Said that black lipstick wasn't flattering

Drowsiness washes over me like black waves. Threatening to pull me under and push my body down onto jagged rocks wrapped in seaweed. I feel jet-lagged, but I haven't traveled anywhere. Not yet. I haven't even left my room. I can't but surrender to the poison.

Once I sat on a jetty with my feet in a predator-fish infested water. It was a dare. 

I was born this way. I should know better than trying to change.

They used to be concerned. They used to feel sorry for me. I used to see worry cloud their eyes like Los Angeles pollution clouds the California sky. I was a lost cause even then. It was much worse than they ever could have known.

I dreamed about wild horses, dark waters and dark boys with eyes that could suck the light out of any room. Any day.

I wrote letters. Typing away until my wrists were aching.

Still, they just worried and worried. Said I changed too much. Said that black lipstick wasn't flattering on nobody. And not scar tattoos either.

I've always done it my way. 

And I like danger. I like fucking.

I am about to do the dumbest thing. My friends tell me; Oh, you will come home in crutches, Kim. 

But I am a romantic. And an idiot.

And I like danger. I like fucking. Here, my life has become dull. The sunshine and that special California light has started to bore me. I act and react on auto-pilot.

I don't need time to think. It was thinking that got me into trouble to begin with. There are deep groves in my brain made by having the same thoughts over and over again.

Today I bought several grocery store rags, drove to the nearest Starbucks, sat in the antiseptic AC-air and looked at celebrity cellulite while gagging on a Venti Caramel Frappuccino. In the corner of my evil eye I watched the tanned blondes hurry by with their car keys and Blackberries. I felt like vomiting in one of those un-offensive Starbucks armchairs, designed not to irritate anyone. But they irritated the hell out of me. Had I carried a knife I would have stabbed that piece of generic furniture dead.

An old flame says she hasn't been able to stop thinking about me, that she can still feel my feverish touch on her skin.

And I am eating it up, sucking it down.

She lives miles and miles away. I am going. And I am staying gone. Come visit me in Berlin!!!

This house is haunted, right Ashley?

The first cut is the deepest. We all know that, right?

On the jagged coastline of Oregon. Where trees have been forced, by the wind, to become prematurely crippled and hunch-backed. Where sharp black rocks stick out of the cold sea.

That's where the dull knife cut into me for the first time. It left an ugly scar. That looked as if it was purchased in a Halloween-shop.

She was my cousin. I know, this is getting gross. She was 21 and I was 14. We had been visiting for the whole week, my dad and I. It was all in the family. Card games and Sunday roasts every night. My dad and my uncle and his wife hitting the whiskey pretty hard. Me and my cousins sneaking away to smoke stolen cigarettes.

I would mostly play with Ashley, who was my age. Her sister, Heather, was hardly ever around. She was going to college in Chicago.

One night we locked ourselves into the walk-in closet with some dessert wine and a Ouija board. Heather was a beautiful goth-girl and looked like Satan's bride already; her skin so pale it was almost translucent. And gray eyes that would quickly shift into black if someone said something stupid or tried to contradict her. She would beat up Ashley all the time. 'Just because she was annoying and used to eat boogers.'

We are going to talk to spirits, she said. This house is haunted, right Ashley?

Ashley nodded and took a swig from that sickly sweet wine, and passed the bottle to me. We had everything set up and I was starting to get that warm, tingly feeling of alcohol. The candles cast mysterious shadows on us and made us feel really daring, cool and adult, in the best meaning of the word.
Meanwhile, I hadn't even gotten my period yet, and Ashley wore braces and had blunt features and a weak chin that would forever condemn her to be invisible.

So who wants to ask the first question? Heather asked. We all had silly drunken smiles hanging onto our faces. She poked me in the crotch with her sock-foot. I don't know if it was on purpose, but I felt a surge of electricity tingling its way up my spine.

OK, I said, clearing my throat. Who are you? We had one index finger each on the glass. Nothing happened.

What do you want? Heather asked, looking around the dark closet filled with mothballs and unfashionable coats.

And then the glass started to move across the Ouija board, spelling out: I w-a-n-t t-o c-u-r-s-e y-o-u

We giggled. But I could tell Ashley didn't like it anymore.

Why? she asked faintly.

The glass begun to move, faster this time: B-e-c-a-u-s-e.

That's not an answer, I said and pretended to accidentally stick my foot into Heather's crotch.

Then the glass swished away and wrote: K-i-m i-s g-a-y.

Ashley stared at me. Then she started to cry, and bolted out of the closet.

I went down to the beach with Heather, where we polished the bottle off. Our parents were smoking bong hits on the porch, but the wind was roaring though the hills and whipping up dust clouds that covered our tracks.

