Marengo Apartments

When I was a little kid my mom lived in this rooftop apartment on Marengo Street in Pasadena.  But rooftop apartment isn’t quite the right description – it wasn’t an open-air bar atop a fancy hotel.  It was this building:

  

My dad had custody of me during the week, letting my mom have me for the weekends. This apartment was the first and best location for my mom weekends.  I was still crazy about her and she wasn’t out of control yet.  She was an alcoholic but she managed to keep the same part time job for years.  In her later years she became a hoarder; but at the apartment on Marengo she was just a scatter-brained collector with a perfect eye trained towards trash and cheap stuff that was beautiful.  In this apartment, the vintage children’s books weren’t on the floor and soaked in cat pee like they were in her last apartment, and the old toys weren’t mixed in with clothes she never wore in the bedroom she couldn’t open the door to get into (she opened it just enough to push a new acquisition in there and then closed it up again).  she had trunks and toy chests and glass-fronted shelves for her tin wind-up toys and spinning tops, Little Golden Books,  small vases full of cat's eye marbles and some of her more interesting jewelry and Beatles stuff.  Even her little collection of pigeon wings was kept tidy, each wing wrapped in tissue paper and stored in a special little trinkets box I knew to stay away from, since the wings grossed me out. 

There was a Murphy bed in the little living room and during the four or five years she was there, she had two different people stay with her (for long short terms), sleeping on that hideawy bed.  The first was Bill.   

Mom’s two best friends were named Bill, and to distinguish between them in conversation we called them Old Bill and Young Bill; the names stuck even when Young Bill wasn’t a part of our life anymore and Old Bill became such a part of our lives he spent his last months in mom’s apartment, dying from cancer, finally giving up the ghost on the bed in the room that ended up being too full of stuff to enter.  For a while I tried renaming Old Bill “Cat” Bill, out of decorum, but it never took and he liked his old nickname the best, anyway.   

It was young Bill who lived with mom for awhile at the Marengo apartment; it’s hard to describe him.  If I’d led a more sheltered life and was some Ohio Writer’s Workshop-trained novelist describing him, I’d say he was artistic.  And it’d be true:  he was an artist.  But I wish I could dissect that term and explain just what he was like.  He was still in the closet.  He was from a slightly rich family, and lived with his mom, who sounds like she was the stereotype of a mom living with her artistic closeted son – she was indulgent but clueless and was famous for her red lipstick, at least as a detail in her son’s few descriptions of her.  He wore the same clothes every day – a dingy long sleeved that always smelled freshly laundered (but it must have been more than one shirt?), corduroy pants and Birkenstocks with socks.  This uniform of his sounds really obnoxious when I write it down -- he sounds like some aggressively mellow hippie, but that's not how it was -- on him, this outfit looked just like the natural second skin of a smart, often unkind, bipolar young man.  I LOVED when he lived with us, as I loved his visits when he still lived with his mom.  There was a Denny’s-like 24-hour restaurant down the block from mom's apartment, where she used to meet up with him often during the week (even going there just to look for him sometimes when she couldn't get him on the phone, often finding him there). Every once in a while, before he lived with us, we’d also go meet up with him there on a weekend, like at midnight – or maybe it was 9 pm for all I knew, but it felt exciting and secret as something that could only occur at the witching hour.

their restaurant

 

A series of photos mom took of Young Bill

I guess he stopped staying there when my mom’s boyfriend David moved in.  David was homeless when mom met him – he was a drunk Vietnam vet who mom realized had embellished his tour of duty once -- it was before there was an internet – she was reading some nonfiction about the war, a pet subject of hers, when she accidentally found some information about the date of a specific battle that contradicted the timeline he used in his stories of abjection.   

Young Bill would have left the building if there was any kid around other than me – he was a sourpuss about the mainstream, including families and children – but he and I were very close and he sometimes found a way to express his fondness for me, like the time we sat on the ground in front of a grocery store and he put quarters in the same vending machine until I got the toy I wanted.  Not so with David – I thing he was ashamed of being a do-nothing drunk liar so he kept to himself when I was around, though my dad will attest to the fact that David perked up whenever dad picked me up and we were heading out the door – he’d always say the same thing in the same way, ‘you come back now, y’hear?’  It must’ve been some personal joke of his – he sounded like a happy southerner when he said it, and he wasn’t either of those things.  There was nothing wrong with him, though.  I liked him pretty well.  He was handsome and the tv-watching silence between us was companionable enough.

Then here’s what happened.  My mom set fire to the top story of the apartment building.  She'd always had tons of these catholic saint-decorated candles she kept lit in the bathroom all night.  Now there are slightly different versions of the story – the one she told most was that the wind blew the candles over and set fire to the curtains, but there was also mention of David getting up to pee in the middle of the night and knocking them over without realizing it at the time.  I think this story of her creating a cover story for him is the real cover story.  I think she did it herself, on accident probably, in one of many devastating moments of unadulterated carelessness.

