Tiny Plastic Houses

I was, by nature, a tricky sort growing up. I suppose it stems from all those abandonment and boundary issues I harbor being fed by a healthy dose of conflict avoidance and general neglect. Of course I could just simply be a bad egg; A naughty. But I see myself as simply a smart kid in a really stupid situation. I grew up just wanting to be exactly what everyone wanted me to be. So maybe I could slide into place wherever I fit at the moment with relative ease.

Growing up wrapped in a chameleon’s cloak only saves you from a very particular set of things and, eventually, you’re found out or you tire of the charade and run from it. It certainly doesn’t leave you feeling very secure in the relationships you build for yourself. How could it? Those people don’t really know you! So, you spend a lot of time with the selves you’ve created and you find that most of them, you really have very little in common with.

When I was 16, I held the best job a slippery girl such as myself could hold. I was an actress in a haunted house. To this day, it is the best job I have ever, will ever hold.

A typical night at that time went something like this: 5:15 pm – Rush home;  Wash volleyball practice from my flesh. 5:40 pm – Paint my face white. My eyes black. My lips rust. Curl my hair. (Think low-rent calivera without the pretty flowers and scroll work and you’d be kinda close.) Throw on a hoodie. Grab a pair of gloves. 6:00 pm – Score a ride with Kelly, my best friend at the time, in her magical Root Beer Float Boat (Brown LTD) 6:30 pm – Convenience Store for supplies (2-3 Nitro Colas each + Mini Thins sometimes + Smokes all the time) 6:45 pm – Pick ups as necessary for those who were not lucky enough to have already gotten a ride. 7:00 pm – Meet friendlies on site and start our night of debauchery.

We would spend our nights making teenagers run screaming for mercy, children cry, and grown men pee themselves in front of their wives and/or girlfriends. It really was the best job ever! ;D

It was here I met my first real boyfriend. He was the first person I can remember actually, really, talking to me about what I really thought, who I really was, what I really wanted… Talked to me long enough to get past the subterfuge. (Of course he did this while I was in costume, go figure; Probably the only way it could have been done, really. I was a hidden sort. )

He was poor. Poorer than us, by any account. Big, tall, strong… coarse. All new things for me in the world of boys. I was also tall, and big, and highly spirited. I did not fit in, even with my own people, so it was nice to have someone around taller than me for a change. Taller and slightly more able, when he wasn’t fucked up in one way or another, and pretty fucking quick on the uptake to boot. (Always a bonus when it comes to partners in crime.)

At first, I was embarrassed that he liked me… or that I thought he liked me. It wasn’t the liking that embarrassed me, it was the thought that I believed in the possibility and then telling myself I was an idiot. It was a joke or I was being used… because that was par for the course with someone like me. So, of course when I fell into the plate glass window known as love, I fell very hard. So hard, in fact, that I have been pulling shards of him out from under my skin ever since… even today.

We were completely awkward together. He was, of course, more experienced than I with all those sordid, sticky details that need not be mentioned. However, both of us lost our virginity the same night. (A story that is written in the annals of time and nowhere else… at this point. Maybe I’ll update you if I ever write a teenage love story.)

I can remember sneaking him into my bedroom several times over those years of on-again/off-again love affair that was us. One in particular that sticks in my mind is the first Christmas after we started dating. I sneaked him into my bedroom that night. My mom had to work Christmas, I believe, and she had taken to yelling up at me in the early morning hours just before she left to give orders for the day: What I was supposed to do. Things she needed from me. Those sorts of things… This holiday was no exception and as I lie there sound asleep, most certainly naked, in the arms of my young paramour. I heard the downstairs door open. My eyelids flipped up like rolled paper shades slipping from the hands of a child. My arms flailed, my legs bucked — I couldn’t get loose. He would not let go of me! I had to slip out from below. I caught her before she made it the full way up, thankfully, and Christmas was saved.

Still, lying there like that, with him, holding me so tightly… It was the safest I have ever felt before or since. I’m not kidding. There have been many times when I’ve sought that feeling from others, even him in various stages of our lives… but that youth and innocence wrapped in his need to have somebody that was all his appealed to my need to be somebody’s someone. Time has a way of erasing the possibility of those sorts of moments and recollection changes everything… But following that, he had to do an awful lot to push me away. Of course, he did do an awful lot, including making me feel like he didn’t want me any longer after I’d given away pieces of myself I can never get back. Breaking my heart. Hurting me physically. Emotionally. Leaving me behind while my ties were still binding…

These bits and pieces of information are things that have been suspected for the past 20 years by involved parties and now I’ve confirmed the suspicions, so that should cause a wave in the kiddie pool… And, no, I’m not romanticizing this here. We were horrible for each other. He was a high school drop out and I was the high-IQ kid who figured out exactly how to work the high school system. His father was volatile at times reacting badly to the stress of his disease and family life. Mine was fairly absent not reacting much to my exploits. His mother was permissive and mine was seeking herself in the wake of a divorce… and both were gone a lot. Being a product of those who raised us, we were definitely no Snow White & Prince Charming. :/

I have often said, when questioned or when pondering the relationship at that time in our lives, we were the Midwest’s Sid & Nancy, with less notoriety, less money, and far less cool! Damn, we were batshit crazy!

But that was a snap shot of me 20 years ago. I suppose this part of is the easy part… Journaling about who I am, why I am, how I am. Sharing secrets. Airing out the room.

Aren’t you privileged to know just that much more about me. :/