Adjusting - the lost chapters

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January 29, 2012

I wander up the road past the bodega for the first time on foot. My pace is slow, thoughtful. Calmer than it has been in awhile. I’m listening to music on my phone and pause frequently to bend at strange angles and to take pictures of the strange life Ive been gasping to describe to my many friends, many miles away. Bricks stacked and forgotten, decorate empty lots - somebody’s lost dream - and bars locked like prisons with rusted metal gates, forever shut, fill the small screen in my palm. The midday sun casts a cheerful glow on it all. Delicate shadows underline the cracks in the building faces crooked smiles and weathered backside of the pavement beneath my feet. The weather is mild for January, and so is the lost ocean inside me. I turn north at the end of the road, returning up the hill of the ridge that North Braddock is settled on. Eventually I come to a large bridge.

I look down at my empty side and stop. I’m not sure where I am and I don’t remember ever seeing this bridge before. It spans a large wooded gorge and in the distance I can see the tracks and a signal bridge. Suddenly I realize I’m looking down at the hollow. Second street stretches out below me through Braddock, hidden behind the trees from where I just came. I must not have noticed. I’ve never walked this far without Brooklyn before.

I hesitate, standing there looking around. The sun will set in a little over hour and I’m far enough from home that I’m not sure if anybody will know me here, nor do I know the political climate on this housing block - to put it lightly. But the bridge stretches out before me temptingly. It’s huge. I’ve only ever seen it before from the distant hollow and train tracks far below, and it’s even larger than I thought it was, standing at its narrow paved edge. I look back down the street towards home. Ive been walking for half an hour but I was dawdling. I can walk home fast if it gets late, and I can pick up my pace now to cover more ground. I look across the bridge again and smile, then take a light step giddy with rebellion. I turn up the volume on my headphones and sway to The Crystals as I take skipping strides along the concrete rail and long sidewalk to the other side. I pass a Welcome to Swissvale sign, but like Second street, I don’t notice that either.

The abandoned houses grow fewer, yet increasingly modern. The area becomes very residential, and feels slightly friendlier than the parts of North Braddock I usually explore. My courage picks up, and my pace slows back down. But with less desolation characterizing the scenery, there are less reasons for me to stop and entertain my budding taste for photography, so I’m making good time. Soon there are barely any abandoned houses and I begin to get disinterested. I had decided when I crossed the bridge that I would not break into any structures here since I was distrustful of the neighborhood, and just photographing their crumbling facades was already boring a few blocks before they disappeared all together. I am about to turn around when I round a bend to a long chained off walkway to the largest building I have seen in months. Its abandoned. Its been abandoned for years.

Again I stop and look down at my empty side, then back at the building. Its enormous. It looks like on of the old early 1900s manors, the kind with gardens and servants quarters. Red brick, three, four stories, stretching across a city block easily. The same temptation at the bridge gnaws at me, begs to me. I know I shouldn’t I swore i wouldn’t in this neighborhood. But its there, ruined. Huge, mysterious and beautiful. The afternoon breeze ruffles the vegetation that nearly obscures the long fence and foot path. Near the center of the building at ground level there is a large hole in the wall and scattered bricks across the parking lot. I shiver wondering what caused it. The Ronnettes hum in my ears. It is such a beautiful afternoon. I step towards the gate, then jump back, then step forward again. I know whatever I do right now I look plenty suspicious. I start to laugh at myself and realize that I’ve got to do, I can’t help it. I came all this way for what? To be disappointed by this seemingly normal residential street. I set out this afternoon in search of something, and I found something, I found something indeed. I can’t walk back. Not with time still on my side. I glance around again then dive under the chain and sprint down the path, ferns and thistle whipping my cheeks and catching on my jacket. I make the turn around the back of the building where nobody can see me from street anymore and stop, panting, with my hands on my thighs. Tag, your it. I gasp at an invisible companion. Chance, luck, my dreams. Then add boldly, Catch me if you can mother fuckers. I straighten up, take a deep breath, and climb the stairs to a large door under an awning. A large open door, inviting me in.

“HELLO!?” I holler into a wide room with wood paneled walls. “ANY SQUATTERS HERE? ANIMALS?” Silence. “IM COMING IN OKAY!?” Silence.

I shift my weight nervously then walk across the room to a doorway that opens into a long hall. I turn around and photograph the room behind me before stepping into the rest of the building.

“HELLO!” I yell again. “IF YOUR FUCKED UP AND GONNA HURT ME OR SOMETHING MAKE SOME NOISE AND ILL GET THE FUCK OUT OKAY???” Silence.

Okay I sigh, starting to relax. I’m alone. Completely alone. Without Brooklyn, or anyone who knows where I am. A shiver runs up my spine as a cold breeze runs through the building, or maybe its just all in my head. I shake my shoulders and adjust my jacket around me. I’m not getting spooked. Im the toughest bitch in town. I begin to walk down the hall, and its lined with rooms. Im not scared of some bricks. I pass some sort of strange bathtub with rails and restraints. These pictures go straight to Facebook, there’s gps tags on them. A calendar, 1996. Who cares how late it gets or that I haven’t spoke to anyone today. A biohazard trashcan. Somebody will see where i am, where I was last.  If something happens. Peeling led paint. But nothing is going to happen. I make it to a window at the end of the hall then turn around, walk back, and stop at a stairwell in the center of the building. The opposite end of the hallway is dark, and down the stairs is pitch black, but the stair case leading up is airy and bright. I grin, smug and proud, then put my foot on the first step, testing it with my weight. I step up, one, two, three, four steps. I reach the first landing.