Well, the fire was a practically unbearable tragedy for her for a long time.  Old Bill took her to Catalina Island for a few days right after the fire, a place I’ve never been to though it’s so close  -- I gather it was an occasional sanctuary for her back when Old Bill still had money to indulge her like that.

I really had loved that apartment.  It was only her and one other apartment on that floor, and the two places were so separate from the rest of the building, like a tugboat wheelhouse.  

The roof was all covered in tar paper, with turbines and vents and pipes all exposed -- we were not supposed to be walking around up there, and had to freeze for a moment whenever we heard someone walking up the stairs, in case it was one of the people who told on mom to the landlord.  There was more than one pink smoggy sunsetted night when we were just up there on the roof,  blowing bubbles or something dopey like that, just enjoying the night.

I used to always go back in circles to the same places from my past.  I lived in the same apartment building in Hollywood twice, once in my roaring twenties and the other time in my staid early thirties with my husband.  That’s the most extreme case of me circling back, but I dream all the time about revisiting the same places – I dream of moving back to Olympia or Philadelphia all the time, almost nightly in fact, and I sometimes tour my old dwellings.  I work far from home but close to where I used to live for a couple years in my early twenties, and I’ve gotten off the freeway to drive past that old apartment once or twice.  I have driven past my first childhood home on Wagner Street several times over the years, sometimes taking pictures of it -- I used to imagine being able to buy it and live there again.

the wagner street house

inside the wagner street house 

Once, when I was apartment-hunting, I even went to look at place in the Marengo apartment building.  I used to have such a self-mocking sense of humor, and thought to myself when I was standing there in that old familiar hallway next to the wall of mailslots:  wouldn't it be weird if I moved in there and ended up starting a fire as well?    

For years I’ve gone out of my way to drive past that building when I'm in the neighborhood.  I used to look at it and feel wistful about my childhood, mixed with a near-obsession over how my mom had marked me for doom so early on – she’d given me absolutely blissful nights of staying up all hours watching late night shows, eating oranges and popcorn, with her unhappy men sitting with us sometimes, me feeling like the luckiest daughter in the world, just getting to stay up late with her.  Then she’d burned it down.

I've been driving past it almost nightly on my way home from work these nights since she'd died, just to make myself a little sad. I feel the wholeness of her death when I pass by the building, and I feel that same old anger at her for her careless life.  Then I feel sorry for her for this same carelessness. 

 

 

marengo rooftop

family

She was mine and I was hers

Gambled hard and split the purse

a patient and her patient nurse

She was mine and I was hers.

"Jesus Loves Me"/"What Fresh Hell is This?"

my current favorite photo of my mother jill

My mom died from a heart attack on Monday morning, much to my surprise.  She was overindulgent, compulsive, impulsive and took a lot of pride in being the person to appreciate the peculiar beauty of objects like old clothes, toys (vintage, dumpster-dived, bought at the 99 Cents Store, or bought brand new and for a fair amount of money she should have used to buy food instead), jewelry, blank books, old aprons and tin plates with chipped enamel surfaces.  One of her last texts to me was:

Reading kate braverman...my favourite poet...I think my poetry was good.  couldn't write a poem to save my life...what do I want to write about...doll suitcases, blue with silver stars, plaid inside...circa 1954.

With all this appreciation for objects and the temporary thrill of discovering them, she loved buying and making me gifts, which she gave to me a million at a time -- I have boxes full of things from her that now seem like historical artifacts.  I have  bookshelves double-shelved with books from her, boxes of jewelry and collage books she made for me, and letters with their envelopes stuffed full of clip art and photos of her cats.  I was looking through some of her old letters and poems she'd sent me and I found this one that is a real fucking kick in the stomach because of her imagining her death, but it's also comforting because at the time she wrote it, she was still devoted to being a rebel:  she supported Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War, and threw herself whole-hog into each counterculture movement I dove into in my teens -- Goth, Heavy Metal and finally, Punk.  She'd been raised Catholic so of course she renounced organized religion, but you could tell she was really drawn to the idea of being saved and watched over by God and Jesus.  At the time she wrote this poem, I remember being annoyed by it, because I couldn't understand her nostalgia for religion, having not been raised religiously myself, and having been badly bullied by Christians in high school for dressing like a 'devil worshiper.'  
She finally stopped trying to be cool and tough in the last decade and got really involved in a church -- she was surrounded by members from her church as she died, which I am glad of, for her:

My Recent Health

Some of you are familiar with my old punk rock war story of me getting jumped by a bunch of skinheads and krusty punx after my first band's first gig.  I was 16, and as a teenager I was overflowing with creative energy and also a sense of everything still being new; even when something was awful, it was an intriguing new experience I wanted to examine with a feverish intensity.  So I wrote and wrote and wrote about the attack.  I did a zine regularly for years and at least 3 issues of it are practically exclusively prose and lyrics, and comics, and clip art, relating to my experience of being attacked.

