Re: sentimental fool

The Movie: An American Tail

The Song: Somewhere Out There

sentimental fool

Cold, bitter days, when the sun shines through but does little to warm your extremities or your heart, always remind me of past lovers. I walked the Lake today, listening to Sade and Jay Z, toying with the idea of not being angry with D anymore. Not being angry for the 2 1/2 years I wasted being in love with him. Not being angry for being so silly and wanting so badly to have faith in something, that I put all my trust in him even though I knew from the start exactly how it had to end. Not being angry for his lies, his deception, his selfishness, his betrayal, his ignorance, his secret. I was walking past the swings, pissed that there were too many little kids on the playground for me to ethically take a swing for myself, thinking about how little I trust people, and why on earth I chose someone who I knew would disappoint me, who I set up to disappoint me, as the one person I would put so much faith and love in. It was about 4:15 and the sun was on its way down. When the sun gets in my eyes and momentarily I cannot see the ground below me as my eyes recover, I notice that I instinctualy hesitate to move forward, as if I don't even trust the ground to be there for me the very next second.

When I was small I used to hide in my room sometimes and listen to that song from the Disney movie with Fifel the mouse in it. I can't remember what it was called, the movie, but the song was about looking at the moonlight and taking comfort in knowing someone you desperately needed to be with was under the same sky and maybe looking at it too and so you were connected even though u were far apart. I used to listen to it and think about my mom and cry. I thought she was my soulmate and that we were supposed to be together. I knew that when I grew up and found her, everything would make sense and she would understand me and love me and I would forgive her for leaving. I never told anyone that I did this with the Fifel song cuz even though I was like 4 or 5, I knew/thought it was really sentimental and cheesy, and besides that it was just private; it was like my time with her.

I am not weak but I have weak moments.
I am so grateful every day that I moved out here, away from dead ends and going nowheres, and have an amazing life, friends, love, and job.


"The best revenge is having the time of your life." - Bettina (Kathy Bates) from Six Feet Under

girl fight

Good day today. Any day on vacation is a good day. I did nothing but eat, nap, write, watch tv and chat on the phone with girlfriends. I did go out into the real world for about a half hour to pick up a package waiting for me at the post office. It was my Christmas present from my biological dad, his wife and kids. They have a tradition on Christmas Eve that everyone (all 11 of them, 9 kids + mom and dad) gets to open one particular Christmas present that contains a new set of Christmas pajamas. Then everyone puts on their new Pj's and watches movies together until they zonk out and have to be carried off to bed. They have included me in their tradition now for about four years which is really nice and special. So even though I'm 2000 miles away now, I still get a Christmas package each year with a new set of cozy sleepwear. After I got home from the post office, I put them on and wore them for the rest of my lazy day.

Today is one of my best friends from high school's birthday. She is 28 today. I wonder where she is and what she's doing to celebrate the tail-end of her 20's. I haven't talked to her in 10 years. I met C when she came to my school in 6th grade for a visit because she planned to attend the following year. She was like nothing anyone had ever seen. She was half Irish and half Italian with long, thick firey auburn hair, perfect olive skin, dark brown eyes, dark eyebrows and eyelashes and a perfect body - I'd never in my life imagined a redhead could look like that; I thought they all looked awkward and pale and freckled like me and my brother. She carried herself like she was in high school, at least, and she was charming. Everyone was in love with her and couldn't wait for her to start school with us the next year. When she finally came to stay, she began hanging out with the group of girls I ran with. We learned very quickly that her outsides matched her insides. She was great at sports and ridiculously smart and fun and her parents had money and she had great fashion sense and she was so super sweet that kids from every social clique wanted to be friends with her, and unlike every other cool girl at our school, she was willing to be friends with everyone that was nice to her. She never got in trouble, always did the right thing and everyone either wanted to be her or be with her. I was no exception. I tried to dress like her and talk like her and be around her as much as I could manage. We remained friends through 7th and 8th grade and then ended up going to the same all-girls high school after that. I got to know her a lot better during high school. We went through a lot of shit together. Even though people often thought we were sisters or twins (because people are stupid and think that everyone with red hair looks alike) I really felt like we were sisters sometimes. We spent a lot of time at each others' houses and with each others' families. People referred to us as "the redheads" - she was "the pretty one," I was "the funny one." I learned from her that being perfect has it's price and that no one is perfect, everyone is human. I think that she perhaps learned how to let go a little bit from me maybe. I might have been a little bit of a bad influence. We saw the Grateful Dead for the first time together. Towards the end of high school I really drifted into a lifestyle she wasn't interested in - got more into trouble than she cared to and we weren't super close by the time graduation rolled around, but she was still very much my sister and I would have done anything for her.

