The post Stuck In The Middle With You – a review appeared first on Laurustina.

If you’ve arrived here in search of more stories about Alice, the quickest link is THIS ONE .

The post just so you know appeared first on Laurustina.

This gift arrived last week – just in time for my birthday – and while you can’t fully appreciate its 3-D elements on the page, I suspect you can still imagine my delight.

[You can find more of June's art HERE.]

The post From June appeared first on Laurustina.

The clock reads 12:03. He’ll be home for lunch soon. She marks the page in her book and unfolds herself from the hideous couch, with its big blue flowers. She opens the shades of the single window, letting a faint beam of light into the dull gloom that is their apartment. They have lived here for a month now in this unfamiliar town, far enough away from home that no one has bothered to visit.

In the bathroom, she surveys her face. It’s bloated. Pregnancy pounds. She’s only in her sixth month, but her face has filled out something awful. Quickly, she applies concealer and a bit of lipstick. Lining her eyes makes them look a little less red. She slips out of her pjs and into the blue tent shirt that her mother bought. The old gray sweat pants still fit over her belly and she’s thankful for that.

In the kitchen she prepares his lunch the best she can. On a small plate, she arranges a turkey sandwich cut diagonally and a whole dill pickle. Beside it, a second plate holds five Saltine crackers fanned out beneath a bowl of Campbell’s Minestrone soup. She can’t cook, has never needed to, and now, with the wedding gift recipe books, she studies in the afternoons, planning fancy entrées that look so splendid on the page but inevitably become burnt glumpy messes by the time he returns from work each night.

She is thumbing through one of these recipe books when he comes in. Like a dog, she greets him tail wagging, desperate for affection and news from the world outside their small dark apartment. He pecks her cheek and rubs her belly briefly before moving into the kitchen to find his lunch. As he eats, she sits across from him, her elbows on the table and her chin in her palms, listening to stories about his day. These stories are peopled with friends she has not met, and littered with technical terms and military lingo she does not comprehend. Still, she listens, hungrily.

She shows him the new recipe, the one she is planning to cook tonight, and she asks for the checkbook so she can go to the grocery store. He tells her again that she should shop at the commissary on the base, but she won’t. She has not been back there since the first time, just a week after their wedding, when she dropped a gallon of milk at the checkout and everyone in the place froze, watching the white waterfall from the counter to the floor. She could not face that place ever again.

He tears out a single check and passes it across the table to her. Then he offers her half his pickle and promises to be home in time to help her cook dinner. She asks if they can take a walk in the evening, like her parents used to, holding hands and meandering through the park in the twilight. He says he’d like that. Then he puts his dishes in the sink, gives her a big hug and a brief kiss before heading out.

She stands in the doorway, her arms around her belly, watching him walking across the complex, seeing him stop at their mailbox. His back is to her as he peers into it and she is smiling at the still-fresh crease in his uniform. He turns back to her and shouts “Nothing yet” as he closes the box and walks away. He knows how badly she wants mail, how she craves the smallest gesture from family and friends, some sign that they have not abandoned her.

Back inside the apartment, she carefully prepares the grocery list, takes a leisurely shower and curls her hair. Going out, even to the grocery store is an event. She gathers her purse and keys and steps out into the sunlight. Before heading to the car, she walks over to check for mail once more. In the box is a single, envelope. She withdraws it and turns it over in her hand. The envelope is blank. No address, no postmark, no stamp. She tears the envelope open and pulls out its contents; a twenty-dollar bill and a neatly folded note. As she unfolds the note, her heart slams against her ribs.

Fill up the tank and go to your mother’s.

 I won’t be coming home.

This is how she was left for the first time, without warning or explanation. Subsequent departures were anticipated, half-expected, and subconsciously encouraged. She became very good at being left, and not so good at being loved.

[Originally posted on Lily White Intentions 07.07.2003]

The post The First Time (from the archives) appeared first on Laurustina.

I just came across this piece I wrote in 2005 which makes me desperately want to add another chapter to the manuscript. How can I have written 74,000 words and not told you about Ari? The last time I saw her was a couple of months before Ashlie (aka Alice) died. She came to Mo-town to visit and the three of us lunched together. There is much I could say, but perhaps it’s too late. In an effort to resist the urge to shove another story into an already over-crowded book, I am sharing the poem here. Let it not be said that I forget my friends.

