I woke up. There was sadness draped over everything like dew in the mornings. A wetness drizzled over the world, but the consistency of misery. The clock. Computer. Stove. Phone. Dead. There wasn't a time. Written on my arm in huge black sharpie MIDDLESEX. And I remembered. Her hands were so soft. For those few minutes I was so in love. And Her mouth. Where had the other one been. Where had we gone. Who was this invading my fantasy? Her home was beautiful. But I needed those hands. I was drinking blood. We all were. Happy. Fucked up. And all drinking the blood. I was vomitting in my cup. I'm fairly sure. I had to leave. I had to know the time. And I saw 4:17 and I knew there weren't any cigarettes, but more drugs. I cried the whole way home, and here they were to cradle my tears. The drugs again. But Her hands. They were so soft. And Her skin is so smooth. Her mouth. Big. Red. Perfect. Her frail ivory skeleton, silk poured over Her. Draped in pearl skin, She was a godess. My godess with lashes of lace. And all I could think was kiss & blow. I had to get out. There was no time. She wasn't there, and I saw it. That wretched place. Grease filled Hell. I was crying. Sobbing. Gasping. And the drugs are still here, but no cigarettes. How could you? Set fire to something like us. Spit on something so holy, send what we were up in flames. We'd made love there. So many times. But no more. Just like Her, and the cigarettes, and the time. Something like us. Its gone. And I'm crying and its so awful. And the drugs are still here.

A while ago I forgot how to like me. Not love myself, just to have a self & be okay with it. At some point I gave myself away. I gave myself to you & I'll never have that me back again. She's yours now. She's yours forever. You left me without an identity. I was a hollow shell of you. & I loathed you. I couldn't be you anymore. I wasn't you. There I was. Without a me. Without a you. Without me as you always wanted. & I told myself I wasn't okay. I told the skeleton I had become that I wasn't alright. I had to learn. I had to learn about learnin' & think about nothin'. I've been taught. Taught to see & think & hear & write & sing again.
I'm singing again.
I've learned to create & I've created. I've filled the empty shell you left me with. I've overflowed it & I'm a me again. I've made myself. I didn't create it, but it was created. I now see with you there can't be a me. & thats all I ever wanted. Was to be able to show you. To show you what I can create. What I know, my love. But with you there never was a me. & its so horrible. I know you'd love this me. & I know this me will always love you. But that just can't be. & I know you'd be so happy for me. I know you'd love me & touch me & want me. But that won't ever be. Because as much as I need you still. You're you can't be with my me.

Stop/Clear

Sometimes all you need is to know that you can still have control over something in your life.

I am Fire.

I am a spectacle. A show. Entertainment.

I am Fire.

I am fun to look at. I'm fun to play with.

Fire is captivating. Intriguing. Tempting.

Fire is a tease.

I am Fire.

You want to feel it. To touch it, just once. Maybe twice.

But you can never hold it.

You never leave a Fire unattended.

You can never trust Fire.

It is spontaneous, uncontrollable.

Fire is a burden. You can not sleep with Fire.

You can not take Fire home.

I am Fire

les belles égéries de la paume

"Have you read this? This is outrageous. I'm outraged. I can't believe our ignorant Landlords. Have they ever owned a fish? Do they just not understand? Eric, have you read this? I'm so worked up. I'm sorry, I'm usually not like this but this just really bothers me. Our idiot Landlord sent out this letter-And I have never seen any bugs in this place! I've never seen a roach or anything. I've lived here for two years and not once! And I tried to argue with him..."

Meet Jessica Corwin. Apt. 3 @ Le Palm. She like everyone else at Le Palm, is fantastical. She is scatterbrained, storming in first in her robe and glasses, briefly introduces herself, has some sort of revelation and scurries back across the hall to her apartment. She does this multiple other times throughout the day. Always remembering something she forgot, or something she wanted to show us. She could talk for hours on end and I could listen to her. Every story is an interesting as the last whether it be about where she got her shirt or how she and Eric met. Perhaps it’s not her stories that are so interesting as it is the way her face lights up and her smile so perfectly conveys every emotion she’s feeling.

"My little sister fucked my fuck buddy. That’s just like fucked up. And I mean, I tried not to be mad at her but it’s like... I have my friends you have yours and I'm not trying to fuck your fuck buddies because that’s weird and now I can't fuck my fuck buddy anymore cause he's fucked my little sister, like its gonna be the guy that fucked the Corwin sisters you know? And I was trying not to be mean..."

