Sitting in the plush passenger seat of my Dad’s mauve Dodge van, I leaned out of the open window, cheeks to the wind, inhaling enchilada grease from Don Cuco’s across the street while we waited for the light. There it was--a carousel, a petrified firework. Dad drank Coke from a Styrofoam cup, mostly ice, I judged by the muted garbage disposal sound, as I stared across the street. Cotton Candy. Tilt-a-Whirl. Sea Dragon. You Must Be This Tall to Ride.
Dad wasn’t usually into that sort of thing, but it was Wednesday, our night.
“Can we go?”
He smiled, his cheeks rising to hide tired eyes and shrugged, “Why not?”We flipped a U and parked in the blacktop lot near the ticket booth. Dad sighed and turned off the engine and we headed toward the lights.
“See that one?” Dad said, his eyes set on a tall metal structure with elbow macaroni pods squealing up, over, around the vertical track, and also spinning in circles. “That’s The Zipper. Rode it in high school with Jimmy from across the street. He threw up all over his car,” he was laughing a little now, rays emanating from the corners of his eyes. I loved when Dad told me stories like these. Jimmy, my uncle Dale and Dad used to climb into abandoned cars and rocky caves that hid in the brush hills near their street. They had all sorts of adventures I could only dream about here in suburban sprawl of Simi Valley.
“Ew! Gross!” I shrieked, but kind of intrigued.
“I must have gone on it ten times that night.” Dad’s cheeks glowed orange, his wrinkles smoothed in the flashing lights.
I was scared to go on The Zipper, but Dad convinced me. Seeing him happy made me happy. The metal pod smelled like a doctor’s office. My eyes squeezed, nervous, as I gripped the metal bar, cold and grooved with peeling gray paint. “Woo hoo!” Dad yelled, while I screamed, wanting it to be over soon. I hoped my stomach was stronger than Jimmy’s, keeping my forehead pressed into Dad’s shoulder as we flipped upside down. His Old Spice aftershave made me feel safe.
Almost ten years later Liza and I watched men unload candy-colored metal frames in the dirt lot next to the worn playground, its once red slide turned salmon from sun exposure. As we walked closer, the late-September breeze carried the smell of cold dirt mixed with roasted peanuts, making our hairs sticking up like electricity. The carnival lights burned against the almost navy sky, canceling out the stars.
We were supposed to be studying for our Bio midterm, she reminded me, her muddy eyes hard. Fifteen minutes, I said. Beats another coffee break.
Around us pudgy kids proudly sported ice cream stains and brandished sticky fingers as they dragged their parents from ride to ride. Carnivals. All that work, then pack-em-up by dawn on route to the next town. I had experience with packing, with back-and-forth. Packing life up from one parent to the next. It wasn’t so bad. I liked having everything I needed right with me.
I looked around for the ride I wanted to find. There. “That was my Dad’s favorite growing up,” I said to Liza, pointing to The Zipper, proud to know that fact about him.
“It looks like it’s about to fall apart,” she replied. It did. But I still wanted to go. For Dad.
Liza typically got what she wanted, which meant we didn’t ride it. Instead, we played some games, Tic-Tac-Toe, the Ring Toss, trading dollars for stuffed animals filled with sawdust, the kind my mom warned me were dyed with pee. I held mine gingerly before passing it off to a girl in French braids on the way to Liza’s sedan. The girl smiled and hid behind her mother’s legs.
Fading with each step were the high-pitched carnival screeches. The Zipper-riders laughing in excitement, screaming in terror. Taking what they could from the experience before it packed up and went to the next place.
Glowy Exhaustion
Today marks a quite significant life moment, which I felt the need to immortalize here on this hub of cultural fascination--my blog. (Thank you to my 4-5 readers, I do it all for you guys.)
So what is this moment of such pristine foreboding, such enigmatic mystery? Well, if you've already seen my recently-updated Facebook status (worded specifically to get a reaction from those reading it on the newsfeed), you know.