I don’t begrudge Ari her shiny new vagina.
How could I while being so adoring?
when I wish to be so brave myself, in other
unimaginable ways.

And the Mr. remarks
that he finds The Poet’s gender snafu
simpler – more palatable
than that of our dear Italian broad’s

And I laugh when he says this
because of course he does
of course he finds
a yearning for manhood
more compelling – more logical
than its exact opposite
than Ari, in her tall shoes
and size-2-g-string
estrogen-flooded emotional state
exquisitely inky eyes
and wry wrists
her quirky bottom-lip-bitten mouth
and more delicate than her tough-bettie exterior
would ever divulge

Sometimes, strangers stare
when we walk, laughing, talking,
pretending to be oblivious
but we see them – Ari and I
and tho neither one of us ever mentions it
I bristle, razor-edged in her defense

yes, yes, stare motherfucker
if you are stricken by her beauty
her ever-intricate artistry
or the severity of her shoes

we all have
we all do

but if you dare to clock Ari
with a half-glance of horror
like a fearsome freak-show geek
then you should expect what you get
a great fuck-you in a glance
not from her, you understand,
because she doesn’t give a fuck
but from me – some secret, self-appointed protector

I don’t begrudge Ari her shiny new vagina.
How could I while being so adoring?
when I wish to be so brave myself,
in other…unimaginable ways.

The post her shiny new vagina; a poem appeared first on Laurustina.

A few years ago, I gave my father a fat stack of stories that I’d written about our family, hoping to connect with him by sharing a bit of myself. What I didn’t know for years after was the stories hurt him deeply, each one feeling like a condemnation when I had written them as love letters. This is one of those stories:

There’s this tiny alcove at the mechanic’s shop, with a garish gold recliner and a soggy box of National Geographics. I am actually delighted with the room and curled now into the recliner with both feet tucked beneath me while the mechanic changes my tires. His sweet, smelly golden retriever has been following me around since I arrived fifteen minutes ago, and now, he sits beside me like a fuzzy end table, mumbling an ancient tennis ball and practically purring while I scratch his head.

This is one of those moments when I am most my father’s daughter, content amid the wrenches, oil filters and battery cables.

I considered once, becoming a mechanic, even went so far as to sign up for shop classes at the community college, but my father dissuaded me, fearing I would hate it. He was wrong of course, because despite his full understanding of the mechanic’s lot in life, he had minimal (at best) understanding of his precocious second child.

I like to know what makes things go.

When I was a kid, I used to take things apart and put them back together again; clocks, lawn sprinklers, my Pop’s 8-track tape deck. I loved the rush of opening a thing up, investigating its insides, and putting it back together again properly so it seemed as if I’d never opened it up at all. I loved socket wrenches madly, that little sound they make and the way bits slip into place. I loved walking up and down the aisles of Grand Auto, with its scented cardboard pine trees, leather steering-wheel covers and bright orange boxes bearing some secret mechanics-only code.

I’ll need a G-13849 air filter for my Bug-Eyed Sprite, please.

I always wanted to be there in the garage, right beside him, handing him tools and hanging on every word of his shop-talk explanations. I always wanted to be on that roller beside him, looking up at the underside of whatever car he was tinkering with at the moment. More often than not though, I was sent out to play with my sisters. More often than not, I was as most children are, an annoyance in the holy sanctuary of the mechanic’s garage.

Why don’t you girls run on down to the park?

Not long ago, my baby sister told me that Dad said, as a child, I constantly demanded to be held. When she told me this, I had a flash of one of those ancient memories, and as I write about it now, from the damp armchair in the alcove of my new mechanic’s shop, that sensory memory comes again.

My father’s shoulder is freckled with fat orange spots and he has two small moles there, the pale, raised kind that look like you should be able to pluck them right off. He wears these skinny-strapped tank tops and I mumble the fabric or rub it between my fingers until it curls up around itself like a girl’s spaghetti strap. His blondish-red beard brushes against my skin and I squirm and squeal from the tickle of it. His smell is a mix of salt, chlorine summers and elbow grease. I love this perch upon my father’s shoulder. I can see the world from up here and it is insistently engaging.

