LilyWhiteIntentions

1.
Mick returned home last night sporting the same hair he left with. All of it. I’d given his father the “Locks of Love” speech and the respectability speech, so I was hoping, but still, you never know. I chased him into his bedroom upon his return and grabbed a handful of his hair to examine its length.
“You didn’t get it cut, huh?”
“Nope.”
“Not at all?”
“Nope.”
“Hmm, well it could have used a little trim.”

2.
The rain was heavy this morning and as we came into town, we spotted a man on a bicycle who appeared to have a clear garbage bag over his head and shoulders, protecting him from the rain. We rode along behind him, marveling at his forethought or lack thereof, since apparently, he had not chosen to cut a hole in the bag for his head. Then, as we came around a corner in front of him, we saw that the bag was actually only covering the hiker’s pack on his back.

“Damnit” I said to Remy, “I really wanted that bag to be over his head. I was already writing a blog post about it in my head.”

“You’ve gotta take a break, babe.”

3.

The Dirty Feet page has been updated, though I had a hard time deciding if what I posted actually belonged there or here. Mostly, it’s there because I wouldn’t want a certain fetishist to stumble across the piece in a public place. Wow, that makes it sound so much more intriguing than it actually is. Scratch all of that. The Dirty Feet page has been updated and most of the archives have been restored. Enough said.

I originally posted this on the Dirty Feet page, but realized later that I wasn’t sure why I’d done so, so here it is, out in the open.

His friends called him Rat Boy. Not all the time, but often enough. She didn’t ask why until she’d known him for more than a year. “It’s because of my teeth.” He said and shrugged it off, She winced and wished she’d left it alone. It’s not that she hadn’t noticed his overbite and crooked front teeth; it’s just that she’d become accustomed to him, and his teeth were no more unusual than the rest.

Months later, he told her about the car accident when he was three years old, which partially crushed his skull. It didn’t damage his brain, but as his head grew, it took on a funny shape, more like a pear than an egg. There are also two scars on his forehead; one inch-and-a-half slash above each eyebrow. These, like the other scars that map his body, have tales of their own, stories of extraordinary luck, both good and bad.

You might not notice these things right away, not now, with his hair hanging like dark curtains down past his shoulders, obscuring all but his dark blue eyes and full lips, stained that natural ruby color women are forever trying to replicate. You’d notice his nose though, large, misshapen and perched uncomfortably on his face. But after time, it too would blend in.

What most people missed, being quick to categorize and dismiss him was actually his most striking deformation; twice the size of normal man’s was his big, fat, ill-formed, bottomless pit of a heart.

So if you should stumble into that East Bay bar one of these nights, and find the one they called Rat Boy behind the counter, pouring himself a shot for every three he sells, please treat him as kindly as he treats you and take a moment to consider what a pity it is that so few ever see us for who we really are or take the time to find out what we’re capable of.

. . . without making me explain or give a whole wandering back-story peopled with characters you’ve never met. You’d trust that I’ve gotten my information from a reliable source and that these are sweet people. Lovey people who deserve to win this one thing.

Think of it as reality television without the television. The Modesto Bee, in an effort to appear hip and “with the times” is holding a “Win a Wedding” contest and they’re down to the last three couples. One of these couples consists of April Hawn and Jeremy Brown. They’re sweet people. Lovey people who deserve to win this one thing.

Now you could blow this off, figuring that since you don’t know these people, it doesn’t matter enough for you to take the two minutes to help ‘em out. And I’d understand that. Really I would. But you could just as easily say to yourself, why the hell not? and you could go here and vote for them to win.

Look, it’s two minutes of your life and you wasted more than that picking link out of your bellybutton last night. So I’ll owe you one, ok? And I promise I won’t ask for such a thing again until Mick drags his skinny behind onto American Idol.

Now go and help Jeremy and April get hitched or hide your lazy, cynical head in shame.