For those not addicted to Facebook, liars, I finished a complete draft of my book. (Insert symphonic applause here.) I freakin rule.
Not only can I impress my Writing 140 students with this illustrious accomplishment, I can also scoff at them when they complain about writing a 5-7 page paper. "Five to seven pages? I could write that in my sleep," I'll say. Or maybe I will just pause for 10 seconds and then quip, "I just wrote five pages. In my head."
Though, now that it has been about 20 minutes since I hit save on my last chapter, the glow is muting into exhaustion. I'm tired. My eyes feel like they've been serrated with sand paper.
Like Obama's promise to go through our budget line-by-line, starting Monday I will comb through my pages, paragraph by paragraph. Like an archaeological dig, I will chip away bad sentences and repetition with a toothpick, wishing I could have just written the book perfectly the first time like "real" writers probably do.
Needless to say, as thrilled as I am with myself, the moment is bittersweet. This is just a pit-stop on the long journey ahead.
Ooh, She Did it Again
Writing is really difficult when all you want to do is play Britney Spears' new single "Womanizer" over and over again. Typing is nearly impossible when you're dancing. Though, I am trying, busting out only on the choruses.
Seriously, I don't care how many kids that chick has, how many drugs she does, how fat or thin she is, how many times her vagina goes in for its close-up--I love Britney Spears. For the past eight years, she has provided me with endless joy and happiness.
Thank you, Brit. Now go make more musical gems for me.
Seriously, I don't care how many kids that chick has, how many drugs she does, how fat or thin she is, how many times her vagina goes in for its close-up--I love Britney Spears. For the past eight years, she has provided me with endless joy and happiness.
Thank you, Brit. Now go make more musical gems for me.
Fiction of the Week: "Bottle"
Here is the first installment of adding some fiction to the blog. Each short-short piece is based on a word my workshop chooses as a class, in this case, "bottle."
Patiently stoic on the oak slab shelves, reflected in the tempered glass, the bottles waited for her move. She leaned on the onyx bar, letting her elbows soak up other people’s drownings, a film of discarded inhibitions coating the cool marble. Reaching over the inner lip, she grabbed a cocktail napkin, a scratchier relative of cheap toilet paper, to pick at, occupying herself as she decided on a hero.
The cool porcelain Malibu bottle caught her attention first. Smooth in her palms she remembered, like a worn toilet seat. Even Malibu made her submit, her hands pressed where they wouldn’t dare linger if she were sober, making eye contact with her reflection in the dank water as the night’s contents emptied out of her inebriated soul. Mike’s pina coladas. Made expressly in his frat-room blender, with real pineapple juice and fresh kiwi, he promised. Blended, he’d reminded her, not the on-the-rocks shit. Gulping brimming cups of the icy booze one after another like Jamba Juice smoothies, pausing only to ease brain freeze, pushing the heel of her hand into her third eye for relief. They stopped when Mike went away. Cocaine. Gambling. He drank beer now. Bet on baseball instead of himself. She eyed the bottle’s persimmon sun dipping into black horizon lines, taunting the inky squiggles to swallow it whole.
She was onto Jager, a true German--harsh, angular, dark--when a sallow man with pock-marked cheeks tapped her shoulder.
“Buy you a drink, miss?” he propositioned her stereotypically. The bartender’s glasses clinking made her flinch.
Her eyes grazed him like steel wool, masquerading as gentle, before looking away. If only she could decide. Jager was too stern, especially in the morning when the brown liquid turned to goo.
She turned to the man. He couldn’t be younger than forty-three, blonde hair tinged grey, succumbing to age, thinning over the crown of his head. He’d be a monk by fifty. Securing herself to the bar, hand gently cradling chin, she murmured, matching his obviousness, “Whatever you’re having.” She heard him signal to the bartender and order two different drinks as she turned back to the bottles, now rows of anxious seniors taking their class photo.
