Scribbled
Everytime I go into this, I get all confused. It is confusing to me. And even more so because the story seems to simple and straightforward. So the confusion must be me; right? I get all scribbled inside. That is how it feels, all scribbled. I hate feeling scribbled. When I'm scribbled, I'm a clump of tangled thread and there's just no point in doing anything other lying down and hoping the world will calmly keep going on above me, and leaving me down here in my clump to try to settle down. You know those Chinese handcuffs? They go on your fingers, but the point is that the harder you try to struggle out of them, the tighter they get. That is my scribbled state. And it is compelled by outsiders to the scribbled realm to try harder and harder to explain, or harder and harder to be clear, or explain, or understand, and the harder I go, the tighter the scribbled tangle. It's a no-win situation, that's for sure.
I first recognized my scribbled state at family functions. Once I'd moved away and been removed from the inner core for a year or so, visiting the good old times became a glimpse into the fact that I didn't feel scribbled so much anymore. I never realized I did back in the days of living my life inside the family. I didn't know I ever got scribbled. It was never conscious, or at least on a level that I was aware of. What I was aware of was more just trying to figure out how to be normal. How to fit in and be comfortable and think right and get better aligned with life. My family had it down, at least in a way that they did not doubt themselves. They were in a groove of life. My wheels were always half off the track, one on, one bumping along the railroad ties and gravel and sending out sparks. I just wanted to get on track.
Going back, say for Christmas, or Thanksgiving, or whatever occasion had the whole family together for fesitivity, I would be so excited. These are the good times! Everyone knows that, including me. These were the times I missed and longed for in my new life away from the hub.
*****
There are a lot of stories I want to tell you. But I can't seem to get them out, because the bigger story that connects them all makes them pale in comparative importance. So, they peter out on my tongue as I tell them. The further I go into each story, the smaller it gets, because the closer I get to the underlying story.
Is this confusing to you?
Me, too.
But we have to try. I have to try. It's in the way of an entire life; my life. For some reason, I cannot go on and live a regular life, my own life, without letting go of this story. And to let go of it, I need to tell it. And to tell it, I need to know it.
I don't know the story.
Fucked, eh? It is. It is my story. I lived it. But it escapes me except in fragments. And I am compelled over and over, endless and endless, to trying to know the story. Because I am infuriated that I do not know my own story. It's mine, goddamnit! I feel robbed, from the inside. Shouldn't some things be sacred, unrobbable? Like a person's insides? Their feelings, memories, stories? Who decided it was okay to go ahead and pillage around under my skin, stealing the shit that is the very essence of my own self? God, I am really, really fucking pissed.
Because it makes me seem crazy, on top of the injustice of losing my own psyche autonomy. I can't even explain my own simple story. I can't even fucking know it. I mean, I do know it, I guess. I know the outline, I suppose. Actually, it's kind of like what I know about my own life's story is what you get on the back of an especially informative book jacket. The plot summary, some key players, a handful of excerpts. But the meat of it, the heart of my life, is missing. And I have been spending two decades of adulthood trying to crack the covers of the book open. I still am.
Want to know the key players? I am hard-pressed to consider myself an adequate answer-giver in that regard, even though it seems there is nobody who knows the answers except me. How do I make this work? Maybe just tell you some pieces, and see if you can fit the big picture together for me.
Is there a big picture? Maybe it's true that I'm a product of a non-big picture. I just had a couple fragments, a few mini-pictures that I am trying in vain to put together in the shape of a big picture. A life. But maybe I don't have one. I know I don't; who am I kidding? You, I guess. And me? How many me's are there? There is the me that is talking to you right now, so there's one. Then there's the me that knows the secret answer to the stories, so two. And the me who lived it all; three. And the me that is successfully keeping me #1 from knowing the truth that me #3 lived; so, me #4. Whatever, man.
*****
One time, my stepdad had to bring my lunch into my classroom because I'd forgotten it at home. Why he couldn't have left it at the door, I don't know. Why the teacher didn't just take it from him, I don't know.
