to keep me company. All I want is someone to feel sorry for me. The landlord’s been banging on the door all day, yelling for the rent.
March
I hate being grown up. It’s lonely and there’s nothing to look forward to. The older I get, the less I’m able to remember. It used to be just my childhood but more and more of my teenaged years are gone. Maybe if I had a job or something… I’m scared.
March
I get so violent when I’ve been drinking. I’m almost knifed a bitch in Gildersleeves over nothing, a guy.
May
Sometimes it’s more painful to live than to die.
May
I do not recognize the face in the mirror.
June
The apartment is clean, the roaches are gone and I have a large cold glass of Rosé beside me.
I am very calm.
June
Finding that I can ingest a lot of booze in a short a period of time and still be clear. The physical clumsiness of the 3rd drink now takes me 1/2 a bottle of wine and 1/4 bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Cream to find. Unfortunately, the maudlin crap comes just as quickly as before. Quicker as get older. Maybe it’s not the drinking at all, just the aging.
July
So far this year I’ve seen 16 movies and had sex 17 times with 10 people. That makes a movie every 11 and 6/16 days and sex 2 1/2 times a month. I guess I don’t actually have a lot of sex, I just have it with a lot of different people.
July
BW got out of prison. Neighbors say he’s been looking for me. I decided the best way to deal with this was to get drunk. It worked, I fell asleep, which I don’t seem to be doing a lot of lately.
July
Voices call my name I turn and see no one as the day grows nearer (any day now, this is the year, this is my last year) the voices grow louder and more distinct am I mad or right or both is it madness to wait patiently for one’s own death?
September
I’m 23 and bored with people and life. The thing that kept me most excited about life was death – and then, I didn’t die.
September
Decided to really go straight, take anything to avoid the midtown sleaze. My first interview – a receptionist job – turned out to be at a whorehouse. I start 10:30 tomorrow morning. I don’t know if I’ll show or not, but apparently sleaze is my fate.
September
Still looking for work. Losing track of days and time. Drinking less because I’m short of cash, but I’d rather eat less. If things get tough I could dance one day a week.
One day wouldn’t kill me.
This entry was written by , posted on November 23, 2009 at 2:02 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, 1980, death, drinking, drugs, East Village, the abyss. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Some things I don’t remember at all. My first kiss. My first date. I don’t remember a lot of my life. Not the way you remember yours.
I remember photographs of events, but not the actual event.
Sometimes I think that I made the whole thing up.
All of it.
Then, tentwentythirty years later I run into someone who was there, in that snapshot moment and they say, Yes, that’s what happened. Yes, it was exactly like that. Or they don’t say anything because maybe they blinked too sometimes. Or they look at me like I’m crazy because they remember it a whole ‘nother way completely.
There are things I know, the way I know about Columbus or the Kennedy assassination, but I don’t technically remember, because, like I said, I wasn’t actually there.
That’s how my life is. I’d blink and days would disappear. Even when I knew where I was, I wasn’t really there. I left my baggage in the lobby, but I was gone, baby, gone. Checked out. I know the stories, but they happened to that other Jodi while I watched from the back side of the looking glass. I shouldn’t be held responsible, because I wasn’t actually there.
I don’t remember not one single thing from my own eyes. I remember from the eyes of the other me, the one who stepped out, stood in the shadows, sat next to me in the cabs, lounged on the couch in the corner and watched with no reaction at all. To anything. No matter what was going down. From the safety of the shadows I watched my life just happen– the good, the bad and the ugly. Even in a room by myself, I stood in a corner, watching to see what I would do next….
Word is you remember the things that are important to you. I think I remember the things that changed me, even if they didn’t seem important at the time.
I remember taking my first hit of cocaine (Hotel Earle, 1976),
snorting my first bag of dope (Mardi Gras bathroom, 1981)
and turning my first trick (Floyd Simpson, February 1978).
This entry was written by , posted on October 29, 2009 at 9:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged blink, drugs, the abyss. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
The inside of a cab is a relatively small space for all this screaming, most of which is coming from me.
I drag this dance bag around with me everywhere I go, stuffed with anything I could possibly need in case I can’t go home for a day or two, which considering the week I’m having, is a smart move. Now, in addition to all the crap already in the bag, I’ve brought dozens and dozens of shiny black and brown roaches with me. Roaches waddle over my change purse, ski down my house keys.
I try to explain to Abu Ben Taxi Man, and to ask for help. All he hears are garbled sounds, convulsive breathing and screams of cockroach, cockroach, cockroach from a crazy girl spasmodically flinging a bag around the back of his cab
A couple walks by on their way home, they eyeball us for a moment without even slowing down.
“Lady, calm down, I have no bugs. You pay and then you get out. You give me six dollah and then you go away, go away and no cockroaches.” He talks to me in a soft voice, maybe a little afraid I’ll wreck his cab, stiff him or turn my hysteria on him.
I know that tone of voice. It’s the one you save for the crazy people, the one you use when you want to say “Okay, just put the gun down and back away…” Maybe he’s right and I’m crazy and this is a hallucination. Apparently. I’m the only one who sees the bugs. It happens. I know it happens, like with coke bugs. I haven’t done a that much coke in the last few days, but it could be.
