I had acted out my own death on at least 100 different occasions by the time that I hit seventeen.
     There were boxes upon boxes of 8mm film rotting away in the damp attic as proof. Silent movies that Nils and I had shot with our late grandfather's Brownie Turret camera.
     I was chased by Nils in a bed sheet acting as a ghost or cornered by him as he wore a black circle skirt tied around his neck like a cape with baby powder caked upon his face his blond hair slicked back with Vaseline and wax fangs in place-- he was a vampire set to drain me-- succeeding in the task only to be destroyed by the beam of a flashlight being held off camera-- pretending itself to be a ray of morning sun. The scene crudely cut to nothing but the circle skirt haphazardly thrown to the ground near a pile of ash dug out from the fireplace--the vampire's remains.
     I was stalked by a rigid walking Nils wearing a black turtleneck and rubber Frankenstein mask or stabbed by him while he was disguised in a fake moustache and a long ominous looking scar drawn upon his cheek.
     Nils wore our grandmother's khaki trenchcoat as a labcoat as he performed experimental surgery on me-- replacing my brain with that of an evil dictator and transplanting my heart with one from a mass murderer. I had a blood transfusion from a swamp creature (a discarded one-armed mannequin with bits of dead leaves and houseplant glued to it).
     Then there were the suicides-- how many times had I committed celluloid suicide?
     Running through a graveyard being chased by a zombie-- taking a shot at him only to find that you can't kill the undead and, when cornered, turning the gun on myself.
     My silhouette against a white wall to look as thought I were hanging from a noose.
     I had pantomimed slitting every major artery in my body with various sharp objects... a box cutter, butcher knife, switchblade, broken glass... the faux wounds oozing pints of Caro dark corn syrup.
     Laying in the cool wet grass with an empty bottle painted to read 'POISON'.


     Nan didn't concern herself with the subject matter but prided herself in our hard work, creativity and laughter.


     Nils and I had a routine that was constantly and consistently blurring the lines between ordinary life and art.

     I spent a great deal of my time as a mermaid.

   People would ask me what I did for a living-- or you know, the kind of thing that I would put on resumes once every six months when I had the fleeting idea of bettering myself-- and I would always answer "model", living off of the delusion that was what I was doing with my life but that was a lie.

   Six days a week-- I was a mermaid.

a ship ( a "dredge boat") that was out to sea in the middle of the night (the Pacific Ocean) near the coast under a dark sky and a blanket of stars. The ship was lit up brightly as though it were a stadium. It sent one 12oz. silver can of Diet Coke out on a current-- delivering it to us upon the shore followed by one fully cooked lobster, a stick of butter (store brand; still wrapped in wax paper) and a small yellow lemon.
    We sat on the cool sand and got to work building a campfire out of bits of wood left from the campfires of others and a box of penny matches.
    We ate a picnic of the lobster dipped in butter and garnished with lemon. We each ate the lobster gone in 3 bites-- one, two, three-- and shared the soda.
   We covered the fire with sand to put it out and waved our gratitude to the ship as it passed.
   We walked home in the moonlight (with smooth stones in our pockets) and fell asleep safe in our beds where we dreamed of dancing in a dense fog while holding up lanterns.



     "What do you want to do when you get done with school, Jennie?"

   Rory and I were laying on a blanket spread out on the hood of his car and staring at the stars. We were bundled to the teeth in our coats, scarves, gloves and knit wool caps. It was the first clear night the city had had all fall and the only reason it was clear was because of the very unusual occurrence of there being snow on the ground.
   Snow in October. I'd never heard of such a thing-- even if it was a minuscule amount.
   I could see the air vacating my lungs.
   I shivered with bones that touched.
   "I want to be John Lennon. I like the way he screams on records."
   "Lennon is moody."
   "Oh, I don't mean literally. I just mean-- sometimes I wish I were a man. I'd have the world at my feet. I would play guitar loud and see everything from trains, planes, cars and hotel rooms.
   I'd sit at the kitchen table and listen to the radio with my shirt off."
   "Oh yes. You can always hear the radio better with your shirt off. That's why I love being a man."
   We let out laughter that the night quickly made frozen.
   "I don't know," I replied in earnest, "I'm terrified. I don't want to be a secretary or a hairdresser or a school teacher. I want to be an artist-- I think--of some sort. I want to play guitar until my fingers bleed. I want to paint portraits of fetuses in wombs and skeletal remains. I want to make films."

    "Mom started using--again," My sister murmured up into the darkness.