That’s when I hear it, a noise. A fucking noise. A resonant thud and scratch like something being dragged a short distance. I freeze. I think to yell out again but can’t find my breath to make anymore sound than a cracked whisper. Slowly I start to step backwards down the stairs. I make it to the hallways paint chip littered floor and stand there staring up the stairs i was just on, trying to move my feet through the chips and dead leaves without making any noise. I muffle a giggle into my fist nervously. Okay. Its okay. Its probably just the wind. I take a summoning breath and walk back up the first step again. Then the second. Im the toughest bitch in town motherfuckers. BANG!

I run. I run so fucking fast I nearly bust my ass on a pile of leaves in the first room and skid out onto the porch, jumping around the broken collapsed decking and fly down the stairs until I come to a stumbling stop in the weeds, bright sunlight and the mild breeze that carried me here like an explosion around me, dazing me for a moment. When I regain my senses I turn around and notice for the first time large letters engraved across the front of the building. LADIES G.A.R. HOME. I shiver again and pull out my phone, braced to discover I just spent the afternoon running around a women’s psych hospital or criminal half way home.

“A fucking nursing home!? For civil war daughters?” I look at my phone in disbelief then back at the building and start to laugh wildly. “Oh what the fuck! I just got the piss scared out of me by a bunch of dead old rich ladies.” I can’t stop laughing at myself. I shake with it, my eyes welling up. I swear its the funniest fucking thing thats happened all week and for a moment I wish with all my yearning that i had a friend to share it with. I cant imagine if anybody can see me, they must think I’m out of my mind. Hell, I am! Im laughing, uncontrollably, completely alone. This is absolutely ridiculous. “Alright ladies.” I say between fits of giggles. “Im coming back in, there’s important photography to be finished here.” I calm myself as best as I can and take a step back towards the entrance stairs. No sooner after my my foot stamps down the grass before me do I hear a distant echoing thud from one of the higher floors.

“Oh fuck this place!” I jump in the air and scream “fuck this fuck this fuck this fuck this fuck this.” I didn’t stop running till I hit the bridge. 

Anda I

I

Her world was blue; blue, cold and beautiful.  It was not the only world she’d ever known.  The turtles told her tales of places white and still and silent where fog once slipped in on a breeze, quiet as a runaway child, and never left.  She though she might like that.  She’d seen were there were more ships than fish (at least it seemed to her so young at the time) and every object there is a word for bobbed past her fins.  Trinkets, strange colored water, dead things.  She knew of a mecca the passengers of the great big boats carried little paper cards for.  A place hot, crowded and tense where you could barely flip your tail without bumping into another fish.  Once a gannet told her of a misstep off the great blue map where it seemed there was no water but everything was made instead of froth and rock.  She thought her mind was that world.  She thought her dreams had wings and flew into the night and made themselves that world somewhere so far away enough to keep her safe.  Sometimes she woke up gasping from too much air being forced down her throat and rocks against her skin.

And her world was blue; blue, cold and beautiful.  It was not the only world she’d ever known.  But it was the world she chose.  For now.

Some memories

Its one of those stranger moments in my life.  With the windows rolled down in the middle of winter, blasting Christmas music to the abandoned houses and steel mills.  Singing as terribly as I can, at the top of my lungs.  Chasing [C]’s car down winding potmarked potholed roads, like a child chasing fireflies, the little light of his cigarette blinking into view when he raises it for a drag.  The cold air is blowing my hair around my cheeks and for a moment I could be anywhere.  I feel like I can be anything.  I remember a cool day when I was 14 walking back from the nursing home where I would sneak my great aunt pizza.  2nd avenue.  Something about the way the wind was blowing my hair against my cheeks, I never forgot it.  And again I just know, I will never forget this, tonight.  I wonder where the wind is coming from.  I think it was nor’east those years ago in my old neighborhood in New York City.  

Cause I’ve always like a strong nor’east breeze best.  Its a feral wind.  Not like the lazy southern whispers of summer in the tristate areas waters, or western puffs, warm like stories and memories.  The Nor’east wind can be cold a bitter one, it can be savage and inviting at the same time.  It can swell into a gale and make every hair on your body stand on end as it shakes a rig.  And it can paint a memory on me.  I sail easterlies in the Carribean these days, but I still like a good nor’eastern breeze.  

We’re almost home now.  I got a song starting to stir in my heart - me and [C] driving cars.  A little drunk.  But we started our engines for home before we felt we’d had too much.  Perhaps that means were growing up.  And “Oh god!” I cry laughing, when the subject lights our minds. We shout “Being a grown up sucks!”  It does.  Sometimes.

My headlights flicker for the last time - they’re still broken - while I turn off my hazards and pocket my keys.

“Tell me Im not the most obnoxious thing on the road!”  I shout at his car across from mine.

  

“Just cause its you, its okay.”  He says.  

And as soon as we’re inside and warm, with Brooklyn jumping at our feet and Harley cat running away knocking over things, I’m running back out in a t-shirt laughing and yelling for the forty of Old E. I forgot I bought in its brown paper bag under the passenger side foot well.  I think I may never forget this.  Well, I hope I never will.