I felt insanely foriegn during those slow-motion years that he walked from the door of the classroom, up the rows, across the aisles, and over to my desk. He set the brown lunch bag on my desk, and I think smiled, feeling sort of good that he was doing something nice. Or maybe thrilled that he was humiliating me, I don't know. Probably thinking it was a good moment for us, I'd guess. He was wearing a black leather jacket, black biker boots, maybe even a black leather cap, jeans, and a huge wallet chained to his belt buckle. He had a beard and mustache. I suspect he scared the hell out of my entire classroom; probably my teacher, too. And definitely me.
A slightly worse than the all-out biker bad-ass look came just a couple of years later, when born-again Christian was thrown in the mix. My stepdad then took to wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket with a tough-guy emblem covering the entire back that proclaimed him one of the improbable "Bowhunters for Jesus." No, wait. It was two separate affiliations that I'm mixing here in the bloody and saddening recall. Christian Bowhunters was the back of the jacket, and Bikers for Jesus was the smaller sticker. "Riding for the Son." It was not a cool situation, and was made worse by the craziness that came with it for my stepdad and my mom. My mom used it all --- "it all" being the born again Christian madness that was embraced with fervored gusto first by her, then a year later, at her needling, by him --- as an excuse, subconscious though it might (*might*) have been, to abdicate all parental responsibilities on her part. Any she still gave a shred of thought to by that point, anyway. She was sick of being "caught in the middle" between me and my stepdad. She couldn't handle having to be the "referee" anymore. And when she invited Jesus Christ into her heart to be her own personal lord and savior, well, she found a system she could hang all those old problems up on and live free.
The hierarchy in the home I spent ages 8 through 16 in went like this: God spoke to my stepfather, my stepfather passed on God's thoughts to my mom, and my mom merely had to relay messages. She bore no responsibility at all. She was free from any action required by my screaming, crying, pleading, begging, negotiating, logical conversational attempts, or suicidal gestures to put attention to the issues at hand. She was taken out of the loop entirely. Devoid of any power at all. And she luxuriating in that status, finally free from the burden of doing anything to remedy my situation. My emotions. My hacked apart life and deteriorating self.
******
I fell in love during these years, when I was maybe thirteen, or fourteen. But too bad for me, I didn't know that's what that feeling was. I missed out on a lot things that way. My first orgasm, for example. I was so freaked out by the weird "vaporizing" thing my body did that I was too embarassed to even tell my boyfriend what had happened. Always feeling like I had a wheel or two off the track, even when I didn't.
My first love was four years older than me. His name was Ronny, and he came from a crappy family in a part of town even crappier than mine. He was very sweet and sensitive and kind, and he adored me. It all computed to so much confusion that I could only touch base with him for limited amounts of time, brief stabs into that overwhelming realm where I was loved and appreciated and treated kindly. Like my stepdad, so much power was misplaced in my hands. I misused it. So did he.
******
Dear Diary,
You suck ass. Why did you let Terry go down into the sewer like that? I can't believe it. If he hadn't read you, he never would have known where I put Hal's thing. Now he might be screwed forever, and it will be my fault. Your fault. It is better to blame you.
Life has not been very good lately. Theresa told Cindy Moore that I stold stuff with her from Kresge's, and now Cindy is telling everybody. I don't want to be thought of as that kind of person, because I'm not. I only did it because Theresa acted like I was an idiot if I didn't. I'm not going to hang around her that much anymore. We just have the mescaline in common. But 7th grade is different than 5th, and times are changing. We are just growing apart.
I met this guy at church roller skating, and he has been driving me to school this week. He is super old, and not cute at all. But he is really nice and he likes me. He drives a green car that is small and kind of dorky. He waits around the corner from the bus stop, and I get in. He hasn't tried to kiss me yet, but I get the feeling he could be thinking of it. His face is pretty acne'd. I really don't want to kiss him. I hope he doesn't do that. He writes me long letters and thinks I'm really smart. I wonder what my mom would say about him, if she knew he was driving me to school. He is like 23 or something, but also a Christian, so you never know. He lives pretty far away, and he drives all the way here just to drive me to school before he has to go to work. His name is Rick, and he thinks he loves me. Gross. Give me a break. Really, it is not gross or anything, just I don't like him that way. I don't think. It's all too confusing to even begin to figure out. I just need to cope with the day-to-day, man. I feel like there are too many realities going on.
