gotta dance! or how you survive a childhood of ballet with the ultimate stage mom

When I was 2, I still wore diapers sometimes but my mom decided it was time for me to follow in her footsteps and go to ballet class. She justified this to my father by saying that it would be good for my tiny developing flat feet (I no longer have flat feet; thanks, ballet!). So I went to my first class which was mostly comprised of wobbly pliés and bouncing to the peanut, peanut butter and JELLY song. In the beginning, it was once a week, always on Thursdays, and I would get a Happy Meal directly after class. My mom never allowed Happy Meals but my dad would pick me up and break the rules. Always a cheeseburger meal with HI-C orange drink. He would help me remove all the pickles and watched as I ate the processed food my mom never let me have. He didn’t say I love you often but this time together said it all. This set the standard for the way my dad and I enjoy eating together to this day.

One Thursday when I was perhaps 3, my dad picked me up from preschool, my ballet clothes and bag in his car all ready for class. I took one look at him with a trembling bottom lip.

“I don’t want to go today,” I said with a shaky voice. Done.

He didn’t mind in the least and we went home. We sat on the couch together and watched tv for about 30 minutes when my mom walked in. She had a bag of groceries in her arms and she looked at the two of us, shocked.

“Why isn’t she at ballet class?” Her eyes were huge and terrifying.

“She didn’t feel like going so we stayed home today,” my dad replied, his arm around me. “I called and let them know she wouldn’t be there today.”

“Oh no, she’s going,” she said, picking up my ballet bag from the spot my dad had placed it when we walked in and holding it out to me. “She’s just trying to test her limits with you. Come on, Anaïs.”

I didn’t move. I really didn’t want to go. I was terrified of my mom at that moment but I didn’t budge. She finally came over and pulled me off the couch and got me dressed right there. I cried the entire time as she rolled tights over my chubby babyish legs and pulled my hair into a tight ponytail. She grabbed my hand and made her way out the door, dragging me the entire way.

“Why are you doing this?” My dad followed us out to the car. “The class is almost over.”

“It’s the principle of the thing, she can’t have her way whenever she wants it.” She put me in my car seat, put the car in drive, and reversed out of the driveway, my dad watching in horror.

She drove me to the dance studio and pushed me into the last 20 minutes of the class. I stood in my tiny ballet shoes and cried and cried. The other girls looked confused. I didn’t dance until I saw my mom standing at the window giving me a look that said so much. I joined the rest of the class and looked straight ahead at the mirror as I copied the teacher’s movements, aware of my mom’s eyes locked on me. This would be my daily life for the next thirteen years of my life.

We got into the car after class and she drove to McDonald’s. She got me a Happy Meal and we sat inside as I ate it in between sniffles. She looked at me thoughtfully.

“Don’t tell your dad I got you this,” she said to which I nodded. “I only do the things I do because I love you, you know.”

I dipped a fry in sweet and sour sauce and wondered what love even meant and how to feel it when the people who said it treated me so differently. Every Thursday though, there was a Happy Meal.

Pretty soon, there were no Happy Meals. One toddler ballet class became three and then five classes, ballet, jazz, tap. Then lyrical, sometimes modern dance. A conditioning class, then the early days of pointe classes. By ten, I danced every day unless I was dying of some illness and my mom never thought I was sick enough to not go to class. She picked me up from school every day and I changed in the backseat, out of my plaid Catholic school jumper into pink tights, black leotard, and a wrap skirt. I learned by age 7 to pull my thick hair into a bun, coiling it into place with bobby pins, securing it with a hairnet, finishing it with flowers and a shiny layer of hair spray. My mom and I ate out every day before class, different restaurants, and I always ate a salad. Class started at 4:30 and blended into rehearsals afterward. I did my homework in between routines, figuring out math problems or answering history questions while watching the pas de deux from Swan Lake or perhaps, the battle scene from the Nutcracker. I danced until 10pm usually and then went home to stand in a hot shower for 30 minutes, my toes bleeding, my muscles sore. I went to bed and I fell asleep quickly. It all began again at 6:30 the next morning.

I want to say it was terrible and in some respects, it was, but it was also fun. I have two words for you: dance competition.

Anyone who has ever been in a dance competition knows those names. Headliners, Showstopper, Starpower, Tremaine. If you were a competitive dancer, you knew these names. You knew exactly when they’d be happening that year and you knew that if someone in your family was getting married on one of those fateful weekends, you would not be their flower girl. I trained all year, beginning in June. Two solos, sometimes three, depending on the category, but I always did song & dance and lyrical, with ballet thrown in some years. The solos would be choreographed by one of your instructors and you would have private lessons where you would learn the routine and practice several times a week. They would tell you where you were weak. I had to learn to jump higher, to not be afraid to throw my entire body into it, to jump the same way I turned, excellently, fouette after fouette. In the middle of July, my mom would rehearse with me in the backyard, yelling at me to leap and practice jumping into the pool so as not to be afraid of the landing. I splashed again and again into the pool, chlorinated water dripping off my tiny shoulders as my mom watched intensely. In case it wasn’t obvious by now, she’s a former dancer.

Not only did you have to perfect your solos and worry about yourself but in a dance company, you had group numbers. Duets, trios, small groups, line, and production numbers, usually about 7 other routines that you had to keep in your head and learn marks for. We rehearsed all the time. We were all friends with each other because we spent all of our time together. It was gossipy and catty but it was better to suck it up and be best friends 4 lyfe (LYLAS!) than to have no one; otherwise, it was just you and your mom. You don’t think about it until later but you’re a kid and you’re rehearsing late into the night, the whole weekend, one day off per week, maybe. I rarely saw my dad as a kid, not because I didn’t want to but because I was so damn busy, busier than him who had his own business.

“You can stop whenever you like, Anaïs,” my mom would say when I’d complain about the hours. “I’m not forcing you to do this.”

That, of course, was untrue, and even if it wasn’t, how could you disappoint your parent when he or she wants something so much? Even as a kid, you know that you shouldn’t be doing this but no one sincerely tells you it’s okay to stop, that it’s okay to just be. And so you dance.

Actual dance competitions are pretty much like the beauty pageants you see on tv. My mom and I would get up at 5 am usually because dance competitions began early on a Friday or Saturday morning. I hate waking up early now just as I did then. I’d put on my tights and leotard and warm up clothes and sit on the couch while my mom put my makeup on me. This was not normal people makeup, this was stage makeup. Imagine a 7 year old with an entire layer of pancake foundation, powder on top of it, blush, three eyeshadow colors blended to perfection, brow highlighter, thick black eyeliner, fake eyelashes plus mascara, lipliner, and then the lipstick. By the time I was in the third grade, I could have gotten RuPaul ready for a night out. It was never fun but it got easier over time. There was only that one time that my mom had to literally sit on me to put eyeliner on me.

“I swear to God if you don’t stop moving, you’re going to be the only 6-year-old girl with an eyepatch, Anaïs Marie, I swear it,” she warned. The thought kept me still as my big eyes became rimmed with kohl.

Costumes and their matching shoes went into individual garment bags and Ziploc baggies. Every accessory was labeled and ready. We set up camp in the dressing room backstage with the rest of the girls from my dance studio and got dressed finally before warming up. Lipstick was the last thing to go on because even the most dainty little girl will fuck this up without a doubt. Our studio had a color to go with different costumes/styles of dance.

The one used most often was True Mauve by Revlon. All the lipsticks were Revlon actually so that every mom could buy the same color because God forbid some 9-year-old’s lipstick not match the other 25 girls on stage. Most often seen in lyrical or ballet routines.

True Red, which made me look like a child prostitute, was for the sassier routines. Often seen in tap numbers.

And of course, Wild Orchid. This was wild indeed and my favorite of the bunch. It made me look like I’d been making out with the actual Barbie Dream House. This was for jazz and the occasional hip hop routines that tiny suburban girls were apt to do (we were all over Big Willie Style for the record).

My mom shellacked my lips in waxy color and I was ready to go. She called me Fishlips my entire childhood but I got my revenge when I grew into much fuller lips than she ever had; she’s still bitter and calls me Fishlips.