On Squid Fishin

On Squid Fishin

I reason with myself while sorting through fish that I think its the camaraderie I miss most.  The haul away, hold, talking ferries and tugs with our hands, last sail, god damn, is it Stella time, yet?  I miss knowing what I’m doing, being somebody (sometimes) looked up too.  Not that status or position was even important to me, but suddenly it almost is, although the longing for it feels more like homesickness than anything else.  And that is a feeling I have only begun to experience in recent years.  Homesick.  Home.  I spent so long looking for it yet still only find it after Ive traded the goodbye beers and hugs.  Or when I realize Im all alone again.  Friends.  I miss my friends.  I miss having friends.  Sometimes I feel spoiled for thinking like that sometimes.  I mean, most of my life its been just me and some poor stray animal I’ve convinced to follow me.  Ive never needed anyone else.  Facebook is for that, and phone calls and letters.  My pup, some food to share with him and some place to lay our heads has always seemed to suffice.  And we have it all now!  A good home, not just a bed but clean blankets and all my books and all his toys.  Money for laundry and food, smokes and booze.  A little bit of pool or drive to a state park every now and then.  But still I long, wondering if perhaps the world won’t cure the hurt in me, poor Brooklyn in tow.
The grass is always greener behind us.  And I wouldn’t mind a friend.  Maybe.  Just one.  My age and not trying to screw me?  And now I’m ranting and wishing for too much again.  

Squid.  Im a disaster.  It would be a blatant lie to say anything short of that, and in my opinion its a rather lenient description of my attempts.  For the first time in my life since I was 14 I am green afoot a deck.  A stranger aboard a vessel where nothing is the same anymore.  I put the hook on the doors wrong, I forget what order things go, in which way.  I don’t get in the way.  I think.  Most of the time.  I try.  I hope that makes up for the rest.  I try, sometimes embarrassingly too hard, (and of course in all my graceless and awkward splendor), but I still try.  And I think I’m getting better at it, or at least I tell myself that.  I can almost lift the bushels to the top of the bulwarks now.    And yeah alright, I’ll admit it, there is a good amount of cursing, stumbling and laughing from my crew mate.  But hey, its an improvement, and with all the fouling and wreck thats defined my summer, I will shameless take pride in that.  There are new sounds Im learning to enjoy to replace my dear luffing Dacron and whipping halyards, rigging singing in a strong wind.  I find rhythm in the hydraulics, casting the net before dawn, and a drumroll as they work to bring it back up.  Right after a cigarette, sunrise, big money big money big money quietly praying over and over in my brain. 

There’s new games to play.  Landing skate on the outriggers and whipping sea robin at gulls replace quarters on buoys and perfect tacks.  I figured out I can pump the ink out of squid before smacking my crew mate in the face with them.  Im proud of that.  Though he thought of smacking each other with them first…. that was an interesting day.    I want to learn everything.  What all the fish are, all the knots.  How to use the big steel winches right, I don’t even know the right word for them still.  In one ear and out the other, somedays all it seems I can remember is the image of hundreds of squid burned into the back of my eyes.  I could never not learn things like this before.  I want to know Mary Rose like I knew Shearwater, eyes closed hearing whats set right, whats tied wrong.  Everything done the best way, the fastest way, in its place.  Knowing just how much to brace myself when I see a large wake.  Dear god do I stumble around the deck.  [cptj] says I’m not the only one, she’s a round bottom so she does roll a bit.  But honestly, Im worse than the observers some days.  I don’t complain about it, at least.  Thats another one I keep hoping will be enough for now.

And every now and then a sail goes by in the distance.  Usually some modern rig, some racer, something I’d rather have nothing to do with, I said once.   Suddenly it doesn’t matter anymore what year she was built, what style is her hull.  White triangles proud and tall, they just mean something.  Now one more time, far from a tavern I once called home, perhaps even same boots different girl, I find myself  daydreaming a world made of little sounds, a believer of sailing ships once again.

We jump in the ocean everyday to rinse the ink off, my crew mate and I.  Bullshit in the sand, sometimes get pizza.  But I find myself awkward and weird with him.  He comes from the other side of the coin where they have TV, and names on the tags of their clothes, networks of friends that rarely change and everyone has clean hair and their favorite beer when they want it.  And though invited enough to join in, they may as well speak a different language to me.   Even the timing of a handshake or hug is a struggle in my wild and backwinded mind.  I try.  I guess I still try.  And wonder if I have a friend, if I knew how to ask that in that normal watching (what do they watch, Conan O’Brian?  They used to watch that in Cali) language,  how to even be that, say that, what is that to them, what defines that?  Lost again.

Enough.  It is time for sleep.  Accept that I’ll be who I am even if thats embarrassing, accept that I know nothing, accept that maybe all I am capable of communicating with is my dog and with my hands, be it music, sketch or ink.  I excuse myself (and its phony, oh I know its phony!) that i tried to hard on everything else today.  Why bother with what I have long ago proved I am just bad at. 

So I drive home thinking of canvas in my hands, and wake up praying for squid.
Camaraderie.  Yes, that is what I miss most.  "Is this squid to small?"

"Keep it."

When K street shut down

In memory of Dan, Marcy and Fluffy.  



“WE ARE THE 99%”

“Say what?!”

“WE ARE THE 99%”

“Say what!?