Other than that particular life-changing experience, though,  I tend not to record the big events in my life.  I didn't really write in any diary, fiction or essay format about living in my first roommate-free apartment, or my first heart surgery, my wedding, the birth of my son, my second heart surgery, the month or so I spent of rehab with family in Florida.  I bring blank journals along to write down the experiences but then it doesn't seem like -- I don't know -- I guess it just seems like the event is so major there's no need to record thoughts for posterity, and to write about my feelings is such a secondary goal to actually trying to survive, at least in the case of my medical issues.

I'm processing this surgery differently though.  I had a 3rd heart surgery on the 18th or 19th of March.  As I get to be older, still maintaning a counterculture ethos predicated on bravely being oneself (in  short-hand I refer to this belief system as still being punk rock).  I'm 37.  I'm a young woman but I've learned a lot and I want to be of service as a reference for younger people if it's ever useful.  An example is this 25 year old home health care nurse who comes to check my INR levels (how thick or thin my blood is  --- an important detail of my recovery).  She's good at her job and is clearly intelligent and funny but she always undercuts her worth with self-deprecating jokes.  It's not like I'm thinking to myself "Dude, stop making jokes at your own expense, it's gonna ruin your chance at happiness."  I think a person who teases themselves a little is usually a fun person to shoot the breeze with because it's a sign of a sense of humor.  At the same time, it is a sign of a lack of confidence, and when I brought that up to her the other day she was like "Oh yeah, I TOTALLY lack confidence."  Learning how great she is is, of course, her own journey, but I want to be able to share what I've learned as someone older than her, to let her know that that lack of confidence is entirely unwarranted.

That was the long way of illustrating how and why I feel the need to be very vocal about this most recent surgery.  I want to be of service in sharing my experiences if it's helpful to anyone else (and also just for my own emotional healing process).  In the hospital I used the voice recognition feature of my phone to stay in touch through emails and texts and to write a lot of my experiences as lengthy Facebook posts, and it felt amazing to be communicating.  I was in a tremendous amount of pain for weeks and it really helped me, psychologically, being able to reach out to people online.  I couldn't use voice recognition to work on this blog though, and my preference is to keep my Facebook posts rather succinct and write all my longer thoughts on here.  So, now that I have enough stamina to sit upright at my computer (at least for a while), I'm back here writing.  

This is a post I left on Facebook recently that I feel is an important footnote ... or something... to my healing process:  

***********

April 8 at 10:41am ·

Dear Women: the sad truth is that, at some point, you may have to strongly advocate for yourself even in a life or death situation. I'm still processing what inept and sexist paramedics took me to the hospital the night my aneurysm almost exploded, or whatever it is that was happening (I'm still unclear). They wasted precious time insinuating that I was having a panic attack, then more time being like "so you're sure you really want to go to the hospital," and i had to pretty much pretend that i was a persistent hypochondriac who wouldn't let up until they took me to the hospital, where, presumably, it'd end up being a panic attack. in the ambulance, when they were calling in to the hospital, they spoke of me as though I were a ridiculous, stubborn pain in the ass. When asked by the hospital over the radio how much I weighed, the paramedic said 145, and I said 190, and he said, "I was trying to be generous" -- i believe my weight is an important thing for doctors to know when it comes to knowing what kind of dosages i need, so i didn't really need the 'compliment' that i was 40 lbs lighter than i am. But i just had to keep pretending to be the nagging woman who insisted on the trip to the hospital. Advocating takes many forms. just do what you need to do to get what you need for your life and don't get worn down by people who don't give a shit about you. you matter.
**************

This was an important thing to share within my Facebook community because, well, shit, what a prime example of how a person really needs to save their own life sometimes.  A lot of things might get in the way of your health.  Usually money, unfortunately.  But sometimes, for women, it's just garden variety sexism that could lead to a full on fucking fatality.  

Here is some else of what I shared on Facebook when I was unable to write on my blog, chronologically.  Here is a series of photos I took of myself from my hospital bed that I posted to Facebook.  

this is photo is awful quality  but I sort of dig it like that.  My husband took it of me on March 20, when I was still in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).  

ICU selfie, March 21

and:  

March 23.