Everything she says blurs together in one run on sentence. She is deaf and had a cochlear implant at a young age. This means she can hear approximately half of everything you say and she articulates approximately half of everything she says. This simply makes her twice as adorable. Her enthusiasm is unmask-able. Her emotions are always evident; she is either smiling and waving her hands or furrowing her brow and still waving her hands. She's beautiful, and she tells me that I am several times while she is over. I quite enjoy her. I enjoy anyone that will sit and tell me a story for an hour and let me rip their bong.

Sad Girls

I walk in looking like the morning after, and I see my mother on the couch. I want to tell her about my eventful night but it will have to wait. She is on the phone, coaching her ex into his new relationship. She’s staring straight ahead the whole time she talks and her eyes are glazed over like a dead person. Classic Bobbie.

"I'm just about to finish watching this movie. The scenes in it are just... god."

I'm now interested in which movie my mother is worshiping this week. Could it be The Secret Life of Bees? The Ya Ya Sisterhood? Anything starring Angelina Joulie?

The movie is about a woman who is French and has to take care of her oppressive ill husband and she is just so drained of life and love that she can't barely walk through a field of daffodils. (gag) The production quality is that of a movie you would be able to rent only from an old public library and the woman in the movie dresses like a Shaker. She hasn't gotten any in years so she gets off to watching Lumberjacks chop wood. And likes to examine herself naked.

"So, are you just ridiculously depressed and sexually frustrated? So much so that you're going to sit around all day watching what looks to me like some opus dei forgein porn?"

"Yes. Yes I am"

I Wanna La La La Lick You From Yo Head to Yo Toes

For me, kissing is a deal breaker. Too many times I have been coaxed into a situation in which I was promised a good lip lock and received quite the latter. If you can't kiss properly, then nothing will ever become of you and I. I've kissed a lot of people in my life. And my personal verdict is that girls are just better kissers. Maybe its just because I'm a girl and a girl kisses how she wants to be kissed. Gays too, but that’s prolly cause they’re really girly. I'm telling you though, in general, girls are much more enjoyable in the mouth department than boys. Over the years I've become very picky with my kissing etiquette, mostly because over the years I’ve kissed some AWFUL kissers.

I’ve broken it down into do’s and don’ts and configured a nice guide to kissing me.

1. 1. Tongue, Lip Thickness, & Opening You’re Fucking Mouth:

I like tongue but not too much, like please don’t choke me with your big gross slimy worm tongue. But in moderation, tongue is good. Also, lip thickness is a big deal for me. If you have tiny little cat mouth, it’s just not going to work. I have very large ethnic lips (what ethnicity? I’m not sure, Bobbie suspects African) so I can’t very well deal with someone whose lips feel nonexistent. I feel as if I’m eating their mouth and that makes me feel weird about my kissing abilities. Not okay! Also, when they can’t open their mouth and still try and use a lot of tongue. I’m getting nauseated just talking about it. Its like HEY. ARE YOU GOING TO OPEN YOUR MOUTH OR JUST POKE ME WITH YOUR NASTY ALASKAN BULL WORM.

2. 2. So…What’re We Doing With Our Hands?

There is no good answer to this question. Especially if you’re going the classy route and trying to kiss in a car. Because one of us is going to have to lean over the center console and its going to poke me in the ribs and if I try and move my arm over it then its probably going to hit you while we’re trying to stay attached at the lips. A hand on the back of the neck will do just fine. That’s the go-to. When in doubt, baby just put the hand on the back of my neck.

3. 3. Places You’re Going to Try To Kiss Me That Aren’t My Mouth:

The Ears. Ears should be nibbled and kissed but the second you try and put your nasty tongue near my ear I’m going to vomit. If you can nibble on my ear without sticking your tongue through my brain then more power to you. However if you’re not sure if you can resist tickling my ear drum with your spit, then just don’t go there. I prefer nibbling on my ear, but keep it at that.

Neck Kisses. I really enjoy kissing other peoples necks. I could suck on an attractive neck until the cows came home. But on occasion when people kiss my neck I want to vomit and judo chop them in the throat. However I resist, because I think this is probably just a personal problem of my own. It’s really a gamble every time. Sometimes I really really like neck kisses.

Hips Sides & Chest. Hips, yes yes and yes. Who doesn’t like to get their hips licked. However, similar to the neck, sometimes it just gets really really ticklish and I’ma have to tell you to quit before I kill you. Same with the sides. Just keep it above the belly button and I shouldn’t freak out too much. And lastly but not leastly, please kiss down my chest. Its prolly my fave.

4. 4. Lip Nibbling:

Lip Nibbling gets its own number because I am so adamant about it. I prefer you to nibble any part of me. Please don’t bite to draw blood (all the time). A little bite, rough kissing is always good. I feel like this is a necessity to kissing that is just not used enough.

Come

If you are a dreamer, come in

If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar

A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...