Something small breaks in me when I realize that most likely that he held me for lack of anywhere better to put me, that he picked me up with a sigh of resignation because nothing else would console his clinging second child.

For most of my life, I have been acutely aware of the distance between my father and I. Up into my mid-twenties, I made clumsy attempts to engage him, each one failing more than the one, which proceeded it. Looking back, I understand how I must have mystified him. 

I no longer jump up and down in an effort to get his attention. I no longer tug at his pant-leg with chubby fingers, begging to be lifted up onto his shoulder. Instead, I make small gestures. Keep my distance. Follow his lead.

Sitting now in the damp, golden chair, in the alcove of the new mechanic’s shop, while he changes my tires, I forgive my father his shortcomings and forgive myself for being the whiny little girl who is still, all too often, begging to be held. 

The post I Like To Know What Makes Things Go appeared first on Laurustina.

I’ve been twiddling my thumbs this week, waiting for the beta-readers to finish their beta-reading so I can get back to the revisions on the book. In the meantime, a new story bloomed and I dove in head-first, hoping it would keep me from obsessively checking my e-mail, awaiting feedback. That said, here’s a sneak peak at the new project, tentatively titled “Dancing The Macarena With Jesus“. It is, of course, a super-rough draft so please keep that in mind as you go.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

“Is he asleep?”

I put down Jane Austin, grab the lower bar of the top bunk and swing up from beneath it. My best friend Lex has his face buried into the pillow and his shoulders rise and fall rhythmically.

I swing around towards my dads, huddled in the doorway, and give them the thumbs-up.

“We’re having popcorn with John Stewart” my dad Gage says, “Do you want to join us?”

It’s a silly question. Of course I do. Up after ten on a school-night is something that’s rarely allowed. It’s been that kind of week though, where things are so horrible that all the little rules just fall away.

On my way into the living room, I pass the big window that looks out on the grape arbor which separates our house from Lex’s. The windows on the other side of the arbor are unusually dark. Lex’s mom Anita always leaves on a light near the stained glass window so the fat grapes and flighty birds give off a cozy glow. I wish one of my dads would go next door and switch that light on so I could at least pretend for the moment that everything was ok.

She’s been gone for three days now and I keep expecting her to show up at the front door or toss one of the pebbles from her garden at my window to let Lex know it’s time to go home. But she’s not coming back. It was an aneurysm, some kind of big bubble that just burst in her brain. She was right there in her office when it happened.

My dad Gage works at the university too and he was one of the first people they called. He came and got Lex and I out of school. We didn’t get to see her though. They’d already taken her body away. We’ll get to see her at the funeral on Monday but that’s it. She’s never coming home to turn on the light for the stained-glass birds and me.

“Come on Molly,” my dad Javier pushes me past the window and towards the couch. The Daily Show has already started, but Gage turns the sound off when Javier and I sit down.

“You think you’re ready to go back to school tomorrow?” he asks.

“No way. Lex needs me here.” I say.

“Javi is going to be here all day and you’ve got a math test. I know it’s rough and we’re all grieving, but I have to go back to work tomorrow and I think you should do the same.”

“Your dad’s right Mol, you can’t afford to get behind. Especially if you intend to help Lex catch up.”

“Little by little we’ve got to get back to normal.” Gage says.

Nothing is normal.

And it’s not ever going to be.

The only good thing about going back to school tomorrow is that I’ll get to see Tony Martinez. I feel bad as soon as that thought comes to me, ’cause nothing should feel good right now. Still, I’ve missed sitting next to him in second and fourth period, missed how he always smiles and then lowers his eyes when he walks past our table in the cafeteria and most of all, missed that last moment of the day when we bump into one another in the crush of people trying to cram everything they can into their lockers before they make a dash for the front doors.

Our cat Fishface comes nosing around the edge of the couch and I reach down to scoop her up, grabbing her too quickly which results in clawing and hissing.

“You gotta go slow with her.” my dad Javier says, taking the cat from me and placing her gently in his lap.