Don't ask me how, but in a way I knew she was just toying with me. But seduction has never felt so good. Hazy with wine pumping through our veins and blood throbbing between my legs, we tumbled around in the sand.

After she had seduced me and I had gone down on her and was totally blissed out, we slept for an hour or so, wrapped tightly in each others' limbs, underneath her long, black cardigan.

She said I was good and that I was pretty and that she liked girls.

Me too, I said.


And the next day a bunch of bullshit happened that I'll tell you about another time. We never visited Oregon again. And Heather never wrote me.

But I still think about how perfect that time on the beach was.

Where's the burning bush? I wondered.

She came to me. Waxy wings sticking out from her bony back. Hair like a fiery halo hovering about her.

Where's the burning bush? I wondered.

But I was on the boardwalk at Venice beach. Some muscle boys in track suits were seducing an audience of fat mid-westerners with their gleaming chocolate skin and back flips.

Nobody noticed that she sat down next to me. She looked like she hadn't slept for centuries. Neither had I. Daddy is suicidal again. My best friend let me down. I have existential anxiety again. And zits. I don't know which is the worst. (I pretend here to be a goody-two-shoes kind of girl, but I am vain as hell.)

Like; where are you going and where have you been?

And this is what she said to me. My jaw fell down and hung open like a broken mailbox.

She took my hand in hers and my fist melted into her palm and became a soft goo.

Fool's gold glittered on the pacific ocean. One of the regular freaks strolled by, lost in the symphony inside his head. His shoes beyond repair, his head beyond repair.

You and I have always been here, she said. 

And I knew that was true. Her cool fingers touched my blushing cheek. Her flip-flop feet inched closer to mine.

Would you like to come home with me and check out my collection of maps? Maybe we can at least figure out where we are going next? 

lit like a fucking kerosene torch and talking the coke-talk

I am just finally able to see a corner and not slam into it. I am just finally done puking through my nose. The poison has left my body, and I don't feel like poisoning it ever again.

But you know I will.

The moon seems neon-lit outside my window. The neighbor is having a party next door. Kesha is blasting on the stereo.

Last night I drank up and snorted lines and let some guy stick his tongue into my mouth, and pull my crotch up onto his. On the dance-floor, flashing and bleeding technicolor light all over my electric body. He whispered generic sexy come-ons into my ear. I was mostly interested in the sack of snow he said he had in his car.

I don't know how, but somehow I ended up in Malibu, lit like a fucking kerosene torch and talking the coke-talk on some veranda with some people I had nothing in common with. But we pretended to share our deepest secrets and most profound ideas. Drinking Maker's Mark and whatever was on hand as the sun rolled out of hibernation and the ink of the night sky faded into blue.

Then the drugs stopped working. They always do. I felt so alone and purposeless in this world. I felt as if nothing was ever going to change. That all the bullshit was just going to repeat itself endlessly.

And that's hell, my friends.

She dated asshole-guy after asshole-guy. They made her the town-mattress, the ho.

We became fast friends. I had a non-sexual crush on Troy. Her hair was truly the lion's mane with wild red curls, lashing out and pulling you in. Her smile slightly crooked and mild like yogurt. I didn't detect any darkness. Not at first.

She came from another world. The Valley via Bakersfield. The first time I stayed the night (hands on the blanket, mind you, I was still closeted), I woke up in the morning to find her mom chain-smoking, drinking beer straight out of the can and listening to Aerosmith in the kitchen. It was 9 am. Troy's baby brother, wearing a bib and eating Wal-Mart fish sticks,  was trapped inside a cloud of smoke.

It was the first time I became acutely aware that someone's parent was a raging alcoholic. All the other ones, the relatives and family friends, did their boozing and escapism more elegantly.
They weren't Polish blondes with three inches of roots. They didn't wear Iron Maiden t-shirts. And they didn't drink malt liquor.

Later Troy told me about all her mom's boyfriends and how once she'd walked in on her mom getting fucked doggy-style on the living-room carpet, by a guy with a mullet and a hairy back. She said there was a parade of men like that. They drove pick-up trucks with bumper stickers and smelled of sweat and tobacco. The father was long gone, the mother wasn't even totally sure who he was.There had been so many of them, because her pussy was pure magic. At least that's what she had told Troy, and then Troy told me.

Troy started using a lot of eyeliner and getting more drunk than anyone I knew. She passed out in dumpsters. Woke up in parking lots with her panties around her ankles. She was the kind of teenage girl who always cries at parties. Saying nobody loved her, and that she was fat and ugly. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Once she threatened to jump out of a window.
She dated asshole-guy after asshole-guy. They made her the town-mattress, the ho.
But her heart-shaped face always had sweetness for anyone who would hold her gaze for a split second of our fucked-up eternity.
Then we didn't see each other for awhile. Turns out that during that while she cut herself really bad. Next time I saw her, her arms were striped by glossy scars, running all the way up to her shoulders. Some were so deep and desperate that they had cut into muscle tissue.