“WE ARE THE 99%”

“AND SO ARE YOU!”  I throw my head back and scream the words as loud as I can despite the burning sensation in my throat that began two hours ago.  I scream the words raspily, savagely, each one punctuated by a small cloud of steam in the air before me so that it seems to linger, always there.  Rain streams down my face, falls through my chanting lips, down my neck, in my boots, its everywhere.  There isn’t a part of me that isn’t thoroughly soaked anymore.  I can feel even my bra and underwear are soaked.  My leather jacket feels bloated with it.  My elbows are stiff where they interlock with my neighbors, forming our human chain.  I don’t remember their names though they’ve told me.  There’s been too much going on for me to focus on that.  They are nice though.  The one to my right looks to be about in his mid thirties or forties, the one on my left looks about late twenties, maybe, Im never good at the age guessing game.  The chant stops and there’s a brief familiar pause that only ends when somebody starts a new chant.  Sometimes we all jump on one chant, sometimes little groups along the line do their own, all at once, so that it all sounds like some nonsensical tune with a crazed beat.  A little while ago my neighbors and I began singing “Were not gonna take it” by Twisted Sister, complete with what dance steps we could muster being linked by the elbows and all.  We got most of the group singing it for a while too, we were all proud of that.  I whispered to myself then, I'll never forget this, while a line of armored police men astride tall and thick chested Clydesdale horses loom in front of us, extending to the edge of the buildings at each corner of K street so that they form an impassable wall.  They wear grim expressions on their faces, furrowed brows and agitated puffs of steam appearing in the air like bubbles from their horse's nostrils, chomping at the bit.  They have fancy rain gear on, long rubber trench coats and thick plated helmets with the visors in front, shielding the rain though its been so long now it's found it's way down their cheeks and lips and chins as well, uniting us in an erie quiet way.  But they also have gloves on each hand and shined boots, while we hold linked, bare, and calloused hands.  We wear vinegar soaked bandanas to protect us from tear gas, where our bomb proof visors ought to be, an array of dancing, shuffling, fraying shoes instead of steel toed boots.  Some of us have jackets, but barely one lacks patches, hopeful sharpie and paint inscribed slogans, gaping defeated holes.  Our backs and arms say love, freedom and peace, American dream, solidarity.  Theirs say DCPD, To Serve and Protect.  Their horse have thick blankets beneath the padded saddles, shined brass buckles, immaculate coats.  We stand astride our beliefs alone.  They stare, horse and policemen alike, above our heads,  unaffected by our merriment, or questions, speeches about their very own pensions we're fighting to save, or occasional outburst of injustice.  They simply stand their, unfortunately just doing there jobs to provide for their own families, as hermetic as the physical wall they've created with their bodies (stealing our principal of protest, to protest with ones own physical being, a small Asian girl from Wisconsin exclaims!), save for a red gleam of anger, or more subtle to catch (it took me the entire two hours to truly identify) a mix of genuine encouragement and empathy getting all tangled up with discomfort and frustration around the eyes and the corners of their lips.

I'll never forget this.   I whisper to myself again, trying to memorize every feeling, every sensation of this moment.  The chill thats gripping my bones in my water logged clothes, the warmth of the bodies beside me.  I taste the rain on my lips, a lock of my tangled hair caught in the corner of my mouth.  I feel my heart pounding in my chest.  I am afraid, yes.  Don't forget that either, not ever I think.   I let my mind drift out into the commotion around me.  I memorize the way everything is shining with rain, the camera man who's recording our faces, back and forth, up and down the line, back and forth again and again.  I memorize the sound of the voices, mixing together, then separate them out again, a protest chant, a police radio, an idle conversation.   Then suddenly I hear a scream from behind us and a clambering of hooves and feet.  Suddenly the milling crowd around our human chain bursts into motion.  There's another scream, but its more angry than afraid this time.   A horse brays, someone shouts medic, people running.  Everyone in the chain cranes around to see but we can't because of the way we're holding each others arms.  It is ironic, beautiful.  And though our fearful, compassionate, united necks are craned, those mounted policemen remain, their expressions and bodies placid as ever, watching what we can only hear and imagine.  The arrests of our friends.

"Mic check!" Someone screams down the line and we all begin repeating the words as we receive them, so everyone can hear.

"Don't look!"

"DON'T LOOK."

"Don't turn around!"

"DONT TURN AROUND."

"Because they are waiting!"

"BECAUSE THEY ARE WAITING."

"For a break in the line!"

"FOR A BREAK IN THE LINE."

"Stay strong!"

"STAY STRONG."

"The world is watching now."

"THE WORLD IS WATCHING NOW."

Awkwardly I reach my hand in my chest pocket and retrieve my last cigarette with a dripping hand.  My neighbor helps me light it and I offer him a drag but he shakes his head.  

"Last chance." I say grimly.

"Yeah," he laughs. "Thanks, but I quit.  Enjoy, who knows when you'll get to have another."

I nod my head, trying to hide that I really am a bit afraid.  He's silent for a moment and I begin to wonder if he saw my reaction, or was too concentrated on the wall of eyes above us instead, as most of us are at this point.

"Least we'll be outta the rain."  He says finally and that gets a genuine smile out of me.  A few people around us chuckle and murmur the same sentiment.  They're chuckles ring out like a melody against the pitter patter of rain - by now now the commotion behind us has quieted down to sloshing feet and muted radios.  It would be comforting if only it didn't mean they're cleaning up, cuffing stragglers, and our group is next on the day's agenda.  Silently more police appear at either side of the street.  The protests chants die down and are replaced by announcements.  My heart's racing.  Cigarette smoke and rain sting my throat.

"Mic check!"

"MIC CHECK, MIC CHECK, MIC CHECK."

"If you do not have a bandanna!"

"IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A BANDANNA."

"Or have not been sprayed!"

"OR HAVE NOT BEEN SPRAYED."

"notify a medic!"