Crown Royale was New York. A bottle with armor. Late night, B-listers at the Pierre. Interviews conducted that would remain whispered secrets into her Sony tape recorder. The tiny bottle from the gift bag she probably shouldn’t have taken clutched tight to her chest, the underwire of her lace bra breaking skin as she walked to the familiar station. To lazy to wait for a cab, she’d said, waving to the chic, black-clad publicists holding clipboards. Her thin wallet made little indention stuffed the back pocket of her jeans. She drank the bottle on the B line, from Rockefeller to 6th Ave, eying the handful of passengers warily, hoping no one would notice her, but almost wished they would. She was invisible. It stung.
A Vodka-Shirley Temple glided towards her, some kind of projected fantasy. Pink, transparent, bubbly. Weak. The man sipped his quarter-filled glass of muddied rain, cognac or brandy. She never knew the difference. Why didn’t bartenders just use a smaller glass when they weren’t going to use the whole thing?
“Come here often?” A smile lurked beneath the crinkled corners of his eyes, skin making paper accordions. She wanted a screwdriver. Lip-smacking, acidic. Made the nose hairs curl if the bartender made it with Popov instead of Kettle One, she remembered, looking at the clique of vodka in the cool kids’ corner. Bottles ranked by label, price, all as transparent as she was, apparently. Inside throat-scorching liquid dressed up as non-threatening water. “It’s my first time,” she said, allowing the words to float out of her mouth like clouds. The napkin, a shredded white flag in her hands. She guessed she could make five, maybe six, and keeping that in mind, the rest came easily.
Patiently stoic on the oak slab shelves, reflected in the tempered glass, the bottles waited for her move. She leaned on the onyx bar, letting her elbows soak up other people’s drownings, a film of discarded inhibitions coating the cool marble. Reaching over the inner lip, she grabbed a cocktail napkin, a scratchier relative of cheap toilet paper, to pick at, occupying herself as she decided on a hero.
The cool porcelain Malibu bottle caught her attention first. Smooth in her palms she remembered, like a worn toilet seat. Even Malibu made her submit, her hands pressed where they wouldn’t dare linger if she were sober, making eye contact with her reflection in the dank water as the night’s contents emptied out of her inebriated soul. Mike’s pina coladas. Made expressly in his frat-room blender, with real pineapple juice and fresh kiwi, he promised. Blended, he’d reminded her, not the on-the-rocks shit. Gulping brimming cups of the icy booze one after another like Jamba Juice smoothies, pausing only to ease brain freeze, pushing the heel of her hand into her third eye for relief. They stopped when Mike went away. Cocaine. Gambling. He drank beer now. Bet on baseball instead of himself. She eyed the bottle’s persimmon sun dipping into black horizon lines, taunting the inky squiggles to swallow it whole.
She was onto Jager, a true German--harsh, angular, dark--when a sallow man with pock-marked cheeks tapped her shoulder.
“Buy you a drink, miss?” he propositioned her stereotypically. The bartender’s glasses clinking made her flinch.
Her eyes grazed him like steel wool, masquerading as gentle, before looking away. If only she could decide. Jager was too stern, especially in the morning when the brown liquid turned to goo.
She turned to the man. He couldn’t be younger than forty-three, blonde hair tinged grey, succumbing to age, thinning over the crown of his head. He’d be a monk by fifty. Securing herself to the bar, hand gently cradling chin, she murmured, matching his obviousness, “Whatever you’re having.” She heard him signal to the bartender and order two different drinks as she turned back to the bottles, now rows of anxious seniors taking their class photo.
Crown Royale was New York. A bottle with armor. Late night, B-listers at the Pierre. Interviews conducted that would remain whispered secrets into her Sony tape recorder. The tiny bottle from the gift bag she probably shouldn’t have taken clutched tight to her chest, the underwire of her lace bra breaking skin as she walked to the familiar station. To lazy to wait for a cab, she’d said, waving to the chic, black-clad publicists holding clipboards. Her thin wallet made little indention stuffed the back pocket of her jeans. She drank the bottle on the B line, from Rockefeller to 6th Ave, eying the handful of passengers warily, hoping no one would notice her, but almost wished they would. She was invisible. It stung.