I take a deep breath, in with the good, out with the bad. Okay. I’m good. Fine, just keep moving, like a shark, keep moving.
I reach into the bag to get the money. I have superior hallucinations, I think to myself, tactile as well as visual. Imaginary roaches crawl over my hand, through my fingers, up my sleeve. Calm, breathe, it’s a figment of your imagination, I tell myself. In with the good, breathe, out with the bad.
The cab speeds off down the block before I can finish closing the car door.
Standing on West 27th Street I yell up to Lola’s window, explaining that there are two distinct possibilities here. I’ve either lost my mind, which is entirely believable, or I’ve brought with me a bag full of cockroaches and maybe I shouldn’t come into the house just yet, maybe she should come take a look first.
Lola cocks her head and puts on a sad face that says she knew that eventually I would to lose my mind. Reluctantly, she comes out in her pajamas and slippers, with Chester the Dog to inspect my bag. They’re the bag inspectors.
I hold it open in front of me for them to see.
Lola leans over, peeks, yelps like a Pekinese, looks up at me and jumps back, still yelping.
She startled me and I start yelping and jumping along with her, dropping the bag. Roaches flood out of the bag and scatter everywhere. We dance and scream and jump around them, on them, yelp and jump off of them. Screaming, laughing and crying so hard I pee myself, just a little. We hold on to each other to keep from falling. Drowsy faces appear in the windows, watching two crazy girls and a dog screaming, laughing and jumping for no apparent reason. It’s still too dark for anyone else to see the bugs.
Chester the Dog, jumping along with us and licking up mouths full of live roaches acts as if I’ve brought a bag of fun treats just for him.
I’m grateful for Chester’s help, but really, she needs to feed that dog more often.
This entry was written by , posted on October 1, 2009 at 3:43 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, Chelsea, roaches, the abyss. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
courtesy of nick vail
I smelled the smoke before I noticed the charred walls, the remnants of ash, the damp floor or the wooden planks nailed up where the apartment door used to be. All my life I was looking for a way out and now there was no way in.
I have a tendency to live in just-get-through-this-moment survival mode. Each bit of chaos pushes the previous bit out, so it’s hard to see connections. When there’s a lot of crazy in the air, it’s all I can do to just make the noise stop.
The screaming in my head went from 0 to 60 so fast it came flying out of my mouth.
“Oh my god, oh my god, ohmygodohmygodohmygod.” I’m yanking at the boards with my hands. That crazy fuck came back and burned up my apartment. Fucking Red. Fucking Red Wolf. Fucking animal. “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod Ketzel! Ohmygodohmgodohmgd”
I’ve had Ketzel since I was 16. Mom named her, it’s Yiddish for kitten. It was what she called me until the cat showed up. I don’t care what happens to me really, but taking care of the cat, that’s my job, my real job. That cat is the only place I feel safe.
I pull at the boards harder, faster, bloodying my fingers, tearing my nails. Broken bits of plywood and door clatter wildly on the sooty mosaic floors of the hallway. Where is everyone? Why isn’t anyone coming to help me? I don’t feel like I’m crying, but my face is soaked with tears. If he hurt the cat I’ll kill him, I’ll find him and kill him.
I’d opened enough of a hole in the door to reach through and let myself in. My apartment was untouched. It wasn’t Wolf at all. I’d find out weeks later that an electrical fire had devastated my neighbor. The fire department had broken down my door. The apartment was fine, except for the door… and the thousands of cockroaches that covered my floor.
A hundred shades of black, brown and red glittered on the floor, not an inch of white linoleum showed. My ears filled with the crisp rustling of hundreds thousands of cockroach wings & shells brushing against thousands of cockroach shells & wings as they stepped over each other, searching for food and a little personal space. Every single roach in the building, every roach on East 7th Street, all huddled in my apartment for shelter from the storm, safety from the fire. Their delicate exoskeletons tinkled against each other as they climbed tables and chairs, devouring Ketzel’s food, body surfing across her water dish. Ketzel, normally happy to chase, catch and devour any and all comers, watched from her perch on the kitchen sink. Baffled by their overwhelming numbers, she looked to me, confusion on her small furry face, for further instruction.
One minute I’m walking down the wild side, next thing I know I’m ankle deep in cockroaches. How could that possibly happen? Obviously, I thought to myself, it is not actually happening. This is stress, a hallucination. You’ve had two really bad days, Red Wolf, the beating, the police, losing your job, the motel window, no food for two days. This is normal. Just relax, calm down. None of this is real. There are not this many cockroaches in the city, no less in one apartment. You just need to sleep it off, hit the reset button.
I dropped my dance bag in a corner and wedged the remains of the shattered door closed, crunching roaches beneath my feet with every step. Vomit rose in my throat. Audio hallucinations. It’s fine, just part of the package, nervous hysteria. Just calm the fuck down. Climbing up into the loft bed, Ketzel tucked tightly under my arm whispering her best Scarlett O’Hara into my ear, “Don’t think about this right now. If you do, you’ll go crazy. We’ll think about this tomorrow”. I kick off my boots, peel down last night’s clothes, dropping them onto the bed with the others already piled there and curl myself around the warm cat fur and escape into sleep as she purrs into my neck, “Home. You’re home. And after all… tomorrow is another day.”