She said she had been home alone at the apartment. Drinking vodka and sinking a razor into her flesh. Time and time again. Crying and pacing. Crying and pacing. Cutting and bleeding. Swallowing the fire water.

Then, even later, we lost touch. What happened to my Troy?
Does anyone know?

i slapped her. i watched her face burn with the sting.

I remember her nightgown. It always looked ratty, despite the cheery tulip print. I remember her soft doll feet. I loved touching those cool velvet soles to my cheeks, then covered with pimples.

I was desperate. And I had so much anger inside me. I didn't know what to do with it. Except keying cars and smashing telephones.

She had raven-black hair, so shiny you could use it as a mirror. (If you wanted to see yourself, that is). She would fall asleep outside my door. on the flesh-colored carpet. It broke my heart, but I was already to used to that sort of hurt, I guess. When i would wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom; there she would be, curled up with the door sill as her pillow, asleep, her features melting.

There was only sweetness in that girl, Carrie. She came from Chile. Had grown up an orphan. And it was possible, they said, that she had something wrong with her brain.

Who doesn't?

But she didn't know what to do with those toys that are supposed to teach you useful grown-up things. Like how to count M&M peanut-looking balls. Or to fit basic shapes into the right holes. One day I got so agitated watching her try to push a square into a star-shaped hole that i slapped her. I watched her face burn with the sting. Then I watched as the bottom lip begin to quiver, and those brown, sweet eyes that had seen fuck knows what, filled up with tears.

She cried. I cried.

Then I slapped her again.

Oh Carrie, can you ever forgive me?

Because I don't think I can.

wrong side of the morning

a redder shade of neck on a whiter shade of trash,
 and this emery board is giving me a rash

i'm flat out,
you're so beautiful to look at when you cry

There's the back pain and the heartaches. The acne and the belly-aches.

I think there's something seriously wrong with our reality. and I am not just saying this because I stepped in dog shit today and then got shat on by a seagull with a tummy ache.  (I had to stop in at H&M and buy a whole new outfit, and I am not even kidding).

I am saying this because everyone I know is so damned troubled. There's pills galore and razor cuts on soft thigh flesh. Scarring red, then fading to white. Always bearing witness to a psychic pain that became unbearable. There's the insomnia. Like the grim reaper he comes and puts match-sticks underneath the eyelids of girls and boys whose neurons really need to be wrapped in cotton candy for a good eight hours. There's the back pain and the heartaches. The acne and the belly-aches.

There's drugs. My friend, the crack-whore, had her boyfriend commit suicide a few days ago. He jumped off a bridge and the waves sucked him under and filled his black crack-lungs with polluted water. She's shooting heroin now. She is beyond caring, she says. Not too long ago she was a talented student at CalArts.

And many of the blogs I read here, detail the lives of bright young women who binge and purge, binge and purge. For what? To fit in some faggot designer's (please take this for what it is, I am a homo myself) sample sizes? Constructed why? And for whom?

And the violence we commit onto each other. The physical and mental kind.

And clearly, I am no better. I called a lady in an SUV a bitch today. I purchased a pair of sneakers I definitely didn't need. I felt happy with my new possession for about two seconds, then I felt empty empty. So I came home and ate a whole bar of chocolate. To fill the hole. When that didn't work I smoked a joint. It worked for awhile.
Now I have insomnia.

(but I should know. I saw something, felt something. In Texas and in Arizona)

I wish I had a dog to pet.
                                                           ***

P.S This is a self-portrait from Tate Modern, London. Shooting myself in a piece by Jeff Koons. Wishing the world was as happy and colorful. XXX

You don't make out with friends. You just don't do that.

I don't know how many times I have to make the same mistake before I make any changes in my behavior?

I keep on willingly laying down in the same shallow grave over and over. Sure, my thought pattern was blurry and erratic (and possibly even sporadic as I was swerving in and out of semi-consciousness). Sara had a birthday and we were all drinking JD. Avy was there and she seemed really angry. There were other girls and boys milling about like specks of dust on a map of the abyss.

I didn't think you could fall into a K-hole from just drinking? And I had just found out the day before that I am moving to the NYC at the end of the summer to begin an internship at a magazine. One with lots of pictures of half-naked, anorectic 14-year olds with heroin habits.

Speaking about anorectics ... I made out with an anorectic friend. Her eyes nearly drowned me in black waters, sucked me down and under. Her lips eager, her tongue hungry (no wonder really). But I should know I should know I should know. Now that I am rising from the pits with a throbbing headache.

You don't make out with friends.

She came back once. As a brunette.