A Vodka-Shirley Temple glided towards her, some kind of projected fantasy. Pink, transparent, bubbly. Weak. The man sipped his quarter-filled glass of muddied rain, cognac or brandy. She never knew the difference. Why didn’t bartenders just use a smaller glass when they weren’t going to use the whole thing?
“Come here often?” A smile lurked beneath the crinkled corners of his eyes, skin making paper accordions. She wanted a screwdriver. Lip-smacking, acidic. Made the nose hairs curl if the bartender made it with Popov instead of Kettle One, she remembered, looking at the clique of vodka in the cool kids’ corner. Bottles ranked by label, price, all as transparent as she was, apparently. Inside throat-scorching liquid dressed up as non-threatening water. “It’s my first time,” she said, allowing the words to float out of her mouth like clouds. The napkin, a shredded white flag in her hands. She guessed she could make five, maybe six, and keeping that in mind, the rest came easily.
A Life Lesson from N*Sync
When I have to drive long distances (Pasadena to Santa Monica, for example), I like to put my iPod on shuffle-mode. Not only does this typically pass the time quickly, but it makes me feel good about myself to know that I can remember all the words to songs in many genres, from Coolio’s “1, 2, 3, 4,” to “Seasons of Love” from Rent, to anything released by Backstreet Boys, N*Sync, or Britney Spears between 2000 and 2004. This knowledge might make some people actually feel pretty crappy (especially if these gems made up the majority of their 995 songs) but no, I am a self-professed Top 40s junkie and I don’t care who knows it.
Driving home last night from my fabulous writing group, and belting out every word to “Bringin’ Da Noise,” a little known N*Sync song from their No Strings Attached album (Classic.), I realized I was on track to turn in to my dad. No, no he doesn’t listen to boy bands. But, like me, his musical taste hasn’t changed much since he was in high school. As a kid, a teenager, and, yeah, two weeks ago when I went to visit him, I have made so much fun of my dad for his CD collection, which I was habitually subjected to within the confines of his white Suburban before I turned sixteen. The guy is stuck in the 80s. “8675309.” “Stray Cat Strut.” “Angel in the Centerfold.” And the 70s. “More than a Feeling.” “American Pie.” And I guess in the 60s too with “Wipe Out” and “California Dreaming.”
I am willing to bet money that if I was super-pumped when N*Sync came on expectedly last night, making my 110 crawl a full-on one-person dance party, I’m still going to love it, and the rest of my shitty music, when I too am a parent. Like my father before me, I will thoroughly embarrass my kids, not with the white-man overbite, which he has perfected over the years, but with my fierce white-girl fist maracas. I’ll know every disgusting lyric of Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre’s hits, inflicting upon my flesh and blood not only acute humiliation but my one-armed roof-raises and up-and-down chin juts, complete with what I like to call my signature puffed-out lip pout. So gangsta.
But, I’m ok with it. Embarrassing one’s children through music is a parent’s right. And now I’m actually kinda stoked about having kids some day.
***I just realized I actually have unwillingly subjected someone to my terrible music. Zach Maher, I am so sorry for that best of 1996 stalker-jams mix tape I made you the summer between 6th and 7th grades before you moved to Cincinnati. I hope you didn't think you would really, "Always Be My Baby," which I believe was track 9 or 10.
Picking Up
Last night, my three best friends since elementary school and I went out to the Viceroy to celebrate C's 25th birthday. It had been eight years since we were all together to ring in the occasion (we aren't terrible friends, I swear--between 9/11 happening the day before her 18th and C going to San Fran for college we didn't get the chance), and we went out with the intention of spending quality time with each other, as C was in only for this weekend. Typically we go to Starbucks in sweats when we hang out, so getting dressed up--hair tousled and lips glossed--was a pretty big deal.