Like school, for one. Dan Taggart and George Hurst and those stupid 8th grade girls who want to beat my ass. I hate it.
Rick is the guy's name from church skating. I think it was in Westland where the skating I met him at was. It was a Missionary Church youth skate event thing, two Sundays ago. The church skates are during the day, very bright in the rink, and the music is Christian music. It is hard to get a feel of guys and all that in such an atmosphere, but we still all manage. It's always about who likes who and all that. So Rick asked me to couple's skate, and I said okay because he was older and sturdy and manly, kind of, in a very manageable way it seemed. I would never skate with him at Ambassador. People at Ambassador would freak out if they saw me skating with someone like Rick. Okay, maybe nobody would really give a shit, but it would for sure limit my chances with the good guys, like Danny Harris or something. Earl Bedford was walking the line enough; he was very dorky, but also older and friends with some of the cool guys at high school. Or so I thought. Once I got to high school, I found out Earl Bedford was really not cool at all. But when you're in 6th or 7th grade, it is hard to know such things about the high school and older crowd. You have to sort of take the leaps you can, and work up from there. A lot the same as how the work world is later in life. Especially if you don't have a college degree. And my home life was the social equivalent back in the early teen days.
I don't know what made it so bad, sometimes. In the bad reputation way, that is. I mean, what was really that wrong with it, from the outside? I wonder. In some ways, I think everyone could tell I was marked, but then sometimes looking back, I wonder if I just imagined everything on my inside was projected and visible on the outside. It's back to that what do I know, thing. That's really all I can say, I guess. Maybe we can piece a story together from those bits. Maybe not.
What I know is that I wore tight jeans. This started in late elementary school. Or maybe not so late. I can remember in the summer, planning what to wear for bike rides. We would wear our short terry cloth shorts and tank tops, and ride around and know that we'd get honks and comments from older guys, which we did. I had a certain set of shorts and matching top that were baby blue terry cloth with pink trim. I looked very good in those shorts. They were very short. I had small, not-yet-wearing-a-bra breasts, but I can picture just how they stuck out a little under that top. I would wear white socks and white tennis shoes, and pull my shorts up just right for how my butt would look on the bike seat. I am embarassed writing this. I am more embarassed that I was a kid who didn't have anything to stop such focus in her life. That's not who I really was, the real me, deep down. The real me got stuffed down, ignored, put on hold, while I skidded off course and out of control. I was driven by needs I didn't even understand, needs and reactions that I took to be my real self. And this damage has been damned hard to tease apart.
The church group was an interesting microcosm. It was a smaller world, side-set to the actual social life dictated by school. One in which I had a better chance of maintaining some control. But still I had similar dramas play out. Still, I pined for the most popular guys. Mostly, they didn't pine back for me. I was not that kind of girl. I'm not sure how they knew it, but they did. I wore eyeliner; maybe that's all it takes to give you away as a person who is hated by her stepdad? Maybe tight jeans are enough to signal to the outside world that your family stands by and lets you be hated and ridiculed by an adult who is a fucking bastard.
******
Dear Brad,
It's me again. I wonder if you're still around. I wonder if this letter will find you. Find you---I guess that's how they put it in the books, don't they? I've been reading a lot since I've been here. And I am sure this is no news to you, but juvi sucks. The food is the worst, and I think I've lost two sizes since I've been in this pit. There is nothing to do but read or fight, pretty much. In the beginning, there's also letter writing, but people eventually quit writing you back, so it takes the fun out of it. It's pathetic, the chicks who write faithfully to people who don't give two shits about them. They just sit there scribbling away every day, all day, smiling and acting like they matter to people. They feel connected to a world that has long since forgotten about them and moved on. It would be sad if it wasn't so fucking pathetic. Assholes.
