*Please, please, please let me get what I want this time
These last couple of weeks I haven’t been sure how to feel. I’m pulling, detaching from myself. Tired. The edges frayed, matted. I have started to believe in the back of my mind how none of this is real. I am not real. Perhaps I am in the dream of a sheep dog resting near a fire in some rustic place where the roads snake through grassy lands and stone fences. Or maybe the fleeting thought of a wilting rose shedding the last of it’s petals.
This life can not be true. But is it false?
Is my existence a branch of a tangent in a possibility having no function or end? Just an equation attempted and abandoned because of it’s inelegant solution, the stumping of a mathematician trying to solve for the answer but only reaching the inversion of Occam’s Razor.
How long for any of this? I can’t turn off on or on off. I want to run but I am bound immobile. I walk the halls of my minds library, plucking out books from the shelves and tossing them onto the floor. I want to douse them in gasoline and light them on fire. But if I do, all of the books, the ones wanted and unwanted, would be engulfed within the fingers of flames. Forever lost.
I wish I was just a small dream of a sleeping sheep dog. She wakes and I promptly evaporate from her synapses being pushed out by her waking mind. Liberated.
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Quasi self portrait. 20 minutes. Back to watercolor, that felt good.
I lived a lot of different lives
Been different people many times
I live my life in bitterness
And fill my heart with emptiness
And now I see, see for the first time
There is no crime in being kind
Not everyone is out to screw you over
Maybe and just maybe they just want to get to know you
Now the time is here
Baby, you don’t have to live your life in fear
And the sky is clear
It’s clear of fear
I don’t want to live in fear and loathing
I want to feel like I am floating
Instead of constantly exploding
In fear and loathing
Got different people inside my head
I wonder which one that they like best
I’m done with trying to have it all
And ending up with not much at all
And now I see, see for the first time
There is no crime in being kind
Not everyone is out to screw you over
Maybe and just maybe they just want to get to know you
Now the time is here
Baby, you don’t have to live your life in fear
And the sky is clear
It’s clear of fear
And when the time comes along
And the lights run out
I know a light will burn on
When they blow me out
Fear and Loathing by Marina and the Diamonds
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*Illustration took about 20 minutes. It’s the last sketch in my current Moleskine classic large sketchbook. I have already purchased the next book to scrawl in and it’s a Moleskine large watercolor sketchbook. Let’s see if I am more inclined to use (water)color in this next book.
My grandfather ran away to New York from Puerto Rico in his late teens to be a musician and bohemian. I like to fantasize about who that version of my grandfather was. The handsome green eyed Lothario, running around the streets of New York City laughing too much, drinking and cavorting with the wrong types. I suspect he had some kind of genius. He was one of those of people who could learn something almost instantaneously. He taught himself how to play the guitar, bass, piano, drums, harmonica and accordion. I often wondered about the man who abandoned his creative calling to be a reluctant family man. I have come to have a deep pain and sense of loss of the person he had dreamt to be, versus the man he had to become.
I remember some Sundays he would lock himself in his room and play his guitar and sing gut wrenching Spanish ballads from the 50′s for hours on end. I would lay on my bed listening to him singing as if his life depended on it. His sorrow traveled through the house and lingered in the air floating. His singing or even his guitar would always put my grandmother on edge. He was supposed to be this “Pentecostal man of God” and here he was using his beautiful voice for worldly songs filled with graphic seduction and passion. He never sang the ‘sinful songs’ like the Christian ones. He lingered within the music and the lyrics like an old lover moving his hand over the naked body of his open and willing woman. The songs would spread themselves wanting him to go in deeper to be filled by him. There were times where his singing would stop abruptly because it was too much, his voice would crack trying to keep his tears back. I could hear him start to cry, the strumming would stop and he would slam his guitar back into it’s case. Later he would emerge from his room with this giant container of pennies he always kept and would dump it on the kitchen table and start to count the pennies for hours, sometimes until very late. He would refuse to speak and he did nothing else except count those thousands and thousands of pennies, to afterwards return them to their original container.
It’s been with the knowledge only granted by time I’ve come to understand fragments of what he was grappling with. I don’t believe he was ever alright about his choices in life. Most of the time he walked around with this mask of a self-projection. He only knew how to hide behind being this faux Pentecostal man.
A few years ago I had lunch with his eldest son and he confessed his sadness at never having a relationship or even a conversation with his father that was ever real or intimate. My grandfather could retreat into that other aspect of himself where all of his words were like a pre-recorded tape of monologued bible quotes.
I told my uncle somethings about his father, the version hidden to him, about why his father might be like this. I don’t think he knew what to do with the information. I made his father too mortal, too human and he didn’t know what to do with these truths. It was as if it would have been easier to remain angry for his distance rather than understanding his father could be this conflicted, harmed, delicate creature that was doing the best he could. My words were not meant to absolve my grandfather of the monster he could be, but to color him in a fuller light. Cruel people are not born, they are made.