"NOTIFY A MEDIC."

I see Liza, one of the people from Occupy Pittsburgh who I came with, and call out to her hoarsely.  I think its funny how she yelled at me at first, for disobeying The Unions orders and taking to the streets with a small surviving cluster of original Zuccatti Occupiers, carrying a large yellow Occupy Wall Street banner, leading to all of this.  I still bear their sign, I stand with them.  Front of the line cause we started it.  No, they did, but at least I was first to join in.  But I don't dare to mention that, my amateur scrap of pride.  Liza is as strong willed as the old vets in camp with twice the energy and three times the anger.  Not only that, but her protest experience is far beyond anything I've ever achieved.  She's not a force I'm apt to reckon with.  She doesn't hear me at first, despite all I'm still despairingly quiet and shy, so I call out again, a little louder this time.  She turns around, nods, then comes jogging over to me.

"What's in the bottles?" I ask.

"It's just vinegar and water."

"What's it for?"

"It breaks down the tear gas." she says casually.  "Nobody's ever told you?"

I shake my head no.  Suddenly her eyes fill with realization and she shakes her head.  "Fuck.  You don't even have a bandana."

"That's for the tear gas too isn't it…" I say quietly, starting to be ashamed of my own naivety despite being an activist for the past two years of my life.  She sighs, takes off her own scarf and ties it around my face.  "But what about you?" I ask, muffled through the multicolored fabric.

"I'll be okay." She says. "Your standing up for us.  Just get it back to me later."  I nod, she sprays me in the face with vinegar water, than walks off tending to other occupiers from around the country, linked in our human daisy chain. 

"Mic check!"

"MIC CHECK, MIC CHECK, MIC CHECK."

"If you are in this line!"

"IF YOU ARE IN THIS LINE."

"you will be arrested!"

"YOU WILL BE ARRESTED."

"This is your last chance!"

"THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE."

"To leave!"

"TO LEAVE."

The man to my right grumbles and apologies, he has a warrant out in Maryland and has to leave.  A few others on either sides of us leave too but I can't see very well.  The chain gets smaller, we grip each others arms tighter, the police increase.

"Mic check!"

"MIC CHECK, MIC CHECK, MIC CHECK."

"We think it would be more effective."

"WE THINK IT WOULD BE MORE EFFECTIVE."

"If everyone sat down."

"IF EVERYONE SAT DOWN."

Awkwardly we all lower ourselves to the ground.  It's cold and the puddles fill my clothes, saturating them even more than before, if that's even possible anymore.  We press our shoulders to each other for warmth but it's awkward and difficult, and for some reason the whole chain seems to want to lean back, making it hard to sit up right. This seems to be noticed unanimously and soon there is a Mic Check suggesting we all lie down.  Then I'm back flat against the concrete with a hundred strangers, blinded on either side.  I hear and feel the anger of an era around me, but all I can strain to see is the endless world above me.  So I pull it close like a blanket, and give all that fear and shivering to the falling rain, cause I know what I'm doing is right.  I know being heard is never easy, life has taught me that at least. 

It felt like forever then.  I stared up at the cold grey sky, the rain like needles burning my eyes, while countless faces passed above me, a camera back and forth, still back and forth.  After awhile somebody puts a warm beanie on my head.  "Philly stands with you." whispers a voice, then clasps my shoulder gently.  A little later I feel a space blanket being draped over me and tucked beneath my legs.  Idly I begin to wonder how cold it is, how long I've been outside now.  It's early January, I know I should be colder than I am in just my leather jacket and jeans, but adrenaline chases the thought away.  Still I stare up at the cold gray sky, the rain looking like those little stars on computer screen savers, stretching into infinity.  

I begin to think of [R], 5 years ago in the Catskills, in the backyard of his country house.  We were graduating sophomore year of high school, or at least he was, and It was the last time in my life I'd get to be a kid.  Child services put me in a program the following Sunday night.  But I didn't know that then.  All I knew was I was finally someplace safe, and I was with my best friend who I adored, finally getting to play in the woods together like we always talked about day dreaming in the library.  His mom was sitting outside with us, maybe on a porch, I don't remember if there is one, doing something quiet and peaceful like reading or meditating, as is her way.  Suddenly a summer storm came up and I began to curse and head for the back door.  [R] began to laugh and cheer, then grabbed me by the waist and swung me in a large circle on his shoulder.  I screamed and the rain began to pelt us both.  He stopped suddenly and dropped me to the ground so that I stumbled a few steps then fell in the wet grass.  He doubled over laughing at me and angrily I jumped up and pushed him down too.  Then finally I began laughing as well.  We went back and forth like that for awhile, playing tag and tackling each other in the grass, until we both were bruised and breathless and he finally coaxed me into a hug (I was suspicious and thought he was tricking me into being tackled again.)

"See Em?" He said softly, with his arms still around me.  "This is why I love the rain.  It's like infinity, you can lose your self in it."  He stepped back from me and pointed up, his head craned towards the sky.  I did the same then quickly looked down and shook my head.

"I can't see it." I complained.  "It burns my eyes."

"Ignore it." He said.  "Just look, like this." Then he began to spin slowly with his arms out, head still pointed to the sky.  I did the same and finally I could see it - the way the drops came at you and spun.  It felt like it could wash away anything, like I could lose myself in that expanse of sky and follow the rain backwards to that far away place from which it came.  I stared up and spun till I couldn't take the burning anymore. When I looked back, [R] was standing smiling at me.  

"Now you don't hafta be afraid anymore." He said.