    Jane and I sat on a bench outside staring at the Puget Sound rushing underneath the ferry. The air was cold, it stung my cheeks and my ears. Adrian was inside getting coffee and tea from the cafe on board.
    My sister attempted to explain everything.
    My mother had overdosed while in the bathtub. Jane had come over that night to return a crockpot and let herself into the house.
    "I'm sorry that it was you that had to find her," I apologized blankly.
    My sister wept, "I wanted to dress her but I couldn't do it. Her body was cold and stiff."
    I shut my eyes tight, I saw spots, I wanted to dissolve the thought of my mother's naked, cold, stiff, dead body. She couldn't have gone with dignity. She wasn't even allowed that much. She had been divorced, pretty much raised three children on her own, found her son dead after he had shot himself in the garage, became addicted to prescription drugs and she couldn't have gone quietly in her sleep, warm in her bed or surrounded by her friends in a hospital. She had to kick off in a bathtub after taking one pill too many. I was furious but oddly enough I was furious at my mother. I felt like she should've known better.
    Adrian placed a cup of coffee in my hands. He sat down on the end of the bench and looked out at the trees. His black wool coat was buttoned with the collar up. I kept thinking about what Holly had told me. Not even fifty degrees in June.
    "You look like an Inspector," I told him.
    "Like one of those English mystery shows?" He asked. I nodded.
    "There's one other thing," My sister interrupted, "The grandparents don't know, yet. No one has told them."
    "We're going to Bremerton to tell them?" It felt like sand in my throat. No amount of hot liquid would wash it down, "I can't...Jane... I can't do it."
    How do you tell someone that their child is dead?
    "We'll do it together," She comforted. I rocked back and forth.
    "No. No, no, no. We can't do this. I can't tell them that she's dead. Can't we get a sheriff or someone to go over there?"
    "Audrey, stop," My sister grew stern, she put a hand on my shoulder, "We have to do it. We don't have a choice and I can't do it without you. I need you now."

    "No," I told her, calmly, as though I were trying to level with her. It was a mistake. It was something else, someone else or any number of things.
    "No," I repeated but I knew that it wasn't a mistake.

I had a dream about Eugene the night before Noah's film wrapped.

    Eugene and I were walking around town. We ended up at a shopping mall and I kept telling him that I had to go. I was going to be late. We went to the circus and I kept telling him that I had to go. I was going to be late. We went into a photobooth and took our pictures together, he was smiling and laughing. I was so worried about being late but I didn't know what I was going to be late for. Finally, he gave in. He walked me to our mother's house and waved to me from the bottom of the stairs. I went inside the house. My youngest nephew was taking framed pictures of Eugene and placing them on a bed. He wouldn't answer me when I asked him what he was doing. My mother and sister took me by the hands and told me about how late I was. We made it to our destination. A funeral home. I had left Eugene because I was worried about being late to his funeral. I had pushed my brother away so that I could go to his funeral. His ashes were in a mayonnaise jar on the alter next to an enlarged photo of him. I touched the jar. I wasn't going to see my brother again because I didn't want to be late to his funeral.

I knew that no good would find me on this particular evening when I walked into the restaurant and saw Adrian and Spencer seated at the bar having drinks.

I made the mistake of wearing that 1960s cream-colored sweater dress to the party for Adam's 35th birthday.
   
    I was feeling like old Nick Carraway again.

    I had broken into Hollywood by accident-- I hadn't even tried. I was the unlikeliest of candidate.
    There were girls younger than myself who took acting classes, had gym memberships and eating disorders and personal trainers. They had stylists, publicists, managers, agents, had changed their names to something better, contracted STDs and went to a different studio every single day and a different party every single night-- just for the opportunity to sit in a waiting room with other girls who had done the exact same thing all for a shot at starring in an acne commercial, a print ad for a new psoriasis treatment or a soap opera walk on.
    These girls were working as waitresses, baristas, dog-walkers, retail shop clerks and strippers (sometimes simultaneously) all just to rent an 8x8 bedroom in North Hollywood in a house where they had to share a bathroom with three other hopefuls.
    But me?
    I had been in a band that could pack a club one night and play to no one the next three nights on tour. I had a radio show that only aired on Saturdays from 11pm to 1am (so if you had any social life at all, you missed it entirely) and I had made a film in what could have been referenced as my backyard by living at home with my grandparents and maxing out a credit card.
    I did everything for the sake of art and because of that-- I always stood in my own way. I feared success because I didn't know what to do with it. I had been struggling for every thing that I cared about since I had conscious memory. I didn't know how to get to the top of the mountain and look down at the beautiful valley below.
    I knew how to get close to the top then say,
    "Boy, it's gonna be great someday when I get to the top...but I'll wait here because I'm tired. I'll wait here because once I get to the top-- I'll just have to climb back down..."
    I'd never once sat in the office of a casting director. I didn't have "people"-- not even a primary care physician.
    What I had was a fluke. I couldn't have even claimed to have snuck in the back door because that would have meant that I was looking for a way in-- instead, I was trying to get to the bar next door to a successful career as an actress and got the address wrong. Once I walked in-- there were people who thought that I belonged there. Two men, separate from each other in the same city but separate from my own, had seen this little tin can film by happenstance and took two very different sentiments from it.
    Noah, a film maker who had yet to know success, saw an artist with whom he felt a kinship. He didn't see the film so much as he saw what I was capable of.
    Adrian, an incredibly successful product of Hollywood, saw a piece of art that he held dear to himself. It was not me that he saw but the thing that I had created that moved him.
    Odd how my "fame" happened because these two men switched places.
    I got to Hollywood and Noah needed me for my art not as an artist-- and Adrian, well, he just seemed to like me for whatever that was worth or meant.