If you are a pretender, come sit by my fire

For we have some flax-golden tales to spin

Come in!

Come in!

I'll Give You Anything You Want $100 Bills

“I’m only going out tonight because you told me to. Now hurry up and take that fucking shot.”

“I am! Just give me a second.”

“No, you’re not. You’ve been taking that shot for the past 30 minutes and by the time we get there everyone will be gone. This is ridiculous. Just take your shot and let’s go.”

“The more you pressure me the more resistant I’m going to be. It’s natural rebellion. It’s going to take longer the more you yell at me.”

“God. Just take the fucking shot.”

The more I get to know people, and the more I socialize with people in the real world, the more I understand reputations. Not so much understand them, as figure out the game to them. I have to now decide what part of myself I want the world to see. I could do as Nomi says and “Just be yourself” but then, if I just go around sayin what I think all the time people will get the wrong idea. You can’t be introverted and extroverted. You can’t have morals and be a sinner. You can, but not with reputations. I’m either going to be the introverted sinner or the extroverted saint. No one is going to say “yeah that bitch who talks about masturbation all the time, but that’s really actually quite modest and shy, but still really sexual…” no. That doesn’t happen. It either going to be “that huge whore” or “that stuck up bitch”

“I’s gots to rest.”

“Are you going to bed?”

“No, she’s not. Nomi usually doesn’t go to bed until about noon.”

Tiny little Nomi burrows into her comforter and begins humming. Apparently she does that while she sleeps. Which seemed completely absurd to me until I found a tune in Travis’s sleeping pigeon coos this morning. The Palm is like an alternate universe. Where everything flamboyant and dark is fun and light hearted. House of Yes is playing on the television, which I am watching intently while also watching Marcus (pocket Rhianna) sleep like a corpse in the middle of a circus, Eric(a) trying to explain why it hurts if Travis punches him in the right spot on his nose, and Nomi burrowing in and out of her blanket while occasionally surfacing to nibble off bits of Marcus’s hair wrap and spit them at him and laugh.

In Le Palm, when you want to do something you do it. You are fearless. I want to pretend that I am Jenny from Forrest Gump. I have Travis’ grandmother’s mink coat and my only pair of heels on, so I climb up the couch and onto the ledge of the window, open it and blow bubbles out onto the streets of Northside while dancing to a song by The Knife. I want the band unloading their equipment on the street to look up and see me and pay attention to me. But they don’t. Because apparently, chocolate scented bubbles always float around the air in these parts, and a broad in a mink coat is like seeing a dog with a tail.

“I’ma kill you. I’ma ‘sphyxiate choo.” Nomi is perched by Marcus’s corpse once more, this time with a tiny baggy that most likely held a pill or herb of some sort at one time. “I’ma ‘sphyxiate choo with this plastic baggie. Now breathe in rull deep.”

She’s so cute and weird. Always wearing something that falls perfectly off her shoulder and some sort of boots to accentuate her impossibly thin legs. That seems to be a trend in Le Palm. Being ridiculously thin that is. Eric is wearing his “Olsen twin sweater” that hangs off his bones and some really adorable Long John cut-offs that dangle from his body like Long Johns shouldn’t. They have a neighbor, Jessica who too, is also impossibly thin and gorgeous like the rest of them. I don’t feel real when I’m at Le Palm.

Nomi is my muse. Like my own personal IT girl. I just want to follow her around and see what funny thing she will say next, or how she will cut and dye her hair to fit her mood. Or whose hair wrap she will be nibbling in the next five minutes. Eric is the gay man I would want to be if I were ever a boy. He’s a sad girl I think sometimes. But damn, he has wit for miles.

“I’m so depressed. I wanted to tell Ms. America a joke, but when I got to her signing booth she was already gone.”

“Well, I’m no Ms. America, but I do love a good joke. Try me. I went out at 3 this morning trying to theft a poncho off of a lawn ornament, and it seems someone else has already done it or they took it down.”

“That’s awful. Did you hear about the blind guy that went bungee jumping? He was really excited for it, but his dog was scared to death.”

Jake is one of the weirdest people I may have ever met. Not because he’s three different types of genders and was beaten and sold into slavery at a young age like most of my extraordinary cases of weird people. But because he’s so logical I guess? I’m unsure. I’ve never met someone more dedicated to social networking in my life, and not just facebook. He lives it everyday. He’s had jobs like Window Salesman, and randomly does merch for shows, and runs an online business that sells beauty pageant make up with testimonials from Sandra Bullock. He’s a kid with a plan and his plan is to make money and be happy and meet people and learn. It sounds like a pretty damn good plan. I’m just not used to meeting people who actually follow the plans they make.