Suddenly all the commotion around us stops and a loud voice comes on a megaphone.  There is no Mic Check or preamble this time, it's the police.  I don't remember what they said, it was a list of rights similar to the Miranda Rights but unlike anything I'd ever heard before.  Somebody told me later that it was The Riot Act.  Shields go up, the mounted officers lean back ever so slightly.  The voice counts down through the megaphone: "10, 9, 8, 7, 6…."

"WE ARE THE 99%"

"And so are you.

On privacy, piracy and the fortunate acquaintance of Cameron Bentley, not in that particular order.

PRIVACY

Not to interrupt the fluidity of this corner of cyber space, (though by the aforesaid "fluidity" I mean rationalization in my head that these ramblings connect to each other in some vague way that makes their revealing nature softer and less awkward), I feel it is about time I address this topic and, attempt at least, to speak plainly.  

So.

I know some of you personally know me, and most of these writings contain information far more personal than is appropriate for our relationships.  Most of you have had the politeness to have never breathed a word of this to me, and for that I am very (very) grateful, both for the sake of my own embarrassment and the confidence to continue writing.  Honestly, I would have never realized anybody I actually knew was reading this until my biological Mom decided to make a sarcastic comment in my Christmas card this past year.   I would have been angry, but she apparently gave out the url or a link of some sort to all her friends before reading and realizing that I have no shame in my past and make no attempts to gloss over any gory detail.  It was never my intention to purposely embarrass her, however, it definitely brought the cheer to one more scaring Christmas experience.  (Hi Mom).  But more relevantly, it also revealed to me that yes, people I know are actually reading this.  My initial reaction: Uh oh.  My second reaction: Fuck it, its to late now.

Yes, I realize the link is RIGHT THERE on my Instagram, and as I continued with my Braddock urbex series, and later, a sporadic record of my way ward life, my personal friends began following.  In my defense, I was one of those children who smashed the cylinder in the X hole instead of finding the circle shaped one, I am also a firm believer that The Nile is no more than a river in Egypt.  Basically, I refused to put two and two together… or I did and came up with 5, who the fuck knows.  This collection was originally intended to be nothing more than a diary of sorts, to help pass the time and relieve some of the uncomfortable emotions I was going through after my transition to Braddock.  (I know, many of you who have been reading with me for the long haul know that there are many other ways than "transition" to describe that incident, some sad and some hysterically sarcastic, but I don't feel like talking about it today.)  You could ask, why then would I decide to publicly broadcast my personal diary?  Because simply, when your going through hell all alone, sometimes its nice to hear that the words you use to describe hell are beautiful at least, and to know that somebody is listening, even if that somebody is on the other side of the world and will never see your face.  Sometimes too, that fact just makes it even nicer, because you don't have to worry about what they will say to you next time you meet, or be afraid of worrying them.  Sometimes you just have to take what small niceness you can get when theres nothing else but cats, dogs and coffee cups, and the scenery looks like something out of The Road.  (That pun was intended.)  That's how I saw it at least.

And there was a shinning moment when this all began.  When the only people reading were strangers behind glowing screens in far away states and countries.  There was a moment, and perhaps thats how I created something almost delirious and brutally poignant from my sometimes backwards and often absent brain.  I'll blame those fledgling months, for summoning the courage in me to spill it all out like the gruesome and gritty disaster that my life has been, then frame it like a ruin porn photograph, like burnt up, shattered, molded and falling abandoned buildings, beautiful abandoned buildings.  But alas, that time is over, and as public things are indeed public, it is time I acknowledge that yes, you are reading, and hell, that's okay.  Also I realize this disclaimer may be alarming for a different reason to another person, the person whose kindness and work is behind all this, so i must also mention that while I've had to adjust my nonexistent social footing, the tool that was provided to me has arguably been the most helpful thing to ever grace my musical and all other things creative career.  (ThankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouCameron)  And so it has all changed in a Starbucks in Homestead a little more than a year ago, Hugabear was imitating Yinzers, I was soaking wet, and none of the patrons were amused.

THE FORTUNATE ACQUAINTANCE OF CAMERON BENTLEY

"What the fuck…." I trail off, staring at the screen unsure if there's a glitch in the webpage or I've really lost my mind and am hallucinating.  [C] looks up at me curiously from across the table, making a questioning expression and lowering his own laptop screen a little bit.  

"You're netbook acting up again?" He asks finally.  

"No, well…. I think its okay."  I say, shaking my head no, sending a spray of little droplets on the floor and chairs around me.  "I don't know."  

He gives me that same questioning expression again, than leans forward very seriously.  "You just realized," He starts slowly, in barely a whisper so that I have to lean forward too. "That you may have stuck your head in a fountain."

"Aww fuck you!" I say a little too loud and flick some water at him from off the front of my t-shirt, much to the dismay of the patrons around us.  He grins at one of them and I start giggling into my coffee cup.  

"Now deez jag offs," he says in a loud mock Pittsburguese dialect that sends my muffled giggle fit quickly spiraling out of control, "think its perfectly fi-ine, ta climb in dis 'ere fountain, then wa-alk in Starr-bucks, and use the internets.  Yinz ought, get back, on der own side of the river."  Some well dressed yuppie type looks at us and grunts, which makes my ill concealed laughter turn into snorting, which then sends [C] off too.  