I left home right after graduation and when I came back the next fall to make an attempt at going to college and doing right by my family, I naturally called her to see her. I was excited about a lot of things going on in my life. It had only been the span of one summer that we hadn't seen each other, but much had changed for me, not the least of which, I'd came out of the closet. I had never told C that I ever had any inclination towards liking girls because, although I loved her, she was a bit of a goody-goody and she also still considered herself Catholic. It was never really personal though, I never said shit to any of my friends about it. The only people that knew was my brother and friends out of state that I had met over the course of that summer.

C and I met for lunch at a Big Boy's resturant, a family joint close to where we had gone to high school. She looked the same, told me how she was about to start her freshman year at U of M to study business, what sorority she wanted to rush, how her sister and her parents were. Then I told her how I'd been traveling over the summer and was about to go to school at Western but that I wasn't really feelin it and just wanted to play music and write. She told me she was still dating the same guy she was with at our senior prom and I told her I was dating someone too. At the time I was madly in love with my first girlfriend S. She was a Scorpio and a poet and an art model and fucking tragic and hot. I honestly thought that at that point we were grown ups and that C loved me as much as I loved her and it wouldn't be an issue. Plus I was riding on the high of spending the summer around people who I was out to and had been able to shed some of the Catholic shame and guilt I had around my sexuality. I was feeling proud and invincible.

She was stunned. She asked me if i was gay because I had briefly dated a couple guys while we were in high school so she was confused. I told her that I was bi and that I was still attracted to men but that I was in love with this girl. She asked me what she was supposed so tell her parents. Then she said something to the effect of: Oh so all those nights you slept over at my house, you just wanted to fuck me, great. What? She was like my sister. No, it wasn't like that! Who did she think she was? She told me that there wasn't any such thing as being bisexual, that we were just sluts and wanted to be able to fuck as many people as possible. Funny, because I was actually still a virgin at the time. I just sat there as she processed this information out loud to me and became more frustrated or angry or disgusted, I'm not sure. She got money out of her purse, put it on the table, got up and walked out of the restaurant. I never heard from her again.

The end of relationships are always so fucking weird. When you look back on something you had with someone and hold it up next to how it ended, if it ended badly, and you can't seem to connect the two. How did we get here? That wasn't the last person to reject me for being queer, but it was the first and I'm still angry with her for it. This year was our 10 yr high school reunion, and although I figured she wouldn't go anyways, I thought about what it would be like to see her there and I felt enraged. I felt like I would want to spit in her face or beat her ass and I was surprised at myself for still feeling so strongly about it. I didn't end up going to the reunion because I honestly just didn't care to see anyone that I don't already keep in touch with. Not at 10 yrs at least. 25 years will be so much more interesting. Maybe by then I won't feel like fighting her anymore, but considering how well I've dealt with and let go of other rejections in my life (insert sarcasm here), who knows.


"It's about to be a girl fight" - Brooke Valentine

bastard nation

Woke up today at my parents' house, the day after Christmas, ready to drive home, ready to be alone again. J and I drove down the coast to Mom and Dad's house on Sunday evening for the holiday. We haven't spent any time together since I moved to the other side of the world/Bay, so it was a nice drive down, catching up. He's doing well at the G-Plex and I'm really proud of him, but he's frustrated with dating. He says he knows the Bay isn't a permanent place for him because he's been here over two years now and still hasn't met anyone he really clicks with. He has tons of hook-ups, and even though he is the hook-up kind of guy, he's also craving something deeper. He wants some guy to sweep him off his feet; he wants it to have a soundtrack.

On Christmas Eve, Mom cooked our big dinner and we exchanged gifts. There was talk of midnight mass but after an enormous dinner, my parents couldn't even get it up for Jesus. They went the next morning instead. While they were at mass, I was fast asleep until the phone in the backroom began ringing and was so headsplitting I had to jump up to grab it and make it stop. In the fog, a voice I hadn't heard in years rang through the other end. "Merry Christmas!" It was K; I'd know that voice anywhere and for as long as I live. "You don't even know who this is, do you?" I told her I did, but that I was just out of it because I was sleeping.