So how are you? I hope this letter does "find" you, ha ha. The only address I have for you is your grandma's. I figure she's been there like a million years, so why would she move all of a sudden? If you're not still here, I am hoping she will make sure you get this letter. I did hear from Sarah Combs that you took off to Florida, but I am pretty sure she was just trying to piss me off. I hope you are in school and things are going good at your grandma's. You deserve it, Brad. Last year was a real pisser for you, and I didn't help that much, I know. I won't go into being all sorry, but you know I am. Well, whatever. You deserve a good year is what I am trying to say. How is 9th grade? I can't believe I'm spending 8th grade in juvi. Ha ha. What a fucking story I've become. Not quite the choir girl you met the beginning of last year, am I? I wonder if you're sorry that you met me. I would be, if I were you. I don't even know why I'm writing to you, because why should I have the balls to write to you after what I did, and what a loser I've become. But some part of me holds on to the connection we had last year before things went to shit, and I feel like you are still my best friend, and the only person I'll ever know in this crappy life who actually feels alive to me.
So, girls' juvi is probably the same as boys' juvi, except we have stupid classes like home-making. It is true. Can you believe it in this day and age? They want us to learn how to keep a household budget and shop for groceries that don't include just Mountain Dew and beef jerky. Guess I couldn't make your favorite meal, then. Ha ha. There is this one chick, this social worker who teaches hygiene. I am not kidding you. She is like thirty or something, and she wants to get us to wear deodorant everyday and brush all our teeth and hairs and etc. Of course, who the fuck doesn't use deodorant or brush their teeth!? So me and a couple other girls, we quit wearing deodorant just to piss her off. If she thinks we're that stupid, fine, watch us be. I probably shouldn't be grossing you out with thoughts of me not wearing deodorant, but then you lived through the camping trip with me, so I figure you can handle it. ha ha. That was a good time, wasn't it? Man, I wish we could go back sometimes. How pathetic to be in 8th grade and already wishing you could go back to the past.
I've been writing some poetry in here. Lame, yeah I know. But want even lamer? Of course, you're in most of them. Don't freak out, I know things are different now and I don't blame you for that. But you are still the most important person in my life, even if you can't be in my life. I miss you a lot, Brad. I think so much about how it used to be with us, how we would skip and go down to the tracks and hang out all day. It never felt stupid with you. Life, that is. And I can't shake the stupidness lately. Anyway, here's one:
size and time
and cheap ass wine
all blend fine
under the viadock
a best friend is found
eyes locked on the ground
hands held, not a sound
there is no tick of the clock
Yeah, okay. I'm too depressed now. I hope you're doing well, Brad. Maybe I'll write more later. I would like to hear from you if you ever are in the mood. I wish you well.
Love,
Amber
(in juvi for stabbing Barry?)
I first recognized my scribbled state at family functions. Once I'd moved away and been removed from the inner core for a year or so, visiting the good old times became a glimpse into the fact that I didn't feel scribbled so much anymore. I never realized I did back in the days of living my life inside the family. I didn't know I ever got scribbled. It was never conscious, or at least on a level that I was aware of. What I was aware of was more just trying to figure out how to be normal. How to fit in and be comfortable and think right and get better aligned with life. My family had it down, at least in a way that they did not doubt themselves. They were in a groove of life. My wheels were always half off the track, one on, one bumping along the railroad ties and gravel and sending out sparks. I just wanted to get on track.
Going back, say for Christmas, or Thanksgiving, or whatever occasion had the whole family together for fesitivity, I would be so excited. These are the good times! Everyone knows that, including me. These were the times I missed and longed for in my new life away from the hub.
*****
There are a lot of stories I want to tell you. But I can't seem to get them out, because the bigger story that connects them all makes them pale in comparative importance. So, they peter out on my tongue as I tell them. The further I go into each story, the smaller it gets, because the closer I get to the underlying story.
Is this confusing to you?
Me, too.
But we have to try. I have to try. It's in the way of an entire life; my life. For some reason, I cannot go on and live a regular life, my own life, without letting go of this story. And to let go of it, I need to tell it. And to tell it, I need to know it.