I sometimes have black days and in those days I think of my grandfather with his bitter sorrow. I have come to understand the things he could never say. I can’t imagine living his half life and never understanding how beautiful he was—never being told he was the song, the music, the poem.
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I saw Concha Buika perform a few years ago and cried my eyes out because she sings with the same pain and passion as my grandfather. I wish he could have heard her music. The lyrics of this song are a poem for my grandfather that capture how I feel about us.
He always would sing this song, ‘Sabor a Mi’ by Javier Solis. The song is about how the singer still has the taste of his woman with him, just as she has his taste.
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*Sketch took about 30 minutes.
I want to take this small little interlude to thank the people who choose to read this little blog of mine. I get many questions via email and comments that I have not shared publicly. I always do my best to answer what I can with many of the personal or intimate questions I receive. I do seem to get certain similar or consistent questions/comments. I thought I’d share a few of these since I suppose I have not clearly addressed what is being asked.
Why did you start this blog?
I started this blog during a very difficult time of change for me. I was in a lot of pain with many new strands of devastating problems and hurts. I was at one of those points of almost losing myself and not climbing out of the rabbit hole in time, I am not entirely sure I am all the way out. I started the blog as a life preserver/floatation device. I was very alone and rather abandoned. I needed an escape valve to let some of the things that were weighing on me to have some form of release. I promised myself to write at least twice a month, to have a task to keep myself connected to the world even if it was on a limited scope.
What is it’s focus? Is it a diary? Is it about illustration?
There isn’t any focus as in a “master plan.” I am simply sharing things from my day to day and past. I am grateful if you read it and exceptionally humbled if you happen to find any wisdom or solidarity from what I have shared.
It is a diary and it isn’t. I tell all manner of things here. Sometimes it’s essay form, other times a more creative type of narrative or a poem. And it certainly is not presented in a chronological order or thematic. The blog is not only about my pain. It’s more about my life experiences, good and bad.
It’s not about illustration in a teaching way. But it is about how I use my illustrations as another form of diary. All of my drawings are ideas, metaphors, feelings, frustrations all wrapped up in my illustrations. At times the images are enigmatic or highly specific. I tend to include my medium and length of time spent on the drawing because I was constantly being asked these basic questions.
How can you tell such personal and intimate things that are all connected to you and your public identity?
I was at a crossroads in my life. My insular nature was harming me. If you know me in real life I tend to be exceptionally private about my life and specifically about my pains. It is a method of protecting myself because almost anytime I have entrusted one person with information they use it as a method of hurting me in some way or shape. Because of these constant disappointments I’ve closed people out. It is also important to note that no one seeks me out, for the most part, of my rather large cache of friends and acquaintances.
So I share the information that I chose to here because I need get the poison out. Even if the conversation is with only myself. I need to make a marker that these things have happened to me. That I am in pain and that it hurts like a motherfucker and it doesn’t belong to anyone but me. I am not ashamed of my past. I am not ashamed of my pains. I say these personal things because they are my truth, my experience, simple as that. And despite everything I am still here.
Does your family approve of what you blog about?
Of course not. But I can’t live my life afraid of them or their perceptions. I love them all deeply no matter what the past is. In some or many cases they either think what has happened to me is no big deal or that it wasn’t possible that all of these things have happened to me. For a long time I thought like them about my own life. It was no big deal.
Aren’t you angry at all of the things or people who have hurt you?
Angry and bitter no. And I don’t believe in pitying myself. The only thing I have learned is that we are all dealt these random cards of life and sometimes it doesn’t feel so random. The continual assault of sad things and bad things to me are difficult to understand. Am I angry? No. Confused? Yes.
How do you cope with all these hurts and pains?
Not very well. I am a highly wounded person that hides it under slabs of put-togetherness. I don’t cope well at all. What I am is highly skilled at appearing normal to 99.99 percent of the world. If you are paying attention you can see the damage in everything I do. This blog, my illustrations, my writings and my photographs the paths in and out of my pain.
How do you decided what you write about or draw?
It’s a bit random. The illustrations always are first, a few days earlier than the blog post. Sometimes the drawing or the illustration are related, other times, not at all. There is no methodical approach.
Are you in therapy, have you been in therapy?
Currently no, previously yes. Therapy has been a highly unsuccessful endeavor for me. It has cause me a great deal of additional trauma, repeatedly. It’s not easy to sit in front of a therapist an see the look of horror and fear reflected in their faces comprehending the specifics about my past. It’s also almost fantastical their suggested methodologies of coping and healing. Clearly I have not found the appropriate therapist. I am not interested in attempting finding a new one since the last time I almost didn’t make it out alive.