K is the only person I've ever truly hated. Her secret was unforgivable. When my brother was a junior in high school, he met K. He worked with her dad at a fish and tackle supply place. It was up on 5 Mile Rd. and overwhelmingly smelled like the rubber they use to make fishing lures. My brother was K's dad's boss. K's dad (B) was a father of 5, my brother was 17. B had secrets too. He set them up on a date - my brother and K. My brother was, is, and always has been in love with fishing and hunting and everything woodsy. Since he could walk and grip a pole, he's been at the edge of a lake, pond, or stream with undivided focus and adoration. Teenage girls don't really dig a guy in waist-high waterproof boots. He was always a great guy, but he was just so focused on something that had nothing to do with anything most girls were into, that he just didn't really have much luck with the ladies. In fact, as far as I can remember, K was the only girlfriend he ever had in high school. She dug him, and he dug the fact that she dug him.

My brother and K dated for about 6 or 8 months before I eavesdropped outside his bedroom door one day and overheard a conversation that would change our lives forever. I was 15, a sophomore in high school, and a complete nuisance. I kept thinking I wasn't really hearing what I was really hearing. My stomach turned, my throat began to close up and I was paralyzed. When I heard him hang up the phone, I knocked on the door and opened it without waiting for him to answer. He was sitting on his bed with a completely blank face. I asked him what was happening and he told me. K was pregnant. I never saw him cry until now, not since we were little and he stepped on the yellow jacket nest in Hines Park and he was screaming and I ran towards him to see what was wrong and then they attacked me too. He got it worse. He screamed and cried all night long that he was gonna die. He was 7 and I was 4. I'd only got one sting in the head and one on my arm, but ended up with a debilitating fear of bees. He's never been scared of anything in nature. Respectful, but never scared.

He didn't know how to tell Mom and Dad so he didn't, for awhile. Eventually he told a couple friends, I told a couple friends, and word spread through his all-boys school and my all-girls school until it became clear that he had to say something before someone else did. Our parents were and are still extremely religious, of the Roman Catholic variety, and although the Romans left behind one of the most sexually deviant histories known to mankind, Roman Catholics loathe and shame nothing more than anything sex-related. Telling them their teenage son, who himself was adopted and the product of a teenage pregnancy, had knocked up his teenage girlfriend, was an understandably daunting task for my brother to undergo. Nonetheless, it had to happen.

He told me when they were going to do it and I made sure I was out of the house. I went across the street to my neighbor R's house and sat up in her bedroom and waited. I honestly never wanted to go back. He still hadn't told me what they were planning to do with it. I mean, on one hand she was already 18, a year older than him so it's not like she was super young. But he was still in high school and had just gotten into the Wildlife Biology program at Lake Superior State for next year - he can't be a father. I don't think he believes in abortion which is what I wish they would do. It seems like the only thing that makes sense at this point. If it was me I woulda had that taken care of weeks ago, but he was different. Our parents were hard core pro-lifers. They were Catholic and parents of two adopted kids, abandoned by their teenage mothers, who out of wed-lock, gave them the gift of life. We were the poster children for pro-life - look what can happen if you make the right decision - life! Really aborted fetuses (who i always thought looked more like burn victims staged to look like fetuses) were the poster children for pro-life, but that's because pro-life isn't about life. We were made to feel like it though. Your mothers could have made the wrong decision and you wouldn't be here, can't you see? Yes, well we saw, but we saw things differently. My brother always toed the line a little more than I did, though I think his rebellion was just more underground, while I was obvious and needed to draw attention to myself. Sitting in R's room in the upstairs of her two-story house I was always so jealous of, I imagined my brother and K giving their kid up for adoption, continuing the cycle, the tradition of catch and release in our families and our lives. It just wasn't going to happen. I knew it. If they kept it though, that fucking ugly bitch K would be around forever. God, what if they got married. I never liked her from jump. She was fake. She was always comin around being sugary sweet to me one minute, sometimes even buying me something, and then she'd turn around and be a complete cuntrag in the same breath. There wasn't room for both our nasty attitudes in my house and so we played nice on the surface but shit was always hostile underneath. I started seething as I sat there thinking about her being in my family forever. I gave them a few hours, but once it got dark and I got tired, I went back across the street to my house.

