drowning flowers xx
i've decided to use this site as a place to post my novel-in-progress. enjoy [xoxo]
x the girl with no home x
Her face reminds me of sex. Not the rough, hard kind. Not the kind that leaves you bleeding and raw. But the sweet, "I love you" kind; with secrets and smiles whispered beneath the covers. Her face looks like rose petals and soft blankets; I think to myself that her kisses would probably taste like icing and strawberry bubble gum. She walks down the hallway like she's some sort of rockstar, hiking her skirt up a little to show off her honey colored thighs; her feet pounding against the new tiles. I follow her into the girls' bathroom where she kicks open a stall door with her combat boots and collapses onto the toilet seat. She takes a bottle of vodka out of her camoflauge shoulder bag and begins to chug away at the bottle until it's almost empty. I normally spend 4th period hiding out in the darkroom; wasting away the time I could spend eating or smoking or studying washing away my mother's sins in the developer, the stopbath. But this girl, something about her entices me enough to give up my developing for one day. I have this sudden urge to touch her; I imagine her running her hands along my thighs and breathing words softly in the night sky. Her pale blue eyes stare off into oblivion and I imagine her world becoming fuzzy and her head detached. She takes a shiny, sharp razor blade out of her leather purse. I watch in silence as she presses it into the taut skin on the underbelly of her wrist; as she slices away at her innocence. Her tainted blood runs down her thin arm and drips onto the cold bathroom tiles.
That's when she lifts her head and for the first time she looks into my eyes. She looks alive; color returns to her cheeks, her eyes sparkling. She seems shaky; maybe it's the vodka or maybe it's the way the razor makes her feel; like she's experiencing the aftershock of something orgasmic. I can't help but stare at her; those beautiful, empty eyes and her ripped fishnet clothing. She lights up a cigarette and blows a ring of smoke into the face of a freshman who walks in. She isn't much taller than the freshman, but something about her badly-dyed black hair and the twisted way she smiles scares the girl. Then, she turns to me, cigarette in hand. Want one?
Maybe she was real. Maybe she wasn't. Maybe her scratchy voice and girlish features were figments of my imagination. Maybe her black fishnets and choppy hair were nothing but the rage inside me; the fury and the silence; the picture my mind painted of who I wanted to become. But it didn't really matter whether anyone else could see her; I knew she was there and that was all that mattered. She saved me from my madness and she created it. But fuck it, whatever she was, was.
She hands me a black cigarette and a baby pink lighter with the words "FUCK YOU" painted in black nailpolish.
They're french, she says knowingly and takes another hit.
Oh, yeah. I say, and uneasily take the lighter she is handing me.
I'm Jamie, she says, her words cutting through the smoke-filled air like her razor blade. She holds out her hands; the letters "JAMIE" tatooed on each of her seperate knuckles. I notice her nails, too. Beautiful. Fake. Long. Death black. I stare down blankly at my own chipped nails. I remember when I used to pay thirty dollars for a plastic set of fingers. I think to myself, I wish it was that easy to replace other parts of my body.
I’m Candyce, I tell her, like I'm introducing myself to the fucking Queen of England or something. I stare down at my ghost white skirt, knee-length socks and new sneakers, everything private covered properly. I must look like a boy standing next to her; with her breasts spilling out over her top, her thighs showing signs of womanhood. I put my cigarette out on the bathroom wall and toss it into one of the toilets, hearing it sizzle and fizz to it's early death.
Really, Candyce. I've seen you around. You get high? You always look pretty fucked up, she says, and as if trying to top me, presses the end of her cigarette onto her arm, not even wincing as it burns into her flesh, and swallows the butt of her cigarette whole. She shows me the tiny scar the burn created, like it's a trophy; a new symbol of her power.
Yeah, I get high, I say, trying to sound like some sort of tough stoner girl. I pull a roach out of my purse and inhale the hazy smoke into my lungs; hoping the weed will make her seem less beautiful, less tough, less everything I want to be.
My world slowly starts to unravel; our conversation drags on for what seems like hours. But I'm so enchanted by the stories she's telling me that I don't even care that I have skipped three periods in a row. We sit on the edge of the marbeled sinks and she tells me about how her father used to rape her when her mother went out of town and when her mother found out she had a new boyfriend every week and they raped her too. I’m thinking in my head it’s just because she’s so beautiful. She tells me about the handcuffs her mother used to keep her in bed and what it was like to trip on acid. She talks about life in the city; about burgulars and rapists and how you have to lock all your doors at night. She says she used to lay awake all night; imagining a shadowy-figure breaking through her bedroom window and slicing away at her neck; she'd dream about monsters and men and goblins and demons. She used to wake up in pools of her own sweat; drowned by her fears. She didn't live anywhere now; her parents gave her up, succombing to their own pleasures and desires; the needles and their love; giving their beautiful baby girl to orphanages and foster care.