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*Illustration is a depiction of my minds insides during the darkest parts. 20-30 minutes, pencil.
I received a bicycle the Christmas after my 8th birthday. I didn’t ask for it. But there it was in front of me that morning so many years ago. I was happy. Sort of. I was given a large gift I had no way of using at the time. You see, I didn’t know how to ride a bike. This particular lesson was on a long list of things my parents had promised they would teach me but never got around to.
My mother went through periods of trying to attain some sort of redemption through acts of gift giving. There were times she would not come to see me for months because she had no present or money to give. I would tell her with my tiny years I wanted her not presents. I was never able to get through to her on this.
The bicycle came on the heels of a horrendous act on her part. While my parents were going through their divorce and custody battle, my mother abducted me from elementary school without telling my father, or his mother, in whose care I had been placed in. For two days my father and his clan had no idea where I was. I remember crying that first night telling mom everyone would worry. I told her I wanted to say goodnight to my fathers mother who was my main caregiver at the time. I pressed, we had to tell them I was alright! She said she would, but didn’t.
Those few weeks after the abduction were hard. My mother’s mother would tell me I had nothing to cry about; my mother had saved me and protected me. How could I want to live with those horrible people?!
I loved those horrible people. I loved all of those horrible people called my family.
I could see the worry in my mother’s face when we would eat dinner quietly. And again when she would tell me a bedtime story. Sometimes while she brushed my hair after a bath she would promise to make it all right one day. She would hug me and apologize, crying into my hair.
So that Christmas she pledged she would teach me to ride. I knew it wouldn’t happen but I dreamt it would.
Month one, two, three, four, five and six, nothing. On month seven I was sent to visit my mother’s brother and sister who lived in Allentown, Pennsylvania at that time.
It was summertime, I was almost 9 and was pushed into a kid mob of various cousins all slightly younger than me. For several weeks we lived, ate and played together; while all of the adults lingered in the periphery engaged in their soap operaesque “grown folk” scuffles.
The world of “us kids” was imbued with its own sense of Lord Of The Flies-isness. Although I was the eldest, I was mostly locked out by the majority. I spoke unusually, imagined differently and the most egregious short coming was I didn’t know how to ride a bike.
I remember one cousin laughing and saying they hadn’t invented bicycles yet in Puerto Rico, so how could I ever know what to do with one. I walked around alone often while my cousins rode bikes all over the neighborhood. I sat outside on the stoop of my uncle’s house and was accused by his redheaded wife of being lazy. The only time the playing field was level with my cousins was at the pool. I was born a swimmer. I could skid on top and shimmer at the bottom of the topaz blue water. And as luck would have it my cousins would laugh and say it must be because I was a frog—an island frog.
It was one of the last days for me in Allentown. I had been avoiding my cousins who were now inside playing board games. Again my uncle’s wife found me on the stoop.
Ally get up. Do something. You know what, put all those bicycles away. Now.
OK. I will. Can I ride one until dark?
Sure. I don’t care.
I put all of the bikes inside with the exception of a navy blue one. I looked at it. I asked myself how hard could it be. Was it about gravity? Balance? It was hard to think my way into understanding how to make the bike go.
I went for it. I straddled it, put my right foot on the peddle. I pushed down with too much force. I move forward a bit and smashed down into the sidewalk. I could feel the skidded sting on my elbow. I started to cry. I was angry. I was I ever going to learn? I got up again and look around. There was nobody there. I positioned myself. I pedaled again, too softly. I briefly wobbled forward and slammed onto my right elbow again. More pain. Blood.
Crying, I got up again.
Wobble. Skid. Scraped knee.
Crying. Up again.
Wobble skid, crashed onto my face.
Stars, blood.
Sweat. Trembling.
Mounting. Fall.
Crunch, another slam onto my knee.
Crying.
Sweating.
Too much force.
Too little force.
No balance.
No balance.
Falling on my face.
Scrape, hit, scratch, bump.
Wobble, wobble.
Fall.
Every extremity had a myriad of bruises, cuts and gashes. I couldn’t get it. I tried and tried. It was almost night. I knew I wasn’t going to figure this out. I was bracing myself on the final attempt. My body stung and screamed for me to stop. I could feel the cuts pulling at me. I was tired. Dirt was caked on me. I wish I could say that I pushed off with certainty, willfulness and determination. I had none of those things. My last attempt was simply my last attempt after already haven giving up.
Breathing hard, filthy and with dried tears on my face. I straddled the bike. I was tired. My knees shook, all of my strength nearly gone. I pushed forward. I wobbled. I wobbled. I was going to fall. I could feel the tilt over in slow motion. And then, Click!