Then it was time for warm up. I went backstage and got ready for whichever solo was first, usually song and dance. I also took singing lessons my entire childhood but those were enjoyable and a sanctuary from the hours of dance. I had my own mic system and my mom had already dropped off the receiver and so I stretched backstage with a headset on. I had already memorized my number and when it came to call my name, the announcer usually pronounced it wrong, no matter how stern my mom had been in explaining it earlier. I smoothed my hair and walked onto stage.

It was three minutes of being on. No mistakes now. I sang and danced and I sold it because that’s what you do when you get on stage, you sell yourself and I was an excellent showman. I hit every mark, made every turn, and performed as if I were the most irresistible creature known to man. I never believed but on stage was the closest I felt to that for a long time. It wasn’t until I was 21, 22 that I felt this way in my normal life and now I walk down the street with the same spring in my step that I used to reserve for grapevines and time steps.

The air was always so cold on stage, the air conditioning blasting you, and in hindsight, it makes sense. Putting yourself on stage to be literally judged by the three people sitting at the table right in front of you is terrifying and cold, at any age, but as a kid? I look back and wonder how the hell I was brave enough to basically throw myself to the wolves. Maybe I didn’t think about it then the way I do now but damn. Balls, kid.

The music faded out and I was done. I took a bow and stage walked (yes, stage walked) with that fake smile that had begun to look real until I hit the wings. It’s over. Now I just had to repeat this about nine more times that weekend and it’d be over.

My mom always watched from the wings. She was forever my toughest critic but whenever I got off stage, she always hugged me fiercely and told me how proud she was. I tried not to tear up against her chest, knowing my eyeliner would be ruined, but that was the small moment that made me believe that all of this made sense, that all of the long hours and bleeding toes and strained Achilles’ tendons were worth it, for this moment. For a while, it was.

I was a good dancer and I won, a lot, actually. This was my life until I was 15, when my parents were divorcing and suddenly, dancing or anything else I did, straight A’s, student government, it wasn’t enough to keep my mom happy or to keep anything together. She turned to me one day in the shoe department at Nordstrom.

“Do you want to dance anymore?” She handed me a yellow kitten heel as she spoke. It was the first time in my life she had asked me what I wanted to do.

“No, not really,” I said, shocked.

“Okay.” She asked for the kitten heel in her size and in mine.

I was free. I felt a relief, knowing I would no longer have to miss time with my friends or skip tv shows or feel like throwing up my dinner when my Russian ballet instructor told me my newly burgeoning hips were too wide, but I knew that she didn’t actually care if I was happy or not, she was just finding new things to focus on post-divorce. She bought me those shoes and I never wore them.

I spent years thinking about my childhood, wondering if I would have been happier playing softball or just being lazy at home after school. I wondered what it would have been like to have more time with my dad (something I’m making up for now) or to have a mom who demanded nothing more than my existence on this earth to make her happy. I wondered what would have happened if I kept dancing into adulthood, pursued it as a career. I wondered how you ever knew what the right decision was and I realized that my mom hadn’t known either. I am the sum of that childhood, I am secret Happy Meals and pink tights with the seam in the back and bleeding, blistered toes and the awkward teenage body forced to be graceful and my mother’s eyes on my back as I pointed my toes as hard as I could, manipulating my body into the perfect vessel for my mom’s love and acceptance. In the end, I’m all that and none of that. I am all the things I have left behind as well as the new things I absorb every day. I stopped looking for anyone’s acceptance but my own and realized I never even had to look so far for that and so much more.

Two years ago, I danced for the first time since I was 15. I took a ballet class at the gym and I stood nervously at the barre, my body no longer as taut as it once was. The music began and I went through the motions, remembering each one perfectly. I was rusty. I felt the muscles pull in my back as I held an arabesque and I looked in the mirror, shoulders back, collarbones showing, legs now wobbly, and I felt whole. By the end of class, I lined up with the other girls for a leap combination, and despite the years that had passed and the wear on my body, I have never jumped as high or as joyfully as I did that day.

Yesterday a man in line behind me at the grocery store asked me if I always smiled so much. I felt my forehead wrinkle instantly and he quickly assured me that no, it was lovely, just surprising to see someone so happy these days. I told him that I’m not happy all the time but that it creeps up on me far more often that I expect, right into the muscles of my face. I signed the receipt and wished him a good evening.

Outside in the cool night air, I realized that I’m much happier these days and that you, wait, You have made all the difference.

The Art of Breaking Up

Note: This is from a while ago when I was being an idiot with Gabe (read: the usual!). There are no breakups occurring in my life right now and Gabe and I are super. I just know a few friends who are going through breakups and might need to read something like this. Maybe you do, too. Enjoy.

I’m sort of floating around right now. I’m drinking Tab for breakfast, it’s the first time I’ve ever had it. It reminds me of Back to the Future for some reason. I have class at noon and I didn’t go to spinning this morning. I’m just bad the day after something ends. I always open my eyes and lay in my bed and for the first split second, I forget that anything has changed, I just know that my eyelashes are fluttering and almost hitting my eyelids.

Then I remember that things are different. I don’t move for a while and then I put on music. I’ll methodically make a mix that feels appropriate or I’ll hone in on one song that encompasses everything I’m feeling and listen to it on repeat. When my ex and I broke up for the final time, I listened to No Children by the Mountain Goats for seven hours while I just sat around my apartment feeling sorry for myself. With an ex-manfriend, the song was I Thought You Were My Boyfriend by the Magnetic Fields. It becomes a religious experience, the making of mixes, the worship of one particular song. Months later when I hear the particular song relating to some breakup, I always cringe. I think of hours and days spent laying on the floor in my panties and some Batman tshirt being angry and sad and trying not to text whichever ex that breakup was with.

While listening to the chosen ritualistic music, there’s also the sorting through of the remains of a relationship, the relics if you will. Photos, clothing, notes left on the fridge, email, old text messages, the leftovers they left in your fridge, the whole milk they drank next to my own soy milk. I get upset and throw it away, filling a Hefty bag with all that shit and taking it downstairs to the dumpster. There’s always that shameful moment when I’m about to heave the bag into the trash that I realize what I’m doing and can’t let go. I tear open the ties and pull out whatever item I can’t part with yet. Once it was a moo cow tshirt you used to wear to bed and another time it was some awful mix someone made me that had Maroon 5 on it. I wish I was kidding.

Soon after the hoarding of the relics begins the pilgrimage to many, many bars and also friends’ houses where you drink lots of alcohol and talk too much. I always go out with my friends and say, “Fuck yeah! I’m single now, I’m going to get fucked up and make out with random dudes all night!”. My friends cheer me verbally while fear fills their eyes and they realize that they’re going to have to make sure I don’t have a meltdown. They can smell the crazy on me despite the Chanel Cristalle I have on. We hit the bar and I drink whiskey after whiskey until everyone looks like a potted plant. I rarely actually make out with anyone since I suddenly remember halfway through the night that you won’t be there to clean vomit out of my hair if I throw up later. My lower lip trembles and I begin to cry. My friends efficiently remove me from the premises and take me somewhere of my choosing, usually involving pancakes. They are good friends. They sit while I sob into my hashbrowns and they help me cut up my pancakes as I discuss how I’m not really that upset about the breakup, it’s just the alcohol. Then I comment on how that ex is a piece of shit and everyone agrees. I make it home in one piece thanks to the kindness of others.

When I get home, I am still glowing from the warm, attentive love of my friends and for a little while, all seems well. Then I see my bed and realize that I’ll be sleeping alone. The sheets still smell like whoever was the most recent co-occupant of that bed and I suddenly dread climbing in and sleeping. So I open a bottle of whiskey or wine and pour myself a glass. After one breakup, I drank a bottle of rosé in my bathtub and sang Otis Redding songs at the top of my lungs until my neighbor banged on the wall at 4 AM threatening to murder me. It’s hard to deal sometimes. You know. When I’m finally so drunk that I can’t tell if I’m sleeping in my bed or in a pit of lava, I collapse nude in my bed and pass out until I wake up the next morning and the contents of my stomach become best friends with my toilet.

After this shameful display, I have the realization that this recently departed person is not coming back and it’s time to move on. 98.3% of the time I have this epiphany with my face against the tile floor of my bathroom. I make tea, I eat a banana, I wash my face. I clean up the mess I have undoubtedly made the night before. I put away the relics of broken love; they don’t get throw away yet, just hidden so they are out of mind. I make a mix of happy things, wise music that will make me realize that this, too, is just temporary. Anything involving Jenny Lewis is recommended. I write in my journal, I draw pictures, I dance around. This helps more than you can know.