The dreams, they tasted bitter. They were like metallic, she looks at me, her eyes seemingly innocent with a hint of embarassment; like she'd just told me that she still plays with dolls.
But I could man, I could really fucking taste them, pressed underneath my tongue. I'd try to explain it to my parents and they'd be like fuck, Jamie, you're crazy. You're a little kid, you'll grow out of it. They'd make sure to turn off all the lights; even the hall ones so that I wouldn't even be able to see to turn on my lights if I got freaked out, she pulls out another cigarette and her eyes look smoky and insecure. She looks like she's remembering something painful; her lips tighten and purse into a crooked smile.
She turns away from me and mutters something about saying too much and that she'd better get the fuck out of here. She takes out a black marker and scrawls her phone number up my left arm.
Call me sometime, she says and walks out of the bathroom; scuffing her heels along the way like an angry toddler.
I go home that night and my mother is passed out on the kitchen floor. She's wet; vodka glistening on her tan cheeks and our new floors; pieces of broken glass littering the tiles. My mother Gwendolyn said I was born without fear. Perhaps without feeling. She loved me when I was little; passive and silent.
She grew to like me less and less as the years passed. She went and got her hair highlighted; her nails manicured, her feet pedicured, her skin tanned and glazed and glossed until she looked like something out of a trashy fashion magazine; leaving me at home by myself to drink her perfume and play with Barbies. She went on shopping sprees with the money her mother sent us from Florida that was supposed to buy us food and get me through college; spending it on Marlboro Reds and real fur coats; white, black; gaudy and expensive. She posed naked for amateur porn magazines. She told me she was a model; but I noticed the lewd looks men on the street gave her. She'd smile like a crocodile; a toothy, lippy grin and say to me, Those are my adoring fans, hunny. That's when I started taking photographs. Black and whites, colors, still-lifes, scenery. Anything to stop picturing the real photos that were taken of our family; exposed, naked, sucking on lollipops and half-covered by silk sheets. That was the only way I could see true beauty in photographs. Otherwise I pictured my mother, nude and crude inside jerk-off magazines; I thought of boys in my classes going home at night and hiding underneath the covers with pictures of my mother's naked, tanned breasts. As much as I hated her sometimes, I still felt sorry for Gwen. Sorry enough not to tell her that I knew what she really did, sorry enough not to tell her the truth.
She's wearing a leopard-print faux fur coat and black slacks; she vomits on herself, and I have to move her head so she doesn't choke, doesn't inhale her own puke, doesn't suffocate on thrown-up booze and cocktail crackers. She opens her eyes slightly; they remind me of mocha and tree bark. I'm picking up the fragments of the last of our beautiful cocktail glasses; splintered and jagged. I cut myself on the largest piece; blood drips on to the tiles mixing with the vodka. She starts to come back to her senses; she's shaking and weak.
She laughs nervously and makes excuses for her state; matted and messy on the kitchen floor. She never wants me to know about her faults. Still trying to be perfect, I think. Perfect is impossible, Mama.
I help her up and she shakes her head. I'm sorry, her eyes say and she spins around me and collapses onto our zebra-print couch. I wonder what she dreams about; I wonder if she ever wishes she was young again. Her skin has started to sag; bags forming in her once perfectly smooth, tight skin; beneath her once radiant green eyes. Sometimes I wonder if she cares about my father; if she wishes for his warm, soft touch at night; if she wishes she had someone to hold her when she's about to fall. Gwen breaks into a million pieces annually and I'm the only one there for her. And I'm definitely not enough. I just hope that she's okay; I hope her dreams aren't like Jamies. I hope her dreams are of rainbows and vodka and pixie sticks and maybe a few white lines for old times sake.
I think I dissapointed Gwen sometimes. She wanted me to grow up and be a beauty queen. When I was little she used to dress me up in frilly girly-whirly dresses and paint my face with makeup and force me to go out on stage. She entered me in all sorts of contests. I won sometimes and that just made her push me harder. Maybe because she always wanted to be a model. A real one. I wished I could do that for her; but I didn't want it. Not the way she had. It didn't seem fair to take someone else's dream away. I started messing up during competitions on purpose; singing notes off-key and tripping on the ends of my dresses. Gwen stopped pushing it eventually, once she thought her baby was a failure. She didn't want to be embarassed by me.
