she's alwaaayys a woman to meeeeee

Thurs|02.27

So, my threat to post fiction has become whatchamacallit. Reality. I was rooting around old files (not in the Australian sense) and found this. It's okay. There are things I would change. Like, it's not too clear where they are, I can't picture it. I would change some wordings. Lots of them in fact. But I don't want to. It is what it is. It's over.

It's called Old Milwaukee, was saved on 10/16/99. I don't know if I wrote it in one sitting or what. I don't remember writing it. I mean I assume I did. This is my computer. ANYWAY! IT IS FICTION! NOT TRUE! Okay then.

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"'Old Milwaukee. It's cheap, and it gets the job done.' That should be their motto."

"Whose?"

"Old Milwaukee's. You know, like on a commercial."

I pushed a hole into my sandwich. Cheese oozed around my finger.

"What's that, grilled cheese?"

"Yeah."

"The ultimate white trash lunch. What kind of cheese?"

"Velveeta."

"Perfect." He laughed, showing mangled white teeth, the front two crossed together for luck.

I hate him, I decided. His sunglasses hadn't come off since pulling in with Mertzie three or four hours ago. Now they were all passed out in front of some ball game, and he was in the kitchen bugging me.

Nothing wrong with grilled cheese.

"Don't talk much, do you?" he asked, dragging on his Marlboro.

"Not to you," I said. "Don't even know you." That's what I wanted to say. Instead, I shrugged.

He imitated the motion of my shoulders, then laughed again.

"Cute, though. That's for sure."

I cracked open a beer. It was going to be a long one.

Mertzie lived in this house called the Shed. It was his parents' old house, and they were dead. It hadn't been painted it in maybe 20 years. Neighbors complained, but not about that. They complained about the music, the parties, the kids throwing up in their bushes.

Cops came, kids got tossed out, it went on and on. Some of us lived there, some crashed for a week or two. Some just came for the parties. Some drove over during their lunch period to get high.

Mertzie should be in jail, I'd heard my parents say. Contributing to the delinquency of minors in the worst possible way. There'd been three OD's, but not at his house. In the woods, off the property.

That happened before my time. The stories still circulated, though. One girl had gone to school with my older brother. According to him, it was a Mob hit. She didn't OD, she was strangled by a professional. Her two friends had to die, because they were witnesses, so they were injected with enough heroin to kill a baby elephant. Big cover-up.

Other people said one was Mertzie's girlfriend, and he was cheating on her with the other two. They all found out that night and committed suicide with Mertzie's drugs, and that's why he stopped dealing hard stuff. I'd heard other stories that make no sense at all-the three girls never existed, they were made up by cops who wanted to buy the land cheap to build a golf course on the property; his parents, not three friends, had OD'd in the woods, and there was a detective still trying to prove he murdered them; the girls were triplets from Canada who all felt what the other two felt, and when one went down, they all went into convulsions on the kitchen floor.

One person, Danny, told me they all died on separate nights, all accidents. He said there was no such thing as a cover-up, most people were too stupid to even think up one. It was just dumb luck whether you lived or died.

He's the one I believed.

As for me, I liked Mertzie. I was friends with his sister. But I never said I was going over there. I was at the mall, I was babysitting, I was in a math study group. Maybe I was even in the school play. But I was never sprawled on the ripped linoleum of Mertzie's kitchen, my lips to a stranger's as he shotgunned smoke into my mouth from the joint held backward in his own. I was never on a mattress, my pants below my knees, getting finger-fucked by some guy I thought was cute last year, before he got sent away to juvie.

I learned something from him. Rehab never takes.

I sat on the dilapidated couch and listened to his stories, and others from the kids who'd been there, kids my own age. They talked about being forced into groups where you move your chairs into a circle, stand up, and confess all kinds of personal things, while counselors yell at you, tell you you're bullshit. How you're lying to yourself.

Never see me in one of those places. I didn't understand how people got caught. Just keep up your grades, check in once in a while with the folks, and you cruise into 18 like everyone else.

If you could keep clear of guys like this one, with the crooked teeth.

Now he was telling me a story about the Navy, like he just got out. He looked over 20, so I guessed it could be true, but I didn't believe him. The truth was all I tried to pull from people. It so rarely got told.

Danny, who said most people are too stupid to think of a cover-up, he always told me the truth. I hung out with him whenever I could. But he got grounded a lot, and we didn't go to the same school. And I was almost two years older than him, so I pretended he wasn't as important to me as he really was.

"Bet you've never seen this," the guy said, and opened his mouth. A bottom tooth moved out of its socket and went back in. He did it again, pulling out the tooth with his tongue. The tooth popped in and out like a freak show.

I didn't know what to say.

"Shit, if that don't make you talk, I'm going to have to think up something that will," he said, and I felt a warning signal in my stomach. The TV droned on from the living room, and someone was snoring. No signs of life in there.

"What'd you say your name was?" I asked, hoping to hold off whatever was coming.

"Didn't. But it's Carl. And you?"

"Lora."

We shook hands. He tickled my palm with his middle finger and I snatched my hand from his grip. Another throw-back-the-head laugh; I wished somebody would come into the house. I stood.

"Where you going, Lora? We're just getting to know each other."

"Mertzie, ah, he wanted . . . " I mumbled something and half-ran into the living room. I felt him behind me. His hand touched my back. I pulled away from him but he was still close, his breath warm on the top of my head.

I leapt onto the couch, landed on Mertzie's cousin Johnny.

"What the fuck!" he shouted, and pushed me off. That woke up Leo and Kevin. Kevin reached down and pulled me into a kneeling position.

