clarification.

why was i massaging lisa's man in the nude in the first place?
it was in front of her and we all were close and she didn't like to do that part for him,
and i didn't mind.

i guess that's why i didn't mind breaking the man's wife back for him in the far, far away land,
and giving her back to him.

people feel like mine, but not mine.

i feel like i'm here to help and make things better. fix and put back better than i found them.

or maybe another, larger facet of the truth is that i don't ever expect anyone to actually stick around long,
so i detach hard and fast? i don't know. i'm just not used to people having the intensity to stick it out together. most who last seem to last for dying early so they don't feel changes.

changes don't have to signify leaving. i suppose if both share values of growing, then you'd grow together naturally. i can't move forward if it's at james' expense in any way. anything that hurts him even in the short term, is agony for me.

james was the supreme mind fuck. i put him through a lot of paces before we got from him writing me a simple fan letter to us meeting by driving down the coast in a mustang convertible on my last good book tour ("they call me mad dog" with simon & schuster), fighting and me learning how to look at the changes in testicle skin for the first time.

i felt like i'd trained to lose my virginity as if it were my version of my debut, my coming out into society.

and i smile when i think of my father. a brilliant cock blocker who gets revenge by grabbing its hair and fucking it delightfully up the ass until it asks and begs dutifully for more.

i feel like my father got brought into the white world like a pet. they saw his genius, his superhero powers. he was like the godfather of his part of spanish harlem.

my mom was chafing at the whitebread rochester, ny bit and had never touched black skin until college. they'd had maids. fuck, even i remember the maids.

and even at 3 or 4, i knew enough to look away politely. i was that white. it's an impossible situation to be born the house nigger and try to live that shit down all your life while your father pays the price.

they took my father and said man you're a genius, you're brilliant, you can do and be anything. it's a time of great change and he'd protested and had the woman next to him, shot. he always went back out and they believed. they had a lot of passion between each other, my mother and father. they'd pretty much been only children, so they had a lifetime of intensity honed and refined on their own without the distraction or dilution of siblings.

and together it WAS alchemy and they were gonna fuck and set their cars on fire and fight and come back together and make interracial children and change the world. they were in love and their belief overcame all. for a time.

but only children get insane and tyrannical when any outward reality  threatens even their sweetest optimism.

and the cultures that'd so successfully and beautifully come together, they didn't know how or where to take things to the next level. they were gods alone in a world that is more attached to symbols than sweat and blood and love. those are for the radicals safely on the outskirts of town.

and my mom ran back to all that she knew: being a white girl. the ones that black men have been tortured and died for merely smelling their goddamn sweat in the noonday sun.

and she brought the FBI down on him and cut him off and changed her name and he was returned to his shelf as the nigger and his girls were taken from him.

he saw the price of buying in and said fuck you. you took my kids. you'll never be able to take anything from me ever again.

and that's how i learned how to be defiant.

i've only ever seen my father submit for me and i have to honor him for that.

he found us years later, and we were feral and bloody.

he did the best he could.

but i think i was born to them for a reason. you can't waste time in this world having too soft a beginning when you're like this. getting born underwater is for pussies. fuck the dead space foyers of walmarts so that  your eyes get adjusted to all the crap you're supposed to buy.

go in blind. stumble touch.

i'm learning the supernatural part of love.

because when my papi and i had a fight a couple of years ago, and he came back to me (which he NEVER did), i'd been raging at him and was done with ALL of my family. i am already estranged from all the women (i'll explain "energy" later and how blood suckers can literally kill you with emotional dehydration and fear and panic).

anyhow, so my pops comes back from a big argument and he usually shuts down and moves on. i mean he's GONE. but this time he comes back.

i'm wrecked emotionally.

and i say something like, "so, what's up, pop?"

and he looks down, shrugs and says, "i don't know. you tell me."

whoa. the air was knocked out of me because in that instance of humility and profound love,
i remembered that was exactly how i felt when i was almost gang raped by my friends in the elevator when i was 11 in the bronx.

when the elevator doors opened on all the trash in the basement, i was tiny and 11, and these 3 guys were bigger than me and i felt this magical surge of energy reach out and hit ANY button up on the elevator panel and hold on long enough to not be pulled out into the basement where i knew i'd be toast.

it was like i had an instant of help because i was fucking exhausted, trying to keep my pants and bra on while they were up against me.

and i looked at my pops and i instantly knew that he'd BEEN with me all these years the best way he could. i was taken away, i pulled away, and so he just.... loved.

and it went out like radio waves or something, and in a pinch when i was dry, it just..."surrounded" me. it gave me an edge. i was young. and on some level, it's like he was intense to "know" this is how it works if i need it.

if i'm "that" kind of kid.

but also along with all that, was this innate sense that i was worth too much to let this be what happened to me. to lose my virginity at age 11 by 3 guys who take me against my will against mounds of garbage bags and rats.

no. i was someone's princess. somewhere. even if my own mother couldn't stand me, i was too good to come to this end.

wow. it's like there's this whole other world right here in front of our very eyes when we ...open to it.

this is why everytime i try to deny magic i'm reminded of this stuff. but it's not really magic, is it? magic is just what's new to us, what we're not used to. and if you're used to being okay as long as your intentions were honorable and you weren't being lazy and playing stupid, then you'll be okay.

i'll be okay if i end up like the other wild ladies of yore. the ones who were once magic, and ended up dying in the bronx with rotting feet and matted kitty cats.

fuck no. i must die in battle. i'm a cartoonist. i must live a cartoon life and die a cartoon death.

and maybe that's why i feel i'm my father's revenge.

they took everything from him, but when i saw his love right there before me, attached to his body, i knew i'd felt that love before when i didn't know he was there.

and i got religion all the sudden, and realized this father love is intense and sometimes seemingly invisible, but fuck... it's THERE.

and i feel like an asshole for not SEEING it all this time.

shame on me.

but i am my father's little girl. i am his revenge.

i see that he loves to fuck white women and put them through paces almost for the sins of all white women.

i smile.

i try not to get to know his women so i don't cringe so much when i know what's coming.

but i'm learning that they need what he's dishing out.

they crave it.
they'd crawl over glass for it.

and i go why?

and my father knows but he won't tell me or anyone.
he's seen so much more than my generation of pussies will ever understand.

all those guys saw shit they wouldn't even wipe on their enemy's shoe.

but my father is complicated and his love also has lessons woven into them if you're strong enough to look at yourself, your part. what you expected.

and my father also is in agony for all of humankind and i'm also his revenge, because he taught me that to defend the weak is to defend myself.

he taught me a lot of shit. but this is getting to sound like a tuesdays with morrie diatribe and if i get too misty, i'm gonna have to start grossing you out so that you don't start thinking i'm anything soft and fuzzy you can cuddle up against.

x