I sit down next to Gwen on the couch, softly caressing her hair with my fingers. Maybe this is a little too nice; maybe her hair is a little too dry. I find the rest of her vodka bottle, and drown myself in alcohol. I think maybe I pass out - maybe I just am too drunk to do anything but pass out. I see her. Maybe I'm dreaming; maybe not. Jamie looks different; more like a Rennaisance angel than a skeleton; more like a Barbie than a Living Dead Doll. I want to touch her still, maybe even more so in my dreams than in real life.
When I wake up I'm in my own bed and not really sure how I got there. The christmas lights wrapped around the bedposts are threatening to strangle me if I don't get up. I look at my clock: 11:11. Gwen barges into my room, stumbling and slurring still, yelling something about bloody thongs in the laundry and how we're out of peach conditioner. I pretend not to hear her and it's okay because in a few seconds I hear the sound of her footsteps sloppily making their way to her own bedroom. I reach for my camera and take a picture of the moon; full and swollen like a pregnant woman. The moon seems to be my only friend. The moon and ocasionally the palm trees. Maybe the weed, too. I start to think too much and decide instead to roll a joint and smoke away the rest of the night. I put some Pink Floyd on my CD player - Dark Side of the Moon. All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be...
I try to remember the last time I felt loved; the last time I wasn't this lonely. I don't remember a time when I ever had someone to cry to; someone to use as a human tissue. My camera, my lovely 35mm I got for Christmas from my grandma; that was my solace, my saviour. The only thing to keep me from the outside world; the world I was too afraid to take part in. I knew feelings would fuck you up; I knew being bitter and cold and detached was the way to go.
Perhaps there was one exception. Starre was probably my only friend before I moved here, to the city of Angels and Death. We used to smoke joints out her window and blast Pink Floyd or The Doors; letting ourselves become totally entranced by the music and losing concept of all time and reality. We chose her house because her parents were never home and if they were they slept. Sometimes her stepdad would want to burn one with us so we'd sit on the back porch inhaling and laughing dryly in that way-too-stoned sorta way. The laughter came from nowhere and it came from everywhere and sometimes it felt fake. Sometimes my whole existence felt fake. Once her stepdad made a pass at me; putting his hand on my white thighs and kissing me while Starre was asleep on the couch a few feet away; wrapped in blankets brought back from foreign countries. Just once. I politely told him to back off and he left me alone. He never asked to smoke with us again, even though occasionally he'd pass me looks from across the dinner table that just screamed "Please don't tell anyone".
Starre was tough. She was my best friend at the same time that she was everyone else's enemy. She was loud; maybe too loud. And outgoing. Everyone thought she was obnoxious but we balanced each other perfectly. She set the fire and I watched it burn till its death. Suburban kids were stupid anyway and I didn't really care if they liked me or if they liked her. And no one liked her. They didn't like her because she was gorgeous and because she wasn't afraid of anything. She'd light up a cigarette in the middle of class or change her tampon in the hallway; sticking her fingers between her skirt at the water fountain. Most people thought she was disgustingly beautiful and wanted nothing to do with her. She was always suspended or on the verge of expulsion but she didn't give a fuck anyway. She wanted to live by her own rules and that she did; never stopping to look back or regret.
When I told Starre about my big move, she said she was going to kill herself.
You don't understand Candyce. You're the only person in this whole fucked up town I talk to. I'll die without you, I'll kill myself, she said to me with tears in her eyes; painting her nails black and red. I told her it would be okay; she'd get on without me and during the summers she could get out and come visit me. But she said it wouldn't be enough.
We finally settled into our new house; pink stucco and all, and the newly installed phone rang. I answered, not having any idea who would be calling me. The voice was deep and vaguely familiar, and I remembered. It was Starre's stepdad, and with a hint of annoyance of in his voice, he told me Starre had hung herself in her bathroom from the shower curtain. He asked if I'd want to come and stay with them and go to the funeral, perhaps read a eulogy. I told him No, that I'd didn't have enough money left to fly back out. Really I just didn't want Starre, wherever she was, watching her stepdad kiss me behind closed doors and whispering about not telling anyone. She really didn't need that. Sometimes I miss her but I know it was never anything special. Just another person who floated in and out; another chapter in the fucked up book of my life.
