Dispatch from the LBC

You showed me how to give this selfish heart of mine.

-The Divynals..

Lets make a little music Colorado.

-John Wayne.

The Lord believes in starts.

-Mrs Greig.( teacher.)

Well, so said my 3rd grade teacher.She also on occasion called me a heathen.But back to the starts.The clean pieces of paper.( Wrapped for your protection and for all I know ribbed for her pleasure.)

To be the first. Boldly so on-ing and so-forthing .The first footprint in the sand delivering you to a perfect days surf. The first time you feel the lust and lips of the one you desire beneath the pressure of your kiss.

Roll away the rock like a good little Catholic and lo! Three holy days later (not,mind you, the same three days that Jane’s addiction sung about henceforth  hot wiring my harlots heart in the process…) but the Easter Three .The Jesus trifecta. Dead? Beaten? Hung on a cross and betrayed? No problem! Here’s your second shot.And a chocolate egg….Lactose intolerance be dammed.!

Starts…..beginnings.

And there it was.Mrs Greig planting the seed in my short timed soul of seven sweet summers clad in shortie pajamas and scabbed knees,of Santa and ….The seed of renewal and chance.Heavy duty artillery for one of such tender years,granted but a get out of free jail card to be prudently filed away even at such a young age.

( Mama didn’t raise no fool )

Meanwhile, back in southern California our heroine,full of sashimi and spitfire,goes about her business….

Ah! San Pedro.Dryer than a spinsters kiss,strip malls mating with body shops on endless roads to heat and homicide. I always think about D.Boon and Mike Watt arguing in a van,teenaged punk dreams caught in a crushed velour wrinkle in time…

I met my new Tattooist today.All red hair and charm is Peter.He will be digging his needles into the burnt hide that houses all my miscellany ("REO Speed wagon tee shirt from the 1981 tour?" "Check."….) and organs next week and my mouth floods with saliva just thinking about being bent over a chair,stretched like so much canvas,Gene Krupa heart,baa-dang-dang-dang,( " I want you all to put your hands together now and give a warm welcome to Miss Goldrush 1924!" ) and?….well,being marked yet again.

( note: The last sentence was doing amazing things wearing something long in a bias cut cream satin with a fox stole.Thank you and now back to the show.)

New running shoes have my Band-Aid bound feet thinking that they are spring loaded.The fat black transvestite who lives in a shanty by the Anaheim underpass now smiles and waves at me as I do my lumbering glory lap twice daily. ( Tickets available for the matinee at the candy bar) my sinews sweat as the clouds menace my leggy self, bully me to push it like a wheelbarrow full of fat  up the syphian hill of Hades fueled by lean dreams….I got a saucy jetsons-esque alarm clock in dull silver plastic to shake me from my dirty dream populated slumber and get me out there  and moving before I even know that I am awake.

What the card punching desk dicks fail to realize is that freedom takes more structure and discipline than their clock punching numbers will ever understand.No one tells me what to do, granted but if I didn’t tell myself it would end up looking like a cheerio dotted sofa surfing Monet .Waterlillies? I think bloody not.

.It would bend and bleed together.

This  thought occurred to me while lying on a forest green and red serape eating blueberries in the yard yesterday wearing little more than a cowboy hat and a rakish grin.

ahem.

Ok,so it does look like an endless summer.But the pay off is not having anything….who am I kidding! I love that as well!

I make it look easy.I swore that I would after the day that I hid behind the wall and Mrs Greigs "Start" theory seemily handed to her by the lord God Elvis on high himself, finally bloomed in the atrium of my 7th grade soul……

Starts! I was thinking about starts!

Internal seasons and watching the deadwood fall away. Miss Suzanne tells me that LA does not deserve me.To a sharp and hazardous point I know what she means.But I only flirt with the dead center.I am a Beatles-esque day tripper upon the hallowed and sin soiled strip and a cowgirl of few words to the desperados that chose to inhabit it.

I am a ghetto girl I swing low and loud in Long Beach and make it all roll up like a red carpet to my same hued double locked front door.