The hardest thing to do post-breakup for me is breaking the little habits you’re used to. You’re not making dinner for two anymore and you can’t get the big calzone at your favorite Italian take out restaurant because it will be too much for just you. He won’t be calling you on your lunch break anymore and you’re not going to have someone to yell to from the other room to tell random things to. I am a lover of words and I always miss the emails and the text messages, the physical handwritten letters as well, if your ex lover sent you those. I always ache for the few words sent to my phone that make me smirk during math class: filthy, loving, random, mundane, philosophical, sweet. Those words, those routines aren’t there anymore. You have to find a new gym partner, someone else to go to the Farmers Market with on Saturday mornings, someone who will watch zombie movies with you. Existing friends will fill these spots nicely and so will new people that you meet along the way. It’s just a matter of rewiring yourself to exist on your own again. I think anyone who has gone through a breakup knows that it’s not as easy as it sounds.

It’s strange the effect someone you are romantically involved with can have on your life. You share with them perhaps more than with anyone else in your life: time, space, fluids, secrets, emotion. They knew you inside and out, your expressions, the way your body feels and moves, the way you react to things, your tastes. When it ends, it seems as if you wasted time. At first, I always feel like an idiot. I think, “I should have spent more time studying or writing or working out and instead I focused on spending time with this person and nothing worked out”, as if I would have thought any more with my head than my heart if I had to do it all over again. Something comes of each person, a change of some sort and it’s hard to say whether that’s good or bad. It’s hard to see that when things are fresh, I never can. I’m still feeling things too much to see anything for what it is. I have to write myself notes sometimes reminding myself that all these failures are preparing me for the next time, they’re training me for the next person, hopefully someone who fits better. I will be smarter, better, stronger next time. Don’t we all really believe this as we start to pick ourselves up? I do because I have hope, too much sometimes.

But every time, I free fall just as hard for the next one. I dive in eyes closed and say fuck it. I throw my whole body, my soul into the fall, into love, into that new person. I can’t help it, I love and then think about how I’ll pick up my bones later. I’ll do this every time no matter how much I’m hating fixing up my wounds right now. My brain always reaches the rest of my body way too late and it begins again.

Oscar Week: The Blind Side

My review of The Blind Side is up at a bright wall in a dark room for Oscar week although this pretty much sums up why it shouldn’t even be a contender. Read and enjoy, or at least, consider. Also, this now makes me a regular contributor to BWDR so I’m sure you’ll be hearing some more from me on there.

brightwalldarkroom:

THE BLIND SIDE

by Anaïs Escobar

I really thought that I was going to be the only person at my afternoon screening of The Blind Side yesterday, seeing as it has been out for a few months now, but I was mistaken. Five other people paid to see that movie and kept turning around every once in a while to look at the girl in the ponytail in the back row who could not stop laughing at almost every turn. Have you ever felt that way? You know, when you are so horrified and angry that you can’t even imagine that you’re watching something serious and so you laugh? This was me yesterday at this screening and while I have grown less shocked in the 24 hours since I saw the film, I am no less angry.

By now you have heard all about The Blind Side, the true story of an underprivileged black boy named Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron) who is taken in by a rich white couple, Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy (Tim McGraw and Sandra Bullock). Michael is given not only shelter and clothes and an education but the coaching and tutoring needed to become a football star sought by every major university. I’m totally spoiling this for those of you who have been living under rocks for the past few months but Michael not only becomes a star at Ole Miss (alma mater of the Tuohys) but was eventually drafted into the NFL and is now playing for the Baltimore Ravens. This movie was supposed to make me feel good then, right? False.

I sat through a two hour self-congratulatory tale about white saviors. The true story of the Tuohys taking in this boy and helping him is indeed a wonderful act of kindness, but this movie does nothing but to allow its white heroes to pat themselves on the back. I mean, the film just started off early on the wrong foot with little brother S.J. Tuohy (Jae Head), who fits the obnoxious sitcom kid stereotype perfectly, complaining from the backseat that he didn’t get to play the Indian Chief in his school play because there was a “multicultural bias” and the part went to a boy who was Chinese. I kept looking to the empty seats around me hoping someone would appear who could look back at me with the same kind of horror I felt. The Tuohys are told by their friends that they are doing such a great thing for Michael, with the implication constantly being that they are such good Christians for this act, that we should be so moved that these conservatives are willing to help an underprivileged boy. Director John Lee Hancock even agrees: “This movie would be pretty boring if it were a story about northeastern bleeding-heart liberals who take a young underprivileged kid into their home”. You read that correctly.

That’s the main problem here, The Blind Side is nothing but stereotypes.  Despite being a true story, none of these characters feel real because they are played as caricatures. Every black person in this movie is in a gang or addicted to crack, and not one is portrayed as redeemable, or layered even. There is a mixed message where the Tuohys love Michael as if he were their own but there is no effort to do anything but make him fit in with their own culture. In one scene after the Tuohys buy Michael a pick up truck, which he asked for, Tim McGraw’s character turns to his wife and daughter and says with a chuckle, “Well, Michael thinks he’s a redneck”. Of course, because the only thing Michael would want to be is a white person. There is a divide between Michael beginning the film feeling completely ostracized in his very white private school setting and then finding his place as he tries to fit into white culture. The film is filled with shots of a black hand and a white hand clasped together but these images are for show only as Michael replaces his past with this new gospel of rich, white conservatism.

As for Michael himself, he is little heard in a movie that is supposed to be his story. The movie tells us he is scarred from his childhood, but we hear little of his desires or opinions as he falls into place as the Tuohys’ newest charity. He is physically built to play football but he is never asked if he wants to, or even, what he likes. In fact, it isn’t until the end of the movie that Sandra Bullock’s character even asks Michael what he wants. This occurs after the NCAA comes knocking and asking Michael if he was in any way influenced in choosing Ole Miss for college, seeing as the Tuohys both went there and are donors to the school and football team. Michael runs away, feeling used for his athletic talent, and this is of course denied by the Tuohys but isn’t this what happened? Didn’t they influence this decision by having his tutor tell him that there are dead bodies underneath the football field at University of Tennessee, their hated rival? Once she finds Michael, Leigh Anne of course tells Michael that he can go to any school he chooses but it feels too little, too late. Michael ends up choosing Ole Miss anyways because “his family always goes there” and you can just see the vacant smile reminiscent of racist early film portrayals of black people. It’s nothing if not disgusting.

The film also cannot decide who Michael is. His teachers and the Tuohys keeps telling us he is intelligent but he is treated like a 5-year-old child at times. Apparently, he can absorb information by osmosis in biology class but then is expected to fall for the spooky lie about the bodies underneath the field at Tennessee. He also cannot play football appropriately before Leigh Anne gives him the most patronizing speech ever about protecting his teammates as if they were herself and the rest of the Tuohys. This makes sense in the thread of this film when you consider that Michael comes into this family to be their protector and to help them finally feel whole. The Tuohys help him but he is there to help them feel complete. He is also there to help their favorite football team since that is his main skill, to play football. They only encourage him to raise his GPA in order to obtain a football scholarship. God forbid the boy wants to do anything else! No, of course not, because he is not smart enough, says the film. Or is he? It can’t decide since he is only a wise, knowing soul when it suits the story. The movie ends and I know nothing about Michael at all.

I am entirely comfortable in saying that this film is completely insidious. The films asks us to feel grateful that there are white people out there who can help save black people. No, I’m sorry, that there are white people out there who can save black athletes from the nightmarish hood The Blind Side portrays. Don’t we save potential black astronauts or underprivileged poets? I guess not, unless they can also play left tackle for your alma mater.

I grew up in the suburbs amongst people like this and this film is just another portrayal that lets them know that actions like these are okay. It’s a cancer, one that reeks of white paternalism and the idea that black people couldn’t improve their lives without the help of white people. “Who would’ve thought that we’d have a black son before we had a Democrat in this house?” Tim McGraw asks Sandra Bullock as they sell Michael to the highest bidding football coach, the chasm between black and white wider than ever. Yes, this is post-racial America. Now, the real Michael Oher is earning millions of dollars a year playing professional football and I wonder if he’s happy, if that’s what he wanted. Most of all, I’m still wondering who he is.