Perhaps I should’ve questioned why the cat seemed to share my hallucination, but I didn’t. I did, however, wonder where she’d picked up that southern accent. We were, after all, both Long Island pussy.
This entry was written by , posted on September 21, 2009 at 11:19 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, East Village, the abyss. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
What was I thinking?
I’d flunked out of Times Square. I didn’t want to go back to some job-job. I didn’t have a job-job to go back to, or any job-job skills. Since high school I’d been a short order cook, waitress, karate school receptionist, file clerk, bar bimbo. Quit, fired, fired, fired. Fired.
I was sixteen when I got out of school. I’d secretly turned 18 behind the bar at the Mardi Gras. I felt like I was a hundred years old. I felt like I’d been slagging around for years.
I had five years left before I got killed, give or take and I’d be an idiot to move out, I had a pretty easy life here. The answers were too scary so my parents didn’t ask the questions. Three hots & a cot, that’s what Snake used to say about prison, why he didn’t mind it. Three hots & a cot…and laundry.
Community colleges have to take you no matter what. I hadn’t bothered with SATs or Regents exams. School wasn’t part of my plan. I don’t like doing things I’m not already good at, which narrows the field considerably.
My plan had been easy money in the bars. I fucked that up. My plan had been some factory job & a cold water walk up. I’d lasted one day in a factory making little spools of copper wire from giant spools of copper wire. Eight hours of winding wire bobbins. Spin, clip, spin, clip, spin, clip. My fingers were so swollen by clock out I couldn’t fold my hand to hitchhike or dial a payphone to call for a ride. I sat on the curb and cried. I have no idea how I got home. So, add that to the list. Factory: quit.
September
The theatre department of Nassau Community College is directly across the street from the Garden City Bowl. I don’t bowl, but I like that things get knocked down and then set right again. I’m hoping I can make that a metaphor for my life. My average is 27 so I don’t put too much hope in a bowling metaphor. Maybe hoping for someone to run in and set me “right” is too much. It’ll be enough if I can just figure out how to stop standing in the way of the ball. Either way, the cocktail lounge it just through that door and I can cocktail with the best of them.
October
My first time on the small stage at NCC is somewhat less glamorous than my Mardi Gras debut. I’d made my own costume, a green and yellow strapless maxi-dress, a chiffon tube held up by an elastic band running around the top, just above my breasts, just under my armpits. I make my entrance, step on my own hem, the dress slides down to my waist and once again I’m on stage, topless, sans lights, sans mirrored ball, but still, topless. With an audience, of mostly our parents. No metaphor. Just destiny. And you cannot fight destiny.
November
“If I had a daughter, I wouldn’t let her hang out with you, either,” my mother says not for the first time.
We’re sitting at the kitchen table. My mother, my father, me, and Rachel. Rachel and I had gone to high school together without actually being friends, now we’re in school together, again. Levittown is just small enough that bad behavior doesn’t go unnoticed, even by parents you’ve never actually met. I was on the other side of that invisible, but very definite, line that separates them from us, “high spirited” from out of control, the good girls from the bad. Rachel made a crack over dinner about how her mother didn’t approve of me, how she was afraid I’d be a bad influence, afraid just knowing me could screw up Rachel’s future. Rachel was a good girl, the kind every mother hopes for.
“If I had a daughter, I wouldn’t let her hang out with you either,” my mother agreed as she cleared the dishes from the table. Rachel helped.
I’m stuck in Limbo, two exits south of Purgatory off the Long Island Expressway. Levittown. The best thing about been stuck in the suburbs is catching a train back into the city.
dirtygirl wonders…
How would your life change, if you knew when it was going to end? Or more to the point, how would you change your life if…? Post your thoughts below. C’mon, talk dirty to me.
This entry was written by , posted on July 30, 2009 at 10:41 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1976, Levittown, the abyss. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I want to tell my story in chronological order. Unfortunately, things don’t always happen to me in chronological order. Some things happen before other things one time, and then next time it’s the other way around. I might not remember Tuesday until Sunday, you see what I mean? And a month or so of Wednesdays are simply gone forever.
Night should follow day, and day follow night. That’s how it’s supposed to work, but it comes out more like a shotgun blast or a spiral paint splatter design.
Night follows night follows night and really, I have no idea where the days have gone and what they’re doing wherever they’ve wound up.
I started in 1957 and I was supposed to end in 1980. Twenty three years & four days, that was the plan. There was no point in keeping track, in insisting on order, chronological or otherwise, when I knew it was all going to end, badly. I had an expiration date, like a quart of milk. I made no plan for living past July 27, 1980.
I want to tell this story in chronological order. But things simply don’t happen to me that way.
This entry was written by , posted on May 31, 2009 at 11:16 pm, filed under the diary and tagged the abyss. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