Leizel smiled at me today as we were waiting for the lights to change.I  was busy converting a pair of golden leather boots on a Korean girl who was slowly crossing bad tempered as the lights yelled their red lit change, all bad teeth and heavy blunt hair when my comrade in the drivers seat up and  sucker punched me.

"No fair!" I yelped" I didn’t see a VW!" ( Maturity-0. Michele-1)

"No punch buggy"she smirked throwing the jeep into gear, grinding the cogs like a cooch dancer,"I am just glad that you are here"

Now what do you say to that?

Nothing. I grinned out the rubber sealed window hole at my dirty little face in the rearview mirror ( objects may seem closer than they appear) Palm tress falling off faster and faster in the reflection, a chorus line of  Busby Berkeley dancers……

(Here I am loved.)

Back to the formative years for a brief and brutal moment now…..

And so it came to pass that she took herself away.

Far from the frigid flat vistas of her solitary youth.Armed with a rusty knife and a serpents tounge she twisted and hoped over oceans and booby traps.She tap danced over tripwires while invisible crowds held their collective breath in awe of her cowgirl devil-may-care thigh flashing corral fence jumping daring.

("Ohhhhhh!" they inhaled "Ahhhhhh!"they sighed turning the big top into a candy striped collective canvas lug…)

She mooched,she meandered ,long limbed and doe of eye. Pale of billowy lip over mine fields she learnt the ways of great and cut snake mean women and set upon a path of high heeled heartbreaks and step-one-two-three-TWO-two-three revenge.

(Back into your memory bank sweetheart for it is time to make a wicked withdrawal..Swirly mists and mirrors,just like the movies baby…..)

You were sitting where they couldn’t see you.You fat and disgusting excuse of a child, smelling of polyester sweat and high school hatered.Bitten and dirty fingers working the hem of your blue plaid skirt like a novice nun manically mauling her roasary.You dirty kneeded nobody.

They sat on the wall above you.Sporting acne and smoking Winnfield Blues.Foot ball honed barrel chests soon to migrate south to take up residency as beer guts scant days after graduation and it was you that they spoke of ,the subject was you.

"A double bag for sure" ( * ) said those teenaged lips Exclaimed with glee.

"Fucken oath mate!"spat a stooge to his Sergeant at evil arms,words filtered through a tomato sauce drowned mouth full of four and twenty meat pie.

"Insurance" continued the 10th grade king of comedy sagely.

(A pause…a beat….a punch line…. )

"Insurance for if the first one fuckin broke while you were on the job!!!"

( * : Re- "Double bag" A woman so ugly that two paper bags are to be secured over her head prior to fornication.)

And like hyenas they bayed,Crows rose from the surface of the blacktop where they had been camouflaged ,disturbed by the ruckus emanating from the wall.Up into the sky,widows weeds on the wing.

You wanted to tear your face off and throw it at them didn’t you baby? Wanted to rise like a wave and drop pain all over them like toxic confetti..

And so it began.Poked its head from the dirt of your bowel,the poison garden internal towards a thundering light far on the horizen.And from its branches? From the never-to break boughs swung a fake ID and a one way ticket out.A pump action shot gun.Maps and gold chains.Bottles of heavy scent and blackmail fodder… Poison fruit.

Eve unto the apple, you bit ,juice flooding you. Free.

And that was your debut, the 1st time out. Cruelty broke the hymen of your childhood and there you bled.Your fist pushed into your mouth, tears barging their way down your face to mix with the witches brew of drool and snot.That was the 1st time that you thought of a new time and place.A country bound by night and wicked red light where you could be all of your heroes and not answer to that which you had been tagged,named….

The witchfinder general and his crones depart your wall.You reached out and pluck the still smoldering half smoked cigarette that had been flung in their bastard wake…choppy seas ahead you narrowed you blue eyes and took a bone deep,lung lacerating drag.His lips still warm on the filter.Your assassin.Your murderer.

Slowly you rose.Regal for the first time ,claws dug into your fast future.Ciggerette hanging from your bit bottom lip, you pressed a hand flat to your stomach and sighed.The seed moving and winding through your very core.

And you smiled because at that moment you knew everything that you would ever need to know.

There you are legion.

M

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