I don't know the story.
Fucked, eh? It is. It is my story. I lived it. But it escapes me except in fragments. And I am compelled over and over, endless and endless, to trying to know the story. Because I am infuriated that I do not know my own story. It's mine, goddamnit! I feel robbed, from the inside. Shouldn't some things be sacred, unrobbable? Like a person's insides? Their feelings, memories, stories? Who decided it was okay to go ahead and pillage around under my skin, stealing the shit that is the very essence of my own self? God, I am really, really fucking pissed.
Because it makes me seem crazy, on top of the injustice of losing my own psyche autonomy. I can't even explain my own simple story. I can't even fucking know it. I mean, I do know it, I guess. I know the outline, I suppose. Actually, it's kind of like what I know about my own life's story is what you get on the back of an especially informative book jacket. The plot summary, some key players, a handful of excerpts. But the meat of it, the heart of my life, is missing. And I have been spending two decades of adulthood trying to crack the covers of the book open. I still am.
Want to know the key players? I am hard-pressed to consider myself an adequate answer-giver in that regard, even though it seems there is nobody who knows the answers except me. How do I make this work? Maybe just tell you some pieces, and see if you can fit the big picture together for me.
Is there a big picture? Maybe it's true that I'm a product of a non-big picture. I just had a couple fragments, a few mini-pictures that I am trying in vain to put together in the shape of a big picture. A life. But maybe I don't have one. I know I don't; who am I kidding? You, I guess. And me? How many me's are there? There is the me that is talking to you right now, so there's one. Then there's the me that knows the secret answer to the stories, so two. And the me who lived it all; three. And the me that is successfully keeping me #1 from knowing the truth that me #3 lived; so, me #4. Whatever, man.
*****
One time, my stepdad had to bring my lunch into my classroom because I'd forgotten it at home. Why he couldn't have left it at the door, I don't know. Why the teacher didn't just take it from him, I don't know.
I felt insanely foriegn during those slow-motion years that he walked from the door of the classroom, up the rows, across the aisles, and over to my desk. He set the brown lunch bag on my desk, and I think smiled, feeling sort of good that he was doing something nice. Or maybe thrilled that he was humiliating me, I don't know. Probably thinking it was a good moment for us, I'd guess. He was wearing a black leather jacket, black biker boots, maybe even a black leather cap, jeans, and a huge wallet chained to his belt buckle. He had a beard and mustache. I suspect he scared the hell out of my entire classroom; probably my teacher, too. And definitely me.
A slightly worse than the all-out biker bad-ass look came just a couple of years later, when born-again Christian was thrown in the mix. My stepdad then took to wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket with a tough-guy emblem covering the entire back that proclaimed him one of the improbable "Bowhunters for Jesus." No, wait. It was two separate affiliations that I'm mixing here in the bloody and saddening recall. Christian Bowhunters was the back of the jacket, and Bikers for Jesus was the smaller sticker. "Riding for the Son." It was not a cool situation, and was made worse by the craziness that came with it for my stepdad and my mom. My mom used it all --- "it all" being the born again Christian madness that was embraced with fervored gusto first by her, then a year later, at her needling, by him --- as an excuse, subconscious though it might (*might*) have been, to abdicate all parental responsibilities on her part. Any she still gave a shred of thought to by that point, anyway. She was sick of being "caught in the middle" between me and my stepdad. She couldn't handle having to be the "referee" anymore. And when she invited Jesus Christ into her heart to be her own personal lord and savior, well, she found a system she could hang all those old problems up on and live free.
The hierarchy in the home I spent ages 8 through 16 in went like this: God spoke to my stepfather, my stepfather passed on God's thoughts to my mom, and my mom merely had to relay messages. She bore no responsibility at all. She was free from any action required by my screaming, crying, pleading, begging, negotiating, logical conversational attempts, or suicidal gestures to put attention to the issues at hand. She was taken out of the loop entirely. Devoid of any power at all. And she luxuriating in that status, finally free from the burden of doing anything to remedy my situation. My emotions. My hacked apart life and deteriorating self.