I was moving forward. I could feel the butterflies of balance in my stomach. I moved forward, farther and farther, faster and faster. I gripped the handle bar like my life depended on it. I was scared to stop. I kept riding forward. I needed to turn back and get to the house. I was afraid to turn. I pulled the handle bar right. I went tumbling onto the sidewalk. I laid there for a minute on my back. Everything hurt. I laughed. I looked at the dusk sky. The stars were starting to dot the blueness of the evening. I got up. I was afraid I couldn’t do it again. I could feel blood dripping from me. I started to walk the bike back to the house. I stopped. I got back on. I pedaled with the right and pushed off with the left. I wobbled. I kept it. There was that balance again. I just called it forward and it came. I rode home. Making ‘U’ turns and then heading back into the right direction over and over. I finally got back to the house, put the bike inside, walked to the kitchen. I needed water—so thirsty.
My grandmother looked at me and yelled, “what happened to you?!”
I was riding bicycle, abuela.
Get upstairs and take a shower, you look disgusting.
_____________________
*Unsure how long this actually took because I would draw a line and stop, and do something else, come back and draw something else and come back to it. I is a quasi self-portrait hybrid of my mother’s face and mine, a little bit. Didn’t think I would finish it. At one point everything was mostly done except the eyes; all I had was the shape of them. The image of blank eyes creeped me out. I thought I would walk away from it, but somehow it got done.
There are times where I wonder why am I still here standing and others are gone; they were greater, grander, beautiful people. And yet here I remain, always left alone with the tattered vestiges of a past I don’t have the fortitude to acknowledge.
Three weeks ago I remembered something about the past I had not thought about in 20 years. I have way closing off to traumatic events that have happened to me. I put them away and they are forgotten on purpose or not. These last couple of years I have been having these sudden bursts of remembrance that floor me. The past claps me down like a tsunami wave and I am left out of breath in desperation.
I had been laying on my friends sofa and he had 80′s music playing on his stereo. Suddenly a song crept up on me. It was Micheal Sembello’s song, She’s a Maniac. As I listened I could feel myself becoming nauseated and light headed. I left the living room and I locked myself in the guest bedroom, sitting on the floor in a corner sobbing. I felt like the building was shaking and crumbling around me. I bent my knees to my chest and bowed my head as I held my legs and rocked back and fourth. I don’t know how long I was on the floor I sort of blanked out. It must have been a few hours because it had been still daylight when I locked myself in the room and it was now dark and my friend had gone to bed. When I came back into myself I was shivering. I had a name in my mind. She was someone I had not thought of in so long. I wanted to shut out the thought of her. Block her out.
I went to the shower. I stood in there a good hour letting the water beat down on me as if it could wash away all of the emotions that were building inside of me. I finally got out of the shower and felt like I couldn’t breath anymore. I was sliding on the floor dripping wet walking out of the bathroom naked and crying. I needed to find scissors. I needed them now. I tore the room apart looking for a pair. I found them and walked to the balcony. I could feel the air all over my body. I don’t know why I went to the balcony. I just couldn’t breath. I look down from seven stories up. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. I need everything to stop. It had to stop. I could feel myself pressing the scissors into my thigh. I walked to the bathroom and locked the door. I looked at myself in the mirror. I wanted to smash it. I hated the face looking at me. Who the fuck did I think I was? I couldn’t breath. If the mirror had been mine I would have smashed it. I would have punched it. Instead I grabbed bunches of my hair and started to snip and clip away, feeling like I could breath just a tiny bit better with every cut. I stood looking at myself with a mess of hair in the sink and on my body. I could finally think clear again. And her name rang in my mind clear as the sky, Mari.
My hair
Mari was one of those people who altered the fabric of my humanity in the short time she was in my life. I remember the first time I saw her. I was 15 and curious as to who she was. There were never many new students at school, so the arrival of someone new always caused a stir. I remember someone whisper in my ear.
She’s crazy.
They just released her from a mental institution.
She was there almost a year.
She tried to kill herself.
It took very little time for the whole school to buzz and hum about “la chica mal de los nervios” or in English, “the girl with the nervous condition”.
I have to confess, immediately I wanted to know her. Better said, I needed to know her. However it was a delicate matter. One’s reputation meant everything and one had to tread carefully not to damage it and shame your family name. She was a pariah.
Mari’s had been sent to her grandmothers house to live after her stay in the hospital. Her family was strict born again Christian of the Pentecostal, fire and brimstone flavor. That was my in. My grandparents were also Pentecostal. Soon after seeing her at school she started attending my church. Everyone at church knew her story. I felt so bad she had to endure being judging quietly by a sea of people. My grandmother seemed to have a great deal of pity for her and urged me to go talk to her. I feigned reluctance. I needed to show the appropriate amount of disinterest to my grandmother so she would insist I make Mari my friend.