The only other person I ever had a connection with was a boy named Sebastian, back when I was maybe four or five. He was the son of one of the photographers my mother used to go to back when she wanted professional headshots; back when she wanted to be on the cover of Mademoiselle instead of Hustler. She would drag me along on her photo-shoots and I'd sit behind the cameras, playing with Indian-style wooden blocks with Sebastian. He was two years older than I was; his eyes were wide and lusciously green, like four-leaf clovers, his hair a mop of brown with streaks of blonde. He grew so fond of me that he used to invite me over to have Sunday dinner with him and his father, Peter. One particular Sunday Peter served us this delicious exotic meal: spearmint tea, guava jam with toasted wheat bread, pomegranate pie with lots of fluffy whipped cream. Sebastian excused himself to go to the bathroom. Peter said he had something to show me, took my hand and walked me into his bedroom. He said he had pretty pictures to show me of my mother. He sat me on the edge of his bed and showed me a portfolio full of beautiful shots of my mother; hair teased and highlighted and lips shined. I looked at a few pictures before Peter locked the door. He touched me on his bed; Sebastian in the next room. He said one day I would be beautiful like my mother and all the boys would want to touch me. He said he wanted me first; he wanted me while I was pure. I wish I could show him what beautiful is now. Needless to say, that was the last Sunday I spent with Sebastian.
The boys at home hated me. Everyone hated me; hated us. They used to invite me over to their midnight pot-slumber-parties and handcuff me and duct tape my mouth shut and strip me naked on their beds. They would send pizzas to my house and then knock on my bedroom window at night; begging for me, naked and afraid under their sheets. I hate them; I hated them, whatever. I was nothing to them; the weed boys fuck toy. Everyone at home sucked.
I let myself slowly drift into a high, hazy sleep; too scared to stay awake, afraid of what I might think. Too many thoughts spiraling in my head; I just want to make them go away. I let the sky cover me in it's blackness and I hope that during the night it will soak up all my dirtiness; all my rage and apathy. I want to be normal. I want to be happy; I want to smile. But lucky for me, even with the weed sleep doesn't come.
I figure there's really not much else to do inside this house. It's quiet except for Gwen's slow breathing in the other room. I want to get out; the house is suffocating me within it's walls and I feel like I just need to breathe. perhaps against my better judgement I decide to go outside for a walk.
The stars are peering out of the thick blackness of the sky, as if taunting me. I'm not your star. I want to play within the lilac and oleander bushes like I used to; I want to inhale their sweetness and pretend to be high on electric flowers. I'm dancing and singing and spinning around playfully when I stop suddenly; I feel another prescense behind me, a light tap on my shoulder as I whirl around. The air tastes like chilli dogs and sweet fountain soda pop.
Hey there, Jamie says. I don't stop to ask her why she's here; how she knows where I live; why she's wandering around at dusk looking for crazy girls like me who want to be children forever. It all seems so normal; I'm just happy someone is there to share the moment with me.
Find me a star, Jamie says; looking up into the endless night sky. I can't seem to find one for her; the sky has clouded over.
I can't, not through all this grey. Not through all the clouds, I don't want to dissapoint her so I say, maybe tommorow.
She passes me the joint in her hand and she falls into the wet grass as if it's made of a thousand of the softest pillows. I sit down next to her. I feel her fingers playfully running through my hair.
Your hair is so beautiful, it's so...soft, she breathes. I tell her that her's is much better. Her hair holds true beauty; her hacked and choppy black hair shows true beauty. The raw and passionate kind. Anyone who looks at her hair and just knows she's important; she's real. She takes her razor out of her purse.
It's always better when your high, she says dreamily.
I want to say: write your story on my skin. Her body is already covered; old scars and open wounds. I tell her I have plenty of room left on my wrists; my thighs. Except for a few pathetic scratches. I tell her it's okay for her to make me bleed.
It won't hurt anyway, she says, it's like an orgasm.
I take off my shirt; I'm wearing nothing but a black bra and a pentacle necklace. I'm cold, shivery; shaky. She takes the blade to my chest. I watch as the blood seeps down my abdomen. I want more; I tell her to break me.
We keep getting higher and higher and it becomes more and more exciting to watch the blood trickle down my pale body. When she's done with my chest she holds up a mirror. The bloodied cuts read: LOVE.
She pulls down her fishnet stockings so I can see her naked ankle.
See? Her ankle says: HATE.
You're the first person who has ever seemed to care, she looks almost teary-eyed but I decide it's just the weed making me think that. That's why your love. Me, I'm not like you. I'm not innocent. I'm not sweet. I'm hate. You're everything that I could've been. You're my Love girl.
You must be thinking about someone else, I say, I don't care about anything. I think, I just let another girl open my flesh; I didn't say anything when she tore away at herself. I'm not a normal person, let alone a caring one. I let beautiful girls scar their bodies.
