The Long Goodbye - Personal Essay Excerpt

Later still, when I was dancing on a platform in my black dress, I saw him watching me from the bar.

He looked at me longingly, like when you watch home videos of someone you love who’s dead. He looked like he wanted to be next to me but that he couldn't do it; that it would be bridging an impossible gap. I acted like I didn't notice him staring, I laughed with my girlfriends about something I don't remember.

I glanced down at my purple shoes, and when I looked back to see if he was still watching me, he'd gone.

As he got closer, I saw the distraught look in his eyes.
There are moments when he looks at me and I can see his primordial cells. He is lost and scared but the fragility and the strength, compounded, hold each other in the darkness.

He loves me so much that I have burnt through him and replaced all else.

Like Father Part Eight

Sometimes, you need music to write to.

"I was sitting with your brother having breakfast and he says, 'Dad, why are you wearing that ratty jean vest?' and I said, 'What gave you the impression I give a fuck what you think?'"

I admire my father.

"Am I a bad daughter, Dad?"

"Are you crazy?" he asks.

Maybe.

I drink a soy latte and he eats a pumpkin muffin. We go to Starbucks because the old Scottish woman who usually guards the patio is gone tonight. My father stopped speaking to her when she started scolding him for being married four times.

"Listen, who you fall in love with, who you love, who you like, who you like a lot, that's a deeply personal choice," he tells me.

"I know I'm right. I know my instincts are special."

"It's your ass up the flag pole. The higher up you get on that flag pole, the bigger the target is. It's your life."

I laugh.

"Don't laugh. Listen. You have to assume that you are the sane one. That's the only way life is livable."

"I am sane, right?"

He looks at me like I'm crazy.

"It's your movie, baby."

"Yeah, until you have kids."

"No. It's my movie still, baby."

He laughs.

The flat finality of that spectacular confession led me up a staircase of thoughts and from their peak I couldn't find my way down.

Sympathy For The Devil

I met him three years ago at a Christmas party. We bumped into each other on the patio, smoking, me in a t-shirt and him in a leather jacket. He looked like James Dean. We were both freezing.

I was incredibly drunk so I don’t remember what we said to each other. I only remember his first questions to me.

“What do you do?” he asked.

“I’m an actress,” I said.

“Are you a good actress?”

“I guess you’ll have to wait and see.”

I bummed a cigarette from him and left.

It’s always funny, the first picture you minds eye takes, of someone who will mean something to you. For years we’d float in and out of each other’s life, sometimes happily, sometimes not. I wasn’t ready for him when we first met. To deal with how he made me feel, I’d get drunk and be reckless with his heart.

On a date where I ended up so drunk that I couldn’t see I asked him what his birthday was.

“Valentines day.”

“No!”

“What?”

“That’s mine! I’ve never met anyone with the same birthday!”

He thought it was special, too.

“Do you think we’d get along if we weren’t actors?” I asked him years later.

“I kind of think we’d be married. We have the same birthday.”

Then he shrugged.

...

On our third first date that night at a bar across the street from where he lives, he spoke about religion, life and death in sweeping ideas and I felt like I could drown in him.

When he kissed me, I thought of Leonard Cohen as every breath we drew was hallelujah.
“I really like you,” I told him.

I wasn’t lying. There was an intoxicating seriousness to him, a seriousness that would soon permeate us, one that I couldn’t ignore. He shook me to my shadow.

As we fell asleep, we watched his “Life On Mars” DVD, the original, better British version. In the pilot, the main character finds himself magically transported into 1973 after his girlfriend’s kidnap and murder. He spends the whole episode running around the 70s thinking everyone’s tricking him, asking how this could happen, wondering how his life took this turn, utterly fucked in bellbottoms.

In his arms, I could relate.

The truth is, I knew I loved him. The more time I spent with him the more I felt things changing in me.

...

Since we’ve started seeing each other I don’t eat much and I can’t sleep solidly.

One night, we were walking to one his concerts, not speaking. Early on, I wanted our silences to be comfortable, but they were not, not for me.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked him.

“That I can’t see. I only have one contact in.”

“I have extra contacts in my purse.”

“What’s your prescription?”

“-1.75 in my left eye and -3.50 in my right.”

“No way.”

“Why?”

“That’s mine.”

I took that to mean we see things the same way.

Black Sheep - A Novel Excerpt

My next few memories are all identical, my father hurling his beliefs about politics; about God; about the price of shoes; on unsuspecting victims, defending himself against some imagined slight.

“Don’t you piss in my ear and tell me it’s raining!”

In every situation, I’d stare at my patent-leathers, waiting until he finished. Sometimes he’d ask, do you want me to tell you why I did that? I would say no, even if I did. Then he would answer, because it’s not your job to tell people what they want to hear. I asked, who’s job is it, then?

Apparently, I’d misunderstood him completely.

One time, we were eating lunch near a fountain in a park.

“Turn your head,” he told me. I did. I heard him unzip his jeans and the sound of a strong stream of urine landing against the marble fountain.

“Sir, what are you doing?”

“What do you think I’m doing?”

“You’re going to have to come with me.”


I turned and watched my father give the policeman this speech.

“Is it part of the police department to harass me when this city is a flagrant vice capital of the world? This city is famous for it’s gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, Anarchists, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians, all of whom are only too well protected by the graft. If you have a moment, I shall endeavor to discuss the crime problem with you, but don’t make the mistake of bothering me.”

His dick was still in his hand.

“You can’t piss on public property.”

He zipped up, took my hand and said, quite proudly, “Showed him.”

I laughed until I cried all the way home.

One day, I realized he’d stole that whole speech from Confederacy of Dunces. I don’t remember when I began recognize the breadth of his lies, the scope of his indiscretions. Nothing he did came from him. You got the feeling everything, even how he loved you, was stolen from somewhere.

Last night, I awoke to him tap-dancing on my ceiling.

“Dad?”

“Just doing my cardio.”


Then he winked and I turned around, pissed, trying to show him I was sleeping. Of course, my father has interpreted death not as a great sleep, but the final awakening.

Yeah, I won’t lie. Things aren’t great.

Black Sheep - A Novel Excerpt

“So, what do we do today?” he asks.

“You tell me.”

Asking him that feels like an admission, an acknowledgment of a lie.

I want to ask my Dad what to do. He can hear us. He does not sleep. He is not dead. I angle my face away from Matt’s. “I want to talk to those women who said they were married to him. Is that stupid?”

He waits until I look at him again.

“Marla, you know the answer to that.”

“Why do you think Dad hid everything from us?”

Eventually, the shepherd must slaughter his sheep.

“I don’t know. Because he was ashamed of himself? Because he was an asshole?”

Looking at my brother, I feel my blood being squeezed out, drop by drop.

Now, the people I love are like celebrities to me, surrounded by rumor and fanfare. Parts of my past come forth like scenes. Nostalgia obliterates reality but this dialogue feels realer than real. My mother lives on a movielot. I want my father’s autograph. I want my brother’s picture.

“I have a lot of questions about his family. Do you think this woman would be a good start?”

“Maybe. It’s hard to tell with people that knew you when you were a younger you.”


“What does that mean?” I tear my nail almost down to the quick.