"Hey, cuz," he said, even though we're not related.

"Hey, Kev." I felt enormous relief. "What's up?"

"Not a hell of a lot. Here, there's room." He elbowed Johnny, who cursed me again, and I climbed up between them. Mertzie was stretched out on the floor in front of them, his head resting on an Ottoman. The new guy, Carl, looked at us uncertainly.

No one invited him onto the couch.

"Guess I'll take off," he said after a moment.

"Okay. Later," said Kevin. His voice was friendly, but cool. I could tell he didn't like Carl.

"Who is that guy?" I whispered to him after hearing the kitchen door close.

"Some jack-off Johnny met in the city. Said he had some good shit but guess what. He didn't." Kevin rested his arm above my shoulders. "Mertzie bought from him anyway, dumb fuck. Then invited him over." He looked at my beer and I handed it to him. He took a long swallow, then said, "Now the fucker knows where to find us. Hate that."

"Shut up!" Johnny shouted. "Trying to sleep."

Kevin shook his head at me and grinned.

"Dumb fucks," he said.

I leaned into his shoulder and looked at the game. Baseball. Bery, bery, boring to me.

"Hey, why are you the only girl ever around?" he whispered. "Little Miss Jailbait."

"Thanks a lot," I said, but it made me feel safe. I was 15, and guys like Kevin cared about shit like that.

"Come on, Lora. One kiss, right here." He pointed to his cheek, just next to his sideburn. Close up I could see blond fuzz covering his skin, and a small freckle that was almost a mole. His voice was deep, and conspiratorial. It held a smile.

I kissed his cheek, lingered there to smell him. Cigarettes, soap. The sweet smell of pot. His orangey-blond hair curled over the top of his ear.

"Mmmm, nice," he murmured, and I did it again. My stomach felt tight. Something might happen.

His lips parted, his eyes closed and opened. I was so close, I could smell the beer he'd just drank. I could see where his lips turned from the pinkish-red of the outside to the deep, inner red, the exact line of the change. I could see his bluish eyelids and the length of his lashes, and how they weren't blond, like I had thought, but light brown. Under all of that was his smell, and the air he breathed in and out. As I watched him the moment passed, and I turned my head back to the TV.

"You waiting for Melina?"

"Yeah. She's at ballet."

"When isn't she."

"Really."

The announcer's voice droned on and I leaned against Kevin.

"Night," he said, from far away, and I drifted off.

"Hey, girl, wake up. Hey."

I felt a kick and groaned. Moved. My neck was stiff. The TV was playing the news. I was still next to Kevin, but Leo and Johnny were gone. Mertzie too. I looked up at Melina, my best friend. Mertzie's little sister.

"How was practice?"

"Everyone else sucks, as usual. Had to stay long." She lifted a bottle of water to her lips and drank, then pulled it away too fast. A wave of liquid splashed against her blouse. "Shit! Madonne! Why does this shit always happen to me?" She stalked off, stripping the shirt from her body as she went.

"Everything's a drama," Kevin mumbled.

"Thought you were asleep."

"Who can sleep. Hey, do me a favor and get up, huh? My arm's numb."

Your southern can is mine, i'm screamin Your southern can belongs to me

Mon|02.24

Rev. Mitchell was new, and I was home that summer. Having "graduated" from "college" and my mother of course invited him over for dinner, and he was "unconventional" in a minister-type way, like, okay, he went to Berkeley during the riots or the 60s or whenever and had "seen" it "all" and whatnot.

He wasn't very reverendy.

Anyhoo.

He came over for dinner a few times. It was hot that summer. My sister came home, I can't remember if this was before or after our father's operation. Probably before? I just don't remember and am too lazy to look it up because I have to get up early. THIS STORY WILL GET BETTER! DONT TURN AWAY JUST YET!

So Kat, I've decided to call this sister Kat, and my other sisters will be known as Leah and Joanie, FYI, and my brother is being called Jay. So there you have it, in descending order of age: Leah, Joanie, Kat, Jay, and me, Cleo. YES! THOSE ARE CODE NAMES! Ya hayseeds.

So Kat is home, and I guess Rev. Wilson or Schmidt or Havenclature is about the same age as Kat, maybe a little older. So he invites the two of us for dinner at "his" "place" ostensibibiblldfgly so I can copy this tape of monks making this odd noise, oh I'm sure you've heard it. It's fantastic.

I'll finish this story some other time. Seriously. Maybe even tomorrow.

If the emus don't get me.

dont cah ryyyyyyyyy out lowwwwwwwwd

Sat|02.22

It's hot out today. Sunny. Me in my coat, tourists in shorts. That's how it goes.

I can't find my mail key. It's been a week. I need it. I have mail. You know? Where is it?

It was on my key chain, which is just a loop of wire, really, and the loop got bent, and the little mail key fell off, and I put it in my pocket and now it isn't there. Where did it fall out? Where is my extra set of keys? Why didn't I duplicate the mail key and give it to my landlord like he asked me to the last time I lost my set of keys, since it was his only copy? Why do I keep losing things? Like twice, TWICE, not once, I've lost my W-4s (or are they 2s?), never to be seen again. Well, until I moved. "Oh, here they are," I said. "Huh." I filed my taxes anyway, both years, with guestimates, and it worked out all right, but still. That's ridiculous.

I need quarters to do laundry and am at work instead, writing this instead of working, so tired, forgot my wheezer, finished my diet coke alREAdy, and I don't see this getting easier. I know this is like nothing to complain about but what is wrong with me? The external messiness of it all must reflect something inside of me, some big f'n mess I don't deal with. Right? Or maybe I'm just a slob.

zzzzzzzz