Here she is—the villain of the hour

August 31, 2025

Isn’t that extraordinary?

The article states that she had green eyes but that’s not true. If you look at photos of her, her eyes are blue, but there she is…right? She exists, nay, she lives.

Was it a lie? Babies dancing like mad!

August 30, 2025

After a vivacious mother takes home a four year old girl, she agrees to protect her when she finds out her father is abusing her, but having this despicable figure in her grasp twists in her head: “we’re going to play a nice game.”

I had to play tennis, or at least try, as I ended up living with Leibowitz family that boasted pro athletes in their teens. They’d even remember this story. I stepped onto the tennis court at about four, five years old, and my tennis instructor opened his arms as if welcoming me to the stage, young lady, warmly. He opened his mouth and out came a booming voice.

“Maria…I just met a girl named Maria…” and suddenly, that name would never be the same to him. I swung my baby racket back. Jose Leibowitz’s green eyes like laser beams clocked it across Mountaingate. I chucked it with all the strength I had. I even skipped and fell forward because I threw my whole body into it.

“Why do people sing me this song?!”

Out of the clubhouse, quick, the stork who snatched a baby back stumbled, shocked, her beak wide open at me, like are you KIDDING ME? “What are you doing?” Her fantastic stems coming out of her tennis skirt made her even funnier, the brim of her tennis cap over her birdlike face. As she’s flipping out, coming for me, my tennis instructor placed his, his hands on his hips. He remarked how far I had…chucked that racket…clear across the court. I made a run for it… and he was taken aback, watching me take off, even, as he told Angelica —who profusely apologized — also acknowledging how hot she was, on the sly, “don’t worry about it.” I could tell men liked her. He crossed his arms. Jose Leibowitz burst onto the court. He looked at them, me — on the other side of the court, staking my ground. I got there pretty quickly. The tennis instructor wasn’t expecting any of it, but he watched me with a deep respect. He was enamored. These —losers, in his opinion. He visibly separated himself from them, he was on the other side of the court, completely. The stage was mine. He watched these people, pointing down, signaling to me to “get over here…” it wasn’t going to happen. He knew, he saw Opens in my future, one of these “special” people. There was no way that I was going to yield. I had staked MY SIDE of the court, my side. I gave the tennis instructor a piece of my mind. “You cannot sing me love songs! I am four!” I snapped at the man. “FOUR.” He had no issue. “No love songs…”

You do not, in four-year-old fits, fists, sing four-year-old love songs, was I incorrect? Was I not too young? Inside, I suppose I felt more sophisticated than I could express, almost as if I held a well of awareness or thoughts that couldn’t yet be translated, full of potential. On the outside, it appears as though I’m acting out.

Alright.

Tennis at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics. Gold medal match, boys doubles. Wikimedia

As I woke up to all this when I was writing about it, let me break down my, uh, thought process as I had no advocate. No one was on my side. Um, if you sang ME a love song at four, especially as a man, I’m going to flip out. And this SONG haunted me, already. With some funny angry face, telling you what I think, believe, know — I hated this song. DO I LOOK like I want to engage in romantic love? Dr. J taught me that you could be raped at my age, monsieur, and here grown men were singing me love songs… why? Why. It was too real. Look, innocence does not mean BENEVOLENCE. I learned it early. Nice innocent routine. Nothing but routines. Dr. J was the most innocent human being to the point of farce, for real, and I saw reflections in her eyes, of some molester, some family, some country, so back off. No love songs.

So it was awkward, you see, but why did I know someone could get raped at my age? Well, because my mother taught me so. I had to conclude at four, I thought about child abuse so often, but usually on Sundays, Sunday morning, specifically, maybe because we went to church, and it was a fixed location where I could drift… in thought. I thought of nothing else. Only sexual abuse, only, exclusively, along with the outrageous stories I was hearing, because next to my mother, it appeared I found another mirror. What do people really believe in? She’s running in there… I don’t remember her performances with the priest, bombarding him with her rapes, every Sunday, but the eye-witness does. However, that was in the air. In her. In me.

Tennis at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics. Gold medal match, boys doubles/ BugWarp

At the courtside table, closest to the game, we were seated in the shade, at seven and nine o clock. Maybe ten. “So my behavior,” I fed her the line, which you’re not supposed to do, “convinced you this was true, along with my mother’s….” I should have asked, why did you think it was true? At the time, at eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, as was the case when I was four, there were so many connections I could not make. A gasp, all these years later, my behavior…

I was referring to my wild fits… and my mother’s, I mean, how could you not at least suspect that there was abuse involved, as I had when I was four, though the dramatic movie soundtrack begins to play in my mind as I presented this drama over the years to people as if I were telling a story that didn’t really happen to me, but there’s a logical explanation, in that, I was communicating with people, and how often do people emote in front of others? This is often complex territory. But I’m supposed to, not you. So, my fits.

As the players make their advance in the brightest clothing in the universe, they were lunging for the ball close to the net, hit up high, finger pointing up, slam — right the back corner. Decimated. Jose Leibowitz and I had matches across the house. I refused to say “I’m sorry, please, and thank you,” which might make sense now, because who would want to? I barked at people, I remember Angelica looking over at me like “I can SEE YOU, you know, I am HERE, I SEE YOU,” but she’s not making the most basic connection which is, I didn’t come from a normal house. I screamed, as I peer with ears and eyes past the “haha” I was so bad routine, and Jose Leibowitz erupted dramatically, from his chair, pens flying, and I put up an admirable though stupid fight, as I lacked the awareness that I was a tiny person who could get hurt, I was never going to win. And remember that this is going to be presented to me as…something I was supposed to be grateful for. Their, uh, rearing.

It was akin to waking up inside a body. After all I was four, and how many people even remember that age at all? I do, couldn’t forget, actually. I blinked there, at nine, too, I was inside the body of a nine-year-old, as I came to hear what I said as an adult, “my behavior…” My heart broke because I was just some kid, nodding, scratching my chin, knowing I wouldn’t be able to put the whole story together, not until later.

The flashes, out of form, of memories. Her bed. I’m on the edge. I asked her about sex a lot, didn’t I? I didn’t understand the Catholics. I was disturbed about the attitudes towards sex I was feeling, and I didn’t understand why it was bad. In her body, the dance, as I used to sit down and watch her, and it was like watching a pop star in a bra, in a towel, though she was overtly sexual, but so was my mother. She wasn’t like her though. She spoke to me about sex, she didn’t shut me down, though to some of her children, she was often inappropriate about sex, which I cannot comment on, sorry. I’m Dr. J’s daughter. To her, sex wasn’t bad. In fact, it was great, she assured me. It was really really great. I often giggled, just because I didn’t understand why it was such a secret if we all came from it, and I didn’t understand how it could destroy my innocence, if I came from it, it didn’t make sense to me…

Angelica crossed her arms, didn’t look at me. Discomfort, I suppose.

“Yes.” My behavior seemed to signal to her that it was true.

I was following, but not really.

“I mean, can you imagine?” She asked. “Saying that about your own husband…?” Tapping her temple with her fingers, okay? You’d never imagine, no? That someone could lie about that, in an Adidas cap, a red bathing suit on, a man pivoting towards the right? Say that about your husband, the stork was shocked. She was disturbed. She turned her head.

It’s true, she never thought that anyone could lie, about THAT? But today is another era. I read about a woman in France who recently confessed that she had lied that a boy raped her in her youth because her brother did. Already, that was a lot to take in.

I thought about this moment.

The New York Times consulted an expert in this article, who said, it’s rare for someone to lie about something like that, which Angelita confirmed on the sunny side of the courtside table. She could hardly conceive it.

But someone with abuse in their family might point the wrong finger, this expert said, because they cannot accuse their family member. I’m already in a mushroom cut contemplating that at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club. That’s gotta breed delusion.

I thought about Dr. J’s condition, as she treated the truth and lie as interchangeable concepts. The difference between them was even laughable, a joke, wee! A party, Dr. J. Mothing mattered, tapping her tea cup sets, but wasn’t it already a lie? This is the point. I thought. Was it even a joke how true that was…? I was trying to interpret her outlandish behavior, trying to discern what an incestuous home would do to someone? She communicated that she believed a four-year-old could be a sexual object.

Now that’s the sexual trauma expert interjecting, on the other side of hell, I vaguely understood I was the four year old in this situation, I was seeing myself as existing in a mirrored reality, but someone at that age, sure, just wrap them up in a sex scandal for shits and giggles, even, which is where I was at that time. One of these, yes, Jokers, who’s going to thrust the hero, me on some joyride where they’ll see how dark man can be, something. Light, it seemed.

And to reference this anonymous woman’s “confession,” that she lied that a boy raped her, which, to me, people can forget. Just because she says she‘s confessing doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s going to tell the truth. Also. So now, you’re going to trust her? I know a liar, he did the same thing, “he confessed.” A sad confession. He told me that he had given AIDS to people for ten years. Blamed it on the girl at my school who gave speeches about AIDS publicly as she had contracted it as a newborn through a blood transfusion — a sad display.

She knows who she is. We all do.

I learned that people don’t know what a liar is— and that included me, though I knew it — and in looking at most people, don’t most people tell a mix of the two? Lie and truth? Never lied? Never mixed it up to make yourself feel better? But people don’t often SEE themselves, do they? Dr. J? Right? Reflections. Her obscene blindness, you see, casting her blue eyes around, acting BLIND, it was provocative, some emergence from the collective.

Speaking of this anonymous woman’s confession with a hole in it, there was a hole in it. The dates didn’t add up between when she stopped being raped by her brother, with some intriguing story about her boyfriend mixed in. And because she’s confessing, this is green light go, which it has to be, where the system bends, not always fair. Life is not always fair.

She said, I did this to stop the cycle of incest, since she had a child, and she didn’t want to pass incest down? Did she mean, her, him, or? The cycle. Does that make sense? It doesn’t to me. That was terrifying. It was dark, gross, abject, but this was my mother, you know, even a child. Did I have a right to care about the subject?