That night they had told my parents K was pregnant and that they'd decided to have and keep the baby. I remember an empty Kleenex box and that the living room felt like someone had just died in it. For whatever reason, and I still don't know if this is true or not, they told my parents that they'd never actually technically had intercourse, but somehow, she'd ended up pregnant anyways. Miraculous. So they decided to keep the baby and eventually my brother did "the right thing" and proposed to her. I knew he wasn't in love with her, I think he knew, and she was stupid if she didn't know. I never saw any spark, but maybe I was just 15 and didn't know what spark was, but my parents had spark, I knew what spark was and they didn't have it.

The pregnancy seemed to last forever and everyone talked about it in school. Eventually this became a problem because we went to very strict Catholic schools who did not look favorably on any student engaging in pre-marital sex. A teacher at my brother's school overheard some students gossiping about his situation and immediately called my parents in for a conference. He informed them that he really liked my brother and didn't want anything else unfortunate to befall him, but that they should know the school had policy against anyone known to have impregnated anyone, and that if anyone in the administration found out, my brother would be kicked out of school. He was 4 months from graduation, but apparently that wouldn't matter. And so began, Operation: Hide the Baby. My brother laid low, didn't talk about it, didn't go to prom because she was showing too much, didn't get into trouble, and just generally tried to blend into the background. My parents tried to get us family counseling. May came and went, he graduated and on June 4th, A was born. She was beautiful, everyone was healthy. My parents traded in their mantra of being failed parents for being proud grandparents, I was an aunt, and I still have a picture of my brother that day in the hospital looking like he'd barely reached puberty and with the wildest look on his face and in his eyes as if he was acting out what a crazy person would look like for a game of charades. He looked like a cartoon.

K and Baby A came to live with us for awhile. I'm not sure why but it may have had to do with her parents' neighborhood and her sister who was in a gang and still lived at the house. There were definitely guns in and around that house and there were definitely other things that might make a mom not want to bring her newborn there. Like her Dad, B, who used to call my house on the phone and ask me to giggle for him and make up nicknames for me, and whose penchant for young girls was allegedly nothing new and who eventually ended up leaving K's mom and their family right around the time he quit the fish and tackle shop, got arrested for tax fraud, and came out as a transvestite. B had secrets and made me nauseous. K had plenty of reasons not to be at her house, but maybe she just wanted to live with her baby's dad, I don't know. True to form, my parents would not allow my brother and K and the baby to sleep in the same room. K and Baby A slept on a pop-up bed and in a crib in the breezeway and my brother was in his room because it wouldn't be appropriate for anyone unmarried to sleep in a room together. Obviously.

Things eventually went sour with my brother and K - no spark plus baby equals nightmare. They broke up, moved out, my brother started paying child support and more child support. He wasn't able to accept his offer from the college up north to go away to study and he had to get another job to be able to financially take care of A. We still had A at our house 3ish days a week. At some point my brother had become close friends with K's best girlfriend, also a K, we'll call her K2, and K and K2 had "drifted apart." K2 and my brother started dating and continued to do so for a couple years. At some point K2 sat my brother down and said something to the effect of: I was K's best friend when ya'll were dating and I know for a fact she cheated on you and that baby is started not to look so much like you anymore, so you might wanna get that checked out. It was true; she didn't look like him anymore, at all. So my brother confronted K and asked her about the cheating allegations. K admitted to sleeping with 5 other guys and claimed she was raped at a party by a 6th. My brother didn't want to tell anyone until he knew for sure, so while he continued to pay child support, he saved money to get a paternity test. He told me what was going on shortly before the results were due, again my parents and everyone else were kept in the dark.

The day the results came in the mail, I was waiting for the postman in the living room and immediately ran out to grab it as I heard him shut the box on the deliverables. We knew it was coming. My parents weren't home and my brother was in his room with the door shut. I flipped through the mail quickly, picked it out, threw the rest of the mail on the floor and took it to his room. I gave it to him, walked out and shut the door, but I couldn't move away from it. I just stood there, waiting. He did it quickly, wasn't but 30 or 45 seconds before I heard something big crash into the wall and I knew he'd thrown something. I backed away from the door as he opened it and stormed out of the room down the hall into the kitchen and out the side door. I waited a few minutes, grabbed a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from my room and headed outside. We sat in a couple of lawn chairs on the grass right next to the side door underneath the crab apple tree, didn't talk really, chain smoked and cried until my parents pulled up in the driveway. I remember sitting there thinking about how not one single person in our family shared a drop of blood now. We were just a bunch of bastards. Baby A was 2 1/2.