“Unlike the Diary of my Childhood, My Mother Doesn’t Read This” was one of the slogans I used when I started up Lily White Intentions. It was a bitter little stab at a particular childhood incident that went a long way to shape the privacy issues that follow me to this day.

I want to say first, that my mother could not have loved me more. If you ask, she’s say “All I ever wanted to be was a Mommy.” and it may or may not be true, but she certainly lived like it was. She loved us so much and so hard, that sometimes you couldn’t breathe under the weight of it. I suppose this stifling lead to the incident at hand.

I was in the 7th grade when she bought me the diary. I’d been writing already for years, but THIS diary was officially a private place for private thoughts. I remember the book itself; purple, with a plush kind of cover and a Holly Hobby girl on the front.

I kept it tucked beneath my mattress and spilled my innermost thoughts into it religiously. There were crush-girl entries about Tony Martinez who sat in front of me in Math and angry ones focused on a Social Studies teacher who I despised. I wrote about walking two miles out of my way coming home from school to avoid Shani Peluso who wanted to beat me up and about sneaking over to Alice Macedo’s house to watch General Hospital. And when I was mad at my parents, I wrote about that too.

Then, in the middle of that year, my mother took the diary out of it’s not-so-brilliant hiding place and read it. All of it.

Continue reading » [783 words]

Now I realize this happens. Parents invade their children’s personal space all the time, often out of concern, and sometimes out of sheer nosiness. I can accept that. However, most parents do not go through their child’s diary with a pen in hand, writing notes to the child in the margins.

I cannot express the feeling of opening that private book and seeing my mother’s comments on my thoughts. On a page where, after a heated argument with my Pop, I’d written that I hated him, she’d calmly noted “This is unkind. Say it to our faces and not to our backs.” Nearly twenty-two years have passed and I still remember those exact words. Maybe I couldn’t have formulated an appropriate response at that point, but I’ve been working on one ever since.

Of course the words were unkind. They were an expression of anger, which I realize you’re personally opposed to, choosing rather to ball up your own and stuff it into your belly where it festers until it seeps out through those bitter little lines around your mouth. Even at thirteen, I knew that feeling would pass and I understood that my diary was a place to spill angry feelings without hurting anyone else. And sweet jesus woman, didn’t it occur to you that I had enough respect for (and complimenting fear of) the two of you that I would never have said such things aloud?

I know she didn’t realize that her actions would leave me with privacy issues; that I would forever throw a protective arm over the page (or a hand over the computer screen) when someone walked past, that I would develop my own secret written language so nosy people wouldn’t be able to decipher my thoughts, that I would password-protect the hell out of documents whether they needed it or not.

I can accept that she believed she was merely offering constructive criticism, a little reminder that mother is watching, which is, of course part of that oft reinforced message I carried well beyond my childhood; Mother is watching and you can be sure she’ll have something to say about the way you’re conducting yourself, young lady.

There’s a point here somewhere, probably more than one, but I am left, at the end of these paragraphs:

* Wondering at the intensity of my need to write, the lengths to which I have gone (and still do) to feel safe putting my thoughts onto a page.

* Trying to make sense of my contrasting desire to make such highly guarded secrets public.

* Wrestling with an intense frustration focused on my mother’s inability to see anger as an acceptable emotion, and therefore worthy of expression.

* Knowing that every parent, no matter how hard they try not to, will scar their children, and it’s impossible to predict which things will do the most damage.

* Loving my mother so deeply and so suddenly in this moment that I am weeping.

There’s music you love and music you forget, and then, there’s music you forget you love and can rediscover, fall in love with, all over again.

I’d had the gift certificate for a few days when I wandered into the music store, intent on picking up something new. The White Stripes maybe, or something cheerfully instrumental. I wandered through the rows under the watchful eye of the can-I-help-you-find-something girl.

I casually ran my fingertips over the CDs, row after row. Nothing was popping. Nothing was jumping off the shelf at me. There were too many options, none screaming louder than those around it.