Anaïs Escobar is a writer and student living in Florida. She tumbls here.

Seen and Not Seen

(I posted the link earlier but decided to post all the text when bee reblogged.)

I was date raped when I was 17.

I don’t say that to shock or elicit sympathy, I say it because it’s a fact. Earlier I read this and have since then had a few conversations that saddened me. I heard about how it was odd that someone would know so many rape and sexual abuse victims and I heard from two friends quiet confessions of how they had been sexually abused or taken advantage of, stories of how when they told someone in their lives, their stories were ignored or taken lightly. This makes me sad and more than anything, it makes me angry that we live in a society where rape and sexual abuse towards both men and women is overlooked and ignored, where victims are made to feel somehow responsible for the violence forced upon them. It’s hard to be a survivor when your proclamations are seen as invalid, or even worse, not listened to at all.

As in many cases I’ve heard from friends and acquaintances, I was raped by someone I knew. It was a guy I had been dating for just a few weeks and we were at a party at a friend’s house. We were spoiled private school kids and we drank every weekend while maintaining perfect grades and the right extracurricular activities to get us into the best colleges. This guy and I ended up in a bedroom at this friend’s house while everyone else danced to the loudest, most obnoxious music imaginable. I felt dizzy and wanted to lie down for a little while. We kissed playfully but when I tried to close my eyes and rest for a second, I felt his hand up my skirt. I pushed him away and told him I didn’t want to do anything. He ripped off my underwear. His breath smelled stale from the alcohol and he felt heavy against me as he kept on kissing me, his hands roaming between my legs. I was nauseated and said no. He held me down, his knees against my legs as he unzipped his pants. With that action, all the adrenaline in my body rushed through me and I screamed my head off. No one could hear me, or maybe it was just that no one gave a shit at that point. I struggled, trying to free my wrists from his large hands, thrashing as he forced himself inside me.

As soon as he did that, I became aware of the fact that this was happening. I was being raped. It was everything my mother had always warned me about and here it was happening. I felt like I was watching myself outside my body, watching myself fight the entire time. I fought because I knew that I was being raped but I wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of giving in. I fought the entire time. When he tried to kiss me, I bit him, hit him with my head; I yelled at him the whole time, and when it was over, it looked I had had the shit beat out of me. He rolled off of me and I jumped up, pulling my skirt down, fixing my shirt. I found my shoes and ran out of the room. He tried to follow me and I shoved him as I ran outside to my car.

I drove home, still technically drunk but more alert than ever. I entered my house quietly and tiptoed to my room. I grabbed a towel and took off my clothes, shoving them into the back of my closet. I walked into the bathroom, turned on the light, and looked at my body for the first time. I had bruises on my wrists and arms, my thighs were black and blue, my ribs felt sore. My mouth felt swollen and I could feel his skin under my nails from where I had scratched at him. I suddenly looked so small in the cold bathroom light and everything hurt from the inside out. I turned on the shower as hot as I could stand it and stood under the water, my face into the stream. I couldn’t tell when I started crying, my tears mixing with the water until I was on the shower floor slamming my hand against the wall and sobbing. The water eventually turned cold and I got out, wrapping myself in the towel. I put on a long sleeved shirt and pajama pants and climbed into bed, falling asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

I woke up the next morning to several missed calls from him. I deleted them from my phone and ignored him. I never spoke to him again. Something clicked in my mind, I still don’t understand it. Perhaps I went into survival mode. I didn’t tell anyone what had happened. I figured that he was going away to college in a few months and I would never have to see him again. Something in my head just wanted to put it as far away from me as possible. My friends asked me why I had stopped seeing him and I brushed it off. I ignored it in my own mind because if I had to really think about what had happened in that bedroom, I wasn’t sure if I would ever get out of my bed at that point. So I didn’t say a word for the next two years and went through the motions in a lot of respects in my life.

The first person I told was my ex-boyfriend. I was 19, and it was close to the holidays, and I started having bad dreams. I woke up from a nap one Thursday afternoon and I couldn’t stop crying. My boyfriend held me in bed until I stopped hyperventilating and then he waited patiently until I told him what was wrong. He held me for about three hours and just when it seemed like I wasn’t going to say anything at all, I told him. He held me tighter and let me talk and cry in his arms as the sun set outside. He and I broke up a few months later but his support in just being able to choke the words out led me to go to therapy and talk about it.

Talking about it felt powerful. In time, I told my friends and my family. I held my mom when she cried at the news, and I reassured my best friends that I was okay. That was the biggest thing I wanted them to understand, I wasn’t a weakened, crippled victim. I was a survivor, I am a survivor. I was raped and I’m changed because of it. I am made of more resilient stuff than I ever thought possible. He has changed me but he has not broken me or destroyed me. I was raped and I am a person, I have a face. I’ve spoken on panels at my college about rape and violence because I’ll be damned if I’m going to let some asshole keep me ashamed. I was raped and it wasn’t my fault. This happened to me but I’m not going to let it keep happening to me every day; my life is too valuable and too short for that. I talk about it now because I couldn’t talk about it when it happened and if I can help someone, anyone, feel like they can be honest about something that has happened to them and share it and report it to the proper authorities then I have done a small part in battling a huge problem.

So please. Recognize that rape and violence and sexual abuse are things that can happen to anyone, men, women, children. If someone in your life wants to talk to you about such an issue, don’t brush it under the rug, don’t make them feel at fault. Listen and support them. Talk to them about it. The smaller, more silent survivors are made to felt, the bigger the problem becomes. You do not have to be ashamed and you do not have to be silent. In my experience, you never forget but it gets easier, it gets better, and you’ll thrive. I promise.

I learned when I was 18 that you shouldn’t talk about your ex-boyfriend on a first date. I was going out with this guy I met once and who I spent a lot of time talking to via IM. I was freshly plucked from the grips of my family and away from home, at college, for the first time in my life. I had dated someone for the first three months I was there only to be dumped. Dumped. I had heard the word before but wasn’t sure what it felt like, I was always the dumper. Now I knew. It felt like shit.

I spent weeks trying to figure out why this had happened. I couldn’t wrap my mind around what went wrong even though the tiny voice behind one ear kept whispering, “He wasn’t right,” to me. No. I just didn’t understand what had happened. I talked to this new boy a lot. He listened to me as I typed IM after IM about how there was no exact moment where things went wrong, they just ended. He was patient. He told me that The Sea and the Rhythm by Iron & Wine reminded him of me. I told him that my ex didn’t like Iron & Wine. Somehow, he still wanted to ask me out. My roommate pushed me out the door.

We were going to have lunch on a Sunday afternoon. I drove to the restaurant, a small Spanish fusion place in downtown Gainesville; all I knew was that it had ropa vieja. It was raining and I parked right in front. I looked up and he was standing in front of the restaurant under an umbrella and holding peonies, which I mentioned that my ex never remembered were my favorite flowers. He came to my car door and handed me the flowers and held the umbrella over my head as we walked up the restaurant. We were seated and we looked at each other awkwardly.

He told me about how he was studying film and how he was going to do an internship at PBS, working on a documentary about sea turtles or something. I told him about how my ex was a vegetarian. He told me about he really loved The Long Halloween, which I’d mentioned before to him. I complained about my ex not reading enough books. We ate our lunch. He was beyond polite and wonderful, attempting to engage me in conversation about anything. He paid and we walked outside. It had stopped raining and the air felt thick and dewy. We said goodbye and he kissed the side of my mouth. I drove home and put the peonies in a vase on my desk. I went to bed but not to sleep.

He never called me again and we didn’t talk anymore. I was mortified but I realized that I had acted like a real bitch. I got back together with that ex, the one who wasn’t right at all, two weeks later. He moved in with me and we fought all the time. I’d smoke cigarettes out the open bathroom window after slamming the door shut. I thought about the boy with the sea turtles and how he brought me flowers on our first date. I knew I had made the wrong choice at the time but it was like, falling off your bicycle and getting back on with scraped knees. I made the wrong choice for the time but the right one in the long run because I learned what I didn’t want and what I deserved and the kind of man I wanted by my side. I learned how to keep an eye out for the right man and when he came along, I knew right away. I had dreamed him. I wasn’t sure how to handle it when I found it but if I had learned one thing, it was to look forward and forget, to just go and move with it.

