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...

a young Liz Lemon  In a further dissection of my obsession with plotlines and constant various forms of entertainment, I have just got to say holy shit, what a bummer  about last night’s NBC primetime line up of the final episode of 30 Rock and 2 new episodes of the Finale season of The Office.   I HATE when stories I like come to an end.  It makes me so nervous to get to the end of things, sometimes, that it’s like a physical thing; I got a nervous stomach ache shortly before these 2 ending shows that I’ve loved for years came on last night, and I wanted to ask my husband if we could not watch them, but I was brave (how crazy to use that word in reference to watching sitcoms!) and watched them anyway, and thanks to that, today I’m fixating on the passage of time all day and how it’s impossible to time-travel, how I’m getting inexorably older every second, etc. – I was all excited to do my blog this morning and I wanted to send interview requests to Davi...

24. This was when the two girls were killing time together in the hotel room, waiting until it was time to go find Beth at the coffeehouse.  Richard, George and Molly had come back to the hotel room after an hour of unsuccessfully losing themselves in sight-seeing, and had found a note from Tess about Tim's theory that Beth/Vivienne might be at the coffeehouse that night, and that Molly would come back in a couple hours, hopefully with Beth in tow.  Soon the two girls were walking down the block to the Black Cat Coffeehouse, and Molly was thinking to herself, "Something big is about to happen."  But Vivienne was only herself, a 36-year-old, dark-haired, too thin woman, a person who always meant well in her heart of hearts but who sometimes acted coldly, disbelieving her own rotten actions all the while she performed them.  When Molly saw Vivienne, who was just a stranger after all, she said, "Excuse me, " and already starting to cry, ran out of the cof...

23. While waiting for nighttime, Tess and Molly sat in the hotel room smoking pot and bonding over the fact that they dreamed similar dreams.  Richard and George were downstairs, drinking in the hotel's bar. "I always dream about peeing, and dramas occurring in bathroom lines at school and stuff like that.  I mean it!" The two girls were rolling with laughter side to side on their backs, Molly lying on the bed, and Tess on the floor, passing a strong joint back and forth between them. "That's' too funny!," Molly howled, "because I do too.  I have like the world's smallest bladder so I always have to pee when I'm asleep, and so yeah, just like you were saying, I dream that, like, I share a big house with all these other girls and all of us literally fight, like fist fight, over who gets to use the only toilet, and then the toilet overflows of course, and  that's  l the dramatic climax of the whole dream!" ...