It all started with my grandmother telling me to sit next to her while we all listened to the preachers sermon. I smiled as I sat down next to her. She seemed relieved. We both played our good girl roles and for the next 20 minutes paying full attention to the reverend until the congregation forgot the gesture of me sitting next to her. It was understood that since I was such a good, moral girl, the granddaughter of two preachers no less, it would be a natural act of charity for me to be her friend. This carte blanche of friendship also granted me permission to talk to her and be her friend in school.
I remember seeing her the next day at school. I said hi. She smiled. At lunch she was sitting on a bench alone. I wanted to go talk to her. I made a large dramatic gesture of the burden of being expected to be her friend by my grandparents to my clique then I walked over to her and sat next to her. She looked at me and then looked away.
You don’t have to sit here. We aren’t in church.
I want to.
No you don’t.
You don’t have to pity me. Just go back to your friends.
No.
She then got up and walked away. I was confused. What the hell was her problem? I ignored her for a week but always stole glances to see her walking to a class. She was always alone. Always in some other universe. Mari had gone from a curious oddity to an outcast no one was interested in. I had all but given up on knowing her.
About a month after she had arrived to school she and her grandmother had come over to my house for a visit with my grandmother. I had spent the morning with my best friend and hadn’t realized she had come with her grandmother until I went to my room and saw her sitting on my bed looking through a box of my cassette tapes. She looked embarrassed when I walked in. I smiled. I took off my shirt and skirt. She quickly looked away. After putting on jeans and a t shirt I plopped down on the bed next to her. I asked her blatantly, “Why were you in the manicomio?” She looked down and seemed to be weighing what to say.
I tried to. I. Um. I hurt. <<long silence>> I tried to kill myself.
Fuck.
She seemed relieved when I said the word. We were quiet for a while. I tried to lighten the mood by asking what music did she like. She couldn’t answer because she didn’t know much about “worldly” music. She wasn’t allowed to listen to it. She thought for a minute and said, “I like that Maniac song from the Flashdance movie.” I hadn’t seen the movie. Apparently she had seen it many, many times in the psych ward. I started rummaging through my tapes and popped in Phil Collins. I cued it to In The Air Tonight. I could see her eyes change as she fell into the music. I laid flat in bed and patted for her to do the same. She stretched out next to me and closed her eyes. She was listening to it like I did. I was entranced by her. I twisted sideways leaning my head into my hand as I looked at her face. Her eyes still closed. After the song ended I was about to get out of the bed and she grabbed my wrist.
Play it again. Please.
We must have listened to the song 20 times. Before leaving she asked if I would translate the words into Spanish for her. I said sure. She smiled. We were friends.
Every one in Puerto Rico has their secrets. Some are common knowledge like Mari’s and others were like mine.
I was a crazy. I was wild.
After my mother’s death I became uncontrollable. My grandparents tried to beat it out of me. And you see, some people buckle under that or others become stubborn. I became the latter. I took pride in not being affected by pain. They could kill me for all I cared. Nothing mattered. In order to have some semblance of peace I was allowed certain amounts of rules to be broken. As long as I kept the family name intact I could wear makeup, pants, listen to music, hang out. These things were not allowed to regular Pentecostal girls but I think my grandparents feared me more than I understood at the time.
Mari’s grandmother was hoping I would be a stabilizing friend and my grandmother hoped the same for me.
A few days after Mari’s visit I tried to sit with her on the benches at school. She asked me not to. I was hurt. I didn’t understand why. I wanted to give her the translated song. When I insisted and sat next to her, she got up and left me sitting alone. I was stung by her callousness. Later she came over after school. My grandmother had let her in and she was in the door frame of my room. I was angry. Fuck her.
What is your problem?
I’m sorry.
You have issues. You are fucking insane. I was trying to be nice! <<Throwing the paper of the translated song at her>>
I am sorry.
I was about to walk out of my room when she grabbed me by the wrist and forced me to sit down on the bed with her. I was startled. She remained quiet as she held my arm. I looked at her, she was crying.
I’m sorry.
Mari.
She let go of my wrist. I picked up the paper off the floor and gave it to her. She read the translation slowly and quietly thanked me. She left soon after. I was confused and didn’t understand why she was this way. She was so guarded and tightly wound.
She continued to maintain her distance while we were at school. But started to visit me daily after school. We would talk, laugh and listen to music. She always felt guilty for the music we listened to since it was deemed a sin. She was always concerned about not being Christian enough or being bad and giving into “the flesh”.
In church she would always in earnest pray and most of the time tried to actually pay attention to the sermons. She would go to the front of the church almost every Sunday when they would call out to people who wanted to rededicate their life and soul to the Lord.
I could give a fuck about god. She would get angry and worry about my soul and my chances of getting into heaven. I told her there was no god. She would get this look of fear as if a thunder bolt would smite the both of us. I would laugh making her uneasy. I was wild, a sinner and living in the filthy satanic world. No matter what her trepidation with the state of my morality she was still my friend.