Over our first round of Lemon Drops the four of us were huddled on the Viceroy's slick porcelain-colored chaise lounges, discussing our impending infertility, of all things, when this guy dropped down on his haunches, filling a tiny gap in our circle. He proclaimed himself a "professional conversation interrupter." We despised him instantly. He asked what we "ladies" were talking about. "Fertility and babies," I said, hoping to scare him off. The guy started talking about eggs and fertility drugs, divulged his mother is a twin. We glanced at each other, making a silent pact to humor him.
After a couple more minutes of yammering about test tube babies, he asked what we were doing out. I said we came to celebrate C's birthday. "Twenty-one?" he asked nodding at her. "Yup!" she replied, not bothering to emit the sarcasm from her voice. After asking what she wanted for her birthday, I told him that a round of drinks would be nice. (A girl's gotta try, right? Drinks were like $16 apiece!) When it was obvious we wouldn't be getting those, A jumped in, saying, quite nicely actually, that the best present would be for him to "let us get back to our conversation."
Something must have been in the vodka because odd advances from men continued. My favorite was later in the night, during another round of drinks, when some 40-something tried to pick us up with, "Hey, if I hang out with you, you ladies will attract more guys." Eesh. "Ladies" again. So creepy. When we said we weren't interested, politely at first, forcefully when he wouldn't leave, he stammered, saying something about how we shouldn't come out at all if we didn't want to meet guys. Then, he accused us of being lesbians, which we emphatically nodded at--yup! that's it!--practically begging him to leave us alone.
After both guys left, hiding dejection poorly with forced anger--we hadn't been nice enough to tell them we all had boyfriends--I couldn't help but think of Neil Strauss' book "The Game." For those not familiar, Strauss, a Rolling Stone reporter, went undercover to explore the pick-up artist world, introducing us to Mystery, who ran training camps on how to pick up women(he got his own show on VH1 after the book came out).
Most guys pick up girls the same way. They just kinda appear and stand there, awkwardly nodding along before asking a yes or no question. Mystery says that guys need to have a plan, lure us in with a memorable line, a magic trick even. But if the guys last night were any indication, those tactics just made them look like douchebags to a woman with half a brain. Sure, I'm remembering, but not for the right reasons.
I guess if I was single, drunker, and not celebrating C's birthday for the first time in nearly a decade, I would have been nicer to these guys. It is difficult to approach a stranger, let alone a whole group of hot girls (no apologies for honesty!). Men are burdened with having to be the ones to approach and then, in 30 seconds or less, show us they are interesting, funny, charming, and rich all at the same time.
If anything, those guys made me more thankful I have a boyfriend and don't need to subject myself to their kind, night after night, hoping some day one who isn't completely boring or douchey will approach. I learned firsthand that meeting halfway decent guys in bars really is a fruitless activity, as many of my single friends lament...
Literary. Or Not.
To follow up on my writing school post, I was in Memoir class yesterday, soaking in some glowing comments about the fictionalized memoir pages I had turned in last week. "Very funny and visual!" "Great voice!" "Contemporary and marketable!"
Totally genius, I thought, just a tad smug. After all, I worked on those pages. I re-worked them after my first session of Janet's class, creating high-brow-esque metaphors, trying to sound like a real writer, using to sensory details to make my readers "feel" it.
Then, the critiques began, always a longer list than those glowing comments. Most were totally right and I am grateful to receive them. It was my teacher's off-handed comment about how my voice was "casual," and "notliterary," that stoked my fires.
Not literary? Not literary?! How humiliating. Especially because I really thought that, this time, I was literary. I could feel the literary-ness coursing through my veins, collecting in my fingertips and propelling just the right taps on my MacBook's white keys.
Not literary.