She’s been blind for a couple of years now and we’re pretty sure she’s deaf too. Lex and I did a bunch of experiments to test her hearing last week, not the least of which was holding her under the piano and pounding on the keys. She was pissed about being held in one place, but the sound didn’t seem to faze her.

The sound in the television is back up now and both my dads are laughing.

John Stewart is interviewing one of those Rock Star scientists, Neil-something. I dig into the popcorn, which my dad Greg makes with real butter and brewer’s yeast instead of salt. Best popcorn ever.

When I get back to the bedroom, Lex is awake, his head lolling over the side of the bunk. Even after I turn out the light, I can see him, a dark shadow against the white sheets.

“I’ve got to go to school tomorrow.” I tell him, “but J-Dad will be here all day.”

“He doesn’t have to stay home for me.” Lex says.

“He wants to. You know how he gets. And anyway, Miss Lena will be all excited to take over choir practice. She’d swoop in on J-Dad’s job in a minute of the Good Rev. would let her.”

“If only she wasn’t tone-deaf.” Lex says, and I swear he laughs. It’s the first time in days that he’s done so.

We’re quiet for a bit, but still both awake in the darkness.

“Are you excited to see your grandma?” I ask.

“I haven’t seen her since I was ten. She doesn’t even know me. On the phone last nigh, she called me Tenesha like five times..”

“Your mom never told her?”

“I don’t think so. Last year, when she was talking about taking that trip to Atlanta, she said she was going to write Grandma Chavonne a letter, explaining everything. But then we didn’t end up going so I don’t think she sent it.”

“Do you want to come downstairs?” I ask.

“Ok” he says, and he rolls off the top bunk legs first, while I scoot back against the wall. We stare up at the underside of the bottom bunk. It’s too dark to see the crayon graffiti we’ve been doodling up there for the last ten years, but the little stars that were leftover from the glow-in-the-dark solar system on Lex’s bedroom ceiling are tacked up under the bunk at awkward intervals and they give off a comforting glow.

There’s this thing I should tell you about Lex. I don’t usually feel like it’s my place to say so and really it’s nobody’s business, but Lex is technically a girl. In his head and in his heart, and to anyone who knows him well, he’s a boy. Even in kindergarten, Mrs. Tobin had to keep pulling him out of the Boys line and making him stand with the girls. For me, it was never really a big deal, but some people don’t understand. I hate the idea that his grandmother, who is about to be his guardian, might be one of those people.

FishFace jumps up onto the bed and snuggles between us. I pet her slow so she doesn’t hiss at me. Lex turns onto his side, away from me and he starts to snore. Not loud, just enough that I know he’s asleep. Before I drift off, I remember to say my prayers.

“Dear God, I’m mad right now and I don’t really want to talk to you. I’m sorry if that’s sacrilegious, but I always try to be honest . Maybe tomorrow you could help me be a little less mad? That’s it for now. Amen.”

The post And now for something completely different … appeared first on Laurustina.

At this point in my revision process I’m supposed to be cutting words, not adding them, but last night I pounded out a rough version of a new chapter, one of those things that I’d toyed with writing originally but never got around to. I don’t know if it will stay in the book, but I thought I’d share it here because it amused me enough that I couldn’t quite keep it to myself. 

*     *     *     *     *

 “Mom taught us that if we cursed with a strong enough accent, we could get away with it. Seriously, you can say shite and feckin’ in front of the whole class and no one will notice, but one futher-mucker and the whole thing goes to hell.” Alice says, leaning between the front seats so she can be sure that Sophie hears her.

 Max snorts from the backseat beside Alice, but doesn’t look up from his GameBoy.

 “You taught them to curse with a Scottish accent?” Sophie asks, incredulous.

 “It was my Irving Welsh period,” I say, “and to be perfectly honest, I was tired of being called to the Principal’s office.”

We’re on our way to Columbia State Park a tiny ghost town in the foothills below the Sierra Nevada mountains. I may have grown up in the valley, but I was born in the foothills and driving through them on this late spring morning still feels a bit like coming home.