Dr. J taught me, or the situation did, that someone could lie about it, and someone could do it. And these two ideas appeared like mirrored images to me.

I had to understand. How could someone lie about something like that? How? Back in my pink room, so pink it was funny, I decided to conduct a couple of psychological experiments on lying in the fourth grade. Ah, the adult in me, finally, went, “that must have been a tough year.” The figure of my father in the writing of this became a joke, he became a sheer joke. You’d think, it’s super dad time, it’s time to click into gear— code red, resources, help. Nope.

I was going to Warner Ave. School as I was, you know, still living on the Westside with the Leibowitz’s, suddenly home, again. The lie ate at my conscious, the lie, how could she? Her terminal illnesses, her dying displays, as she could enact dying, which I’ll get to later.

I had to understand.

Looking into the mirrors in my room, I hated lying, I hated it, and yet, it was so common, wasn’t it, Dr. J? It was hard to explain, she was prescient to me, somehow. So, yeah, I decided to lie consciously to try and understand why…why the impulse?

Evidently, lying turns out to be complex, complicated, in that, there’s different forms of it, but I had broken down her lies into two categories: she seemed to tell lies that felt true to her, as she could die, which I’ll get to later, as the obvious question is — what do you mean? And she believed her own lies!” My father cried. But so did he. And people do, believe their own lies, and have you ever caught someone in a lie? rOr caught someone who did something that wasn’t that cool? Shaping, shaping, shaping, meaning gets shaped, reshaped, it’s commonplace, nothing is real, you didn’t hear it right. No one hardly ever stops, and goes, yes, I meant it that way, I apologize. In my own circles, today, it’s practically dissolved solid boundaries entirely. Even in myself, I’ve made a passive aggressive play recently, and I tried to make it as if I meant something else, because of how I did it, which makes communication utterly confusing, so I eliminated it, and just the other day, I basically eliminated a friend as she did it, with a smile. Dr. J. Society isn’t an honest arena. Mirror mirror mirrors. Nothing in that arena translates to me.

First, peering through my pink blinds with hazel eyes, I aligned myself vertically, with God. I was a spiritual person, and lying, I remember talking with God, I saw as such a problem, with memories of casting my gaze upon a quiet world, before the invention of the internet, one that was going to get worse. She was prescient.

I had to wrestle with the ethics, first, in other words. It was wrong, that seemed to be innate as an understanding, though people do it, don’t even REALIZE they’re doing it. I wanted God to work through me, even, I remember, just because, what was I supposed to do with that? So I suppose I was searching for use, how to find use in it. So, it was time to plan, once I justified it as having some purpose, even if it was the sheer intrigue, shock factor, of a child in the throes of despair actually deciding to lie consciously to study it, this fact of life, it’s so common it’s ridiculous. The papers, the media, doesn’t care — they’re lying all the time.

People put on faces, nothing but faces today, and shut you down nicely.

Now, would someone suspect that I was this calculating, ah, Dr. J, her obsessions. It was simmering there as a thought when I had launched my “undercover investigation,” a serious one.

Funny enough, someone told me later, that a girl in my class lied to the student body that year that her father would take 100 if not 200 people to Disneyland if we elected her. That was a hilarious mirror on the political world — yeah, that was a no, on his end. He was most definitely not organizing that. Kids lie. It happens. Kids go through phases, also interesting. She might not have been lying, either, which is how it was presented, and I live strictly with a legal framework in my mind at all times. Sometimes people slip. She might have, in fact, just stepped a little too far, not understanding what she might be putting on her father for a school election. Or, maybe she told her, explicitly, yes, I lied about that to win the election. I don’t even remember it.

I had to set up a psychological container, my words, meaning parameters, meaning intention, meaning a set up. I was going to lie for a purpose, these were my reasons, and I did it to explore two types of lying she participated in. First, Dr. J seemed to believe she was dying when she enacted it. Dying was a theme in her psyche.

Her sister had called the Mickey Mouse phone from time to time acting — as I had picked up the phone at four, I could — as if she were dying. On her last breath, couldn’t even say “hi.” I would snap and go running on all fours up the stairs to yell: “your sister!” My reflexes had been on point, “get help,” I didn’t need to be five, so what happened here? Later, I had asked how she was doing, and Dr. J stacking papers, casually, had told me that she had married a murderer who was in and out of jail, or something, though did she say prison? A lawyer would have catched that distinction. He beat her to death, sometimes, and with a wave of her hand, that’s when she’d call her. She was really over it. That’s just a conversation with Dr. J.

Nothing but beating, dying, rape…

So, I decided to, on the schoolyard, tell a lie that felt true to me— that my father was dying. I confessed it to my friends, which required sadness, and this state was dark, lowly, hungry, and it did have an effect, in that, they demonstrated care and sympathy, so I remember feeling that perhaps this arena came from an extreme lack of care, as Dr. J really appeared starved. So, it was sordid, not comfortable, and here we go, I don’t know where I ended and she ended, but evidently, I was still friends with these people. I was actually their friends…

I thought about this next step in social development — school. Dr. J, uh, well, had never given me the impression that she was ever normal. Was she the weird girl in school?

My friends, they caught on, that it wasn’t true, and what was I supposed to do? It wasn’t, and there was a point when that story evidently unraveled, maybe I wasn’t a good liar, but then, neither was Dr. J, though her tears were real, and she was convincing enough to Angelica.

I had to allow it to the situation to take its course. I couldn’t tell them that I was conducting a psychological experiment. I get it, also. I watched these children, I saw that they had structure, they had, like Angelica, a frame — fascinating, for a child, to see it so clearly.

They would not be able to compute that I could have done this, but my mother was Dr. J. And how many times did I have to say it? I am not from your world.

I was outside the known world. I knew it didn’t have to be that way, that’s the point, and yes to a certain extent, that includes our psychic structure, and I’m referring to the actual construction of society, hierarchy.

And some of these responses, disbelief, am I lying? About conducting experiments on lying? I was in a sex scandal. I had bigger fish to fry. Confusing…because what I did was OUTSIDE what people thought was possible and yet — this is so “Joker’s Daughter” of me — anything is possible, with a smile, with some airy smile. Nice sentiment. There’s dark, light, directions, it’s amazing to encounter the world in 3D, plastic. That’s the brain too.

I apologized to my friends, and they were Russian, Chinese, African, they were not white Americans, so I’ll add that to the mix. They were straight up ANGRY, got up in my FACE, especially CHINA, CHINA was up in my face. “Why did you do that?” Maybe she was Korean, as that feels a bit more like that culture, but, I apologize, I don’t remember, but I think she was Chinese. I did not know, you see, I apologized. I wondered if Dr. J had ever been confronted, just remembering the priest, okay? How no one confronted her? They just let her put on some bombastic display at the top of mass, altar boys holding sticks, whatever this was. The eucharist minister was there, heard her. As a mirror image, could someone see abuse, and not be able to respond appropriately? Mirror. They forgave me. I suppose it felt that way. China forgave me, explicitly. A terrible SHAMING, as this word, SHAME was so putrid and present, a real killer. They weren’t that cruel about it, their response was correct, however, they were upset. But it’s more the result that festers in the subject.

Back in my room, “ew,” wow. That was a head trip. My mother had abject sides, she wasn’t clean, and I got Angelica — her response was justified, but her illness was not seen as a real illness. I understood the DOSE of care and sympathy. It was real pathos, she was a pathetic character, and now, as an adult, I understand its function, in that real care was urgently needed?

Shaking that off, I would now just lie, blatantly.

Ever thought, as an interjection from me on the other side of hell, that one’s cleverness can work against them? I had no one, what can I tell you? I was so young, so the bridge between in and out, the bridge between states of awareness, was developing, I was developing.

She appeared to just lie, for shits, weeeeeee, to get crude about it. I suppose anger drove my actions too, alongside despair, as I was on two wheels in two different realities: it was true, it was a lie, and what she did, understandably, would have enraged me. In my case, just hand me those foam bats, no? In psychologist’s office— just hit something, right? Just GET ANGRY. Just give Maria the space. But I wasn’t in touch with my anger, not in a clear form, I don’t think.

I had to set the intention and forget about it. I had to have no attachment to doing it, just let it go. Perhaps, people reading this might not understand what it means to not have attachments, in a basic way. Just let it go. I had to set up the conditions to make it as real as possible. I had to wait for the impulse to lie. It’s in God’s hands now…

This situation, in particular, illustrates Eric Berne’s framework extremely well, but it’s also just a framework, not the absolute truth. So I set it up, I prepared myself, I couldn’t tell anyone what I was doing, not until the end. I had to go through the entire arc.

On the schoolyard, the boys at the lunch tables that appeared like a staged chorus fit for a musical. They could NOT stop talking about the impending release of Mortal Kombat IV. Their faces turned left and right. Their arms reached across. Engrossed in a choreography, they spilled over, enthusiastically, about the ways one could rip off limbs, “oh my god!!” They could stab and slice through their flesh, mutilate their abdomen, hang a man by his entrails, and destroy a body. They could speak of nothing else. In the center of the boys was Bobby, and I don’t know why, because I don’t even remember a feeling, so I cannot comment if I had a real crush on him, or not, but it floated. He was the cute boy in class. I don’t know what to say about that age because who cares? We’re nine. I don’t know how to talk about that now. Sure, shrug, maybe?

In that moment, I felt it. I wanted to lie. I don’t remember how much time passed. I wanted to break reality, I understood. I sympathized with the desire to change one’s circumstances, to want to connect, maybe, albeit strangely, or get attention. Was that mixed in? Dr. J was most certainly full of herself, however, from what I hear, that might signal insecurity in fact. I wanted to break reality, change it, as if I could wave a magic wand, seductive. This would probably veer into the space of fantasy as Dr. J lived there. Now, as I was studying the world instead of living in it, at this point, I was standing on the school yard, wondering how this might have gone for Dr. J. Someone who spectacularly didn’t fit in, kids can be mean, no, I sniffed around, no one here was cruel, but there was cruelty in the world, that we know, don’t we Dr. J? As someone who maybe came out of a mentally ill home, there might not be heart, or at least, Dr. J seems to be cuing the Games of Thrones cellos…in the Light of Seven, I listen to soundtracks. There wasn’t always heart. That was true. Kids didn’t necessarily understand. Not to cast a blanket statement, but they might not be developmentally able to receive a person who comes out of “a situation.” Or she’s burning bugs, Dr. J. Something. Doing weird shit.