She was so beautiful in every way. She was funny, ironic, silly. Slowly she began to share small tidbits about her life. There were the things I could guess, beatings, the oppression of religion, dogma. More beatings, anger and all the ugly I was living in my own life to a certain degree. Sometimes I cried. Sometimes she cried. Sometimes she held me. Actually she always held me. After a few months we were incredibly close. At church we (actually I) would would write inappropriate things about the church goers on pieces of paper tucked into my bible engraved with my name in gold leaf. Mari would scold me for being so mean or vulgar with my comments but still smirked and stifled laughter.
At times I would have Sunday lunch at her grandmothers house. I loved going to her house, mostly because I got to see her closer and more intimately. Her room was spartan compared to my sky blue room of teenage debauchery and girlishness. All she had in her room was a dresser with a bible on it and a bed with a white sheets tucked in like a hospital. Even the walls we white. It felt maddening but with her in the room it seemed perfect. I helped myself and climbed onto her bed. She sat on the floor cross legged Indian style talking with me about her stay at the hospital. She had been afraid and confused. It also seem like she had been relieved to be there. She said the longer that she had been there the better she felt. It made no sense to me. Looking back, everything should have seemed so obvious.
She pulled out a small notebook from the inside of her pillow. She opened it to a blank page and asked me to draw anything I wanted in it. I took it and doodled in it. I drew her and myself. I drew a pseudo picture of my mom. I wrote snippets of a Jose Martí poem. I asked her if I could peek at the other pages. She had to think for a minute and nodded yes.
It was like a diary and scrapbook of things. Her penmanship consisted of tiny looping letters that were unintelligible to me. I didn’t try to read it. I was more interested in the other things in it. There was a magazine cut out of Jennifer Beals in Flashdance regalia. Pictures of parents. Doodles. A pressed flower. Bible quotes. Bubble gum wrappers taped in. A few get-well cards. Assorted clippings for various things. A picture of me at the age of about 5 I had given her. And a picture of an unidentified girl. I asked her who was the girl. She coldly said, “Nobody,” snatching the notebook away.
Again, another wall. I left, my feelings stung.
After that I became tired of her being so difficult and resumed my normal behaviors with my standard group of friends. And even more fever pitch with my secret bad behaviors. I became unavailable after school and on the weekends. I could see her looking at me at school. I ignored her.
On my way home one day from school one day a DJ friend caught up with me and handed me a tape. I had asked him to dub the soundtrack to Flashdance a few weeks earlier. I didn’t know what to do. Give Mari the tape or just forget the whole thing? It has never been easy for me to walk away or to be cruel. I stood up late playing, rewinding, playing, rewinding the tape. I was translating all of the songs for her into Spanish. The next day just before school started I saw her walking to class; I handed her a small bag with my Sony Walkman, the cassette and pages of translation. I walked away. I figured this would be a parting gift of whatever this friendship had been.
For a few weeks we smiled politely as we passed each other at school. One day I found her waiting for me outside of my last class period. She asked if she could come over on Saturday. I wanted to say no. I was tired of her intensity. But instead I said yes.
It was one of those rare Saturdays my grandparents weren’t home and it was just she and I. We talked politely. We laughed. I read her snippets of a play I was reading at the time, Un Niño Azul para una Sombra by the Puerto Rican playwright, René Marqués. She always listened intently to what I read to her. She couldn’t understand my fascination with books, I suppose, to the same amount of confusion I felt about her self-imposed piety. After us running out of conversation, sprawled on the bed she asked if I was dating the guy she kept seeing me with. I said, “Sort of.” She nodded. Then she smiled at me and said, “I have a surprise for you.” She made me get my radio and bring it to the living room. She put in a cassette and then asked if she could take off her clothes because it would be better way to see her skill. I shrugged and said it was fine. She took off her blouse and her long frumpy church approved skirt. She stood in front of me in her white bra, white panties and white socks. Anyone else would look ridiculous. Not her. Mari was 2 years older than me although we were in the same grade. Her shape was the body of a full formed ripe woman.
She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. She was almost too painful to look at. Her complexion was the perfect coffee with milk color. Her loose hair fell a few inches below her shoulders. I felt scared and exhilarated at the same time. She pressed the play button on the boombox and the thumping baseline to She’s a Maniac started. She began dancing in a way I had never seen. She became this poised, intense, seductive animal. I felt myself being pulled into her even though I was siting far away on the floor. I looked up at her while she moved her body in perfect controlled rhythm. She was free. And happy and magic. So many fucking things I still couldn’t explain properly.
Watching her gave me a chemical reaction.
