Lilla hates the kind of humor that is dredged in misogyny and violence, those kind of jokes that are too ‘cool’ to not find funny. Nazis-gangbanging-a-nun type humor, it’s obligatory to laugh otherwise you seem uptight and too politically correct. “Aren’t we already desensitized enough?” she tries to explain.
She saw a volcano when she was 15. The dried lava flows looked like elephant skin, piled up together, with Lorax trees randomly dispersed. She likes to think the world used to look like that. She dyed her hair black the next year so that people would take her seriously.
Lilla lost her virginity to Tony the same summer that she saw the volcano. He was 19, and she didn’t realize it at the time but seeming attractive to a 15-year-old was scores easier than getting laid in his own age bracket. They were under the boardwalk and Lilla had half a bottle of peach schnapps. She was trying to tell him about elephant skin, and an elephant skin world, but he wasn’t interested.
She thought a lot about elephant skin and Tony’s skin and after a while the two became one memory, especially after he skipped town to do some illegal work in
She moved to
“you are beautiful” he says, Mathieu is his name
i am in the club where i first met you
“are you german?”
you had asked if I wanted a drink, even though I had been checking out your friend
“American” I say
I took a vodka and coke and left christophe to fend for himself
“I can’t believe my eyes” he said.
I can see the chair that we sat on.
“My horoscope today said I would fall in love with a foreigner.”
there is where I first looked into your eyes, your sunken cheeks, your crooked smile.
“How old are you?” I asked. “21” he said.
I told you I teach at the university. you asked what I was studying.
“I don’t believe you” I said. “you can’t be a day over 19.”
I said it again, I don’t take classes, I give classes.
“Horoscopes aren’t always right” I said.
I have to get out of this place, your taste is still in my throat.
the bath water is black and
my knee is bloody like a
little boy fresh off his bicycle
another failed adventure
his friend (the cute one)
tried to kiss me on the beach
he asked
what is the difference between French and American men?
I told him that
the lies sound prettier
in French.
everyone knows that the opposite of love is indifference.
last year it was my philosopher lover, and how he drove me crazycrazycrazy; wanting his kisses and wanting his want. now its Raphael, the Parisian masseuse, and he’s got a girl (wants a little on the side). he’s got ten years on me – his ten years on me [just call me miss midlife crisis] he pretends his friends don’t know but he parades me in front of them, right up the stairs.
I tell him I need a massage therapist; I have a hurting in my heart, to which he just kisses my forehead and says ‘tu mélange tout.’ but I’m not mixed up, I know exactly where this is going- straight to hell in a handbasket as the southern girl in me would say.
we
can watch the southern stars and you
can count them
(my freckles too)
i was never allowed to watch talk shows
which made them endlessly appealing to me
I would stay home sick from school with diet cherry seven up, liptons chicken soup and paperdolls, all I needed spread out on the coffee table and the princess bride in the tape player
but as soon as my mother left the house I would flip on the television,
scan through the channels,
the screen would glow bright with
longlegged lolitas, ball-breaking jailbirds, incestuous cousins,
I would stare wide-eyed as oversized drag queens paraded across the box
shaking what god didn’t give them
the aphrodites would raise from the audience, born in the waves of excitement, screaming ‘how can you live like this? you are a disgrace’
Aphrodite the hermaphrodite
which garnered responses of hiss and blur from the pink and turquoise stage.
girls in short sequined skirts would dance on imaginary poles, shouting, can you believe I was a geek in high school? a thousand pound woman would brag about her lovers
or a punk rock goth boi would be made under into mr republican 1993
the phone would ring, and I would answer, exaggerating the weakness in my voice ‘yes mommy I feel ok, but I wouldn’t say I feel good.’
‘are you watching television? what are you watching?’ she would ask
‘just price is right, mommy.’ it wasn’t any use, she always knew the truth, even if she didn’t hear the audience screaming ‘it’s a man! no it’s a chick!’ in the background. ‘they are talking about a blender’ I would say. ’12 dollars!!! $12.50!’ I would add for affect.
she could tell I was eating up the 12 year old Mexican runaway, the Saturday night latex model/ Sunday school teacher. my eyes devoured the salacious titles,
‘I was fat but now I’m all that!’
‘my man will stay and you will pay!’
‘don’t be crazy, you know its your baby!’
I learned the terminology of daytime tv, like ‘cross dressing’ and ‘paternity test’, ‘three way’ and the perfect way to drag my words when saying
‘that just ain’t right.’
and it just wasn’t right. but it was perfect
it was the world outside of my cul-de-sac, a world bathed in neon lights and techno beats, where everyone has an opinion, an identity,
and a rhyming juxtapositional slogan.
some of those men were the women I wanted to be.
one day crawls the sky with black
and following are
by me,
only me bollywood and the girls
all in the same place all
who we are in the same place,
no where
all being.
a londonite train small and clearly delicious
the Catherine
that smoldering scot which wins each French man
with his spirit
and a soft accent
the bottle precisely does disappear and not a responsibility
not No not a step No
required : the need the whole
i was waiting to be xrayed as part of my green card process.
my head was heavy because my boy hadn’t called in four days and I was convinced his car was wrecked in a ravine.
I went in the little room and the woman told me to take my shirt off and stand against the wall
“Are you pregnant?” she asked me.
I looked at her, paused, looked some more. I was a few days late, I suppose.
“Do you speak French? Are you pregnant?” she asked again.
I had understood what she said, and at most any other time in my life it would have been an easy reply. “No” I said, though it came out as more of a question than a response.
“the procedure is dangerous for the fetus” she explained. “are you sure you’re not pregnant?”
getting an appointment at this place had taken three months. “I’m not pregnant!” I said to her, with a stronger and more certain tone.
she carried on with the process, xraying my chest and then sending me back out to the waiting room. I was all white.
“whats wrong?” anna asked. “what happened in there?”
“well, I think I am pregnant and I just deformed my child who’s father hasn’t called me in four days.” I replied.
And that was how Lou Deformo was born.