She came back once. As a brunette. She had a new man, but he waited in the car. Daddy's knuckles turned white, but his eyes couldn't help but sparkle with adoration. She was very thin again. We all went out onto the veranda. She didn't hug me, but she patted my head, and later held my hand. Her hands were cool and soft and I wished we'd magically become conjoined like that. She had presents. A Polaroid camera and a small gold chain with a heart.

Until about a year ago I wore that heart every day. And this is very strange because I tend to lose all jewelery all the time.

I asked her where she had been: Where have you been mommy? I said.

And she said: Oh honey, I've been working. A woman's got to work, you know.

I remember how daddy turned his face away but I still saw his eyes become flooded with tears, almost to the brim.

When she drove off again, with the mustached man by her side, I wondered why she had given me a heart when she didn't have one.

I rather would have been an aborted fetus in heaven for aborted fetuses

My mother.

My mother left without a trace. I was still a kid, a cute kid (there are pictures to prove) with pig tails and band-aids on my chubby knees.

Still, she couldn't love me. She never wanted me. I was an accident, and due to her upbringing she was unable to see abortion as an option. It didn't matter how soft my skin, how blue my eyes, how peachy my cheeks and how dimpled my smiles.

Until recently I felt that I rather would have been an aborted fetus in heaven for aborted fetuses, looking down on the mess other people made (and keep making).

My mother had big dreams. She wanted to become a famous photographer. She wanted to sail the world. She wanted to make a difference for other people.

Becoming a mother aged her ten years in 9 months. Her once perfect breasts begun sag with gravity. Her hips and belly became branded with fiery stretch marks. Her face became wrinkled from frowning. And her mood-swings started tearing her apart. She couldn't stand my weeping. Said to daddy it was the worst sound in the world.

One day she drove off in the family car. She left a note. It didn't say much. It just said that she was sorry and that we shouldn't look for her.

p.s images borrowed (as often) from: http://ghostwerld.wordpress.com/

Like bird chirps, or baby giggles, only more elusive

And then we steamrolled sedona. or sedona steamrolled us.
I got tangled up in the vortex, almost fell from a cliff so red it seemed like a figment of my devilish imagination.
I heard voices in the wind. Like bird chirps, or baby giggles, only more elusive. But still they spoke to me.
This desert somehow manages to be lush in all its dryness.

I tried meditating again, sitting on a flat-topped rock. I don't know how long I had to sit, but it felt like no time at all, and then, again, I was no longer trying. I was meditating. I didn't have to struggle to stop the thoughts from coming. There were no thoughts, just a tingly stillness and a glow. I felt a smile settle gently on my lips.

And I don't think I can eat another animal.

In fact, Daddy and I took a vegan vow. He says he will truly give up smelly French cheeses.

And then we talked about my mother. It was a heavy, but ultimately good conversation. I will tell you all about it later, beautiful beautiful people.

how can I tell this without seeming like a total douchebag or a lunatic?

There are certain things that scare me. Of course. I don't like the shape of forks for example, and darkness can be eerie sometimes. But I am scared of axe murderers, sadistic rapists and rabid dogs rather than ghosts or spirits. Despite having a total angry New Age-man for a father, I've never had any religious leanings. But I have been thinking, at weak and desperate times, that it would be nice to believe in something other than that we'll all die now or grow older.

Yesterday evening dad and I went to a yoga class in Alpine, about half an hour north of Marfa. It wasn't my idea. Then we went to eat at the Reata Steakhouse. I gave into my carnivore urges and ordered steak. It was so rare it stained my shirt. I had really begun to wonder what this trip was all about, and the disappointment started to coagulate and harden into miniature fists inside me. I was looking away, looking bored, drinking my ice tea when dad told me we had an appointment with a healer and that we'd had to get going.

Again, driving south and turning onto a bumpy dirt road that seemed to lead us to the edge of earth or to a grave of quicksand.

And I kept getting angrier, because I kept thinking we were going to turn up at some red-haired hippie lady's house, and that dad would wanna do her and I would be left listening to the last sounds I wanted to hear.

Finally a faint glow appeared and then a modest house, that turned out to be completely powered by solar panels. A young guy, maybe thirty or so, came out on the porch to greet us. His name was Craig.

First we drank tea, then we ... how can I tell this without seeming like a total douchebag or a lunatic?

Let me just tell you this. For the first time I wasn't trying to meditate; I was meditating. And unless there was some chemicals in the tea Craig offered us, I was experiencing a natural high that sparkled and pulsated hot lava up and down my spine, making little supernovas go off all around me.


I fell asleep during the ride back to Marfa, with a big smile pasted across my face. The last thing I felt was the back of daddy's hand softly touching my cheek.


p.s took the photo of myself in the bathroom just as we got back.