To be fair it must have been quite the sight for everyone in Homestead Starbucks that early summer day: A red headed bearish looking dude and a tiny drenched girl, both wearing clothes that screamed homeless, smelling like beer and goat piss and laughing hysterically like children with, contrastingly, fairly expensive laptops in front of them in the back corner of Starbucks.  It took us a full minute to calm down before I even remembered what I wanted to point out to him.   

"Oh yeah!" I gasp breathlessly, excitedly pointing at my laptop screen again.

"Lemme guess, you forgot the keys again?"

"No…" I start to say and catch him grinning, realizing he's making fun of me and it went over my head again." Stop it!" I almost yell trying to look mad between residual giggles. "Your gonna make me forget again."

"Okay," He says seriously, "Let me see."  I jump up and turn my laptop around to him.

"It looks fine." He says, obviously confused.  I shake my head again, sending out another small shower on everything around us and point to the Page Views number on the screen.  "Huh." He says and sits back.  "Think its a glitch?"

"I don't know." I say quietly.  "But there's no reason for it to jump up like that.  Nobody knows about it."

He nods his head and refreshes the page.  When the number is the same he shuts down Internet Explorer then runs it again.  I put my password back in and bring us back to the page, this time the number is one higher.

"You pay for an ad or something lately?"

"No."

"Facebook?"

I laugh, "Definitely not."

"How many's normal?"

"Bout 10 to 20."

"Huh." he says again then shrugs his shoulder.  "over a hundred yesterday."

"What???  No." I stare at the screen incredulously.  There were even more yesterday.

"You check your email?"

"No!" I say, surprised I hadn't thought of it and whip the computer back around towards me.  [C] shakes his head and laughs, then goes back to what he was doing earlier.  About a minute later I'm flailing my arms for his attention again.  

"Got an email did ya?"  

"Oh my god dude, check this out." I say and spin the laptop back to him.  He reads it through then nods his head.

"You were talking about making a website, weren't you?"

"Yeah, I bought teamunderdawg.com but I couldn't figure out how to program it with this fucking thing." I say, gesturing disgustedly at my netbook. 

"Oh yeah," he says laughing.  "I can't believe that wasn't taken." 

"Right?"

"This one too."

"Yeah." I say, then smile proudly.  "Pretty red cars…."

"Sell off the photographs?"  He asks.

"That was the original plan." I say, then re-read the email.  "Looks like he's got everything put together here though…  Says he likes my music, I didn't think I had any recordings."

[C] shrugs, "There was the Occupy jam with Dublin."

"They posted that?"

"I think so." He says, then starts looking it up.

"And my writing…" I say, reading the email once again. "But my blog used to be linked to my photos, before everyone started instagramming.  Maybe it still is…"

"Yeah they posted it." He says without looking up.  "You know you could just go on the page and check it out for yourself."

My eyes go wide and I shake my finger at him slowly making what I think is my "Ah-ha!" face and gesture, but judging by his varying reactions I'm probably always pretty far off the mark.  We don't talk about these things.  He smirks and we both set to tapping away again.

"Ha!" he suddenly yells and spins his laptop towards me.  "I saw your own website before you did."

"No fair my laptop sucks!" I complain while it slowly loads on my own screen.  But there it is in front of me on his.  My pictures in a neat little banner scrolling across the top, and an old profile blurb I wrote from somewhere.  Some videos of drunken jam nights with Don Carpenter.  My pictures all put together and up for sale.  Then my fledgling blog on the far right, ready for the world to listen.  

"Ha!!" I chime proudly, echoing [C] and smacking the table.  A few people look up startled then try to ignore us again.  I laugh through my grin and dance in my seat, clicking on all the links. "I got a webbbbb site!  Fuck yeeaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!"  I announce to all of Starbucks.  Im sure they thought it was porn.

PIRATES

I woke up to pain.  I couldn't tell what kind of pain at first, all I knew was it was pain as my eyes blearily opened to the small room with the falling sideboard in the back of the shack.  The pain was moving.  It was moving really fast, burning up my leg.  Then suddenly there was a tug on my left hand and…  Im being attacked!

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!" I screamed.  "Ya-ya!  FUCK!"  I kicked off the blanket and scrambled to the back of the bed, a giant white cockatoo chasing after me across the blankets.

"What the fuck??" Crystal groaned beside me, then suddenly became alert when she saw Ya-ya in the bed.  "God damn it Ya-ya!"  She reached for the bird then pulled away when Ya-ya's beak snapped at her too.  "Rick!"  She yelled, but he was already stumbling into the room and snatched up Ya-ya in one quick motion.  "Sorry girls." He muttered groggily.  He held her under his arm for a second while he stared at the two of us, obviously confused, then shrugged and left the room, quietly reprimanding the large cockatoo under his arm on his way out.  Its only then that I noticed both me and Crystal were in bikinis and everything was covered in shaving cream.

"What the fuck did we do?" I asked, slumping back down into the blankets.

"I think we thought we were going surfing…" She said and lied back down too.

"Oh." I said, still not remembering.

"And peppermint schnaps."

"What?" I asked.

"Oh yeah… you'd never had it before.  The minty stuff."

"Ohhhh," I said remembering music and a clear shot in my hand.  Lots of clear shots in my hands.   "I liked that stuff."

"Yeah you did." She giggled, then frowned and rubbed her head.  

"Shaving cream?"

"Those surfers." She explained.

"Oh…." I moaned dismally, everything coming back in a flash.   Last call, getting frisky with some tall dude, hopping fences, faking an accent, barefoot in the gravel.  Why the fuck were we behind the house?  

