It wasn't really supposed to be any day of consequence. What I remembered before the incident was that there was a recent change in my outlook. For years I would fantasize about what I would look like with very short hair. You know, like Halle Berry, Audrey Hepburn, Audrey Tatou, Nora Zehetner. These faces that would shine through the short hair when you would otherwise think you're overlooked. I wanted it. The freedom it tantalized you with. A life with short hair, where people judged you and chose to be your companion, not because of the length of hair you have. Hair length for women, and to an extent maybe men, does pose different political strategies as the world seems to be easier for women with long hair. And a small part of the lust for short hair, was the temptation of the knowledge of would he still want to be with me when I cut off all my hair. He'd always threatened when I would ask to cut it. "I'd leave you," was a particular memory I've forced myself to remember. So one summer day, remembering that I could, was able, had the capacity to, finally take those scissors and free my head. I told my friend about it. "I'm cutting my hair tomorrow." "Oh really, I need to cut my hair too." "What are you going to do with your hair." "I'm going to cut my bangs. They're getting so long. What do you think about me getting bangs?" "Yeah, do it!" "You think so?" She plays with the top of her hair and pretends to cut it. Then, she asks me what I've been waiting for her to ask. "What are you going to do with your hair?" I Pause, dramatic pause. "I'm going to cut it all of." "What? What do you mean?" "I want to cut it all off. I hate my hair. I just want to shave it or something." "What? No, don't shave it. What? Is something wrong?" Maybe. "No I just want to cut it. I want to see what I look like." This is true. "When are you going to do this?" "Tomorrow." "Why don't you just cut it short like halfway?" "No I want to cut it off." "Wow.. That's crazy. OK, you've got to take a picture and show it to me." She waits for me to respond. This is the moment when I can renege on my decision. "Yeah, I'll send it to you." That night was my last night with my hair. I wore a fedora hat, my hair draping over one side of my shoulder, and I wore some ironic t-shirt. I took my hair out to Little Tokyo with my friend Jeremy and his acquaintances. I remember red lights, esoteric bars and an after hours house party. I was introduced to K and I thought it harmless. The slow acid trance music played and I sat in front of a bare wall, a projector playing arthouse images on the wall and me. I stared at the crowd for a while. I needed a change. It was in me.

The next day, I downloaded pictures of women looking enticing in short hair. I was getting excited. I played a Roman Holiday clip of Audrey Hepburn getting her hair cut short over and over again. I picked up the phone and made the appointment. "Two hours from now? Yes, that sounds great. I want Michael Anthony." It was set. I strolled into the shower, my long hair grazing my back. Blowdry it. Straighten it. I had recently dyed it red. It's faded now but the golden hues shine in the sunlight. Didn't matter.

 

"Although Gene was white there was something of the wise and tired old Negro in him, and something very much like Elmer Hassel, the New York dope addict, in him, but a railroad Hassel, a traveling epic Hassel, crossing and recrossing the country every year, south in the winter and north in the summer, and only because he had no place he could stay in without getting tired of it and because there was nowhere to go but everywhere, keep rolling under the stars, generally the Western stars." -- Jack Kerouac, On the Road, ch. 4

 

"I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was--I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that's why it happened right there and then, that strange red afternoon." -- Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Ch. 3

The truth is always sweeter the first time around.

So I spend the whole day at home, wrapping another commercial I've worked on. There was a feeling that was slowly rising from what seemed like the connection of my stomach to my hands. It was the despair I was afraid would manifest sooner or later. And it did today, like a raw, concentrated darkness; a phantasm of fears that escaped, combined in spirit, and finally possessed me.

I took it to dinner at one of my recurrent haunts; the Vietnamese noodle restaurant in the middle of Silverlake. I felt like the people who dined there, cooked there, served there, understood me so my defenses didn't have to be so high. It was one of the few places that maybe I could find someone who I wouldn't mind talking to. Anyway, my stupor and I, we yelled at each other in the car on the way to the restaurant. We parked on one side of the four lanes of Sunset Blvd. And we sat there for a few solid minutes in the darkness, yelling, brooding, crying, letting the numbness sink. And then we talked each other into crossing the busy street into the restaurant. And I blinked at the person at the front counter, grinning through gritted teeth, asking quickly if I could sit at the downstairs area. She didn't see our inner struggle.

I walked down, sat at a booth and I think I stared out into myself; at the wall in front of me. A woman named Yuni came up to me with a menu. There was no use really looking at anything else. I always get the same thing.

She comes back and I order a Pho Tai. Maybe I should order some wine? No. "What tea do you like here?" I ask her. This is the first time we venture outside of the normal server and customer conversation. "Orange blossom is good." I squint my eyes at her and she tries to think of something else.

"What's something calming?"

"...There's no chamomile.." She peruses longer the same choices she already knows. "Jasmine."

I agree and order it.

"Whats your name?" I ask her.

"Yuni, what's yours?

"I'm April."

"Now, I know your name!"

"I always come here."

"I know. But you just keep to yourself. You order, you eat, you keep quiet, and then you leave."

Yes that was me. I smile.

Maybe this part of the conversation happened sooner or later but she says, "My birthday is in April."

"Oh yeah? My birthday's in April too. What's your day?"

"April 29."

"Mine's April 27."

Her eyes grow bigger. "We're the same. How would you describe yourself?"

"Calm. Intellectual." Well, I am.

"I'm calm too. Really mellow. Do you laugh a lot? Even when you're sad?"