Until, coming ‘round the end of the D – F aisle, she smacked me in the face. Aretha. Why don’t I have any Aretha? Is it sinful not to have Aretha? Is she overhyped? Do I really like Aretha or do I simply think I’m supposed to like Aretha?

I had to know. I swiped her off the shelf, paid the will-there-be-anything-else girl and left. I ripped the wrapping off the CD on my way to the car and popped it into the stereo as I backed out of the parking space.

I was digging tracks 1 through 5, enjoying the hell out of them as I drove back to work and wondering how I’d forgotten the pleasure of Aretha. Some of the songs were silly, a couple of cheezy 80’s tracks that I giggled at because I knew every damn word. I was having one of those I-don’t-care-who-sees-me-singing-along moments. The sun was shining a little bit brighter, traffic was moving better and I was catching every green light.

And then, came track 6. Chain of Fools. And I know it will sound ridiculous to say this but all of a sudden I was laughing and crying and bursting at the seams. Even now I can’t put my finger on the why, except to say that something in me burst wide open and in that moment, I felt pure, unadulterated joy.

The feeling stayed with me, subtly for the rest of the afternoon, like the warm glow of a spiritual epiphany or the remnant of a lover’s kiss. I don’t know how I forgot she could do that.

I try to think of a way to tell you about The Villa truthfully, without blowing it out of proportion or making it sound better or worse that it was. I try to think of a way to tell you about The Villa that will make it matter, help you understand what it meant and what spending almost nine years of my life there did to me.

It’s not really a ghetto in the old sense of the word. Its people aren’t locked in or forced with guns and guards to remain there. I know this. At the same time, it is as much a ghetto as anything is these days. Oh it doesn’t necessarily look the part. It isn’t the Beach Flats in Santa Cruz, doors off their hinges, no running water, two or three families to an apartment. No, it was deceptively tidy, with doeskin paint and mallard green trim, four two-story buildings each facing, from a different angel, the white fenced swimming pool.

I was twenty-two when we moved in. Mick was a toddler and I was pregnant with G.T. though I didn’t know it yet. At that time, the complex was almost exclusively peopled with thirty-something women and their children. This is only a rough estimate since I didn’t socialize with my neighbors at all. The only one I knew by name was the woman who lived above me and that was merely because of her repeated calls to the police regarding the frequent screaming fights taking place beneath her. Those fights went on for a year and a half and then, miraculously, the upstairs neighbor got the peace she desired and so did I.

I should have left then, should have balanced a boy on each hip and set out into the world, leaving the ghosts behind, but I was scared and broke and even more than that, I was broken. But this isn’t about me; it’s about The Villa itself.

And I thought that maybe the best way to tell you about the villa is to tell you about its tenants. I sat down with the boys and made a list of the people we knew. When we were done, I looked at that list and realized I had a story or two for nearly every one of them. So I suppose this is a preface to those Villa Stories. And once I’ve told all of them, once I’ve made the place and its people real, maybe then you’ll understand.

It’s impossible to start these Villa Stories with anyone other than Joanne. Perhaps because she’d lived there the longest, or because she was such a formidable woman. Or maybe it’s that she holds the key to one of the ugly secrets I mean to confess.

I don’t remember at what point or in what order I learned the things I know about Joanne, but I watched her right from the beginning, lumbering up and down the stairs of the building directly across from my front door. I suppose she was in her mid forties then, though it’s hard to put an age on her because, to do so, one must recognize that this big gruff woman was once young. Surely her closely cropped blond hair was, at some point in the past, longer and femininely styled, and despite her excessive girth, it’s possible she was once thin or as curvaceous as the Betty Boop cartoon tattooed on the wide expanse of her upper arm.

Fifteen years, she’d been there, raised her daughters in that upstairs apartment across the way. The eldest, a tough girl named Kit had escaped before I came, but returned just long enough deposit her own children on her mother’s doorstep. Shortly after the children arrived, Joanne’s younger daughter Dee got knocked up and moved into an apartment just a few doors down from mine. As far as I know, Dee was the first of the second-generation tenants.