Words speak like music
a melody
a divine thing
a bitter coating on the tongue
like a pill that was chewed instead of swallowed
a vial of gunpowder
a headache
the constants on repeat...

I paid ninety-nine cents for this song and I will listen to it until I tire of it (or singing along to it)
...or some great crash that forces me to either give up or buy it again...

Again.

Why?

Because I am drunk and alone and there is no story to tell.

I love him.

(this is why I wake up with a trail of blood from the corner of my mouth)

I do not  want this
I want to be young and pure.
I want God to be my best friend.
I want to pray on my knees twice a day in a white dress slip.
I want to write down my sleeping dreams.
I want to read the Bible.
I want to read my Tarot.

I want to buy a new song. 

 Private planes. Oscar winners. Las Vegas.
   
    I had stolen food from the catering tables and green rooms of some of the most popular bands in history (once, I even managed to swipe a bottle of Moet from The Buzzcocks)-- but it wasn't until this particular night that I truly knew what it was like to feel... like a celebrity...

    ...and it had my skin crawling out from beneath my hair.

     There was blood in the middle of the road. A lot of it. So much blood that it could be considered 'pooled'--within the cracks of the asphalt. It filled potholes with dark liquid that, it being night, made it appear as though the old mountain road had been recently repaired.
     There was so much blood that I begged Benjamin not to turn the car around to look at it-- only I forgot to use words to beg him-- I vibed him. I stared. I shook my head-- but his eyes were focused on the scene and he leaned forward over the steering wheel to squint at it from behind his glasses.
     "What the fuck..."
     He put the car in park and turned to me.
     "You stay in here. Lock the doors. If I'm not back in ten minutes--call for help."
     "We're halfway between Bremerton and nowhere, Ben. There isn't cell phone reception."
     He shot me a dirty look as though I, myself, had created this obstacle.
     "Okay-- if I'm not back in twenty minutes drive back to my parents house and get my dad. Good?"
     "Yeah," I agreed but in an empty way because I knew that I'd never be able to find my way back to his parents house-- especially not in the dark.
     I half-heartedly prayed for his safe return while he was gone.
     I wasn't sincere in my bargaining with God simply because, despite the large quantity of blood on the ground, I refused to accept that there was anything wrong.

     I would probably be more productive as a human being if I actually acted like the seventeen-year-old girl that I so often feel like I am.
             I've been thinking about this a lot. Not just today. Not just since I made the bet with the kid. The stakes are high. We each have to keep a blog every day until the end of his spring break and the first one of us who fails to update on the daily basis has to buy the other one a frozen yogurt. I told him that if we both manage to keep the blog then I'll buy us both a frozen yogurt and him a new book. I don't want to lose a bet to a 12-year-old. What sort of role model would I be? I want us to be tied. I want to have to buy this kid a book. I want him to have to read...Good Lord, I hope he isn't reading this.
      Here's what I mean by the seventeen thing... Imagine having to be awake by 6:30am five days a week-- no exceptions. Imagine someone forcing you to exercise 45-minutes 5 days a week and not for your health but for a grade because we've been deluded into thinking that our futures somehow depend upon it... imagine being forced to read books and then have to write about them and learning a foreign language--because you have a test on it. Think of taking the part time job after the 30-plus hours a week at school just because you want spending money, a new guitar or a car...and the guitar lessons... oh God, think of how once upon a time someone believed in you so much that they bought you guitar lessons and do you know what you did with those guitar lessons? Nothing...because the homework for that still felt like homework. Stupid. And imagine that despite all of this, you still had so much time on your hands that you actually felt bored.
     "What are you doing right now? Want to go to the record store? I'm bored."
     When I was seventeen, I used to be able to write about 20 pages of fiction a day-- because my imagination was just that strong. 
     I have to wrap this up. It's almost midnight and any post after midnight means that I lost... if I lose, I definitely can't lose on the first day. I'm preparing myself. I'm ready. I'm not only going to spend the next couple of weeks in competition with the kid. I'm going to spend the next couple of weeks living like I'm seventeen. I mean, I already do that in someways. I have the Shangri-Las "I Can Never Go Home Any More" on the portable turntable on the floor next to the shag rug where I can lay really close to the speaker while it softly serenades me so that I don't wake anyone up with the noise. I have a newly purchased F. Scott Fitzgerald collection and a framed photo of a man who I wish was my sweetheart on my night table.
     Might as well learn a few things while I'm at it.

    (This story was written for my friend, Danny Bland. The only honest sentiments I've made have you in them.)

             Allow these words to serve as evidence that I no longer care who it is that I take down with me.

    
    Sleep.

    oralackthereof.

    "...but only three hours of sleep," the funny little doctor in the white coat said as he scribbled on his prescription pad, "that will make any one crazy. How are you now? Thinking of hurting yourself?"
   
    Entertaining notions of killing oneself isn't really hurting oneself, is it? It's more like the end of a continuous, suffocating hurting. No one pill will fix it unless it is all of them.
   
    I didn't even fucking miss sleep.

(For Courtney and Scotty B)   

    February 18th happened just as it had every year for the past six years.