Remembered: The Harlot

There was one color I was not allowed to wear as a child. My father said it was the color of harlots, and to wear it would be sending the wrong message to the boys at school. “You’re not that type of girl,” he used to say.

But I was. I was that type of girl. I was hot, I was angry, I was bloodlust.

My parents got divorced when I was 18. From the day I was told he was leaving, I was suddenly very interested in purchasing a new wardrobe. I became a fire engine sauntering down the street. I inspired fiery passion in every boy I came in contact with, whether it was with my new low cut dress, my new strappy heels, or my new tight capris. My new look was very definitely sending a message, my own version of a scarlet letter. I needed to let the world know exactly who I am.

Right before I left for college, I bought a new car, a Camaro that matched the flush of my cheeks. I had read that prostitutes in Europe would use vehicles of the same color in order to attract their clients. My new car had the same effect on the boys at college.

This is the color of harlots, huh Daddy? Let me show you how much of a whore I can really be.

The Topic:
“Give me a memory of the color red. Do not write the word 'red' but use words that engender the color red when you hear them. For example: a ruby, a tomato, fire, blood.


Writing has the elegance of mathematics. Try to write economically. A red cherry is redundant. Cherry is enough unless it’s one of the yellow ones from Washington state. Then it’s a yellow cherry. But, otherwise, cherry immediately wakes up the color red in the mind.”

What Real Friends Do

I was smack in the middle of my favorite dream when the phone rang. Matt Damon was just getting to the good stuff, if you know what I mean. But when he opened his mouth, the annoying sound of my ringer came out. “Matt, don’t talk like that,” I cooed to him in my dream. “Take off your pants now.”

Ring, Ring!

I opened my eyes. Damn. It was almost three in the morning. Who could be calling?

“Hello?”

“Elle, is that you? It’s Becca.”

Becca. My best friend. Or, at least, my best friend until four years ago, when she met her pig boyfriend.

Becca met Keith at the library, of all places. She was smitten by his intellect, and loved telling the story about how they met while reaching for the same book. She fell fast and hard.

I wasn’t fooled. There was something-- I don’t know-- off about the guy. He said all the right things, but there was something in his eyes that was just plain evil.

I’m a very good judge of character, if I do say so myself. I tried to warn Becca that Keith was bad news, but she didn’t want to hear it. “If you’re going to love me, you have to love all of me, and that includes my boyfriend. If you can’t support me, then I can’t be around you.”

Well, I admit it, that hurt. She was going to dump me in favor of some chode she just met? I told her to call me when she realized what it meant to be a friend.

That was last time I had spoken to her.

“Becca? What’s going on? Are you ok?” I was instantly wide awake. Becca was crying on the other end of the line. Something was very wrong.

“Elle…. I…. can you come get me? I need to get out of here, and I don’t know who else to call.”

“Sure, I’ll come right now. Where are you?”

“I’m in West Covina.” Then silence for a bit. “Elle… he hit me.”

She gave me the address, and I hung up the phone. West Covina was 40 minutes away. I made it in 20.

I arrived at the apartment complex that Becca shared with Keith. She was already waiting outside. Her left eye was swollen shut. There was a line of dried blood coming out of the corner of her mouth. The last four years had not been kind to her; she looked at least 15 years older. She looked sad and oh, so tired.

I took one look at Becca and gathered her into my arms. “Oh, Becca,” I whispered. “What did he do to you?”

“It’s ok,” she answered through her tears. “It’ll be ok. Let’s just go.”

“Not yet,” I answered. I led her back to my car and opened my trunk. I pulled out my wooden baseball bat and a can of red spray paint. “Show me which car is his…”

The Topic: 

"In the middle of the night, you get an urgent call from a friend you haven’t talked to in years. Something terrible has happened. What is it and why is he/she calling you?"

The Little Boy's List

A little boy was given a school assignment to write 10 important things that had happened in his life. One of the events he wanted to write about was when he was sealed to his family in the temple of his church.

The boy showed the completed list to his father, and his father suggested he think of another event, saying that the sealing was not appropriate to discuss at school.

My first thought was that Dad was smoking crack. The sealing was an important moment in the boy’s life. Why shouldn’t he write about it? I think it’s awesome that he counts his sealing as one of the top 10 most important events in his life. I don’t think any teacher would have a problem reading a paper with such an event listed.

I believe in freedom of religion, and I believe in freedom of expression. The boy should be able to write about his sealing (or baptism, or bar mitzvah, or whatever) without fear of any negative repercussions.

But let’s change the scenario a bit. What if the little boy wrote about something else? What if his shining moment was his initiation into the KKK? Or what if it was when he went to the dentist to get his artificial fangs implanted? Would we would be as supportive? Would be applaud the boy for not being afraid of sharing what he believed in? I know I wouldn’t, and I suspect you wouldn’t, either.

What’s the difference? It’s not hard to figure out. The sealing is socially acceptable, and the other two are, well, not. OK, fair enough. But there was a time, not very long ago, when admitting you were LDS wasn’t very socially acceptable, either. But people stood up for they believed in. And persevered.

I think the boy has a great list.

(ETA: I am not LDS. Nor do I support the KKK or vampire worship. Not all of my posts make sense.)

30 days of me

Day 04- A habit that you wish you didn’t have

I have many bad habits.

Every time I set down a knife-- I mean EVERY TIME-- I set it down with the blade up, like this:

I don’t even know how I do this. It’s not like I do it on purpose. It just happens.

I abuse my fingernails to no end. I don’t chew on them, but I pick at them. Pick, pick, pick.

These are my hands:




Look at my gross nails. Try to ignore my old lady hands.

But I think my worse habit is my love affair with my scale.

