Thursday, October 21, 2010

a letter to YOUKNOWWHOYOUARE.

Sometimes people surprise you. Sometimes in really bad ways. I feel like that happens to me a lot. Because i have so much faith in the people i love. And sometimes they REALLY, REALLY let me down. This has been one of those days - one of those months.
And, then again, sometimes it takes years to realize just who REALLY IS there for you. That can be surprising, too.
I don't know why I'm telling you this, except that I want to tell you everything, and I can barely speak to you or communicate with you at all. Circumstance.
It's been a terrible, terrible day. My feelings are hurt so badly by someone I love so much - and it really feels like I've been kicked in the teeth. There is no-one to talk to. My brother is busy with his baby daughter and later his girlfriend....my sister has not been calling me back or writing back - I have no idea why. So for the moment, there is no-one to talk to. No shoulder to lean on.
And, as I was driving back up the hill, the thought rushed into my head that all I need to do is put my head on your chest for twenty minutes (or twenty years would be great) - and everything would be better. It would all dissolve away. The hurt, the frustration, this present feeling of loneliness, the anger (not much of that, but a little)
But not only can I not put my head on your chest - I can't even call you. I can't hear the sound of your voice, or tell you about my day or hear about yours. And I miss you so much - I feel like I'm CRAZY - but I can't fucking help it!
So many questions about this, you. Why? Why now? This timing could NOT be stranger for me. Is it a test? and if it is - of what?
Where do I find those answers? Do you know? Because i sure the hell don't. And the one 'answer' that keeps ringing in my head and body like a mantra is "I don't want to live without this."

WHAT KIND OF ANSWER IS THAT!!!!!??????????

here and now.

The thing is...sometimes things come back. Like my mother. I hadn't seen her in soooo long - I wouldn't have recognized her if i had passed her on the street. That's the truth. And she came back. Just for a little while. But she did resurface.

Now someone has come back to me that I don't know how to feel about - well - that's not accurate. I can't help how I feel about this one. I just can't help it. Someone from my past. Someone who knows me. I guess I mean - someone I don't know what to THINK about or DO about.

We always want to DO something about whatever, don't we?

There IS no advice. there IS nothing to DO. Nothing to be done.
With all of the crushes, and the excitement, and the sparkle-shiny and distractions of Hollywood - of a VERY full life - I have forgotten this. I forgot what this IS. What it feels like. How important it is. I don't know what I am going to DO with these feelings.

In a way, I wish that the full moon would come and go, and I'd be over it. Or i'd get my period and have one of those "OOOOHHHH! it's just hormones!" revelations.....but in another way - I don't want to let go. Whether my heart is being ripped out of my chest or injected with mind-blowing happiness.....I don't know. It all feels like a life raft. It all makes me feel like I'm fully alive again, and if it goes away - what really is the point?

The human heart is such a mystery. i wonder if my mother felt this way when she ran off with the preacher.

I don't think so.
I'm sure she had lots of really strong feelings - but she didn't know this one. She did not.

It's raining here, now. Raining in sunny southern California. The golden State. We will be voting in new people here very shortly. the races are neck and neck. I hate to think what this beautiful state will become if Whitman wins. Not sure I'll be able to stay.

I just don't know.
I just really don't know about anything right now.

from Interlochen to Lockhart

David and I didn't have very much time to get to know one another at Interlochen. Not very much time at all. But there was something between us. Something that needed to be explored. He knew very little about me, and I knew almost nothing about him. But I did have the chance to meet his mother before graduation. And his sister, although in a cooler social group than I was, was in the theatre program with me, and if we weren't exactly best friends - I really did admire her as an actress, and we were friendly with one another.

David's mother came to see the play I directed as my final piece. She was, and is, a very well respected actress. So when she went out of her way to find me after the piece (very experimental theatre) and gave me such a wealth of compliments about it, asking questions about the process, etc - I was divinely flattered and pleased.

That last year at Interlochen was a crazy one for me.

Let me start by going much, much further back.
When I was four years old, my "mother" left. She started a 'religion' and ran off with a married and somewhat famous Methodist preacher, leaving myself, my Dad, and my two brothers behind. Yes, this was in Texas. Land of the crazy.
Because this preacher was a little famous already, and because my Dad was in the spotlight in San Antonio , Texas at that time - this "free love" episode made it into a lot of the Texas newspapers. "Free love" because in the beginning, Judy (mom) and her preacher were living WITH his wife and kids in some openly free-love situation. Thank GOD she didn't take us with her.

In fact, it was just the opposite.In short order, she called my father up and told him that she would sell ALL of her rights to us - her three biological children, including visitation - for one thousand dollars. Yep. $1,000.00. For forever. In my calculations of this later, I figured I was worth about $333.00 to my own MOTHER. The woman who gave birth to me in South Africa. The woman who gave me her genes - and maybe genetic things that would have been good to know about when I got pregnant....

Why is this relevant to my last year at IAA?
Because she found me.
Or her mother found me.
It's not like I was hard to find. My other grandmother had a dress store in the same location as it was since before they were married. A successful dress store that was in the yellow pages and everything - it was even CALLED my grandmother's name - Mary Nash. The Mary Nash dress Shop. I started working there for her in the summers when I was 11 yrs old. NOT SO HARD TO FIND.