When I moved out of ICU to the less urgent cardiac care floor, I wanted to capture the stillness of a night by myself in a hospital bed, being able to see a vaguely surreal bit of the outside world.  this is the nighttime view from out my hospital room's window:

I took this on March 26.  The lights are coming from the hospital rooms of people convelescing, like me, in the adjacent hospital wing.

March 27




This one was taken on March 28 with the caption "It Sits."  I did feel more like an it than a she sometimes, not necessarily in a bad way, just that I was an entity that people were working to fix and maintain:

March 28:

 And so on, daily.

I have been at home from the hospital for a couple weeks-ish and this is a photo of a good saturday afternoon with my amazing son:

another thing I posted to Facebook that feels like a significant thought to me (april 4) is that cynicism was an utter waste of time.  There is no point in thinking of life sarcastically.  You may hate it, but hate it thoughtfully, and if you have the brain chemistry or luck or strength to be able to love life, that shouldn't be done sarcastically either.

***********

I'm still working to grasp the order of recent past events.  I think it was the second week of March, I got a sudden back pain that felt unusual.  I went to work with it and then later in the week I went to urgent care -- they help with pain management there, not diagnosis, so the doctor there can't be faulted with sending me home with some medication to deal with the pain.  I spent Thursday and Friday home on my back, trying to get better.  I went back to work that Monday with a still very sore back.  After work, I stopped in at my beloved South Pasadena Library and while I was walking around, I got a pain I knew was something awful, but I still acted natural, stood in the check out line, drove home at a normal speed, then sort of exploded in pain as soon as I got home, let my husband know I thought I was having a heart attack.  He started driving me to the Cedars Sinai Emergency Room, which is my hospital, but it was too urgent, so we went back home and called the ambulance.  As described above in my "Dear Women" piece, the paramedics were beyond inept.  The nearest emergency room was in Alhambra Hospital.  It's not a good place to get stuck at.  I was assured that it wasn't my heart, and then, that it was definitely my heart and that I had an aneurysm that was ready to burst and kill me very soon.  The young and nice but dumb young man who was trying to find a hospital bed for me elsewhere (since the doctor at Alhambra didn't want anything to do with me) was calling hospitals and saying "We have a young woman here who has a very serious situation with an aneurysm and needs to be operated on immediately."  I heard him make this call to a few different hospitals, each time sounding more dire.  Patient care etiquette should dictate that you don't let the patient overhear you saying over and over (to paraphrase), "There's a woman here who is about to die -- do you have an available bed for her?"  It was one of those gallows humor moments in life.  

What took the cake, as far as gallows humor goes, was the fact that the first available bed they found for me was at the county hospital.  I don't have the words or clarity to describe how horrible it was to be at that hospital for as long as I was (over a week, I think), but I will tell you with certainty that I would be dead if my husband hadn't done everything in his power to finally secure a bed for me at Cedars Sinai hospital.  

To explain, the back pain had been a symptom of a serious thoracic aneurysm I had.

Anyway, that's all I want to write for now, but I know I want to describe this experience and the revelations that went with it and the different kinds of pain, for many posts, the way I did with my old punk rock injuries when I was still a passionate teenager and not someone so aware of the very real need to keep one's shit together and try to live as strongly and as best as possible.

LEFT BEHIND BEERS

This is a Budweiser can in the rafters in my garage

This Oly and the mayonnaise jar lids were in the garage in the house where I lived in 1999-2000

(this was also in that same garage)

Fairness Poem

Sometimes my body feels like a rattrap. 

I can feel some small animal, hardly a morsel, sickly and slowing down inside my skeleton. 

Every day for a year and a half straight I pondered

the meaning

of every inconvenience.

Was a flat tire a sign that I shouldn’t leave the house?  I walked everywhere. 

I was always seeing something I thought I should write down –

a violent protest to end the war, a cop throwing his cigarette butt

on the lush green grass of a public park.  Eventually,

I tried to help homeless men and women and even children

decipher a meaning to life. I approached it like a math problem:

this one person has to suffer enough to cover a sadness deficit

so some other guy and his girl can live in a decent apartment

and both own cars.

You shouldn’t describe the meaning of life to a sick person

unless you are also sick. 

My body is a rattrap but I feel okay, all in all. 

I feel better when there’s so much noise I can’t hear that last disappointed moment.

I’m grateful for friends and for my health.

Native Angeleno

Framed beneath the smoggy, pink sunset,

the gray frankness of lonesome smoggy streets

lets Angelenos know that the city is a heartbreaker.

Good and bad and mean and nice and happy and sad.

Why does there have to be so many people?

How can there ever be enough attention

for each of us?

Dear Native Angelenos,

I have no siblings.

Can we be brothers and sisters?

Do you like me?

Am I pretty?

I like dangerous streets 

and safe ones,

too.  

I like attention but I also like being ignored.