After the results were in, K said she'd make sure my brother never saw A again if he told anyone he wasn't the father, or about her numerous indiscretions, but considering my brother had never been anything but an exemplary parent, I don't think he was too worried she'd be able to follow through on her threats. My parents were crushed, but since their own children weren't biological, they rebounded pretty quickly using the blood-isn't-love rally cry as a crutch. I was angry. I was seething. I spent months and months doing nothing in school but scribbling half-baked plots for revenge on K in my notebooks and journals. How could she do this to my brother? To us? To A? She knew the whole time. She knew it was a one out of seven shot my brother was the dad, but she choose him. She knew he'd step up, do the right thing, move her out of the hood, take care of them; and he did. He sacrificed his plans, his life, his future, everything that was supposed to be, only to get completely blindsided, used and set up in the worst way. That baby was never gonna know who her father is and it was all K's fault. I was so angry at the time when my parents didn't immediately admonish her. They weren't just civil, they were nice to her, like nothing had happened. I thought they were pulling some turn-the-other-cheek Christian bull shit, but I see now they were sacrificing the satisfaction of stewing in their anger, in order to keep their relationship with A. After everything, K still looked to them and trusted them and would bring A over to their house at least 2 or 3 days a week for a long time. I didn't see that though at the time; I was so angry. As I was prone to do, I focused on my anger so intently, the sadness never had the time to sneak in.

I don't remember a whole lot after that. I remember my parents, sadly and shamefully sharing the news with other close family members and people not know how to react or act. I remember everything being really awkward as they tried to transition a toddler from calling my brother Daddy to calling him Chris. What could she possibly understand about what was happening? What would her Mom tell her? Who's place was it to dictate these things? I left home shortly there after, but when I would occasionally come back through town I would still see A for a few years as she grew up. As she grew though, she looked more and more like her mom each time I saw her, and I hated it. The more she looked like her, the more I found myself not wanting to be around her. I felt terrible. I knew it wasn't her fault, nothing was her fault. People have babies, they make choices, and then the babies grow into live-action reminders of those choices, indiscretions, mistakes. Sometimes it's hard to look at them.

K and A lived with a man that K hooked up with shortly after her and my brother broke up. He seemed like a decent man and from what I could tell was a good father figure to A. She called him Dad. My brother had wrestled for a long time with what to do and in the end decided to take K to court to get his name off the birth certificate, so he wouldn't be financially responsible for A any longer. I wasn't living in the area for years so I don't really know what the gradual separation looked like and he doesn't talk about it. He moved on with his life. He went to college, didn't have to work multiple jobs, traveled, fell in love, and did all the things he wanted to do. He eventually moved to Alaska, K and A moved to Illinois, and my parents, and then later I, moved to California.

The last time I saw or talked to A, she was probably 6 or 7. Until I answered the phone yesterday and K was on the other end. I asked if they were having a nice Holiday, if they were in Detroit, etc. Then she put A on. I felt bad because I had to ask her how old she was, but she just sounded so different. She is 13. She sounded like she coulda been 18. I mean, she just sounded like a teenager, almost like a grown up. Her tone, inflection, everything was different. I was in awe. She seemed happy to be talking to me, but in the back of my mind the whole time I kept thinking that I should apologize for missing her entire life or something. I didn't, instead I may have tried a little too hard to push forward. She told me she was gonna be starting high school soon and that she was thinking she wanted to come to California to go to art school after that for Photography. I asked her if she liked taking pictures of people or places. She said animals. I immediately thought of my brother. I told her she should come out and visit us and we could look at schools for her some day. She was really excited by this. She said she'd never been to California yet but she wanted to. She said it'd be great to come out and go to the beach, maybe meet guys there. I laughed. I asked her for her email and told her I'd send her some pictures of California.


A bumper sticker from BastardNation.com: "Honk If You Might Be My Daddy!"