Okay, I took a deep breath, as the boys — kept, one in particular, one who always called for Bobby, flipping OUT about the series of buttons that — oh my God! His head, guts, blood. What’s next? Can’t wait! I was driven by a passion for psychology, a passion for architecture, and, I think, a despair to understand how someone could become…her… I didn’t know how to deliver the lie, you know? The natural impulse was to act as if it were true, though Dr. J was past that. Her personality appeared so fake. Her delivery was so sincere it was insincere. She was so dramatic that she existed outside of the norm, already. Taking a seat, all by myself, with my brown paper bag, I said, “I already have that game.” In a snap, the boys fanned out in a musical theater around Bobby Kia — who took the lead. “Liar.”

I don’t know why, why this word hung around me, like a shadow, it was interesting, because I wasn’t a liar, so that was a feature I was observing. How does one become who they are? The things we carry that we don’t even know that we carry. I didn’t understand it. The point here, I don’t think he picked up on what I was doing around this time, but he might have. It’s just to speak about what’s in the air. Even with child abuse, a child can get lured in. At that age where we might get pulled in directions that are not true, you see, we’re susceptible at that age. We might not understand what we’re picking up on. This felt more of a familial lingering.

We all come from a family, ancestral worship even seeks to maintain a real line through the generations. Psychiatrist Murray Bowen’s work into family systems is built upon that concept. He observed the family as an emotional unit that spans generations, and the emotional dynamics breed dysfunction. He noticed that schizophrenia as a generational problem related to the mother. He was a scientist of psychology, that is, his work was rooted in biology, not the subjective experience—that is Freud. The one who “rules them all” next to Jung.

I mean, shrugging at Bobby Kia, “okay, but I already have that game…”

“No you don’t,” and I said, “yes, I do. I already have that game.”

Bobby Kia threw the gauntlet—"prove it.” “No problem,” I said.

In class, my eyes were on the clock at the end of the day. So were Bobby Kia’s. Once that bell rung, I had to get the game. If Dr. J even cared about getting the game, I don’t know, doubt it, she seemed past that, just erase it.

When it rang — I was a ninja — diffuse the plan.

Across the yard, my body was flipping out. I was a wreck! A nervous wreck! Into the ’81 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, an iconic car, how could anyone do this?

“Westwood,” I said to my father. “Gotta write a paper, gotta get this game for this paper.”

“English.”

My father drove me to Westwood, no problem, no questions asked, it was a creative writing project for English. I walked into the electronics store where they sold DVDs, games. I approached the most perfect sales assistant. He was slapping labels on cases. Remember, there are no such thing as small parts only small actors, this was one of these moments.

“Do you have Mortal Kombat IV?” I asked. He sort of laughed through his nose at me picking up a case. “You’re never going to get that game,” he leveled with me. “There’s a wait list.” I thought. “There’s no way?” I asked. “There’s no way I can get that game, at all?” My father interrupted me. “They don’t have it.” “Please,” I said. “No,” he said, as if to say “nice try.”

“Come on Maria…”

“Stop, I’m having a conversation…”

“No way,” he said, “there’s no way you’re getting that game.” Just please. I felt epically defeated, but I took a deep breath, thinking that there must be a company address. I turned and took a couple of steps to leave, and he called out to me.

“But you can rent it…”

I paused. So did he.

I turned, “rent it?”

“Yeah…” he dragged it out… picking up the next case, as if he slipped me that information because I was a girl asking for Mortal Kombat IV, and I needed it now, not later.

“Blockbuster.”

“Are you serious?”

Pushing the door open, a fourth grader, I couldn’t believe this, I muttered to my father, “unbelievable, these boys need to BUY it, buy it, please.” I got into the Cutlass, snapped on my seatbelt, the cosmic joke. “It’s available at Blockbuster,” I said to my father, how ridiculous, so — putting on my seatbelt — to Blockbuster.

We drove over to Culver City. The whole way, I was so annoyed. “Have to buy the game, eh? Can’t just rent it at Blockbuster.” There was so much meaning in all this. On and on these boys went about this goddamn game and it’s available.

We pulled into the parking lot in the ’81 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, an iconic car. I jumped out and ran into Blockbuster in a state of urgency.

“Where is Mortal Kombat IV?” I appeared. “Do you have Mortal Kombat IV?”

“Where is Mortal Kombat IV? Really? It’s here…?”

The attendant took me over to the game without delay. “Oh my gosh,” I said, as my father hated cursing, there it was: Mortal Kombat IV. I got the game in less than 24 hours.

I must admit, right? In my room. I held onto this game, the one that these boys lived and breathed over for weeks, every day. They had to get THE GAME, the feeling I had, was nothing short of a drug. I was tracking my sensational experience as much as I could, not really understanding through my convictional charge across parking lots, how anyone could lie, as it was so intense. I felt a certain amount of inner tennis, a back and forth, justifying, even. But I was performing a conscious experiment even if I acted unconsciously, too, by default, as we operate between the two, but this inner back and forth felt more like a vague presence that didn’t really apply to me in this case, so how? How is it possible for someone to lie about that? There appeared to be an inner justification. There seemed to be some desire to go on this ride, and now, with a feeling of triumph, I pulled it off. I ripped the label right off, the need to return it, who cares, once I crossed that line, I’ll pay 100 bucks to keep it, whatever I wasn’t thinking about it. I didn’t have all my teeth. It’s a drug. Dr. J was an addict, a severe one. I didn’t care anymore.

The next day, I walked onto that Warner Ave campus with a confidence I had never had before — I headed straight to Bobby that morning always surrounded by all the boys. His face changed, didn’t it? As I made my approach— his smile dropped as mine lifted. I dropped that game and with it, the mouths of the boys. His main attendant, if you would, he was amazed. “There you go.” I got that game in less than 24 hours. There’s your game. I didn’t tell them they could rent it at Blockbuster. I wasn’t doing it for Bobby Kia, this was deeper than some boy I didn’t think about when I left campus, this was about family.

If they thought I did it for him, I don’t know that, as they didn’t care. There were several thought processes to break down. A, people make conclusions that are not true, but they believe them to be true, and this one would really really hurt me. And they believe that love, or a crush, could make someone go to lengths to be liked by them. I wondered if there was Dr. J in there, I don’t know, only because she literally threw herself on every man. She went to bizarre lengths, but the world is telling me that this is true, that people can. And is that collective?

Oh, what one would do for love…

And the whole world changed, opened. The day appeared brighter, heavenly. So this is the subjective experience. He was nice to me, flirtatious, even, Bobby. I had earned the boy’s respect, sort of. He tapped my butt, how strange, holding a basketball. A couple of us girls were holding cool paper towels for them that day, I do not know why, a hilarious setup. If I had triggered the girls in some way, I do not know, I might have. I was observing dynamics. This was a romantic affair—lying. Fetish. For a moment, it seemed like I was in a new world, though. All my problems disappeared. But then, Blockbuster called, weeks later.

My father approached me while I was playing handball outside our garage as my class was a fan of the sport, and I was, I believe, one of the good players, actually. My father and I played it, together, against the wall. “Blockbuster called,” my father said. I didn’t think about that, about them wanting the game back. “You didn’t return it?” I looked up at him with a ball in my hands. How was I going to do that? I was nine. I looked at the man. He didn’t respond normally. He didn’t seem to clock that. “Why didn’t you?”

To insert this factoid about Nick, before we enter the game on Miracle Mile, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s around this time, a year later, about, but he wouldn’t tell anyone, not a soul. I found out ten years later from his doctor when it was Alzheimer’s now… I called his general practitioner, my junior year of college, wishing I had done it before, actually, and he yelled at me that he told him ten years ago!!! And wouldn’t I have been able to sue him for malpractice? He was CONFUSED, “Alzheimer’s?! No!” He wasn’t surprised! He was so angry.

Now, I have to confess, I tried to convince my father to let us keep the game, like what’s the penalty? (No questions about the event, no questions.) He told me I was ridiculous. He was upset. Now, I went through normal human emotion, I began to feel bad, especially because “I gave it to this boy at school,” but I was conducting a psychological experiment, which I didn’t tell him. But, shoot, okay, I can’t remember if I had accounted for the break down of the lie though I had already gone through one as I conducted a couple of these experiments, just trying to assess what happened to Dr. J at this juncture. Now, most people, I believe, don’t take the step, they don’t come clean. I had to. I was not able to keep lying or disconnect and run away. I had to get the game back. I apologized to my father, I’m tracking the suite, evidently, my father was sick, and Dr. J might have come out of a family of liars, as her condition felt so innate which implied an environment. This was just her world.

Taking a breath, I prepared myself for the backlash. I went up to Bobby, I needed the game back. He looked me up and down and called me a liar. I got him the game, but I took it—fair. I needed to get it back, regardless. He did, he brought it back, and he wasn’t that mean, actually. No one was. He didn’t go yapping around, nothing. He handled that well. But again, I was tracking the arc of it, where he called me a liar in the hall, a big fat lia. He corrected himself. I wasn’t FAT, but I was a liar publicly though it was very mild. No one was even around. I believe what I did was still impressive. “Thank you Bobby.”

Right there, my friend Rachel, the Russian prodigy walked up beside me. She had been watching me with her angular bangs—the whole time. I had been interviewing her as a child prodigy because my mother was supposedly a child prodigy. I remember this question I had asked her. We had walked side by side a year earlier down this hall.

“Do you…um, do you have problems? Do you experience any issues?”

She had a satisfying squint, as I did, “no,” she said.