But, for what ever reason, my maternal grandmother didn't "find" me until I was 15 years old - and in the first program that the National Theatre of great Britain did in the States. It was in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Where David was from. I sure have some ghosts there.

Anyway, after a grueling performance of 'Joan of Arc', this freakish little woman that I barely recognized came up and introduced herself as my grandmother.

Over the next year, Judy started to write to me at Interlochen.

At first, I viewed her letters with - I can't even find the words. With loathing and dread and disdain. But she kept writing. And I had had a terrible childhood. It became fairly easy, fairly quickly to succumb to her flattery and lies. Her pleading that it wasn't her fault, that we had been mercilessly taken away from her. At that time, I didn't know the story of the thousand bucks - which, by the way, my PATERNAL grandmother, Mary Nash, paid for.I REMEMBERED that horrible German preacher being at our house during the day when my father was at work, and I REMEMBERED the weird 'Church' they started and dragged us to, but....other than that. I didn't even know she had been an actress. No WONDER my parents had been so vehemently against my acting. They opposed it every step of the way. My wonderful grandmother was the one responsible for allowing the National Theatre program and Interlochen.

The bottom line was that I wanted a mother. A real mother. And an actress mother - or one that HAD been an actress - was even better. Every letter that she sent me was more seductive than the last. She sent me photos. Of her holding me in South Africa. She was so beautiful. So, so beautiful on the outside....but even as I was being seduced by the idea of a real, beautiful mother that SUPPORTED my acting, I could see in the photos that she looked like she was posing for a photo shoot, and I was an inconvenient accessory.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

David.

Well, this is getting into the hard stuff for me. There is a reason that I'm writing this now - but that will come later.

For now...let's just start with David. The first David. The only David that ever should have been. My David.

He was a piano player at Interlochen Arts Academy. I saw him, heard him play before I ever met him. He was phenomenal. In the small concert hall, all blonde wood and cozy. One of the newer buildings. I was wearing my favorite sweater in the whole world - even until this day - my white angora sweater with a slightly low neckline and little heart buttons. The heart buttons sound tacky, I know, but they weren't. They were subtle and pearl white, you wouldn't even notice they were hearts unless you looked closely. Those girls in the 50's knew what was up. Every time I wore that sweater, people wanted to touch me.

Anyway. That was the night David came to my attention. I fell in love with the way he played, with the way he looked, carried himself, the shy smile that he barely threw to the audience as we were applauding madly. I knew who his sister was - and I couldn't BELIEVE she had a brother! A CUTE brother!!!

So, I did what any smart girl at IAA knew she had to do to meet the cute, shy musician of her dreams. I became his secret admirer.
For months I wrote him notes and left little things at the altar of his locker. For months I tortured over the question of whether he knew who I was and was ignoring me - or whether he could REALLY be so clueless as to not figure it out, already. Maybe he was gay. Half the guys there were....who knew?

Finally, with the support of my girlfriends, I left him a note asking him to meet me down by the lake. I had no idea if he would come - but I couldn't wait any longer.

It was a foggy night. I suggested we meet down by this little abandoned shed where kids used to go to sneak a cigarette. We had a name for it - but I forget what it was called. I was really, really nervous as I came around the corner and through the thick fog. Butterflies in my stomache, flutterbies in my head - the whole nine yards. As I looked around, my heart sank like a stone. He wasn't there. My ego was crushed, all my little fantasies deflated. He probably had a girlfriend - what was wrong with me? I had sent my spies to grill his sister - but she was in her own world, anyway - maybe she didn't know...?

And then, just as I had begun to believe the worst, I saw a tall, dark figure coming towards me in the fog. The fog was so thick that night, he looked like a ghost. I couldn't even see his face until he was 2 feet away from me...but there he was!

I was so happy that he had come. But this WAS the big reveal. Maybe he would be disappointed that it was me. Or maybe he already knew. I was so nervous. And it seemed like he was, too, because the first few minutes were very akward, and the akwardness was fueled by the romantic fog and set on fire by the sexual tension. I mean, before we had even touched each other.

David pretended that he had no idea it was me sending all those notes. But he did say he recognized my perfume from them when he leaned in to kiss me.

We kissed in the fog, on the beach, for as long as we were allowed to before we would have gotten into trouble.

I actually remember leaving David for the first time that night. It was the first time we had ever been together (in any way - except notes) and it was the first time I ever had to leave him. It was wonderful and horrible all at once. He sent me back to my dorm room on a cloud for the most part. I was singing, dancing, hugging myself - off my noggin to tell my best mates all about it.... But it was a little horrible, too. Even that very first night, when all we did was try to fit a little talking in between the kissing, I felt like I never wanted to leave him. It felt like something was ripped away from me - physically. And mentally. And spiritually.

Little did either of us know that night how close we would become. What we would go through together. Little did we know then - safe at Interlochen - what crazy hell ride through my past and present we would be experiencing together.