sweetheart redux

27. Molly disliked most of the people she called “normal.”  So much indifference and stupidity, such unthinking conformity to norms, it disgusted and scared her.  That's how she was raised, by parents who felt the same way felt about normal people.  But, she also had problems with the people she nicknamed "artists," people like her who rejected religion and mass-produced ideals and traditional gender roles.  The problem she saw with most of these fellow artists was a lack of passion.  There was no fight in them, like how liberal politicians always let themselves be bullied by conservatives.  Molly responded to the world as though making bullies aware that she could not be taken advantage of, and commonplace unfairnesses were experienced as personal affronts not to be accepted.  It turned out that Vivienne and Tess were unfairness vigilantes too.  When one of the two EMT's who came to pick up Rosie's body was hoisting her up by the shoulders ...

26. Molly called the hotel room and reached George.  "Oh goodness, Molly, you sound so horrible, are you okay.  What happened?" Rosie happened into this world roughly five years later than Beth but looked much older than Beth, because of how much time she spent in the sun, and her bad genetic luck, her hair gone prematurely gray by her mid-thirties.  The one conversation she and Vivienne had was mostly about movies.  Rosie had been drunk.  "Whenever a normal person (she meant someone who wasn't homelessly like herself) tries making acquaintances with me, it always makes me think of watching Midnight Cowboy; you now that movie?”  "Mmm hmmm, it's a good one.  I used to go around telling people it was one of my favorites, actually, but really I love a happy ending.  Now that sadness is passé, I can be honest, I can say how much I like romantic comedies and children's films."  Vivienne took for granted that Rosie understood this type ...

photo by Nicolas Sage photography When I was in sixth grade (in the early nineties), me and my mom bought a book called Weetzie Bat about a teenaged punk girl growing up in L.A., and I read it straight through, crying when I finished it, from exhilaration and the relief at having found such a blueprint for the person I wanted to become.  It really did change my life, both by helping me define a sense of aesthetics (I LOVED the title character’s punk-whimsical fashion) and by giving me a more positive outlook and the idea that I could and would lead a charmed life.  I did end up leading a charmed life after reading that book, and a lot of it was thanks to the author Francesca Lia Block, who graced my fan letters with prompt and engaged responses, and who, when I ended up being friends with her through a mutual friend a couple years later, would invite me to the readings and events that would make my month, or sometimes my year.  Over the years we lost touch, as hap...

25. When Tess called Molly and told her about the homeless woman whose description in some ways resembled Beth, the first emotion to wash over her, before hopefulness that her mom was locatable, way joy that a girl her age was calling her.  Then they made plans to meet in the hotel lobby in half an hour.  Together, they would find Rosie, and Molly would identify her as Beth.  *** "Where did it go?  That yester glow? When we could feel The wheels of life turn our way? Yesterme Yesterou Yesterday." George could imagine Beth living on the street, under a bridge, two different ways.  He could imagine her starving to death, growing dizzy in the heat, in -- what outfit would she have chosen?  But he could imagine a converse scenario that involved her experiencing her surroundings the intense way children usually do, fully interested in the sensory experience of a thing; she could be sitting blocks away from him, kee...