“Supposedly she was a prodigy,” so I wanted her opinion, as a child prodigy. Only because Dr. J played like she was “some special girl.” Not to say that she wasn’t, but Rachel didn’t act like that. And the obvious question is, was Rachel really a prodigy? She was in the gifted program, so she was above average.

And I have to laugh, because she’s Russian, you see. After my last experiment, Rachel had hung back. She had disappeared, too, totally off my radar—a Russian. She went black. To me, she no longer even existed. I never even knew her. She could disappear like that. I was amazed by her.

“What are you doing?”

She turned to me as Bobby walked away.

She was my biggest obstacle in conducting this experiment. She was the only person who saw that I was doing something consciously. She might have used this term.

“You’re doing something on purpose.” Not just anyone could have peered through. A Russian, I have to laugh. I had a Russian mother who came into my life later, who nodded, as I told her the story. “Of course,” neutral about it. “The reality was,” she thought, “clear.”

In Eric Berne’s framework, the transactional psychologist that defined drama as a psychological game, the point was — the result. What you’re unconsciously seeking out. The game, if one wants to identify what it is, it’s always the result, according to him. In the alcoholic, it’s not the high someone wants, but the day after, when you feel like shit. Whatever the result is, that’s actually what you’re aiming for. Since Dr. J was a pathetic character, I thought about that, in that moment. This is the end. I didn’t know if it directly applied, but that was — the blow.

Berne believed that we’re all just searching for or avoiding intimacy. The tricky element in his framework is that, what Rachel did was rare. She was a rare person. She wanted to know — “what are you doing? Why are you doing this?” She even insisted on it, you see, as my friend. Now that the experiments were now over, I could talk about it.

By the tetherball court, tucked under a tree, we were alone. I confessed to her, and this is intimacy. She told me that’s what I was doing, as if I didn’t know. “Psychology.” I said. I had to understand why she lied in the way that she did, my mother. “Everyone lies.” She disagreed. I wondered what she’d say now. But we talked about it; she was a real friend. She could tell I was doing something on purpose, because this wasn’t who I was. I wondered if Dr. J ever had a real friend. Wondering if they always exist. I had to understand.

She told me what every Russian knows. I was never going to break the system. That’s very true. I just couldn’t stand lying. I believe I really confessed, too, I sort of needed to, I saw it as a major problem. Lying. But Berne, later, made me think of the romantic affair of it, and as a means of avoiding intimacy, I just don’t know if I’m that attached to his framework.

Rachel was the only person who questioned my father, she didn’t understand him. She didn’t even need to squint to see him fast asleep in the windshield of his car through the fence—a Russian. He would just sleep there, and now, came the terrifying part. I asked her to watch once. Waking him up. It was as if I were bringing him back from the dead. His terror was epic.

“What you wanna kill me?”

When she found out that he was an aerospace engineer, she stopped in the hall. She was shocked. Do you know how hard it is to shock a Russian? “Your father is a rocket scientist?” This is what she was going to do, things like this. “No,” I said, “he’s an aerospace engineer.” “Maria this is what an aerospace engineer is.” We looked at one another, floored.

That was the end of my experiments, they were too nerve-wracking. I couldn’t do that outside of a few instances, I couldn’t even imagine how someone could lie about that, but I thought, you’d have to stop caring to such a degree, but she lied about illnesses, dying. Now, the lie I told that felt true, was about my father, and then he turned out to have a disease.

But what disease?

When the phone rang, the backyard was framed in the white windowpane like a Jasper Johns, a work of art, an American classic. She picked up. The sprinklers spit, set the beat. It was 1989, the year that Kaoma whipped the world into a frenzy with the sexiest dance on earth.

“Oh…” she smiled. Just as she had predicted, looking down at me. He called. “Look who it is…” she was delighted, even, laughing, the good witch. To what honor, even, could she, loving it, you see…be receiving this phone call? He wanted to play nice. He didn’t even know her. Two can play that game, she thought. She paced the kitchen with legs shaped by the Gods seeking his balls. “How nice,” we’re pretending that we don’t know why your daughter is living with me now. “New Jersey and Italy? How nice…” She didn’t help him, she didn’t mention me, but neither did he.

I never forgot this phone call. Her performance was “out of this world,” my mother’s phrase, but the memory hovered there like a bubble in float in the backyard. It never lost its clear shape, as it was singular, unique, I recorded it, even. The colors were red, green, yellow, impossible. I began to wake up to that. What am I looking at?

He called her house and acted nice? I was four, you know.

He didn’t know, though, shush. My guts dropped, as if the entire understanding of my entire life broke, some structural column within me broke. “He didn’t know. Why is he acting like this?” In his divorce file, he wrote, I came home and Maria was living in another family, but all he had to do was pick me up. He didn’t because “I” hated him and he didn’t know why. But what’s happening here? What are you talking about?

Hated him? I was nine, ten, in the Oldsmobile, when I asked him, as — my conversations with Angelica evidently rested on the corner of my eye, regarding this hazy figure in the car. I was too young, maybe that statement wouldn’t apply to someone else, but at nine, I can’t quite compute that. I hated you, and you didn’t know why, emphasis on WHY. It was only in jabbing him, that he would point down, “they told vicious lies about me, vicious lies.” That he didn’t know were being told, a piece that clicked into place, okay? So, I don’t know what a break down is for everyone, I can’t even begin to tell you the layers that I had to deal with as I wrote this stupid story, coming to wake up, wait? Like being in that body, at four, looking out my eyes, what? He called?

But there was — a razor sharp smile on Angelica’s face, just as she thought, baby. This son-of-a-bitch in Portuguese — called, a Brazilian mother, baby.

She wasn’t in a rush, eh? She had all the time in the world. He really went on and on. Continuing to pace the kitchen, back and forth, loving this, really, she dropped the mask and squatted real low. She stuck her finger in her mouth at me: yuck. Popping back up to standing, she was the mother hen, her chest puffed out.

“How nice…”

Suddenly, desperately, she stomped, actually confused.

“What?” She needed to hear to him, the warmest woman. “I did not hear you…” She needed to, “please, what?” She was sorry, just so sorry. “Maria?!” A revelation. “Is she aroun?!” I was right here! She was so sorry! She blamed herself, laughing, really. She hadn’t brought me up, right? She laughed, she really did. There was a purely subtextual convo.

She skipped over her words as if she were in a fairytale. She always keeps the babies, she said, drawing the line of sight between her and them, right where she can see them. She assured him, really, that she was the watchdog of the concept of children, you see. “She’s right here,” as it were wondrous. Right in her line of sight. Never leaves it. She assured him…really. She didn’t want him to worry. I fiddled with my fingers. The mask dropped a little bit, “never been safer.” She meant it, you know. With her whole heart and soul, she wanted to quell his concerns: “don’t worry, please Nick, don’t worry…” she left the truly sincere note in all this resonate…a moment. Gazing across the grass glistening in the sun freshly watered, she spoke of wonderful times, “so many children, a dream.” She delighted at the invisible babes playing at her feet. “They love me,” she said, “…as a safe person.” (Nothing but laughter these years.)

“Nah,” she dropped mask, she didn’t think I wanted to go. She really didn’t.

“Can you WHAT? So many kids around,” she laughed. (None were.)

“I’m sorry I didn’t hear you?” She meant it, she really wanted to, hear him that is, she was so sorry. “What did you ask?” Aggressive, but nice. NICE was the OPERATIVE word.

She paused.

She pitched high, the good witch.

“Talk to her?”

“Of course!”

She laughed, no way, so sorry; she sizzled as she dug her fingers into her eyelids and shook her head—for a while. Her face rose, open, generous. “So sorry.” She was soooooooooo sorry, she laughed. She was really a bull. “So many kids…”

The subtext was: why wouldn’t you be able to talk to her? Not like you did anything, right????? Innocent man???? Laughing, right? Yeah, a bull, she laughed for a while. “She’s right here, one moment.” She couldn’t wait.

She bent down real low and called me over with her finger. I was pinned under her beak— her eyes fell out of her face. She couldn’t even believe it, mouth agape, brows raised. He invited me to go on vacation with him.

She couldn’t move, couldn’t wipe the shock off her face. She just shook her head no. “No,” I said—easy. I was four, five. “I love you Maria…” He reached for me. I didn’t know what to do, her face practically cartoon. I just started saying it back.

“I,” she grabbed that phone—brought it to her ear. “Thank you so much for calling, really,” she said with so much truth in it. “Thank you so much, for calling…” all the way to the receiver. “But really,” she meant it, rubbed it in, how much it meant to her, personally. She hung up on him, nicely, and cursed his existence in Portuguese like a bull. “And what are you,” she pointed down at me, brightly now, “going to say to the lawyers?” “I want to live with my moder because…” I had a script, we rehearsed it, often.

“High five!” I slapped her hand. She clapped; it was time to dance!

A spin on the living room dance floor. She had six kids, grandkids, so a birthday, Wednesday, soccer game, excuse, there was always a party. “JOSE!!” We switched like that. “JOSE!” We danced through the years by Kenny Loggins. This was the lambada, baby, deadly, this woman would blow you away, and she would tell you – in the bedroom. Together we were strong! You know I belong right here with you, through the years, it’s betterrrr every day! You kissed my tears away… and to the violins building…

Then, he requested to visit. Now that. That, I’m following her logic. Looking back on all this, many years later, I felt a beam drop, each step of the way. Right, in writing a book about all this, I began to wake up to this story. So, I understand why she believed it was true… but of course, my father’s throughline vanished at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club. She didn’t say, you’re father acted guilty, you see. And why is that? Hazy, hazy shapes, sharp sounds, a sensational event…

And then, he requested to visit.

The game heating up, we were head on, the players taking on the gait of a dance around our table. “Who gives a shit?” Their sneakers squeaked. “About a man who rapes a child?” She touched her pinky. “Rape,” she cautioned me with a pointed finger to “pay attention.” Her pinky dangled now, and she pointed, again, “rape,” that’s what she said. “No one gives a shit,” her eyes demonic over her beak, “about a child molester,” she spoke clearly. “No one,” she laughed, a cartoon stork, “believe me.” Whack. The ball streaking.