******
I fell in love during these years, when I was maybe thirteen, or fourteen. But too bad for me, I didn't know that's what that feeling was. I missed out on a lot things that way. My first orgasm, for example. I was so freaked out by the weird "vaporizing" thing my body did that I was too embarassed to even tell my boyfriend what had happened. Always feeling like I had a wheel or two off the track, even when I didn't.
My first love was four years older than me. His name was Ronny, and he came from a crappy family in a part of town even crappier than mine. He was very sweet and sensitive and kind, and he adored me. It all computed to so much confusion that I could only touch base with him for limited amounts of time, brief stabs into that overwhelming realm where I was loved and appreciated and treated kindly. Like my stepdad, so much power was misplaced in my hands. I misused it. So did he.
******
Dear Diary,
You suck ass. Why did you let Terry go down into the sewer like that? I can't believe it. If he hadn't read you, he never would have known where I put Hal's thing. Now he might be screwed forever, and it will be my fault. Your fault. It is better to blame you.
Life has not been very good lately. Theresa told Cindy Moore that I stold stuff with her from Kresge's, and now Cindy is telling everybody. I don't want to be thought of as that kind of person, because I'm not. I only did it because Theresa acted like I was an idiot if I didn't. I'm not going to hang around her that much anymore. We just have the mescaline in common. But 7th grade is different than 5th, and times are changing. We are just growing apart.
I met this guy at church roller skating, and he has been driving me to school this week. He is super old, and not cute at all. But he is really nice and he likes me. He drives a green car that is small and kind of dorky. He waits around the corner from the bus stop, and I get in. He hasn't tried to kiss me yet, but I get the feeling he could be thinking of it. His face is pretty acne'd. I really don't want to kiss him. I hope he doesn't do that. He writes me long letters and thinks I'm really smart. I wonder what my mom would say about him, if she knew he was driving me to school. He is like 23 or something, but also a Christian, so you never know. He lives pretty far away, and he drives all the way here just to drive me to school before he has to go to work. His name is Rick, and he thinks he loves me. Gross. Give me a break. Really, it is not gross or anything, just I don't like him that way. I don't think. It's all too confusing to even begin to figure out. I just need to cope with the day-to-day, man. I feel like there are too many realities going on.
Like school, for one. Dan Taggart and George Hurst and those stupid 8th grade girls who want to beat my ass. I hate it.
Rick is the guy's name from church skating. I think it was in Westland where the skating I met him at was. It was a Missionary Church youth skate event thing, two Sundays ago. The church skates are during the day, very bright in the rink, and the music is Christian music. It is hard to get a feel of guys and all that in such an atmosphere, but we still all manage. It's always about who likes who and all that. So Rick asked me to couple's skate, and I said okay because he was older and sturdy and manly, kind of, in a very manageable way it seemed. I would never skate with him at Ambassador. People at Ambassador would freak out if they saw me skating with someone like Rick. Okay, maybe nobody would really give a shit, but it would for sure limit my chances with the good guys, like Danny Harris or something. Earl Bedford was walking the line enough; he was very dorky, but also older and friends with some of the cool guys at high school. Or so I thought. Once I got to high school, I found out Earl Bedford was really not cool at all. But when you're in 6th or 7th grade, it is hard to know such things about the high school and older crowd. You have to sort of take the leaps you can, and work up from there. A lot the same as how the work world is later in life. Especially if you don't have a college degree. And my home life was the social equivalent back in the early teen days.
I don't know what made it so bad, sometimes. In the bad reputation way, that is. I mean, what was really that wrong with it, from the outside? I wonder. In some ways, I think everyone could tell I was marked, but then sometimes looking back, I wonder if I just imagined everything on my inside was projected and visible on the outside. It's back to that what do I know, thing. That's really all I can say, I guess. Maybe we can piece a story together from those bits. Maybe not.