"Yes! I do! I laugh when I'm sad, when I'm angry, when things are going crazy."

She laughs.

"Because it's funny!"

We both agree.

I admit, "I was just laughing before I got here. Because I'm sad."

"I'm sad too.  I was just crying five minutes ago. And now I'm laughing. What are you sad about?"

"I fell in love. And the man finally broke my heart. I knew he was going to do it before I got into it. I knew. And it finally happened."
 I smile at her again. She understands.

"I'm sorry."

"Why are you sad?" I ask her.

"My mother's in the hospital. She had a minor heart attack. And I find out my niece was being molested. By her babysitter's husband."

The world is put into perspective.

Then she smiles, tears on the tops of her eyes. She hugs me and tries to comfort me when she is the one who needs love.

My selfish mind doesn't realize this. I eat the pho she puts in front of me, mind in a cloud of the glass of wine I had drunk prior to driving here. But my emptiness is quelled for a moment. Thanks to the woman who thought she had no other strength to give. The last of it she gave to me.

At the end, she slips me a small glass of wine. "Drink this. It'll make you feel better." She giggles a bit. I want to hold her hand and let her cry.

I drink the soup, the tea, the water, the wine. And I am full and full. I stop behind her before I leave and give her a hug. She asks, "do you feel better?"

"Yes." I did. Even if it was a little bit. "Thank you." So I left Yuni there and the voice calmed for a while.

But after I closed the door behind me, it came full force again. Why is loneliness such a powerful creature?

I walked to my car with the same halfway death wish. But no one ran me over. So I got in, drove off, and passed the Vista Theatre and the Los Feliz 3 Theater. Nothing appealed but "Looper." "No you don't wanna fucking see that again!" I yelled at my weak self. She wanted to watch "Looper" to dwell on his memory. The memory that imagined he was Bruce Willis traveling to the past, thinking of the woman who saved his life in the future. His future wife. Maybe that future wife could be me. What a strange fantasy. "Don't fucking watch Looper," was good advice.

Home again, the bouts of talking loudly to myself are getting worse. I lose awareness when I'm doing it now. I'm afraid this will happen in a group of people and they will all know how removed from reality I am.

And then I called Nick. I wonder if I'm using up my friendship favors with him. I'm the girl who calls him way too often from across the sea. He lives in Taiwan. I hope I'm not hurting him. Sometimes I just get so lonely, and I think I left some part of myself with him, and I need that part to interact with me.

I have this fantasy of walking from Glendale at dawn all the way to the ocean, or at least how far the sunset will take me. Friday's a good day.

Good Night.

 

 

I'd thought I should write about all the wonderful things that happened to me before I could start writing about the present. But I've realized, I'll probably never write about the wonderful previous things that happened. So I will just start writing.

Now, I'm at the Shrine Auditorium. A beautiful old thing with Moroccan like awnings, and really a curious spirit to it. Right now it is filled with workers in black, managing long rolls of cable, and waiting for the next couple of hours to pass quickly so they could clock out. No one looks up and sees the green and orange, chalk like borders on the rafters here. I am trying to see more of the beauty in things. Sometimes, it's really difficult to force yourself into this. It's an awareness that requires energy; enough so to transplant you to another way of thinking. I think it's almost as much energy expended when you've realized you're dreaming in the middle of a nightmare and you force yourself to wake up. Almost.

I have had a great many heartbreaks this year. I don't like to admit it since they shame me; the admittance and the self pity. There are also a great many accomplishments I have helped actualize. But my heart, my head, gets stuck on the romantic failures, disappointments. So much so that I work harder on multiple avenues for distraction, for something to fill the big loneliness, the big hole, the void that's left. Is that too much of an abstraction? I long for something to fill it but nothing short of profound and all-engulfing, all-encompassing, extraordinarily suffocating, would suffice.

And it isn't death.

So only burning both ends and inside out and running through entropy can keep me occupied. I wish. Seconds are misleading though when your'e awake and aware embracing bittersweet memories around them. Words are fun to perform acrobatics with.

Do I really need to tell a story. I like the abstract. I like the unsaids. I can tell you I'm sad but not why. Why do I have to? For memory's sake?

It doesn't start here. It started quite a while ago.

Is it a formula? Chess moves to attract a woman? An actor, chess player, writer. I get these glimpses sometimes. Like you let me see you in between the act. More and more.

Does he ever give you glimpses of his short lived epiphanies? He does, everytime I'm able to see his act. His moves. Which move is he using now?

Obsession.

"I'm not boyfriend material, darling."

Honey, darling, sweetheart. Those words sound really cool.

You are always playing a game. But make it a dance. Not winner or loses. Dance with him.

Before him, every time she would see 11:11, she would make a wish. Before, she would wish to be rich. For a time, it became, just to be happy. Then it became, I wish he would be happy. Then, today, I wish for me to be happy.

First thing first, you have to be in a position to make him happy. And then, you can deserve him. And then get the king.

Ah this is hard. Obsession/Romance so intertwined with goal-driven, against all odds, reward based system. This is an integral part of the manipulative tendencies of people.

It's easy to roll a naive person into your manipulations. To force the card of trust.

You have a sweet face and a sweet voice. But I think I'm being taken advantage of.

I am wise but I'm a fool.

Being alone. How do people deal with this? They create some kind of army of people wiling to give them attention when they're lonely? The more manipulative you are, the more you attract?

Yes I need a friend but friends don't do this each other.

"It's only a fantasy."

 

I forgive you Joey. For this hell you created for me. I forgive you.