We stop off in Sonora to have a quick lunch with Ruby who works in the Memorial Chapel three blocks from the apartment where my first memories are stored. It’s another ten minutes to Columbia, the main street of which has been restored to it’s 1850s charm, It’s the kind of place that kids visit on school trips, and families stop off at on their summer vacation. For my family, it holds even a more personal nostalgia as the house my maternal grandparents lived in is two blocks up from Main St.

We arrive in Columbia to find the parking lot nearly empty. No school busses. No RVs. Not a minivan in sight.

 “Sweet” Max says, “it’s never this empty when we come here.”

 The four of us trudge up the slope from the parking lot to find Main Street deserted. It’s shops and exhibits are open but it appears we have the place to ourselves which is rare indeed.

Alice runs up the block, stopping now and then to read from the plaques outside the exhibits.

“Thaddeus Hildreth struck gold in these here hills in the Spring of 1850. Within the month, the tent and shanty town was home to several thousand miners, intent on finding their own fortune.”

She skips up to the next exhibit, a Chinese shop with a pickled duck in the window.

“The Chinese were the Mexicans of the 1850s,” she says, “hard-working cheap labor with super-tasty cuisine.”

“I think she’s paraphrasing.” I tell Sophie as we follow along behind her.

Max is already up at the Blacksmith’s shop, nosing around the displays and trinkets for sale. Alice reaches him first and pilfers a nail ring from a dish, slipping it on her finger as she dances back out into the street.

 “Then came the bars and brothels.” she says, with a sweep of her hand, “For what good is money if you haven’t whiskey and women to spend it on?”

 I drop a dollar beside the unattended cash register, and we move along to the end of the street, investigating the jailhouse, firehouse and my favorite tiny miner’s cabin where a plate of plastic peas has sat uneaten on a tin plate since before I was born.

 Coming down the other side of Main Street, we pass a couple of kitchy shops before we reach the Columbua House where Alice freezes on the plank sidewalk and gestures wildly to be sure she has our attention.

 “My mom is going to tell you to peek through the windows and look for the wooden high-chairs which her father built when her Grandpa was the cook at this restaurant. Whether you can see them or not, just nod and smile.” she tells Sophie.

 “I’m not gonna say a word.” I laugh.

“Well not now. I stole your thunder.” Alice says, grabbing Sophie’s arm and dragging her over to the window where they both peer inside then turn back to me with a smile and a nod.

 “You better watch yourselves or there’ll be no Candy Kitchen for you.” I point at them both.

 Mock horror spreads across Alice’s face. Then she turns and sprints up the street to where Max is already waiting outside the candy store. We all go in together and are immediately overwhelmed by the assortment of candies, every kind of sweetie you can imagine. For me though, it always comes down to the old-fashioned candy sticks and we leave with a bag full of them.

 At Sophie’s suggestion, we tuck into The Jack Douglass Saloon a few doors down and order two glasses of Chardonnay and a couple of sarsaparillas. Max wanders over to the old piano and starts to tinker while Alice steps outside to see if she can get finally get enough bars to send a text.

 “This is brilliant.” Sophie says.

“I never do things on a whim anymore.” I say.

“I moved to Australia on a whim once.”

“And then Japan?”

“Nae, I planned that one.”

“I ‘m jealous. I got as far as the coast of California and ended crawling back home.”

“But this is good.” she says, raising her glass and taking a long gulp.

I do the same.

“Well I had to separate Alice from that computer and telephone one way or another. This seemed less drastic than duct-taping her hands behind her back.”

“Does she have friends like ‘er? “

“There’s this support group she goes to, but everyone there is Max’s age or much older. I tried to get her to check out this group for queer teenagers, but she was scared, wouldn’t even give it a shot.”

Just then, Alice comes through the saloon door and pops up onto a stool at the opposite end of the bar.

“So what was the drinking age in 1850?” she asks the burly barkeep.

“You’d have still been old enough for another Sarsaparilla, little lady.” he says, uncapping the bottle and sliding it across the bar to her with a deep chuckle.

“It’s a shame, “ Sophie says in a low voice, “’cause she’s clearly social.”