What I know is that I wore tight jeans. This started in late elementary school. Or maybe not so late. I can remember in the summer, planning what to wear for bike rides. We would wear our short terry cloth shorts and tank tops, and ride around and know that we'd get honks and comments from older guys, which we did. I had a certain set of shorts and matching top that were baby blue terry cloth with pink trim. I looked very good in those shorts. They were very short. I had small, not-yet-wearing-a-bra breasts, but I can picture just how they stuck out a little under that top. I would wear white socks and white tennis shoes, and pull my shorts up just right for how my butt would look on the bike seat. I am embarassed writing this. I am more embarassed that I was a kid who didn't have anything to stop such focus in her life. That's not who I really was, the real me, deep down. The real me got stuffed down, ignored, put on hold, while I skidded off course and out of control. I was driven by needs I didn't even understand, needs and reactions that I took to be my real self. And this damage has been damned hard to tease apart.
The church group was an interesting microcosm. It was a smaller world, side-set to the actual social life dictated by school. One in which I had a better chance of maintaining some control. But still I had similar dramas play out. Still, I pined for the most popular guys. Mostly, they didn't pine back for me. I was not that kind of girl. I'm not sure how they knew it, but they did. I wore eyeliner; maybe that's all it takes to give you away as a person who is hated by her stepdad? Maybe tight jeans are enough to signal to the outside world that your family stands by and lets you be hated and ridiculed by an adult who is a fucking bastard.
******
Dear Brad,
It's me again. I wonder if you're still around. I wonder if this letter will find you. Find you---I guess that's how they put it in the books, don't they? I've been reading a lot since I've been here. And I am sure this is no news to you, but juvi sucks. The food is the worst, and I think I've lost two sizes since I've been in this pit. There is nothing to do but read or fight, pretty much. In the beginning, there's also letter writing, but people eventually quit writing you back, so it takes the fun out of it. It's pathetic, the chicks who write faithfully to people who don't give two shits about them. They just sit there scribbling away every day, all day, smiling and acting like they matter to people. They feel connected to a world that has long since forgotten about them and moved on. It would be sad if it wasn't so fucking pathetic. Assholes.
So how are you? I hope this letter does "find" you, ha ha. The only address I have for you is your grandma's. I figure she's been there like a million years, so why would she move all of a sudden? If you're not still here, I am hoping she will make sure you get this letter. I did hear from Sarah Combs that you took off to Florida, but I am pretty sure she was just trying to piss me off. I hope you are in school and things are going good at your grandma's. You deserve it, Brad. Last year was a real pisser for you, and I didn't help that much, I know. I won't go into being all sorry, but you know I am. Well, whatever. You deserve a good year is what I am trying to say. How is 9th grade? I can't believe I'm spending 8th grade in juvi. Ha ha. What a fucking story I've become. Not quite the choir girl you met the beginning of last year, am I? I wonder if you're sorry that you met me. I would be, if I were you. I don't even know why I'm writing to you, because why should I have the balls to write to you after what I did, and what a loser I've become. But some part of me holds on to the connection we had last year before things went to shit, and I feel like you are still my best friend, and the only person I'll ever know in this crappy life who actually feels alive to me.
So, girls' juvi is probably the same as boys' juvi, except we have stupid classes like home-making. It is true. Can you believe it in this day and age? They want us to learn how to keep a household budget and shop for groceries that don't include just Mountain Dew and beef jerky. Guess I couldn't make your favorite meal, then. Ha ha. There is this one chick, this social worker who teaches hygiene. I am not kidding you. She is like thirty or something, and she wants to get us to wear deodorant everyday and brush all our teeth and hairs and etc. Of course, who the fuck doesn't use deodorant or brush their teeth!? So me and a couple other girls, we quit wearing deodorant just to piss her off. If she thinks we're that stupid, fine, watch us be. I probably shouldn't be grossing you out with thoughts of me not wearing deodorant, but then you lived through the camping trip with me, so I figure you can handle it. ha ha. That was a good time, wasn't it? Man, I wish we could go back sometimes. How pathetic to be in 8th grade and already wishing you could go back to the past.