My real name is not Jules. Some of you know this already. Some of you learn it in one of those awkward moments, like the one Tod and I had yesterday when he called my office and I answered the phone using my real name. And there’s that little moment where you’re trying to figure out which name you should call me, and whether or not it’s worth re-labeling the mental cubby marked JULES in your mind.

Well you’re welcome to do so if you want, if you’re a stickler for truth, or if once you know my real name, Jules will feel like a lie. But don’t do it to please me because honestly, I’m not all that fond of my real name and I’ve answered to Jules (privately) since long before you met me.

Of course, if I simply don’t tell you my real name, then I suppose you’ll have to call me Jules, won’t you? Unless you want to spend the whole day calling me “whatshername” or “whosiwhatsit” (my mother’s personal favorite moniker for women whose names she damn well knows but prefers not to say aloud. Men in this category are usually referred to as “he who shall remain nameless”. Seriously, she hasn’t said my ex’s name out loud in eight years. But I digress).

The point is, I really despised my name for the first twenty-seven years of my life. It’s a big round-lettered name, a three-syllable name you can stretch out in a number of ridiculous manners. It’s the name that, when I was fifteen, gave way to a humiliating nickname which later that year was the impetus of a badly-sketched comic book created by a boy on the school bus, titled “Mighty Bra; the Bra that Saved the Universe”.

This is the one in which I show you the lengths to which my parents would go to humor me. [or] This is the one in which I explain what bored teenage church girls do when they’re not pillow fighting or reading The Song of Solomon aloud to one another.

In the summer of 1984, my friends and I penned a play titled Attack of the Killer Vinyl. It was a nod, I suppose, to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, though to be perfectly honest, I don’t know where the idea for the vinyl came from. My friend Ani composed the creepy little theme song, while her sister Crystal and I worked tirelessly to make each of the characters come to life. The plot was pretty basic. A Vinyl Monster had invaded a peaceful little town on the day of the hero and heroine’s wedding. As it wreaked havoc outside the chapel doors, the wedding party and guests tried to keep their composure. However, as soon as the ceremony was complete, the Killer Vinyl broke through the church doors and proceeded to “vinylize” everyone in the place, everyone, that is, except the bride and groom, who were able to defeat and destroy the Killer Vinyl before driving off into the sunset.

Like any other playwrights, we had a burning desire to see our pages come to life and we set aside a Saturday night to make it happen. Of course, we didn’t have access to a camcorder, but we’d decided we could record the whole thing on an old tape player, then stage the scenes and shoot photographs for each. My mother brought out a treasure trove of old clothes and my sister Morticia donated a fistful of hats. We were almost ready to begin when we realized that we simply didn’t have enough people to play all the characters we’d written. Even if Sherah, Crystal, Ani, Tracy and I all played dual roles, still we needed a couple more actors.

This is where we come to the lengths to which my parents will go to humor me. When approached them about joining us and filling the minister and mother-of-the-bride roles they said “yes” without hesitation.

With our recording devices, our costuming and our cast all in order, there was only one more issue to be worked out. How would we show the “vinylization”? We hadn’t considered this ahead of time and had no great special-effects plan. And now, the success of the whole endeavor rested on our ability to think “out of the box”. Or in the box, as it turned out, a box in the second drawer of my mother’s kitchen. A long yellow box with a serrated edge and big red letters which proclaimed its contents to be Saran Wrap®. It was unanimously accepted among the cast that the Killer Vinyl would smother its victims with this shiny plastic coating.

Sadly, the single audio tape of Attack of the Killer Vinyl is long gone, though I can still hear Ani’s screeching rendition of the theme song in my head, and remember bits and pieces of what we thought was damn funny dialogue. The images however, have survived these last twenty years, and I give you now my favorite four.