I weigh myself twice a day, everyday. The first weigh-in is when I first wake up. I go to the bathroom, turn on the shower, and step on the scale while I’m waiting for the water to get hot. If it’s less than the day before, I am satisfied. If it is more than the day before, I fall into a deep depression. My day is shot before it even begins.

My second weigh-in is the last thing I do before I go to bed. I get undressed, and then step on the scale. I usually weigh roughly two pounds more than I do in the morning. If there’s less than a 2 pound gain, I call the day a success. If it’s more than two pounds, I declare myself a fat ass and make the Agent turn off the lights so he can’t see my fat rolls.

Don’t act surprised. I think I’ve already made it clear in the past that I have issues.

I wish I wasn’t this way. Don’t you think I wish that? I wish the scale didn’t define me. I wish I was comfortable in my own skin. I wish I could look in the mirror and see a beautiful woman.

But, more than anything, I wish I could lose 20 more pounds.

More 30 days of me: 

Day One

Day Two 

Day Three

Waiting

The Topic: 
Someone has stolen something from you (or your character). Something of tremendous value. What will you do to get it back? Or will you give up? 

She unlocked the front door and entered the dark, empty house. Too quiet. She walked slowly up the stairs and straight into Connor’s room, as she had every night. She sat on the bed, and hugged his pillow to her chest.

How did it come to this?

He had been gone a month now. The police wouldn’t help her because she had never filed a formal custody agreement. “He’s the boy’s father,” they told her. “He has a right to be with his son.” There was never a reason to file a custody agreement. Phil had always been so accommodating. She wanted to believe that even though their marriage was over, they could still have a friendly relationship for Connor’s sake.

She was so stupid.

Her sister tried to calm her down. “You’re going to get him back,“ she encouraged. “You’re doing everything by the book. Your lawyer is filing all the right papers. You never kept Connor from seeing his father. A judge is going to look favorably on that. And think of it this way: at least it’s not some stranger with him. He’s not in any danger, he’s with his father.”

This did little to ease her fears.

She didn’t even know why he was doing this. What motive could he possibly have? She had given Phil everything he wanted. She would never have dreamed of keeping Connor away from his father. Why was he doing this? Why? Whywhywhywhywhywhy……..

Every day for the last 32 days, she had tried to get a hold of Phil. He didn’t answer her emails or calls. His secretary claimed he was always in meetings during the day. Phil had pulled Connor out of his preschool, and his apartment was always deserted. Where was he? Where was he hiding?

He was undoubtedly hiding Connor with whatever short skirted whore he was dating that week. Whoever she was, she was most assuredly not Connor’s mother.

Who was helping him brush his teeth? Who was making sure he finished his dinner? Was he in a new preschool? Did he miss his friends? Who was reading to him at night?

Was he missing her as much as she missed him? Did he cry himself to sleep at night? Who was wiping his tears away?

She signed a heavy sigh and curled up on the bed, trying to breathe in the last lingering remnants of his scent. She had just fallen asleep when the ring from her cell phone woke her.

“Hello?”

“Mommy? Daddy says we’re coming home tomorrow!”

She closed her eyes in sweet relief. And the tears fell.

30 days of me

Day 03- A picture of you and your friends

Here’s me and two of my closest homies (taken Feb 27th):

I’m the one in the middle. I always hate taking pictures with them because they’re both so beautiful and I feel like the token ugly friend. “RAH! I’m going to eat you! Run for your lives!”

Yes, I have self esteem issues.

More 30 days of me: 

Day One

Day Two

The Lucky One

A coworker said to me the other day, “do you think retarded people are happier?”

Well, let's see... Are you happier?

My coworker continued. “Do you think retarded people know that they’re retarded? I don’t think they do. I have a fear that I’m actually retarded, and nobody tells me, they just let me go around thinking I’m smart.”

Ugh. Do you see what I have to work with?

There is no way that my coworker could have known this, but my stepbrother is mentally disabled. It’s not super severe-- he can walk, talk, dress himself-- but he’ll never be able to hold down any kind of job, or even live on his own without some kind of help.

Ever see the movie I Am Sam, with Sean Penn? That’s about the level of my stepbrother, Lucky. He was named after my stepmother’s father, and by utter coincidence, my father is also named Lucky. I kept the tradition alive, and BK’s middle name is also Lucky.

I first met Lucky when I was 18 and he was 8. My parents had just split up, and I wasn’t all that happy about being introduced to what would soon be my new family. But my heart began to thaw a bit when I saw Lucky. He was a cutie. He was having trouble walking (I learned later that his hips weren’t strong enough to support his weight), but he could carry on a conversation well enough. He invited me to play the latest Madden game on his Nintendo or Sony or whatever was cool to have in 1993. He could tell me each player on the team, their position, their number, and if they were good or bad.

And yet, he couldn’t write his name or tell time.

I totally dug on Lucky. Yes, he was simple, but he was kind. He had a huge heart. He didn’t think evil of anyone.

And yes he was happier than I was. I was worried about college and my rent and paying for groceries, he had none of those worries. But he also enjoyed more, hurt more, lived more. Everything he felt, he felt…. More.

All through school, he had a special friend, a girl named Layla who was also mentally disabled. Lucky always said he was going to marry Layla someday. She was small and frail and looked like she needed protecting, but her spirit was as strong as Lucky’s. She was struck and killed by a car when she crossing the street when she was 17. The driver fled the scene and was never found.

That was 10 years ago. He still talks about her.

So, when my ignorant coworker thought he was being witty when he asked if retarded people were happier,  I could only give one answer:

“Yes, they are. Because unlike other people, they can still see the joy in every day things. But they also hurt more, because they don’t understand how evil people can exist in the world.”