Watching her made me understand clearly what I already knew. She made me turn to liquid. I felt the ache. That adult need. When she finished she was out of breath and looked at me for approval. I stood up giving her a standing ovation, laughing and clapping. She looked ecstatic.
Who taught you how to dance like that?!
At the hospital. Remember? I told you about watching the video.
How many times did you watch it?
A lot. It saved my life. I started to re-practice some of the dance steps after you gave me the cassette.
My grandmother was fidgeting with the gate outside of the house as Mari scrambled to put her clothes on. By the time she walked in Mari was dressed and I was getting us something to drink from the fridge. My grandmother looked at us suspiciously and told Mari maybe it was time for her to go home.
Mari and I grew close again. We would talk at school sometimes and she would walk me home after school. In some ways it was a secret being conducted in public. Mari started to become jealous of my other friends, particularly boys. I had been messing around with a boy off and on. It was getting more serious with him. While I was sitting with Mari on the benches one day he asked if he could come visit me at home after church. Mari stormed off after I said yes.
Later that afternoon while coming out of one of the girls bathroom stalls Mari pushed me back in and locked the door. She shoved me against the wall pinning my shoulders, attacking me with want. She kissed me and I kissed her back. She was pressing her body into mine. She grabbed my face and took my breath away with each press of her lips on my mouth. She held me by the neck pulling me towards her. She grabbed between my legs. I had never felt anything like this. She looked into my eyes as desire was blinding me.
She brought her mouth to my ear, “You are mine. Break it off.”
I moaned.
She shook me, “Break it off.”
I closed my eyes. I couldn’t stand. She held me up.
You are mine.
Yes.
Mine.
Yes.
She licked my lips, devouring them once she heard everything she wanted to hear. The universe and the colors in it were never the same again. As I gasped and sighed she suddenly changed. She pulled away from me. I nearly fell onto the floor by her release. She scrambled out of the bathroom, leaving me there alone. I closed the door. I cried and cried. The pain of loss and confusion were too much. I stood in the bathroom until the school bus came and went. Alone, I slowly walked the 5 miles home. I couldn’t understand what happened. I got home and crawled into bed. I feigned sick and stood in bed all weekend missing church.
On Monday she wasn’t at school. She missed the whole week. On Saturday morning my grandmother knocked on my bedroom door. She came in and sat on my bed. Mari is in the hospital.
What? Why? <<tears instantly streaming down my face>>
She tried to kill herself. We are going to visit her today. Get dressed.
The whole drive I sobbed. As we approach that horrible hospital I wanted to throw up. It was the very same hospital my mother had been at before her death. I sort of had a blank out. I came back to myself as we were walking down a long hallway to her room.
We walked in. Mari was restrained to the bed. She was looking out of the window. She had bandages the length of her arms. My grandparents swooped in asking her grandmother to come to the hall so they could minister to her, pray and offer words of comfort. They left me alone with Mari. I was shaking. She didn’t look at me.
Why Mari?
You know why.
Please Mari.
Get out. GET OUT. GET THE FUCK OUT.
Hospital staff came pouring in and my frightened grandparents pulled me out. I stood in the hallway looking out of a large glass window while they sedated Mari and my grandparent made sure Mari’s grandmother was alright. On the drive home my grandparents talked to themselves about how suicide was a contagious because it is demon. I gritted my teeth as I cried and scratched and dug my nails into my thighs in the backseat.
My grandparents allowed me to miss a few days of school after the incident at the hospital. And by the time I had gone back to class, Mari was sent home. My grandmother insisted I go visit Mari because she wanted to apologize for her behavior at the hospital. I told her I didn’t want to. She forced me to go anyway.
Mari was in her bedroom, she had a small suitcase. Her mother was there to take her back to Arecibo. She packed slowly keeping her head nodded down. She softly said, “I am sorry Allicette. I never wanted to hurt you. What I did, everything, was wrong.”
I cried. She came close to me and held me. She wiped my tears and kissed me.
She whispered in my ear, “I love you. I am not supposed to. You know that. God…”
Fuck god.
I suddenly needed to leave. She grabbed me by the wrist and wouldn’t let me go. “Please stay.” I sat defeated on her bed. She sat on the floor in front of me. She rested her head on my lap and I felt compelled to smooth her hair. She cried and repeated over and over, “I am so sorry.”
We stood like this for a while until my grandmother knocked on the door and came in. “Mari, I think it is time for Allicette to come home.” As I stood up so did she. Suddenly she hugged me so hard I lost my breath.
Goodbye Mari.
Goodbye Ally.
A few weeks later while at church, during the announcements, the reverend asked for the congregation to pray for the strength of the Jimenez family because of Mari’s untimely passing.
Narcissus, plod, sod.
Crackle, charge, discharge.
Diminutive dominative
You, the I in mine.
I, the I in mine.