And most importantly, to be kind, so kind, to anyone who is also putting himself, his heart, out there. Do not stomp, do not be cruel, do not forget that you have a heart as well. Use it.

The Bump

Whenever people I know talk about getting plastic surgery, I instantly jump and say, “No, you’re beautiful! Stay natural, be yourself, you’re perfect.” I understand that this isn’t always the case since some people are unattractive but still, we should try to accept our faces and bodies for the most part. If you really want to get work done, I can get that but you know, beauty’s fades so like yourself as you are. The thing is, I always say or start to say things like this but then I remember that I’ve had plastic surgery.

Yes, I had my nose done when I was almost 18. I’m 23 but my nose is only 5.

Let me back up a bit. After I went to my junior prom the previous spring, my friends and I all gathered at someone’s house to hang out and whatnot. I’m pretty sure there was no drinking going on that night but again, I can’t be certain. All I am certain of is that I ended up diving into what was the shallow end of the pool and hitting the cement bottom face (and nose) first. Let me tell you, I swept the pool with my face, it was ugly. I surfaced and my friend screamed her head off; I had cuts all over my face and “road rash” I guess you could say on my chin and left cheek. My nose was swollen and bleeding, the tip scraped and bloody. There were no parents in sight so my friends helped me ice and bandage my face. I spent the night and awoke the next day still swollen and looking like Tina Turner after a night with Ike. We took pictures, now lost, and I looked like I should have been in a Lifetime movie. Poolside Menace: The Anaïs Escobar Story.

I got home from the prom sleepover/catastrophe and said hi to my mom as I opened the front door. She screamed when she saw my face and called my grandma and they took me to see my uncle who’s a doctor. He wrote me a prescription for ointment for my cuts and scrapes and he looked at my nose and said there didn’t seem to be any serious damage; the bump that stuck out on the left side was something that had been there for years. Everyone yelled at me and told me how lucky I was that I didn’t snap my neck and I listened and took something to sleep. I went to school the next day and told everyone I had been in a fight with my ex-best friend which became a funny rumor amongst us AP kids. A few weeks later, the swelling had gone down and the scabs starting falling off in the middle of AP US History. It seemed my days of being a scarfaced badass were over.

Summer came and I was my lazy self. I woke up early to swim laps and run, but then I would nap for hours at a time while reading biographies of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington and an entire history about Appalachia. If you didn’t think I was a nerd before, now it’s official. My mom had taken to listening to me while I napped because she could hear me wheezing and whistling in my sleep. She got worried and so off we went to the otolaryngologist (that’s an ear, nose, and throat specialist for those who don’t think obsessively about words like me). He took a look at my nose and made a face.

“I’m going to do a little test with these tubes, okay?” he said to me, readying the tubes in his hands.

“Sure, go for it,” I said, not really nervous.

“I’m going to insert these slowly up your nostrils to see how open your sinuses are.”

He pushed the first one up my right nostril slowly and it went all the way up and I could feel it in my face which was creepy yet awesome. He removed it and began to push the tube up my left nostril. He got like an inch up when I screamed. It felt like he was stabbing my sinuses with a tiny knife. My mom turned white as I reacted so violently. I pulled away and he looked like he had his answer. He did a few more things, feeling up my face with his thumbs, taking photos with some crazy camera. Then he sat down to give us his medical opinion.

“Your septum is deviated. You’re not getting any air through one passageway which explains why you are wheezing while sleeping. Most likely, your septum has always been deviated but the pool incident worsened the condition. That’s why you have the bump in the side of your nose, it’s from the septum. You’ll have to have surgery to correct the breathing,” he said. I looked at his Prada loafers and then back at his face.

“So, I’ve always had this deviated septum which gave me the bump I’ve always had but now it’s worse because of the face-into-pool thing?” I asked, imagining myself with a Michael Jackson nose.

“Yes, exactly.”

“Can you leave the bump and just fix the septum?” My mother looked at me like I had asked the stupidest question of all time.

“Well, no.” He began drawing a diagram of my nose on a little notepad. “When I go in and adjust the septum, there will be excess matter that will need to come off in order for it to sit in place. It won’t be a traditional nose job per se because we won’t be breaking your nose. It’ll be your nose, just better, sort of how it would look if you could breathe perfectly.”

I thought about how my dad had the same bump on his nose and he breathed just fine. I knew that my situation was different, that I had added something extra to the breathing equation but still. My nose was this thing that I inherited from him and now it was going to have to change because of this stupid mishap. I was bummed but what could I do?

“Of course, you could always tweak things here and there if you wanted to, while I was in there, I mean,” he continued.

“Like what?” I asked. I was curious despite my feelings of daughterly guilt over the whole thing.

“Let me take some photos and show you.”

I stood in front of the far wall and he took some photos of my profile from both sides and also facing forward. He uploaded them into the laptop in the patient room and began tapping away at the keys. A few minutes later, he pulled the laptop up on a table in front of my mom and me and we sat to look at the photos. There was my nose and my face in profile, same as ever. Then he showed us the after effects of what he had worked on. It looked exactly the same but better. To this day, I can’t explain it. It was my nose, still slightly big and whatnot, but prettier somehow. I am ashamed to say I was drawn in
by how simple it seemed: rotating the tip of my nose 25 degrees upwards, narrowing my nostrils just slightly, and of course the bump that stood between me and oxygen being shaved off. After a twenty minute demonstration, I was sold.

My surgery was scheduled for November 23, two days before Thanksgiving. My dad agreed that it was for the best since I couldn’t breathe that well but I sensed that he felt a little bummed about my good old nose that looked like his and his family’s noses. An ex-boyfriend had called it Anne Frank-esque at one point; yes, thanks for bringing my part Jewish heritage into this, pal. My parents signed off on it and were both pleased that my health insurance would cover up to 90% of the entire cost since it was for medical reasons and not just cosmetic. My dad paid the difference and I think that may have counted as part of my high school graduation gift.

At my high school, plastic surgery was a common gift to many girls. Every first day of school, someone came to homeroom with huge new boobs or plumped lips or a new nose. I really believed that I was different that I wasn’t just one of those girls, that my reasons were different but were they? I most likely wouldn’t have gone to the extent of having anything changed about my nose aesthetically if it weren’t for the septum-pool catastrophe but I was lured by the somehow prettier me in the after photo. I told my friends about the upcoming surgery and most laughed, not believing that I was going to actually go through with this. Others were nosy as teenagers tend to be.

“What kind of nose did you pick?” Jackie asked me as we sat in pre-calc doing groupwork by which I mean we were talking shit about other people.

“What do you mean, what kind of nose did i pick?” I replied, honestly confused by the question.

“I mean, did you look through a book and pick which one you liked?” she continued.

“No, they take pictures of you and just improve upon what’s there.”

“Oh. I guess that makes sense. I hope it turns out okay.”

Me too, I thought to myself. Me fucking too.

During the few weeks before surgery, I watched every nose job episode of Dr. 90210 and Extreme Makeover and whatever other plastic surgery show was on. My mom winced at the doctors cracking noses and resetting them but I needed it. I wanted to know exactly what was going to happen to me when I was under. I had never had surgery before and I wasn’t so much scared as I was intensely curious about what was going to happen when I wasn’t aware. I googled all of the side effects and learned about all the things that could go wrong. I googled “death by nose job” more than once; there were some prime horror stories I bookmarked. The more I learned, the calmer I became about the whole thing. The day before my surgery, I went to school like everything was normal and went to sleep that night very relaxed.

I awoke the day of surgery at 4 in the morning to get to the hospital early since my surgery was at 8am. My mom was wringing her hands and freaking out. She and my grandparents came to the hospital with me and they all looked very stressed about the whole thing. They made me put on my hospital gown and they put the IV in my arm. My mom teared up as we sat in the pediatric surgery in between room (I was a minor, whoa!) and she kissed my forehead and cheeks a bunch of times before they made her go. They gave me amazing drugs and I talked to the adorable gay male nurse about how I was going to drink mimosas on Thanksgiving while I took all the Percocet the doctor prescribed me. He said that was his perfect Sunday. I became relaxed thanks to whatever was dripping into my veins and soon they wheeled me into surgery. I saw my doctor and we chatted for a bit and then the anesthesiologist put the mask on me and asked me to count back from ten. I made it to ni-. Then it was all black, as surgery goes like that.