I've been writing some poetry in here. Lame, yeah I know. But want even lamer? Of course, you're in most of them. Don't freak out, I know things are different now and I don't blame you for that. But you are still the most important person in my life, even if you can't be in my life. I miss you a lot, Brad. I think so much about how it used to be with us, how we would skip and go down to the tracks and hang out all day. It never felt stupid with you. Life, that is. And I can't shake the stupidness lately. Anyway, here's one:
size and time
and cheap ass wine
all blend fine
under the viadock
a best friend is found
eyes locked on the ground
hands held, not a sound
there is no tick of the clock
Yeah, okay. I'm too depressed now. I hope you're doing well, Brad. Maybe I'll write more later. I would like to hear from you if you ever are in the mood. I wish you well.
Love,
Amber
(in juvi for stabbing Barry?)
*****
Amber,
Hey, what's going on? I got your letter today. Sorry it took me a long time to write back, but I'm not at my grandma's anymore. She kept your letter over the holidays, then she gave it to my uncle Jim because he was heading down here. Yeah, it's true that I'm in Florida. I don't know why, but here I am. Anyway, Jim got busted on 75 in Georgia and was in jail there for a while, so anyway it took a while to get your letter. I'm glad I got it, though, and I'm glad you wrote to me. We don't have to talk about what happened that screwed it all up between us, Amber. Seriously, you've always been the best person to talk to, and I really could use that every now and then, you know? It's not just the girlfriend in you that meant a lot to me. I would like to take a stab at keeping the friend around. Stab --- I guess I shouldn't say that, right? ha ha ha ha Yeah, whatever. Life is so fucked.
Florida is fucked too. It is just like you picture it from postcards and stuff, except instead of asses in g-strings add in about fifty million flocks of old people crawling around everywhere, and everything being cooked to a fucking pulp in the heat. I swear to God, I don't get why you never hear about the smell. But back the world's old fuckers in a crock pot all day every day, and you got a whiff of Florida.
I know you won't like this, but I am not in school. I might try to get into night school, but right now I am just working. I got a job at a shop detailing cars. It ain't bad, because there's no rust and our shop specializes in classics, so I get to work on some really cool rides. I am getting pretty good at it, too. I've been here five months and I already got to do my own car last week. It was a simple job, but still I did pretty good. I am living with the guy who own's the shop, his son. Steve is the owner. His son is Lou, and Lou is a fucking tool. But he pays two thirds of the rent and that works out good for me. I sleep in a tent in the backyard so far (yeah, I remember our camping trip too. Like every night) It's hot as a bitch out there, but Lou is building me a loft in the back room and it ain't done yet. Like I said, he's a fucking tool. But I only sleep out there, and I got the house for everything else right now. It's a shack behind a stanky ass motel with an actual pink flamingo stuck in the lawn. Can you believe that one, Ebony Eyes? Just like you always joked you wanted for a retirement place when we got old.
Man, it's easy to fall back into the old patterns with each other, isn't it?
Well, I didn't even ask you about juvi and stuff. You getting any trouble from anyone in there? Someone got your back? I gotta worry about you in a place like that, Amber. You might think you're tough, but I know that shit takes a toll on you. My little poet, ha ha. Let me know how you're doing on the inside some, too. My own, well I sort of shut that door for a while. I don't know what else to do.
My mom found out where I was down here last week. Fucking Uncle Jim has a big fucking mouth. She called the shop and told me she wouldn't report me as long as I gave Hal his fucking thing back by the end of the month. Ha fucking ha. They deserve each other, man. Anyway, since I don't have the fucking thing, I don't know what's going to happen yet. I wish I was 18 so bad. I just got to try to hold out until then. Four more years of scrappin.
Well, I gotta get going. Steve keeps looking at me and I know I been on a long lunch. I'm sitting on the picnic table behind the shop. It's the only shade outside the shop, one palm tree over the table. Don't let them kid you about Florida being stretches of beach, man, it's all strip malls.
Amber, take care of yourself. I am thinking of you and I'm glad you wrote. I don't hold no grudges right now, because my mind, it don't go there anymore. Here's to both of our futures, and getting out of this fucking hell hole of being minors.
Hugs,
Brad
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