The demon: there was a demon surfacing within her, and it was psychological. To me, at nine, ten, I can’t always pinpoint where I am in time, I’m amazed that some of these concepts I was learning about in church were appearing to be true in a way. There was a demon in her… and I was taken aback. It was extraordinary to me. It was sick, this situation was sick, so that’s what that appeared to be. “Sick in the head,” Angelica could spit on my mother’s name, but what do you say to someone who went through this? It’s just —was it in the head? It was true, valid, not exactly frightening as an entity in this form, a demon.

Her finger going up and down, she regarded it as if it were a wondrous mechanism of action —a DICK, this is what it does. Real talk. She sliced it off with her other finger — “pay attention,” she wanted his DICK. She showed it to me, eyes wide, the area in question. Up and down, up and down, like this is what it does, “wow,” as if it were magical, even, “this is a dick.” She showed how it goes into a vagina, even, we’re talking anatomy 101. With all due respect, I was nine, squinting at this, thinking, “yeah,” I get it. It’s pretty real, but it’s not always real, people can like it’s not. So she was like, at times, trying to EXPLAIN that this WOMAN told her that a MAN was RAPING a child. “Uh huh,” that was my reaction. I was trying to give her the emotional room. This was not SUNSHINE, sparkles, what the fuck was this? Was she supposed to act SANE? She wanted his BALLS, Maria, she wanted to RIP his fucking DICK off and throw that shit into the WEEDS of Pennsylvania. And her bite, her whip, the whole package, she flipped out. She told me this was happening, to “you,” and here, she made me laugh, “you, her, Maria,” she came forward. “You, her.” She wanted his dick.

I’m on her side right now. I could understand how she could lose her mind, want to hurt him, and why did this appear poignant to me, thinking about the unreality of Dr. J? Why did her response pass? Why did it feel important to me to let her — unleash the WHIP! LIKE FUCK YOU. Requesting to visit. But she does not SAY IT, what my father did. This: a child rapist, molester, abuser, struck a match within her, even if she’s dancing the lambada regardless like Nina from The Forbidden Dance, which, you know, the multiverse.

So she goes, YO BABY, right? Getting into her chair, in her bedroom, expertly, giving it to ME, we’re going to GET this mother fucker, we’re going to play A NICE game. He might call, right? Chewing her fucking gum. Then, he does, and then, he requests to visit. So — “Sure,” right? She smiled, by the pitcher of Kool-Aid, even, with 3,000 children — an exaggeration I could never play into, skid into — slipping on her bright yellow slip-in-slide.

“Why not 8:30?” Kids were around her, in fact, most of the time. The slip in slide in a permanent state of use… I was usually just hanging around her.

So she received quite a drug: righteousness. She was in the right. I got hooked by the same claws. And, this figure, in particular, might inspire someone to kill, it’s just, it didn’t appear like that’s actually what happens due to the element of sex.

Regardless, no one gives a shit about a child molester, she said, so having this figure in her orbit triggered a spell… and God bless her, she kept getting provoked by his responses. I can’t blame her. So now, she’s getting a decent wad of cash, a lawyer might say, even embellish, sure, “not bad,” even understandable, though it wasn’t nothing to her, in front of my face.

So, I’m looking at this…all these years later? Through this process, the process it took to get here, I’m hit, in my world, with — no no no no no, dementia, yada yada, from more people who think they KNOW! It was always the case.

Like the game, these players jumping into the air acting like FISH in a goddamn ballet, really playing by the rules, strangely, this was where people scrambled, insisted, that they knew what it meant, okay? When they had never even seen the game before…

I know EXACTLY WHAT’S HAPPENING AND WHY… listen, no, YOU listen to me, as tennis players hop from one line to another.

Steven Pisano from Brooklyn, NY, USA Wikimedia

Nicole and I looked up at the treehouse plastered against the sky side by side. “We’re not supposed to go up there.” She reminded me. Bees had taken over, but me? I saw no bees. The backyard was a picture-perfect, saturated in color, but illness lurked here, possession, invasion, in the real American dream that it was, and you wouldn’t even know it. People lied, this I knew. I snapped at her to follow me, or I would never be her friend again.

In our sparkly slippers, we climbed up the ladder until we reached the top. I could see everything from up here! A map of America in plots, yards, and picket fences disappeared over the horizon under a sky like a blue eraser. My gold slippers sparkled wildly from a hyperreal land. At the wooden door kid-sized, we were scared at a portal of a new, unknown world. You do it, no, you do it. Let’s do it together. A nightmarish creak hurt my ears as if it hadn’t been opened in years; we faced the black, the subconscious from which anything could emerge— and from the pit of despair two bees emerged as if the guardians of the colony and hovered before our faces about to scream.

We screamed!!! I pushed Nicole out of the way so I could go down the slide first. My hands held on tight to the wooden sides. A karmic piece of wood punctured my finger. My little feet ran off the slide. I flew over the blindingly bright metal until blades of grass turned black. Angelita pointed the tweezers as me like a weapon—

“Do you know why my kids love me?”

We were seated in the kitchen, at her round table, an intimate scene. The blades were digging deep into my skin, as I had a real winner lodged into my itty bitty finger, black. I winced, I said, ow. She got frustrated, in a white wash, the light that came through the windows. Throwing the tweezers down, she gave up, a moment. I said “sorry,” for the first time. And she didn’t really care about my apology, “what about her?” Nicole appeared at the threshold, sad, because “was it nice?” Angelica wondered, right? Was it FUN? As many years later, I’d call her, because I didn’t know anymore, and hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha, how much fun, she said, we had. Not to get Joker-esque, but if you ever wanted a real mirror, that would be it. “What are you going to say to her?” Nicole. I never wanted to hurt her, so I walked over, and I said “sorry,” and Nicole did something that stayed with me — she hugged me.

Look, if I’m being honest? What do I even say? She hugged me. That broke the tension. I walked back to my chair, Nicole came to cuddle with her mother, and like the good person in all this, instructing me, she picked up the tweezers and pointed them at me. “Do you know why my children love me?” I hope this text gets shoved in my mother’s face. I wish this text could get SHOVED in my father’s face. “Because I discipline them…”

I was five. Was I abused? Or not abused to this woman? How am I ordering these pieces, you see? But I changed, something changed. Someone once said, a woman, a healer supposedly, that I was broken down, my spirit was. Was it? Fun times, yeah, one would imagine a Joker’s eyes rolling over there. But life, no, in her lathering it on, as I would have a right to, no? To a side? Which I never had, even sincerely, “aw,” poor me, poor Dr. J. I skipped it. I wasn’t sure, and that was an obstacle, that “tell me to feel my feelings,” as this ridiculous man told me to do, was the point, like let me sit in a shallow pool, bright blue, in the backyard, and sit in tepid water, you know? There’s a time and place for anger. So, why did this fall on me? Not why me, or whining about it, but, why did this fall on me?

When night fell, the house became the treehouse, child’s play, but the darkest vortex, so it was real and universal though not of this world and it could lurk inside some house so small in the grand scheme of things that you wouldn’t even believe it possible like the armoire that leads to Narnia where a white witch lures children with sweets. Dr. J was the sweetest, you see, which Angelita reflected back on my father. Nothing but sweet sweet reflections. Down dark corridors with Dorothy (Nicole), I sought to understand Joy, a woman who put mirror mirror mirrors on her tax law office walls as if she came from a fairytale inspired by Jean Baudrillard. A woman who, ran into the church “every Sunday,” according to an eye-witness I secured, and “accosted” the priest with her rapes right before his performance as a lawsuit was building behind the scenes in the Catholic Church: a billion dollars. Did this happen to her once upon a time? Am I seeing a real figment of her imagination? Why is she doing this? Why am I in a sex scandal?

And just to GET HERE, JESUS, like did I need to SPELL IT OUT to everyone I KNEW? Why I used SEX SCANDAL as a phrase? She lied, I could even turn my college-self, and look, looking at my sorry excuse for a “like a mother” who cared so much for me, who I wronged, even, didn’t I? Did I not say what she said? She lied, yes, that’s what I said, but I was, uh, four, as innocent as you are, who made connections, assumptions, based on a layman’s understanding, later knocked down WITH WORDS OF CARE AND CONCERN, literally speaking, that she lied??? Like that would mean a goddamn thing to a police officer. “Cool,” thumbs up. And there’s Dr. J hanging out a limo — in a fur — getting drunk, sleeping around town, acting like a fiscal savior, and I gotta hear — mentally ill?

That one, that reflection, I didn’t know what to do with, you think I’m lying? Exaggerating, again? Like it wasn’t really a sex scandal, even as a joke? A nice joke? I’m telling you, me, the world I was in, my looks, even, I thought about that, later, my personality, my world — and there’s a smile— wanted to manipulate me out of existence, they did not care if I died. I was four at the time, but now, I’m not, I’m 39.

Angelita dimmed the lights. A sex scandal.

Time to play, right?

Come on, girls…

She diffused the play like a stage director meets sports coach with a vision. “We’re going to put on a nice show, a big show, big big show,” her arm scanned the kingdom. “The house was ours…” We had to act happier than happy, never been happier (without you). The front door was our target—we had to be loud, very loud, laughing, screaming, playing like crazy, her eyes crazy, when she gave give us the signal. “But you have to ignore him,” she said. “Pay attention,” she pointed, the good, snappy witch. Me especially. “Not one look, okay? Not one. He does not exist,” she meant it.

Her arms flew at the front door—go.

Thinking about the bees, our high-pitched terrified scream, now, it was time to unleash the FICTION—forced and fake. Nicole and I jumped, laughed, and shrieked in glee. Hand at her ear, she couldn’t hear us, already, you see. “More,” a Bugs Bunny conductor. We unleashed our voices with nightmarish yet funny faces—ahhh!!! Her hand marked it: level one. She pointed up, we had the stars to reach. Trick or treattttt, she cracked open the door to our voices laughing and yelping in a forced jubilee. Her bird-like face appeared in the crack. She peeked over the threshold — is that you, really you? It was hilarious, her face. Opening the door all the way to the wall, there’s nothing to hide here, you see, I dare you to “visit.” Like she was going to let a child molester into her house…

And all these years later, I was beside myself.