I woke up in recovery having no clue what the fuck was going on. All I knew was that I felt a weight on my face and that my bladder was about to burst. I tried to talk but my throat was so dry. I heard myself and I sounded like I belonged in a stage production of The Miracle Worker (“Water, Helen, WATER!” “WAJSHIUFDHIOSNDKJ”). I began to sit up but as soon as I did, nausea struck and I threw up all over myself. Dark, bloody vomit everywhere. A nurse came over and quickly got me out of my hospital gown and cleaned up. I tried to touch my face while I was laying there naked waiting for my new hospital gown but I was admonished right away. They put me in a new gown and I realized I had to pee. The nurse gave me a bedpan but I refused to pee in it. I sat up without puking this time and insisted on going to the bathroom in an actual toilet. This nurse wanted to kill me by now but she guided me by the arm and stood guard while I peed for a good 10 minutes. That was seriously the best piss of my life.

Once they got me back into my recovery bed, they let my mom come into see me. She was crying and blubbering and talking really loudly at me. Apparently, my one hour surgery extended into a three hour one and my family thought I was dead or that something awful had happened. My mom was abusive to hospital staff in order to get information and she was relieved to find out that my surgeon was just a slowpoke perfectionist. Everything turned out great according to him and I could go home in a few hours. I stayed for those few hours and cleaned the hospital out of apple juice. Sorry about that. I had had my surgery and survived, plus I still had a nose; things were good.

I went home that afternoon and had the best recovery of all time. My grandma made me soup and anything else I wanted to eat: peanut butter & honey sandwiches, sweet potato fries, almond milk strawberry milkshakes. I was living it up. I watched tons of movies from childhood including Ghostbusters and Back to the Future, and I got to enjoy the annual Thanksgiving screening of Gone With The Wind. I love watching Atlanta burn. The drugs were great and I didn’t even abuse them; I had very little pain to be honest. I received phone calls from my friends like an old Hollywood star, in my pajamas and in bed, telling my family to take messages for me when I couldn’t be bothered. I milked this for all it was worth. After all, I’m a healthy person, when would be the next time I’d have people at my beck and call?

I thought I would be grossed out by the healing process but it was interesting more than anything else. I took the packing out of my nostrils the day after surgery by pulling the attached little strings and saw what looked like two bloody tampons fall easily out of my nasal passages. My mom saw this and ran out of the room gagging. After surgery, I didn’t bruise at all. This is probably due to the fact that they didn’t have to break my nose in this nose job but my friends were disappointed nonetheless. They wanted me to have black eyes and to look really dramatic post surgery. I felt bad seeing how bummed they looked that I looked exactly the same the next week at school. The only change was that dissolvable stitches fell out of my nose now and then.

Truly, I was shocked by this. I had expected that when my doctor took off my splint a week after surgery, I would have this dramatic Extreme Makeover moment where I gasped and saw that I had become the most gorgeous creature ever. Instead I looked in the mirror he handed me and saw the same nose, a little bit perkier but nothing that was noticeable really. I could breathe better now which was the point but the whole thing had become something else entirely what with the promise of a magical feeling once my nose was improved upon. I just felt like me. As the swelling went down more and more, I realized the most dramatic change was that the bump was gone. It sounds silly but I had never really noticed it to begin with. It had always just been there. I remember when I was 12, I played Brigitta (the bratty Von Trapp child) in a local production of The Sound of Music and one of my fellow child costars commented on my having a prominent nose; I can honestly say that until that moment, I had never even thought of my nose as anything other than just being there. I became aware of the bump then but I never worried about it more than the occasional passing thought. It was never an albatross carried on my face, it just was.

People couldn’t really tell the difference due to the subtle work. They said I looked better somewhat but couldn’t figure out why; my lips looked bigger apparently, though. After healing, it was like surgery had never happened. Even now, I sometimes forget that I’ve had a nose job. The change wasn’t big enough to really notice because I guess for me that wasn’t the reason for doing it. I’m not saying that I wasn’t drawn in and attracted to the cosmetic reasons for doing it but it was such a subtle change that it’s like it never happened. I breathe much better now, I no longer making a dying whistling noise when I sleep apparently. Everyone in my vicinity is pleased about this. The whole thing just slips my mind a lot of the time.

I have to admit though, I think about it nowadays in a specific manner a bit more since I see my dad more than I used to. I look at his face and we still look so much alike but I also see where there’s something missing from my face that’s on his. I worry that I’ll have a daughter one day who inherits my deviated septum and bump and has a nose that looks conspicuously different from her mom’s. What do I say then? I did indeed have my nose fixed for medical reasons but can I lie about the tip rotation, the nostril refining? I don’t know if I could lie.

“It’s true, I couldn’t breathe but I’m also a vain bitch.”

“I don’t regret it at all, I like my nose now but yours is perfect just as it is.”

Even now, I sometimes have guilt about this change as tiny as it was. I feel like I betrayed the things I believe about beauty, how I feel that imperfections make people gorgeous: crooked teeth, scars, prominent features. To this day I still think that people with imperfect faces are the most interesting and beautiful. I feel jealous as well. I find myself staring at my dad’s nose and imagining how my old one would have aged over time. If I have a kid with my former bump, I’ll be jealous of this bond that he or she has with our family history that no longer shows right on my face. I have a million other things that show my life history on my face and body but I suppose I’m slightly bitter that circumstances took this one away. Although, the bump’s lack of existence has become a part of my history as a result.

Things like this never really turn out how you expect. I miss my bump sometimes with the same intensity that I get when I don’t like some of my tattoos at times. Similarly, I then feel attached to the scars on birthmarks on my body and want to hang onto certain tattoos for what they represented to me when they were permanently engraved onto my bleeding skin. It’s why I take time to get to know the nuances of a new lover’s body. I always want to hear the story behind a scar and count freckles and moles, and discover the treasures hidden by clothing and the constraints of privacy and awkwardness.

Maybe that’s the big thing behind it all, I suppose. Whatever happens to your body, by your own choice or not, it’s there, it’s part of your body now. You may choose to cover a tattoo that a lover gave you or change the breasts nature gave you or cut yourself or cover scars with makeup but the stories behind all of those are still there on your body. Everything has a story, a small piece of something daunting and scary that makes up a life. It doesn’t really matter what you look like, if your nose bump is gone, if your ass is huge, if you have acne scars, if you have a fucking stupid tattoo that you wish you never got, if you have jacked teeth, it’s all a part of your story, your mythos; maybe the physical tells the stories we just can’t put into words yet. I guess we’re all just looking to build our personal legend any way we can.

Sometimes late at night, I call my dad when I get anxious. We talk in Spanish and his s sounds are comfortingly the th sound of Spain. Cothina as opposed to cocina. I tell him that most of the time I don’t know what I’m doing, that all I know how to do is write and bake things when I get nervous which is why my fridge gets full of five and six pies at a time. I tell him that I worry about how to take care of myself entirely one day and how no one teaches you how to be an adult in college, especially not in creative writing or literature or film classes. I see nothing of how to be a grown up and pay bills in the books I read and movies I watch, all I learn is how to write more and more. I tell him this and I can hear him listening to every word, him, the man who moved to a new country and built a life and a business and took care of not only himself but an entire family. He waits for me to finish.

“Do what you like and the rest will come,” he says for the thousandth time in my life. “Just live your life and it will all work itself out, I promise.”

It’s terrifying when someone believes so much in you when you’re often entirely unsure of any possible outcome.

girlperson travelogue: on taking a drive in Florida

(Because it’s almost spring and this is something we could all do with.)

If you come see me in Florida, here’s a short list of things to look forward to:

1. beaches
2. orange trees
3. my grandma’s empanadas and other assorted foods
4. my pear and gruyere pie
5. driving with me

This is a short list and not that impressive aside from the empanadas but that last one, driving with me, is kind of a special thing. I like public transportation whenever I’m in a big city, I like reading on a train or bus, it’s peaceful and allows your mind to sort of wander as the traveling is put in someone else’s hands. But driving is really wonderful in a specific setting.