"Eh, might as well have lived it up.  You can't go back." Crystal said, pulling me back to the room again, that had slowly begun to spin.

"Huh?" I said, alarmed.  I didn't remember getting into any serious trouble.

"Your passport, they knew you fudged it….  I told you not to do that!"

"Aw fuck." I mumbled and pulled the pillow over my head.  "I can't get a new one for three more years."

I was just starting to wallow in my self pity and regret when Ricks voice suddenly boomed through the wall, breaking my thoughts.  Crystal winced.  

"Violet!" I heard from the other room.

"Huh?" I yelled painfully, wondering how bad it was that while the morning was admittedly a crazier one, it was all perfectly normal to me.  

"We gotta be at the booth in half an hour!"

"Okay!" 

"Seriously!" He yelled. "And don't give me no - I'm hungover - shit.  We're pirates."

"Okay!" I yelled again, exasperated.  Then rolled off the mattress and onto the floor with a dramatic thunk.  

"See ya on the beach." Cyrstal yawned and pulled the rest of the blankets around herself.

I rubbed my face with one hand then dragged my feet over to my hat and plucked it off the ground.  "Bean-bean" I said softly as my little kitten strutted in the room with a stretch and rubbed against my leg.  "Whuz up my do?"

"Me-owep" 

I shook the shaving cream off my hat and re-shaped the wire edges and my long white feather, after carefully inspecting its plume for left over shaving cream flecks.  Then I adjusted it on my head and stretched a long, exaggerated stretch before setting out to find my boots and sword.  Within a few minutes I was dressed and had my corset laced up enough that I was ready for Rick to cinch me in.  Lastly I tended to Sabina, and fitted on her tiny black and sequined harness before scooping her up onto my shoulder and lazily leaning against Rick's doorless door frame.  I watched him hang a chain from his nose ring and straighten out his boots before he motioned for me to turn around so he could lace my corset shut and hand me a beer, the mid morning sun poured through the window, forever burning it into my memory.

"Show-time kid."

I was 19.

Lawyer Wonderful and The Killer Kid

I like to look at everything in the office (inspect it like a child with an ant between her forefinger and thumb) the x-rated Chinese porcelain statues, the authentic scrimshaw, jeweled clocks and 12 foot fishing pole.  I put my nose right up to them, those mysterious objects (the marble arab with a bronze turban, law books, metal figurine of satan fingering an angel, stuffed talking shark bean bag), and look at them this way, then that way, every chip of paint and speck of dust, just to make sure they're just the way I left them every year before.  I never touch them, they are sacred in some way that I cannot describe.  I just look, with my nose millimeters away, close enough for my eye lashes to brush aside those specks of dust, if i was not careful, which I always am.  I just look, and only when Lawyer Wonderful has stepped away, he has never caught me inspecting such sacred things.  The photographs of his teeny bopper girlfriends in 1960 something, he's told me a million times, his wives, Toughy and The Ayatolla, all those fish, he holds them proudly next to Hattian men in far away lands.  I look once a week, sometimes twice if I'm lucky and there's extra work to be done.  I make my rounds of them all, slowly, carefully, methodically, marking each like a clerk taking inventory, then I listen for the latch across the hall, footsteps in the hallway, and scurry to my little orange chair with a towel across the back and old newspaper clipping about coast guard murders and the dangers of cigarettes no doubt, he left them there for me years ago.  My fingers fly across the key board, ten little birds skillfully pecking away.  I don't need to use the mouse any more.

"Killer kid?!"

Ctrl+P, click-click-whirr-whiz.

"I was waiting for you." I say. The pages float to the desk in front of him. He picks them up, absently adjusts the old foam visor, a teal blue that has faded with his hair along the years so that I imagine them akin in my memories, aging together.  Lawyer Wonderful and his teal blue tennis cap.  Neither exists separately to me.  After a pause he puts a pencil down and makes a mark, asks me what word I think is better, debates what we are really trying to convey to the client here.  Then, sometimes immediately, sometimes after some time he sits back.  Something we have wrote calls for a memory and he pulls out a page from somewhere in his mind.

"Killer kid," he says, and points out the window, "Certainly you know about Hell's Gate?"  I shake my head no.  "The Busking Sailor, someday she say's I''l sail around the world and she doesn't know Hell's Gate!  Well let me tell you, Oye-ya-ho-hoo, those currents…" I grin, he's told me a million times.  More million times than the teeny bopper girlfriends in Brooklyn, more million times than the scrimshaw collection and history of the musket in the corner by the fishing pole.  More than the story about how they took the door frame off to get the globe inside thats an exact (exact!) same model as the one in the presidential office in the white house.  More than the stories about Rabbi Goor, Cousin Dan and the adventures of Zeze and Bolivar.  But really if you count them they're all the same.  All one story, blended and weaved into one.  Our own secret mythology in the office.  Lawyer Wonderful is king and I his dutiful scribe, Killer kid.

"Alright!" he finally says, scooping my paper back up again.  Whether were still on the currents of Hell's Gate or migrated to a debate over using heretofore twice versus following once, doesn't matter anymore.

"I'm ready." I say with the same comfortable grin, like well worn jeans, favorite sheets.  He tosses the pages back, they float just as when I floated them to him, I scoop them with the same sweep of my arm.  I catch the old printer with my hip on the way to my computer room and clumsily catch it before it falls, this happens three times a night.

"Oh no!" he says, "She's destroying the office again!"  I laugh while walking away, settle in that orange chair, then let my fingers fly like ten little pecking birds again.

It's gonna be a long night.