“Here she is Nick!”

Nicole and I flew by as if we were the roller coaster ride. AHHHHHHHH. Nicole screamed “IMMA GET YOU!!!” AHHHHHHH. AHHHHHHH. Angelita stood guard in a tennis skirt with her arms crossed. Titling her pelvis, rocking herself on her feet, she relished the sight of babes running crazy, wild, free, but most importantly, “safe.” A little bounce off her heels, oh! She popped down low and waved to us as we ran past on a thrill ride across the house. She requested that we raise our voices with her hand like a conductor and cupped her ear like a master of ceremonies. He didn’t even try to step foot into her house. He had to watch the happiest show on earth, an ecstatic nightmare. “YEAH!” Throwing fists. And in the end, just like a show, she closed the door from the wall—in no rush. She thanked him so much for coming… what a time we had, she thanked him for “the memories we made.” It was heartfelt, even. He got the door slammed in his face more than once, nicely. Giving us her hand, we leapt to slap her palm, hard. High five!

“Ohhhh ohhhh ohhhhh! I am a woman in love!” She turned it up, again.

“And I’m talking to YOU!”

Nicole and I threw our fists in the foyer. You know I know how you feel. Another night another show coming off the heels of yet another love song. I might as well start breakdancing because how is this even happening? A four-year-old spinning on her head, feet in the air. I learned that the truth can be so true that you have the license to push it over a real edge, which is a striking feature of the truth, another file in my drawer. What is the truth? I really wondered. I think, in a theatrical context, since we were already there, that you’d want the performances to get better, rehearsed, choreographed. I’d still be in a true zone, I’d just be taking the real circumstances as an opportunity to make a statement. That’s what I had in my hands, presenting this story to a person felt more like a premonition, um, Society of Spectacle, this:

Margaret Atwood.

In the New York Times article about Alice Munro’s daughter’s molestation, she said, “very very likely” Alice Munro herself had been molested a girl if only because it’s so common. So, why not “do it,” in the voice of Jodorowsky’sDune— to one of Nicole’s favorites? Enya. You couldn’t take the music out of this house as this was the Sound of Music, but funner. We’re dancing regardless. We will change the world.

I wanted to conceive of so many dances. There were so many songs… so many love songs. It had to be the right one, and there were so many good ones.

I’m going to take a little time… a little think to think things over…

He drives the ball over the net to a classic in slow-motion, instant reply, a leg is flung behind the other, on the return.

“Very very likely,” Margaret Atwood said…and Nicole and I take off on another night, another show, full of poetry. We were free —running through the house as if in a prairie, laughing, picking up pillows and throwing them into the air! The flashes of our real faces, the forced nature of our play— as I’m reflecting on the real events, not the choreography it’s inspiring—would strike dissonant chords, but that’s exactly what it was. A joke. Requesting to visit, this man, my father. What was the truth? This was always my question.

Remembering myself in college, at Astor Place Starbucks throwing my fists in the air! Yeah! I performed this scene for my friend, laid it out, but he did not…know what it meant. Exactly. Out of sense.

“You hated me and I didn’t know why…” my father said, when I asked him, “why didn’t you pick me up?” Picture Nicole and I running by with our chests open, a pas de deux. Laughing, playing. Does that make sense? His response?

You hated me…

WEEEEEE!!!

And I didn’t know why…

So he got the SUBTEXT?

There’s a woman standing guard at the door. Someone he had never met. You see, oh my God, was it true?

The awkward bit, the sexual trauma specialist, he’s fine, “when was it not true?”

“When did it become a lie?”

That question changed my life. No one ever asked me.

Standing there in the foyer, I wondered, was it a joke Dr. J? Is this what it’s really like? In a way?

“Hungry eyes” is definitely coming on… Angelica and I dancing side by side…apparently, I turned into a dancing machine.

We're going to play a NICE game, Angelica said

August 25, 2025

I remember watching Nicole tipping past the point of conscious behavior at her brother José Leibowitz. He always picked on her. Finally, the earthy Virgo, snapped, beat red. She punched his arm with all her might across the room. He winced, found it funny, until a point. “Did she know what she was doing?” My mother? People asked me. We can lose a grip. About to switch into another state, himself, I was struck by that—what is that switch? What’s happening? He’s going to lose consciousness. My mother made me aware of states, and I was fascinated, because I saw glimpses of her, wondering about that line, tipping point, what happened to her. Nicole was no longer aware of what she’d doing, and he was about to tip over, and it’s understandable, if you push someone, they might flip out, respond. Like magic, just when she was supposed to, Angelica burst through double doors with her fantastic legs coming out of a tennis skirt. She blew this fight away in Portuguese. The children fled from the flames. I stood there amazed at her, always. How did she know what was happening? That’s a four-year-old. (She heard.)

But Jose and Nicole appear older than they should in my memory, the kids. Maybe I’m wrong. It all happened so fast. That’s where we were though, at some tipping point between conscious and unconscious behavior. They always fought, so maybe I’m remembering it globally, but she exploded — boom, she was angry.

“You,” she blasted. “Me?” In my room now, she said.

I trailed behind her, I got in trouble a lot — I barked at people. But this time, I didn’t understand, as I didn’t do anything, so I don’t know where I am in time as I became known as a problem child. I refused to say “I’m sorry, thank you, and please.” I threw fits, I think. My behavior became a joke, even, how bad I was, so I tended to play into it, later as an adult, which almost ruined me, I think. I don’t do it anymore. How funny it was, I could laugh and laugh, so I played into the comedy of it, because it was also true. It was a comedy, or a comic universe.

We crossed the foyer, the crystal chandelier, it cast rainbows across the walls at night. I studied them, the beautiful even teary effect of colors. How did it do that? The crystal tears hanging still, the warm glow, the lambada coming on — again. The flecks of rainbows, so light and crystal can produce colors. With my little finger, I discovered light was real, couldn’t quite grasp it, the subtle projection, but I could hold it in my palm, upstairs, mostly, and Angelica would always snap at me, “stop staring at rainbows.” Her son and I, José, the most perfect name, we had matches across this house — no woman wanted to deal with me as I punched, bit, went for the eyes, I think. Angelita jumped on the perimeter, “Jose!” Women screamed “Jose” as I ran through the foyer —it was as if he studied me as if I were an opponent.

These moments, I remember them, but they feel as though they’re already in another dimension, so his legs leap over the ottoman, and the chases became so hysterical to me, picturing him jumping out windows in his tennis gear — and it might not be that far from the truth, actually, as he had to wrangle me down, so I’ll leave that be. So if I were telling a story of it, he would become my guardian, but that’s not exactly what happened, but even he would understand what I mean. He would explode from his desk. He would descend like thunder, he wanted me to hear him coming. He’d employ confusing footwork to snag me. He STARED at the ground and start throwing his feet in confusing directions to throw me off, and he would try and get me to say “thank you, please, and sorry.” I would throw punches. He’d hold me down, I didn’t yield, why would I want to say these words? Please, sorry, thank you. Picture some four year old who has no idea that she’s SMALL. I didn’t come from a house where I had to say these words. I barked at my father to explain the intricacies of the universe to me. BARKED, “WHAT IS IT?” No one is telling me, don’t talk like that.

They could have tried a softer approach, but I don’t think she thought I was abused yet, I don’t know where we are in time, but I was lucky, wasn’t I? I could have gotten beaten, isn’t that right? (This was how people spoke to me.) Wasn’t I on some weird edge? Unbelievable. How believeable the unbelievable is. I did feel like there was a collective. Some collective well of knowledge, except there’s more than one, and it didn’t mean it was right. But terrible things can happen to a child, that felt pretty known. Like, this could have gone much worse. As far as I know, these moments were dramatic and intense, but no one hit me. And no one was calling my parents? Was that the money, the accusation, both? Don’t know where I am in time.

And look, thinking about that mirror in my room, would they even tell the truth? The truth is, people shape it, especially under the gaze of the public eye, scrutiny, so they could very well lie. That’s just what the truth is. My father’s divorce file said, he came home and I was living with another family, and he was typically gone 5-7 weeks, and I don’t know where we were on that time line, but this situation developed quickly, so am I in phase one, two?

“It happened so fast.”

Once Jose came home—he threw open the front door and all his gear down, loud, right? He wanted me to know, no matter where I was, that he was here. Five women, including Angelita, the hottest one, RAN to him and screamed Jose! For a while, “JOSE!” was the name SCREAMED across this house, because he was the one — no matter WHERE I was, he could feel me, truly, this man. “She got out this time.” So, I’m interpreting this memory, later. I hid and tried to run away. “No no no,” he said, “she’s here.”

Into the living room, I remember seeing his shoes. The ladies called JOSE, no, no! We looked there, but I was crafty, crawling on my elbows and shit. Jose knew who I was. I forgot where I was that time, but he found me in three seconds, it was annoying. WHAT??? These women. HOURS, they searched for me for hours. JOSE — number one in the USA at tennis at 16—fast. I hated him. He hated me.

Nicole on the grass in the backyard: “wind and fire,” she said, softly smiling, pensive. “Yes, it was always going to be that way…” but my moon was in Gemini, she probably still remembers, “so…” As a Dorothy, she explained the elements to me. She spoke of her siblings, softly, airy, in terms of their astrological signs.

He once held a pitcher of orange juice, hiding at the kitchen door, because I was coming around. He poured the whole carton on me. The kids hated me, but think about it? Why I was there? The house turned around this foyer, so I remember standing there and looking into the living room. Jose and Michele confronted their mother. It was an unspoken change, my presence. Michele’s body language communicated that. One day, she walked up to her finally and paused, standing there in the living room. She threw her finger over to me, like it took some courage.

“What is she doing here?”

I was a touch too young, at the time, to be able to interject and add my two cents.