I’m going to share with you the drive I would take you on if you chose to ride shotgun with me. You can pick my car out easily, it has a Batman sticker on the back windshield. You’ll be pretty happy with my car at the moment as well since I just cleaned it so it no longer has old pumpkin spice latte to-go cups and water bottles in it. You’ll have to put on your seatbelt because my car beeps annoyingly until you do. Also, you know, safety. I practice safety by unrolling the windows so we can feel the post rainshower breeze.

I’ll turn the engine over, cupcake keychain dangling, and make my way onto the road. We’ll spend some time driving down University headed north, passing your average suburban restaurants and neighborhoods. When we hit where Coral Springs and Parkland meet, we’ll turn left to take the Sawgrass Expressway west. Well, west before it curves south. I’ll take off my left ballet flat, close the air conditioning vent closest to my face, and put my foot up on my closed cup holder, pedicured toes hanging out the window. I’ll grab an emergency cigarette from the center console and light one for each of us in my mouth. We’ll smoke them quietly while we wait for the light to turn green. When it does, I’ll press my right foot on the gas and turn onto the highway.

This section of the Sawgrass Expressway isn’t very exciting but as it begins to curve around and become southbound, you get closer to the Everglades. Everyone I know says I’m crazy and that you can’t smell the Everglades from the highway but I can. I can smell the swamp with its tall grass and boggy wetness, filled with birds standing on awkward long legs on land, mindful of the alligators whose big eyes pop out of the murky water. Things are more developed around this expressway now but I remember when I was little, my dad told me he was driving on this road late one night when an alligator ran across the road in front of his speeding car and caused him to swerve. Even now, I keep an eye out for possible reptile road kill.

We’ll drive south for a while as the Sawgrass turns into I-75 south, headed towards Miami. Don’t worry, this drive won’t include Miami unless you’re really desperate for pastelitos de guayaba y queso. Oh god, now I want to go to Miami. Task at hand, Anaïs. It’ll be sunset by this point and we’ll look to our right to watch the orangey pink sky over the Everglades, lit up by the sleepy sun. As it gets darker, I’ll nod at you and you’ll light one cigarette that we’ll share. I watch it spark and reach my hand to squeeze your thigh as you take a long drag, the slim cigarette’s glow lighting up your face. You’ll hold it at my lips so I can take a drag as we get closer to where we have to merge at I-595 east.

I-595 east is simultaneously my favorite and least favorite highway in Florida. It doesn’t have the packed insanity of I-95, which stretches north into countless states up the eastern coast, but it is a pure madhouse at all hours of the day. It connects Weston, a newer development so far west that they drained parts of the Everglades to build exhaustingly douchey and trite gated communities, to Fort Lauderdale and the Atlantic Ocean. I hate it because everyone drives like an asshole but they have no idea that I am the biggest asshole driver of all time. I mean, I learned how to drive in South Florida, and who are South Florida drivers?

1. Insane old people
2. Ex-New Yorkers
3. New immigrants to this country
4. A combination of any of the above categories

Exactly. So don’t you worry when I begin to press my ballet flat-shod foot even harder on the gas, just relax and remember that the only time I’ve been in a car accident that was my fault was when I was looking in the mirror to check my hair. My hair’s already windblown from the open windows! You’re fine! We’ll weave through traffic, each exit closer and closer than the last, as we get closer to the actual city. You’ll see Fort Lauderdale’s skyline and lovely buildings and I promise that you can smell the salty ocean air even from this point. Maybe I just have a good nose. Keep yours ready, regardless.

We’re not heading to the city though, we’re merging onto the Turnpike. I have a Sun Pass which I recommend to anyone driving in Florida since waiting to pay tolls is no fun. They also call the Florida Turnpike the Ronald Reagan Parkway or something but I ignore this fact. We’ll head north once again, having made a loop around Broward County, and get off on Atlantic Boulevard. My hair will be insane by this point, wild and all around my face, my cheeks red from the wind and being whipped by my dark waves. We’ll pull over at a 7-11 to get proper Slurpees, mixing flavors of course, and gummi candies. Dinosaurs, worms, bears, ewoks, whatever we can get our hands on. We’ll drive more slowly now, cruising towards the beach, the smell of the ocean really noticeable now, not just to my excellent bloodhound nose. I’ll park in the metered parking by Pompano Beach, quieter at this time of evening than Fort Lauderdale beach, and we’ll stretch our legs for the first time in an hour.

I have supplies for this kind of night. I’m the girl who always has a blanket in the trunk of her car in case of any nighttime beach emergency. Blanket, Slurpees, candy, keys, and we’re set. I take off my shoes and walk through the sand, legs pushing against the natural sinking that occurs as I walk. It’ll take a proper amount of time to choose a location, somewhere secluded but without the creepy factor; close to the water without being in danger of getting splashed too often. I find it as these decisions are naturally in my blood and we spread the blanket, our hands touching as we unfold it. We’ll lay down on it and I’ll sip my cherry-blue raspberry-coke-cancer Slurpee as I take in how big the moon is even at sea level.

We are at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, a much maligned ocean in comparison with others, but a magnificent one nonetheless. It seems endless and from here we can watch the boats from shore. If a cartographer drew us on a map at this moment, we’d be tiny specks, no more significant than the billions of particles of sand and shell around us. But here, alone on this beach, we are huge. Our shadows created by the glow of the moonlight loom and your hands seem huge as they wrap themselves around my waist. The comfort of having our arms around each other translates to any location: bed, the park, a restaurant, the subway, couch, here where the land meets the sea. Being comfortable is less a matter of where than a matter of who.

Come to Florida, we’ll take a drive.

The Love Notebook Series

By yours truly and for old and new readers alike (4-7 are the best). Enjoy.

Love Notebook #1
Love Notebook #2
Love Notebook #3
Love Notebook #4
Love Notebook #5
Love Notebook #6
Love Notebook #7

sing songs along; or the bonds of a mixtape volume 1

If you were ever in the position where you had to give me a gift, I’d want one of the following things:

1. a letter (but only if you could write well)

2. cash (because it’s awesome)

3. a book (as long as it’s not something horrendous)

4. a mix (either the link to one or a cd, it’s been years since i’ve gotten an actual tape and i can’t even play it in my car anymore)

My parents made me mixes when I was a kid, on cassette tapes with early Beatles songs and the not so well known Madonna songs and old Cole Porter standards. They were something. I’ve lost them over the years unfortunately but the point here is that they started the tradition and set the standard for receiving personally chosen compilations of music as gifts. I’m a sucker for them, especially the good ones. You know, the kind where the person obviously has taken your taste into account but also introduces you to amazing new stuff you haven’t heard before. How else would I have found Saturday Looks Good to Me? I found a bunch of mix cds I’ve received over the years so this will be a series about each and also, the actual mix (or as close to it as possible) itself. Let’s go.

Yep, I was class of 2005. I became more comfortable in my own skin junior year of high school. After two years of monthly highlight touchups and listening to whatever everyone else listened to at my private prep school, I started being myself more openly. This seems ridiculous to me now but when you’re a teenager, everything is changing faster than you can even grasp. My body and mind didn’t seem to match and I felt awkward in any social situation so to start reading comics openly and telling people one of my favorite bands was Pinback was kind of a big deal at freshly 17.

I lost friends, well, lost is the wrong word, we grew apart. We were different. I made new friends, I found nerds, weirdos, and pre-hipsters (those can’t be avoided I guess). Even if I didn’t feel entirely understood all the time, I was closer than I had been in a long while. I met my friend Cori. I haven’t talked to her in about two years now. We grew apart in between college and travel and the insanity that seems to strike you at 21. However when we were 17, we got along splendidly. I remember spending homeroom gushing about the first part of Kill Bill

and making elaborate and ridiculous videos for our theology class projects (pre-YouTube!). She liked calling me An, amused at it being also an indefinite article (“That’s you for sure,” she said). We talked the rest of our friends into going to a Marlins game one Friday afternoon and we met at her house. She handed me this mix cd as we waited for the boys.

“You’re really going to like Spoon, An,” she said. She had drawn a tiny version of what she always referred to as my “tight, sweet ass”. “Plus, there’s another song that makes me think of you.”