So, I decided that I am going to post fiction on here once a week. Not to prove that I, in fact, am literary. I am reading my pages to Fitch and co. tonight, so unless she decides I am a literary genius, I'm guessing I will still be decidedly "casual" tomorrow as well. But I have to do these two page shorts for Fitch each week and she wants us to rework them after we get comments. She's not going to grade them, she said, reworking is just for our own growth. And I apparently really, really need it.
But by putting out my promise to cyberspace to post these re-manifestations of me trying to be literary, 1) I will actually re-work them, and 2) I will have to be accountable for my literary-ness or lack thereof. Both good for that growing I need to do.
Yeah, so that comment kinda pissed me off, right?
Totally genius, I thought, just a tad smug. After all, I worked on those pages. I re-worked them after my first session of Janet's class, creating high-brow-esque metaphors, trying to sound like a real writer, using to sensory details to make my readers "feel" it.
Then, the critiques began, always a longer list than those glowing comments. Most were totally right and I am grateful to receive them. It was my teacher's off-handed comment about how my voice was "casual," and "notliterary," that stoked my fires.
Not literary? Not literary?! How humiliating. Especially because I really thought that, this time, I was literary. I could feel the literary-ness coursing through my veins, collecting in my fingertips and propelling just the right taps on my MacBook's white keys.
Not literary.
So, I decided that I am going to post fiction on here once a week. Not to prove that I, in fact, am literary. I am reading my pages to Fitch and co. tonight, so unless she decides I am a literary genius, I'm guessing I will still be decidedly "casual" tomorrow as well. But I have to do these two page shorts for Fitch each week and she wants us to rework them after we get comments. She's not going to grade them, she said, reworking is just for our own growth. And I apparently really, really need it.
But by putting out my promise to cyberspace to post these re-manifestations of me trying to be literary, 1) I will actually re-work them, and 2) I will have to be accountable for my literary-ness or lack thereof. Both good for that growing I need to do.
Yeah, so that comment kinda pissed me off, right?
On Writing School
Stephen King, who is currently my favorite American writer save Twilight guru Stephenie Meyer, advises not to show your work until it is finished, and even then, to select only a few people whose opinions you trust to read what you have. In his book, "On Writing," King says writing school is unnecessary--just write he says!--which makes me regret paying thousands of dollars for USC when the King School of Writing is basically free. More troubling, is King's assertion that writing schools are filled with people who think they know what they are talking about but, really, are just as ill-equipped to write as you are. Writing entire books--highly suspect. While I have met and made friends with a number fabulous writers, whose opinions I respect, and without whom my own book would still be in my head instead of on 136 Microsoft Word pages, King has a point.
Writing school, I've found, is little more than a bunch of people with big dreams to be famous writers who meet at certain times on certain days, read each other's unfinished work, and then give their uninformed opinions about them. In a field where we are made to put our hearts on paper and allow people to scratch at them with their pens, the constant critique is wrenching enough. Trying to weed through the comments, that sometimes can have more to do with either personal biases or jealousy that they didn't come up with your idea, is frustrating in that you don't always know who is biased, or jealous, or just plain moronic. The instructors don't always know either.
While I don't want to seem like I am biting the hands that feed me (critiques and comments, yum!) each week, I also don't want to lie and say that very person (or teacher) in every writing class--in both New York and Los Angeles--I have taken actually belongs there. Heck, I don't even know if I belong there. Which I perhaps why I was grateful that this semester that I got a spot in White Oleander writer Janet Fitch's fiction class. I was in love with her within minutes into our first day of class after she declared, "Unlike the majority of writing instructors, I believe writing can be taught." She spoke of toolboxes, complete with wrenches and hammers. We needed full sets in order to write well. We needed not just the flathead, but the Phillips too. She said that while we may not use both, or we may prefer the flathead, it was important to at least know how, so we could make that choice. Tools sounded a lot better than passing out pages and hoping for the best.
Finally, this semester, I am learning to become a writer. A real writer. I feel distinguished just thinking about it.
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