Up the steps of her house, Angelica had six children, a joke. Nicole, the youngest, was the astrology prodigy, I call her, a Dorothy in ruby slippers. I wore gold. My best friend, she’d wince when I got in trouble, she always stood by me. There was Jose Leibowitz, a name you cannot compete with, a few years older. Nicole was clearly a surprise, and then, Angelita got her tubes tied, so she wasn’t looking for a seventh. Michele, the sole blond, was the lethal one, as they always are. She was a pro soccer player along with the sole brunette, Louise, the future lesbian of the family. They were a couplet. Jo— the doctor at Berkeley, she brought me sprite when I was sick once. Andrea, the eldest, already had kids, young, like her mother. I have no recollection of their father, but he worked constantly, but doing what, I don’t know. He was supposedly a travel agent. He was never around, but I remember seeing him for a couple of parties—their world-famous parties— and once at dinner when I refused to take my elbows off the table while I was eating, not that happy about where I was, evidently, but what did he say? Did she tell him? The money, right? It had to be good enough.

Oh, the game, the tennis game, sneakers squeaking, a good volley back and forth. They were trying to throw the other off. Her husband told me — as my elbows were on the table and I was pushing around food, not living at my house, anymore, but who gave a shit? I’m four, I’m not having that deep of a thought process, but I’m upset. I understand, looking back at myself. He told me to get my elbows off the table. He commanded a captain-type respect among his children as if he were the father in The Sound of Music, which is also where I was, as you couldn’t take the music out of the house. A love song could rip through the athletic home at any time, she was dancing sexy regardless. We weren’t talking at the table, as his commanded silence, but his children loved him, adored him. He said to me, on the sly, while eating — get your elbows off the table. Now, to me at four? It’s not happening. He raised his voice, slightly. Get your elbows off the table. No one is speaking. So I just, but just took my elbows, literally, off the table, continued my action of pushing the food around. He said it again, as my elbows were just off the table. I slid my arms down a touch. So, off we went, the two of us, he’s repeating, losing his patience, elbows off the table. I slid down the entirety of my arms, acting all four-year-old about it, ornery. All the way down, until, finally, he’s about to blow, and I put out a single pinky on the edge of the table.

He blew.

OH MY GODDDDDD!!! The Neapolitans. He blew, the father. I tried to tell my cousins, as I spent a few summers with them after this debacle, in Naples, and then I disappeared to them a few years later. I was bad, I was bad, okay? I exploded, uh oh? Feast 2 with these people, Christmas, December 5th —

I had tried to warn them, “I am a woman in love” streaming from their stereo around the rugged cliffs on our way to Angela and Vico’s in splotches. I had tried to tackle it, right? With one foot on either side, seated in the middle in the backseat between them, Franco and Flora, equal parties, I…had tried to warn them. They wanted to know what happened, why I disappeared, and I was at a point, at that point, where “it was always like this!” I don’t know if that’s true exactly, I mean, the fault of it, but who I was became funny. I tried to tell them I jumped out of her car, pushed her door open, and they’re just finding it charming, of course. I’m thinking they’re going to get “something’s off.”

“Aww…”

“No!”

And then, I had to insist — I told a woman to get out of my way, I was practically raised into the air — they put “My Way” Frank Sinatra on, in my honor, a Christmas anthem. You see? The goal in these parts is immortality, so the end of the year? There’s no bitterness, no dreams of the year to come, I did it — my way. That’s the attitude every year — so that’s what Christmas is about in Naples. “My Way.” I pushed — celebration. I pushed the button: this bitch, this little bitch, she told this woman to get out of my way, YEAH! A Christmas baby. YEAH! Applause, songs, tears, pizza coming out of the outdoor oven, it’s all timed to the song, naturally, as these people are so in tune with one another in groups, it was Aristophanes, a true Greek chorus. I had no idea, even, that they put it on for me, so classic, they waited to the end to tell me… it was a shock, a true shock. “Yeah!”

That’s what the end of the year is. It’s a chance, not a romance. And I would receive applause from these people for saying that. “YEAHHHHH,” party favors, bravo being slung, flung, blown — man, these people know how to blow you away with BRAVO. BRAVO! The Neapolitan baby told this bitch — get out of MY WAY! These were middle-aged men in cashmere sweaters. So they put on that song at Angela’s in my honor, and when we sat down to eat, they kept wanting me to — tell them, how I told this woman to “get out of my way,” as they understood the sentence, due to Frank Sinatra. Angela kept saying, “ESCI, ESCI,” because my Italian was limited. “Exit,” in other words, “EXIT…” Giggino tapped the dinner table, conclusively. We did a little reprise.

“My way.”

They didn’t understand, okay? Are you laughing at FRANK SINATRA? And I could be attacked, yes, even by members of my own family, HEY! YOU? ARE YOU— boom, MY WAY again. In revolt. Fuck you. And then, we’re kicking our feet, but Frank Sinatra is another mood entirely, this is DEEP. This is bravo — firing like canons, DEEP metal, people, deep.

I ended up flipping out, they pushed me too far — “I was BAD, okay? I was not BRAVA.” UHHHHHH? They kept wanting me to do it, looking at me like this JEU, or play is unnecessary — “show us how you told this woman to get out of YOUR WAY,” right? They had the same teeth, they adored them in me, at the dinner table. “Get em.” I insisted, “okay?” They received my insistence. “UHHHHH?” I insisted, I was bad —"OKAY?” They weren’t into it—FOUL, bitch, because they’re NASTY, at the table, they’re IN THE PLAY, they’re charging the field, they’re RESPONDING.

“I was BAD!” To an Italian? “YEAH…” sure… enough of that.

“A bad baby?” Angela asked.

“You know,” um, acting stupid, trying to find the word, “monster?”

UHHHHH, the crowd responded, UUHHHHHH.

I was on some edge, getting up from the table, and YELLING and THEY DON’T GIVE A SHIT — they’re commenting, disagreeing, having side convos, telling me WHAT THE? I’m pointing to fruit, “when this bad…” Silence, uhhhh, the crowd is ADJUSTING. “It is NOT GOOD for eternity…” I searched for the word for “spoiled, brat,” when “A BABY IS NOT GOOD.” A bad baby? Has she lost her mind? “Uhhhhhhhhhhh…” They’re calling my foul, watching me act out, perform, but dinner in Naples is a match, theater, whatever. What’s the goddamn difference? Charge the field, tear down the set, save the smuggling revolutionary, this is our true thought process. WHAT? “I was bad,” I said, and my cousin Giggino leveled with me, look this comedy routine, he said without words, so I laughed, “it doesn’t work,” he said simply. “It just doesn’t work,” as he believed I was a true comedian. “DOESN’T WORK,” and I’m insisting at the man. I suppose I had a sharp smile—which they were indifferent to — because I got the impression that children got blamed sooner than they should be. But to them, I’m insisting, sort of with a smile they don’t understand, even, understanding I’m trying to MAKE A POINT, but WHAT IS IT?

I couldn’t help what the story was, you know? So, it was a match, it could be.

So then — GIGGINO — boom, he was watching me, in the match I was in, like he didn’t like that I was bad. So he came after me, later, at his house, in the kitchen.

“What are you talking about???”

“Why are you talking about yourself like that?”

Such a “Dad move,” right? The second I stepped onto the floor, the living room floor, GIGGINO would fire: “HEY COMPLICATE!” I was goddamn complicated. I took a deep breath, I was trying to be open to them, but there’s no way they were going to be able to deal with… the story. But he’s not going, “yeah you were bad,” or playing into that I—ME?—was a piece a work, like “my father didn’t stand a chance,” I couldn’t believe that, later. That people said that to me. He hated it, all of it. He sensed it, even, smelled it. He could tell that I became the problem, and he didn’t like that, and then, there was so much he didn’t know.

He didn’t give a crap, “what are you talking about?” They might not understand their own prejudices, gender biases, right? She had them too, Angelica. She favored men, you see, her daughters used to snap at her, and she didn’t deny it. Jose was her favorite. I laughed, I did, I laughed all these years through, at the truth of it, you know? I don’t know, maybe someone will understand, there is an architecture, ideas that are engrained. I felt that way, like my father was favored, that I wasn’t believed because I was a WOMAN, female, yes, also. I MEAN WHAT I SAY. But he was also sentenced, without a doubt. A man could do this, it was so easy for this woman to believe, but “you’d never expect” someone to lie about that… it’s just to a lawyer, they’re going, “I do not understand…” you see. Lawyers want you to EXPLAIN. When did it become a lie? Lies are a tricky arena, and I fell for it too. You think, the biggest liar, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. If you have ever… had any experience with shady shit.

He watched me as I tapped my pinky on the kitchen table, remembering that dinner. “I WAS BAD.” I threw Italian across the walls like mad — amazing, to them — Pollock, it was art, okay? According to my cousins, strictly speaking, what I was doing was Neapolitan art of the highest caliber. Abstractionism, it was art, even important, Neapolitan abstractionism? I’m telling them, trying to, tapping my pinky. GIGGINO said YES, GOOD. I’m trying to tell them about this dinner as if it would EXPLAIN WHY I WAS BAD. GIGGINO was saying GOOD in my FACE. “YES, of course.” Giggino — undercut — “did these people know you were Italian?” He gave me DOUBLE pinches. He gathered his pinches— his pinched fingers.

No one in Naples acts like it’s abnormal to get upset, at any time, basically.

I laughed.

“Show me,” he said, even gallantly, “an Italian who would EAT with their elbows off the table.”

“AH,” Giggino looked at me. He got through. “Telling an Italian to EAT,” his wife said, “si,” “TO EAT,” Giggino leveled with me, “with their ELBOWS off the table.” He called it “absurd.” He couldn’t even deal with it. I insisted. He nodded, okay, let it slide. He FOLLOWED ME, goddammit, he’s nodding at me, “Maria,” as I slid my arms down the table again, he’s FOLLOWING me. He gave me the PINKY — he showed me the PINKY — was it not “vai fanculo?” He gave it to me like a fuck you. Of course. He put it on the edge of the proverbial table. He GOT what I was SAYING. “GOOD.”