Instant bond. I listened to it in my car with my group of passengers on the way to the game. She was right, I did like it. Pretty soon we made our way inside Joe Robbie Stadium (it will always be Joe Robbie stadium to me) and sat in the early May sunshine. I always wore contact lenses then and I had big sunglasses on. Cori passed me her bottle of water when mine ran out. She was good at stuff like that back then. I leaned back and watched the Marlins take a beating from a team I can’t even remember. It was getting dark around the seventh inning stretch and we all stood. Cori hugged me suddenly, her small arms wrapping around my waist, an excellent hug. I’m not sure how to explain what I felt except that I felt liked for the first time in a while, and not the me in halter tops, but the real me. I felt my hair growing frizzy in the permanent Floridian humidity and I couldn’t care less.

Later I dropped off the friends in my car and I made my way home. The mix continued and one of the songs was definitely not Spoon but Flaming Lips. I listened to Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1 and smiled slowly as I realized this is the one that reminded her of me. It had always reminded me of me, too. I saw my own fear of facing things, of not trying as my own pink robots, and I battled constantly to ignore the ways I’d try to wig myself out. I sang all the way home and thought that Cori was Yoshimi, and I was, too.

Three years later, I sat in my tattoo artist’s shop and didn’t move as he sketched in marker pink robots and a tiny dark haired girl battling them. It hadn’t come to life yet but it was there on my right arm. I hadn’t told anyone I was putting it there but it was something I felt I had to do for a while. I felt low at that time in my life. If I thought I had nothing figured out at 17, it was worse at 20. I had no idea what I was doing and all I knew was that the adrenaline from having a needle permanently marking me made me feel alive. I was trying to feel something, anything. Tattoos, riding my bike too fast in the rain, rough sex. I sat in the chair ready to go and it seemed like too much suddenly. This wasn’t for me like my other tattoos, this was for something else I hadn’t figured out yet. I apologized to my artist and ran out of his shop.

Cori and I had both moved to the same town and we were neighbors. I lived in a brightly painted apartment and she lived in a tiny house with tons of kittens. We had even ended up buying the same car the year before. I drove over there and parked behind her. I went inside, knowing she never liked it and walked into her kitchen. She was standing at the stove barefoot.

“Your arm looks cool,” she said. She was holding a bag of lentils.

“Thanks.” I looked at the arm sized mural on me and back at her. “I don’t know. I couldn’t really do it.”

She knew better than to ask about it. She handed me the lentils and went to the refrigerator.

“You want to help me make soup?” She looked at me as she took two tomatoes out.

I nodded and we set about chopping vegetables. We didn’t eat meat then and so we used every vegetable in that kitchen. We sort of played it by ear, adding things as we went, but it turned out pretty great. I didn’t say much and neither did she but it was okay. She was anxious those days and I was lost; she needed to stay busy and I needed the company. We ate lentil soup on her front porch and watched as cars drove by on the quiet street. She squeezed my elbow gently.

That’s the way we get by.

—

This mix won’t play anymore (sadface) so I made a mini sampler of my favorite Spoon songs plus, of course, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1. Click here to download and enjoy.

Adrian Tomine's Summer Blonde; or how everyone you will ever be romantically involved with is a creep

browsing through old book reviews, reposting and whatnot. continue.

As I read Summer Blonde earlier this week, my mind kept returning to something I had written a few months ago, Love Notebook #5. These lines specifically repeated themselves over and over again in my head:

This is a love story for the creeps and the stalkers and the freaks; for the people who call you 46 times in a row when you don’t pick up the first time; for the ones who convince you that it’s totally normal that they watch you sleep; for the people who think all your friends want to sleep with you; for the people who don’t know when to let go; for the people who delete all the photos of your exes from your computer when you’re not home; and for the people who will only know how to love in their own fucked up ways.

I loved you, too.

I know about creeps. We all do, really. At some point or another, we’ve been the creep or the creeped upon in a given situation. This is the common thread in Summer Blonde, that all of these characters, all of us really, are weirdos. They exist in isolated states whether they are involved romantically with another person or not. The comics are not only drawn subtly and in great detail but the stories are as nuanced yet realistic as the accompanying art. As in his acclaimed graphic novel Shortcomings, Tomine creates characters whose small worlds teem with the everyday insecurities and neuroses that are almost uncomfortably familiar for the reader. Tomine is successful as an artist because he is almost preternaturally aware of what people are thinking and doing behind closed doors.

Summer Blonde is a collection of four stories, each loosely linked to the other by the overwhelming feeling of awkwardness and loneliness that accompanies so many interactions between humans. The first story, “Alter Ego”, deals with Martin, a writer in his mid-twenties who has received a decent amount of praise for his first novel and is now unable to meet the deadline for his follow-up book. He is bored and distracted with his life when he receives a postcard from the girl he was in love with in high school and decides to track her down. The girl is long gone from his hometown by the time he comes around but Martin befriends her high school-aged sister and they begin a tenuous friendship as the rest of his relationships begin to crumble. “Alter Ego” is a study in getting the things you thought you wanted and then finding that you’re still not sure what you want. Martin feels like that friend who continually complains about his life but only so those around him can remind him of how lucky he is. With people like this, does that ever matter? Don’t they still find ways to see how awful their lives are regardless of reality?

Indeed, reality, or relative ideas of reality rather, is an idea that every character in Summer Blonde struggles to define and live in. The title story, “Summer Blonde”, centers around Neil, a lonely man who is jealous of his casanova neighbor, Carlo, and besotted with the Vanessa, the girl who works at the greeting card store he visits often. Neil is a nebbish in the classic sense and spends hours in therapy discussing his inability to have relationships with women and his awkward crush on Vanessa. His obsession with Vanessa grows when he sees that she is involved with Carlo. This leads Neil down a road where he becomes directly involved in Vanessa’s life in irreparable ways. Reality is not only an issue for Neil, who can only see himself as a guardian of sorts towards Vanessa, but for the other characters who delude themselves in their own perceptions of their romantic relationships. All involved are left to question whether they can ever really know the person they’re sleeping with any more than they know the person who stands next to them on the street.

Hillary Chan, a lonely, somewhat angry phone operator, is the focus of “Hawaiian Getaway”. She is fired for an error involving William Shatner (no lie) but doesn’t seem to really care. Now unemployed, she sits in her apartment all day, avoiding awkward phone conversations with her pushy mother and overachieving sister. She has little contact with the outside world and has difficulty connecting with other people. She begins to get her kicks by calling the pay phone on the street below her bedroom window when people pass, harassing and berating the people who answer. Hillary is unable to vent those frustrations towards the people in her life so she lets herself relieve her own anger by hiding behind the anonymity of a phone call. This feels familiar, not only the feelings of inadequacy and frustration with the direction your life is heading, but the feeling of needing to vent and finding yourself unable to to the people closest to you. Why else have humans kept journals for thousands of years? What about the internet, with its faceless barbs and bickering on message boards and the comment sections of websites and blogs? We all have mediums where we lash out without the repercussions of being known. Of course, the double edged sword of technology is that it’s now that much harder to remain faceless forever.

The final story in the collection moves from the awkward world of twenty-somethings to the truly tragic realm that is high school. “Bomb Scare” centers around Scotty, a lonely high schooler who has one friend, Alex, who is constantly tortured at school for possibly being gay. Scotty’s friendship with Alex ends as Scotty tries to befriend Cammie, a girl who is only well liked because of her sexual willingness. Scotty turns his back on Alex in order to impress Cammie only to find that he doesn’t really know that he wants to be close to anyone. This story seemed to be the most painful, perhaps because high school, while different for everyone, is such a singular experiment in not only hurting each other but ourselves. It feels as if we are going through the motions of being almost adult while blindfolded, having no idea how to go about the simple things.

This is a collection of stories for the voyeur in all of us. Tomine is a master at creating the most relatable and alienating images of loneliness in comics, literature in general even, these days. This of course comes back down to perception: what are we supposed to be looking at or for? Reading this gives you the feeling of looking through your lover’s drawers when he or she isn’t home. You’re expecting to find something you don’t want to see but then you find something else entirely and you’re never sure how to feel about it. This of course makes you as much of a weirdo as the significant other you were suspicious of. Welcome to the club; nothing but love can turn you into a total creep.