“She spent a lot of time with this trans-boy Bret until his mother shipped him off to LA. And she’s reconnected with some of her friends from Santa Cruz, including the girl I feared would become the mother of my first grandchild well before I was ready for such things.”

“Are they datin’ again?”

“I think she and Mia are just girlie friends now, but I suppose it’s complicated.”

I finish my drink and go to sit beside Max on the bench at the piano. We slip into a rudimentary “Heart and Soul”. After a bit, Max begs off to the restroom and before I can abandon the bench, the barkeep comes over to accompany me. He’s too good, too fast and my fingers get all tangled up. Finally I take them off the keys and wave them in the air.

 “I give up!” I cry.

“Everyone does, eventually” he laughs, rolling off into a bit of ragtime which shakes a layer of dust off everything in the saloon. I return to Sophie who is on her second glass of Chardonnay. We watch Alice chatting up an elderly patron at the far end of the bar.

 “She pretends she doesn’t care what people think but it’s all bullshit.” I say, “She had this teacher back in Santa Cruz, a real hardass but he was fair and she respected that. A while back weeks ago she sent him an e-mail, telling him about her life now,,,lying her ass off about school stuff, but being totally open about her transition. Couple of days later, she gets an e-mail back, calls me up at work crying, but good crying. This conservative Christian Republican Drill Sargent sent back a thoughtful and supportive message. She was so proud of that e-mail. It’s hanging in a frame on her wall.”

“What I don’ get about most folk is, why be an arse when you kin just as easily be kind?”

Sophie takes a last swill from her glass and slides it across the bar.

On the way back to the car, Max and Alice climb up onto the massive rocks near the gold-panning shop and beg me to take their picture. They’ve been climbing these rocks every year since they could toddle and I have a fistful of snapshots with them and Eddie at various ages and levels. This time, they get all the way to the top.

 Max throws both fists into the air like a conquerer but Alice stands demurely, little purse clutched in her hand and the other shoulder pulled to her chin like a flirt. I wonder, as I snap the photo, when they’ll decide they’re too grown up to scamper up those rocks, which visit will be the last time I get to photograph them up there.

As they’re climbing down the back side of the rocks, we hear Alice shout, “Shite! I broke my feckin’ heel!”.

[You can learn more about Columbia State Historic Park here and here. You can learn more about Alice here.]

The post A Bit of Nostalgia and Road-Tripping appeared first on Laurustina.

It’s not that I haven’t been writing. I just haven’t been wriing for you. Instead, it’s been weeks of contract work and revisions on the manuscript. Head down and eye on the prize. Some of the new work has been challenging, other bits are too silly for words. But my clients are great and at the moment, I can’t complain.

I took some time off yesterday however to luch with three Twitter friends. They’re my first real-life Tweeps and like nearly every one of my experiences with Bloggy Peeps, I had a lovely time. Despite my rice-burning panic and the usual dog hysteria (mostly Iggy, of course) these women were chill and instantly comfortable to be around. As a sweet reminder, Megan (imagine Miss Bliss with an Aussie accent) left me with this delicate opal pendant.

In other news, I’ll be looking for a handful of Beta-Readers this next month. Basically I need speedy readers with a critical eye to help me hone in on the bits that aren’t necessary or don’t work. I need to slash approximately 20,000 words by the end of April. If you’re interested and think you’re up for the task, let me know.

That’s it for now, but I promise to be back around soon with something more interesting to say.

The post this that and a little of the other thing appeared first on Laurustina.

This is Pig. Actually, his full name is Ignatius Banjous Trimagnaton which is of course ridiculous and therefore rarely invoked. Mostly he’s introduced as Iggy B. but when we’re irritated with him which happens all too often, he is simply Pig.

He’s a surprisingly elegant Italian Greyhound, favoring his graceful mother rather than his squatty, surly father. Over the last nine years, he’s gone from spoiled first puppy to cranky old man. He’s the reason that visitors cringe when ringing our doorbell. He’s well known as the one who steals pizza (and the occasional falsie) and pees on anything within two-feet from the floor.  What I mean to say is that he’s an ass, but he’s our ass and every once in a while he’s awfully freakin’ sweet.

The post The Beastly Bastard appeared first on Laurustina.