Allicette Torres, March 2012
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*The illustration is a lark. I was watching the news and the image of a criminal was flashed on the TV screen. I am fascinated how any criminals are ever found with these crazy drawings. I decided to use this “perp” style as a metaphor for people who tend to hurt you. It’s like you know the specifics of what they are. They have eyes, a mouth, 2 hands, etc. But as they harm you everything is blur. You are left with pieces of the person you thought they were. You basically are left with what amounts to a bad police sketch. This scratch took about 10 minutes.
I am an artist. Most of the time a photographer. I don’t work in a diner. I don’t take orders about my artwork. My work stands on it’s own. I am getting tired of being perceived as a maker of porn. I was rejected again for another show by the “graphic” nature of my work. I find it almost amusing the people rejecting my work are women.
Fuck your small mind.
Fuck you.
What is it about certain women and their baked in fear of tits, ass or vaginas? What is wrong with women owning their own sexuality? Why is it thought as oppression or in a negative connotation?
I was told by a curator recently how my work is damaging to women. And it’s even worse how I am objectifying women. I laughed.
It was the hunger, it was the pain
The women in my photographs can be vulnerable but they are not being objectified. And I will be honest, if I happened to feel inclined to shoot them as being “objectified” because it serves my artistic conversation I will do it.
I am not going to do feminist approved cunt art. Where normally a vagina is seen specifically as a tool or object. My photos speak the language I mean.
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The illustration was a 5-10 minute scratching out. Just let my hand doodle whatever it wanted to.
Remember?
It’s never happened.
The past of the present.
Letting a new day re-begin.
I remember.
Add to a memory again.
Each slumber like a year, a day, moments.
The past future begins.
Grasping. Claw. The rip.
I remember.
And when you fall asleep add to the memory again.
That path, wanderlust.
Hold me down.
The road.
I remember.
Hunger.
Spirals like ropes.
Softly spoken words.
Porcelain.
I remember.
Waiting. Drown, sea.
That breath.
The moment. Last, last, last.
Starshine. Glitter. Black.
All of those things, I remember.
Allicette Torres, March 2012
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*Pencil sketch. 20 minutes or so. I was barely able to scratch it out it was stuck inside my mind. I am having trouble sketching these last few days. I started 2 watercolors that are based on this sketch. I feel lost about how to hold the pencil or even the brushes.
Through the course of several months various people have told me how I should be feeling about my fathers death. I am uncertain if I am giving off a scent or vibe which clearly states, “Please tell me how I am doing. Yes. I really want to know.”
Yesterday I received an email from an acquaintance which after glossing over condolences, monologued to me how my father death must make me feel so overwhelmed at taking the helm of finally being an adult in “definitive and certain” terms.
I was baffled. I wanted to laugh.
She continued in her email how this is a transitional time for me. How I was leaving behind the net a parent offers. The security. The unique championing only a father could offer.
I wanted to scream, to call her and yell expletives, to take my laptop and smack it on the concrete floor until all I had left in my hands were a few wires, a motherboard and perhaps a few keys.
I try very hard every single day to remember how my reality is not everyone’s reality. I understand I’ve had a hard and complicated life; I know some have it easier and others have it harder than me. I just can’t help but feel at times other people, “the look on the bright side, free advice givers or we all have it bad people,” just love taking a bat and swinging it at my knees. I have a special love for the last group because the pinnacle of their tribulations are along the lines of not having a sweet sixteen.
You know what? I was born an orphan. I was born alone. And NO, I don’t mean in that philosophical context of being born alone. By the time I was born both my parents were simply walking dead.
Did they love me? All I can say is they said it at times and could have bursts of “loving me” but their actions were never in sync with the traditional sense of love.
No matter how young I was every day I was dealing with adult problems. Most of the time people weren’t present to help me or fix them and most of the time when others tried to take the helm of my life it would end in other disasters.
My parents would leave me alone for days, some times weeks.
My parents, while in their care for what little time they had me, would forget to feed me.
I somehow missed the entire third grade.
My grandmother would remind me almost constantly how no one loved me.
The other grandmother would inform me a few times a week how my mother was a whore and she didn’t want me. Occasionally she would come from behind strangle me with a garden hose.
I could count in the two digit thousands how much economical support I received from my parents and relatives.
I got smacked, punched, kicked and rendered unconscious for my own safety; to teach me “right.”
The list above is me glossing over my past. At 17 I assumed all responsibility for myself. There have never been any nets, support or pearls of wisdom.
If my truth hurts you, not my problem.
I have always been an orphan, the adult. I can not mourn what I’ve never had.
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*The sketch was about 20 minutes. It’s in a new sketchbook I am testing out. I am still deciding if I like the tooth of it or not. Pencil. It was drawn with Jane Child’s song, “Don’t Wanna Fall In Love” on loop.