She shakes her head and the crown of lilacs she's been wearing falls into seperate pieces at her feet and she giggles like a schoolgirl. She's been acting so soft all night; I'm not quite sure if she's still the same girl who blew a ring of smoke into the face of a freshman and openly sipped vodka in the girls' bathroom earlier. I notice that she looks different now; her eyes are a pale shade of lavender and her face looks ghostly-white.
She tells me she's going to take me somewhere. A real party, she says, her eyes wide and gleaming. I don't really care where I go as long as I'm with her. I take pictures the whole way to this party though I'm not even really sure how we get there. Our feet are barely touching as the ground as we skip down the boardwalk at midnight; Venice beach and the moon, oki dogs and night prowlers, palm trees and the sweat and salt of the Pacific.
I can't even explain what happens to me at the party. Time moves in slow motion but I'm talking too fast. Everything is spinning and I love everyone. I kiss a girl with a shaved head and a lip piercing and tell her that I want her to come home with me. I am talking to everyone; speaking at a million words per minute and everyone looks so beautiful and I just want to touch all of them. I am not afraid of anything and I sit on strangers laps. I tell them stories about Starre and how everyone back where I used to live hated me.
How could anyone hate you, a pretty skinhead girl whispers into my ear dreamily and I watch her pupils dialate as she speaks; she strokes my hair. My heart is beating too fast. I take the hand of a boy with black hair and black lips and put it on my chest. I tell him to feel it, I tell him I'm dying. He reassures me, No, not dying. Just really really fucked up.
I snorted the crushed up blue pill off a mirror in the bathroom. Jamie had handed it to me and told me to roll up a dollar bill and inhale. She had already cut it into two halves but she told me it had had a picture of two hands coming together on top of a heart. I wished I had seen it. Jamie fell into the bathtub and pretended to nakedly carress herself like she was in a soft porn; dragging the dry loufa across her skin and cupping her breasts in her hands.
Isn't this fucking crazy? she says after the boy with the dark lips walks away from me. There's so many people in this tiny apartment; crowded and sweaty and glistening, but I feel like I know them all. There's two lesbian girls in the corner; wrapped in eachothers arms and singing lullabies while they softly kiss eachothers lips. They're wearing torn skirts and tank tops and I wish for a minute that I am a lesbian so I could have them hold me in their arms and listen to them sing. Rockabye baby in the tree top... In the other corner, a group of girls wearing only high heels and silk, black thongs are prancing around in their underwear and rubbing themselves against a bunch of boys who look like something out of SLC Punk. Tall blue mohawks and gauged ears. It doesn't bother me that I can see their naked breasts; their hard nipples. I love them and their nipples. I love all of them. I love all of them and they accept me. They want me there. They hand me paper flowers with handwritten messages on them: Peace, Love, Unity, Respect. I figure they're raver girls; adorned with baggy, bright blue pants with holographic, sparkly strips hanging off the sides and glowsticks and lots and lots of kandi up and down their arms. Sometimes a random person kisses me on the cheek and leaves lipstick stains on me so they call me lipstick girl. By the end of the night, I'm Candyce the Lipstick Queen.
I think about going home but decide maybe it's better for me to stay out of Gwen's hair for awhile. She won't notice for a few days that I'm gone anyway, I think to myself. I imagine all the fun I could have in those few days; all the lips and legs and eyes and kisses and hugs and pills.
Jamie guides me into another room; full of bongs and curtains and love beads and blue walls and introduces me to a girl named Poppy. I'm not sure if that's her real name but I don't care. She's tall and lanky and has bright pink hair; spiked like a punk rock boy's. She's wearing a skirt with a collared shirt and a black tie; she looks like she'd kill you if you even moved the wrong way. Her eyes are midnight blue and you could get lost in them for hours. She has a needle in her arm; her friend looks at her knowingly; they look like they hold a secret far too deep for humans to understand; far too deep for the average stoner girl like myself.
Poppy is going to let me crash with her for a few weeks. She lives up in the Hills and her house is big and pretty. You could come if you want, Poppy doesn't care, Jamie says and eagerly waits for my response.
Yeah, dude, your hot. I wouldn't mind a hot girl staying with me for awhile. I could introduce you to some people; I know lots of guys in the bands around here and I know they'd sure as hell want to meet you, Poppy looks straight into my eyes and for a second I'm scared to say yes. I don't even really know these people; Jamie and the skinhead girl and the black lipstick boy or Poppy.
Don't you need to go home? I ask Jamie.
I don't have a home, she says and rests her head against my chest. Me either, I think, me fuckin either; and that's why I go with her. | 