He sizzled, brought the intensity down, he was resolved about it.

“Look,” he said, “if you tell a Neapolitan to EAT with their elbows off the table, doesn’t matter how old they are,” he assured me. “This is the reaction.” He continued, a doctor. “Revolting like this, that’s…” he grew fatigued, “that’s just the reaction. It’s just Neapolitan… they’re going to revolt,” he said it as if there was nothing one could even do about it. “BEING ASKED to eat with your elbows off the table…” He was disturbed. I laughed, I really did. I didn’t even know they existed, I was in California. I insisted I was bad, a piece of work. Giggino hated it. That was that.

“Why are you there?”

I can’t help that many truths exist, I don’t know what to SAY. I’m not Italian, I’m from California, and she was actually from Brazil… just to say. I don’t SPEAK in an accent. I’m not Italian to her. God knows if she even knew I was Italian, she might not have been concerned about it, if you would, not in these circumstances.

My back to the court, sneakers squeaking, the players in a tense close match, I asked her how much she was paid to do this in the shade of the umbrella.

Not looking at me, she said, “1200 a week.”

“For 24/7?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

I asked her to repeat that. “24/7?”

“Yes.”

What did that mean to me at nine-twelve? I didn’t think about looking up that value until recently, as it was 1989. That would equate to about 11k a month, cash, no taxes. So, never enough, she said, never enough. She went on and on and on …this is money. The pay didn’t even bring me respect, it brought me the opposite. I owed HER for taking care of me basically speaking, she clothed me, fed me, she would list everything she did for me, though she was paid. She agreed to the deal. It’s one of these moments I had, like, look lady, YOU made a deal with the devil, not me. Money. This is money. Her putting this on me, like she clothed me, bathed me, fed me, that’s what she agreed to, and a grateful complex I had prevented me from living a normal life. So that’s the adult looking back in this moment. I had to be grateful? For this? My mother said I was being abused, that she was being abused, so it was only right, tears falling, Joy. I get she was played, but did she think she was actually sort of getting a good DEAL? THInk. WHY else, why else would you do that, though of course, her emotions are wrapped up in her decision making, of course. Thinking about these sneakers needing to be quick and agile across the court. She cared, right? About me? About a child being abused? About some woman begging her, please help me? I’m a fair person, not everyone is. SHE most certainly was not FAIR, not when it came to me. At all.

And so, Angelica said, don’t worry, she agreed to take charge of me while my mother garnered up the courage to leave her abusive husband, and this is what she does. We might not have started at 11k, but that’s where we’re headed for around the clock care.

Her bedroom always looked holy to me. This was where the real show was…I would sit on the edge of her white bed, as I had rules. I couldn’t get into her bed, normally, and it felt correct to me. I would watch her dance — to herself — in the mirrors — primetime, the light streaming through her white curtains. Her foot kicking back on the plush white carpet. She turned herself on, dancing to herself in the mirror — Nina. We watched that movie, she would fast forward to the sexy parts, I laughed at her. I usually clapped. She’d laugh and have to sizzle herself down…”love,” her face rose from her hands. “Love,” it was all she talked about. Sex. It was love. Only the best love songs scored this heartwarming story, Lady in Red, too, Celine Dion. I could never get over that it was 1989, the year that the Lambada took the world by storm, a dance so close to sex it was even scandalous, and it began in heartbreak.

I took a seat in my chair. Angelita brought hers in front of me. She was different this time. She wasn’t angry with me. We made each other laugh, so that usually broke up the tension, but this time was different, her mood was. I could never see my father again, she dipped down, in sweet little girl tones. The light came through her window, a heavenly glow. “Why?” I asked. “You’ll never see your mother again,” she said. But I wasn’t seeing her, but I didn’t say that. “And you’ll never see us again, do you want that,” sweetly. I was four, five, so I wouldn’t have known how to approach that question, but of course, I bonded with these people, I’m designed to. “No.”

“Shush,” Angelita shushed me, bringing herself back up.

“We’re not going to tell him what we know…”

“We going to play a nice game…” with this piece of shit, she spat on his name. But — she didn’t ask me any real questions, and I don’t think I would have been much help. As far as I knew, at the time, it hadn’t happened to me. Now, I don’t know.

The phone rang.

**I included a scene with my cousins because I’m working out what the book is, and something has to change, as I’m going to wake up to all this, so I might move that later. I see some pieces in it that might be better later, but I’m just going to leave it as is, and keep moving through it, because maybe it’s not necessarily too soon, like introducing the dancing here, the love songs, but I might just need to rewrite it, depending on how the rest goes. But around here, as I began waking up to all this, I might need to make some kind of transition, but it’s coming, so the phone rings… it’s my father…

So right now, I’m going into my first tennis lesson next, which is related to a love song, as my instructor started singing “Maria” from Westside Story to me, which was — a no no. I chucked the tennis racket as hard as I could, I even threw my body into it, so I caused a scene, but my tennis instructor was so truly enamoured with me, “that’s a good backhand…” no love songs!!! I am four! I flip out, and Angelica and I talk about how my behavior signaled to her that it was true, too. I had to put together her side, as I was writing about it, so back in her bedroom, perhaps, I’m thinking ahead, I asked her questions about sex, right. “You’d never expect someone to lie about that,” she said, but I see the truth of it and the lie of it like mirrored images, isn’t it already a lie? And I’ll conduct my psychological experiment in the fourth grade that I did in school, needing to understand how someone could lie like that. I’ll make sure to put in the crazy case of a pedophile lying left and right, about what happened.

This is where people, and even I, could get confused. The lie.

I conducted a couple of psychological experiments in the fourth grade, tough year, on lying. And there, you’ll see that my father was actually sick, literally, but sick with what? And then I’ll go into the game — kick it off. Overall, thus far, I just have to work the language, style, with that tennis game. But there’s a build, the game getting nastier, right? Something. Thanks for reading.

I think, overall, I can’t quite shake that no one reading this is going to necessarily think it’s not true, so I’m not sure if there’s suspense there? Any point in acting like that question isn’t there from the beginning? I’m trying to just speak about it from the place I am in now.

Bodies in space. Joma Marcel launching for the ball strangely /wikimedia

"So I started living with you just like that?"

August 18, 2025

Whoa whoa whoaaa—I am a woman in love! And I’m talking to you. I played Barbara Streisand in my head as I watched the game —You know I know how you feel… a player step-ran to launch for the ball — to realize the attempt was futile. It’s a riiiiiiight, she wails. The racket slid down his grip. On the court, you can flip out, huff and puff, lose your composure, and roar with a shaking fist. Drama. We are capable of expressing ourselves largely, in movement and song, we have range, but in which direction? Ah, people I spoke to had trouble there, though we know anything is possible. Dr. J could dash towards the IRS to the same soundtrack… ready to save a man in a white mink? Imagine, her pushing some door open at the IRS? It’s a riiiiight. It’s all in the same universe of intensity. But, Dr. J, was a strange one indeed. I agree. Unusual direction. I guess.

The ball bounced off the fence.

We were facing each other off the courtside table at 1 and 5 o’clock.

“And I started living with you,” I asked, “just like that?”

Her sandals hit the ground. She brought her fingers to my face and snapped them, so I could see the reality of it up close. “Just like that,” she fell back into her chair and crossed her arms, looking off and shaking her head in regret, hatred. I gave her the space.

I remembered it as overnight, but in a court of law, I couldn’t prove it factually, so no point in trying, but that’s how I remembered it. She confirmed my understanding of it. However in a court of law, she would have to define what a snap meant. To a lawyer, they might mock it, so-to-speak.

“One day, two days?”

“What’s a snap mean?”

“Literally overnight?”

In a court of law, you’re looking for the actual sequence of events. People did it to me so often, it drove me crazy. They gave me their opinion, interpretation, as if it would hold up in a court of law as fact, which was the governing system I lived by, as the way people could express themselves in real life reflected Dr. J. I lived with that mediator of thought, you see, in my mind at all times. Why don’t you live with a legal system in your head? That was always my question.

Money. It’s a hook that snags you right on the smile line, like a fish, it’s primal. Dr. J was an ecstatic fountain of cash changing colors complete with a sexy woman holding a slinky snake — Joy’s in a business suit, clapping like a monkey with cymbals, hanging off Michel her limo driver/lover, getting sincere, so sincere, suddenly, for a man is in trouble, needs saving.

Elaboration aside, her personality was actually along these lines. But people exaggerate. However, that impulse or that state of invention within a normal context doesn’t take over the whole self, but it’s expressing a kind of truth, in that, it felt that way. They’re trying to be interesting, or entertaining, so did she have a condition? She was a moving exaggeration, not a normal person, and I hope I don’t have to defend myself. I had to defend myself — “I am not exaggerating,” but I understand people exaggerate, so why do you? Because it was real, it felt, sometimes, that I would bring up “this thing” people did, but did they exaggerate real crimes, like if someone said murder, to present a blunt case, would these people be wondering if they were exaggerating? Describing a serial killer, even? Who were they expecting? What did they think someone who’d orchestrate something like this would be like? Joy. Confetti. High-powered. A combination of traits that made no sense. I can’t begin to pull out all the crazy people who ever walked the earth, meaning I cannot confirm that everyone who’s nuts would follow her lead, but Angelica couldn’t compute it, it was foreign, outside the known world, so she couldn’t necessarily see it. She couldn’t foresee what was coming, impossible.

Before I go into these phone calls with Dr. J, I’ll give you a preview of it as you would have to keep in mind that the offer of money mixed with an innocent request, as that’s what it was, regardless of the timeframe—is coming out of the mouth of Dr. J — a chaotic system. Her speech was bizarre, my mother was a visibly unhinged human being. She had a physicality that even communicated it. She offered her, I’m guessing, hundreds, “oh my, kiss kiss, so excited, all smiles, so sorry, saving a man, you don’t even know, maybe a compliment to her, maybe all those thoughts at once, 500 hundred,” and she said yes. I don’t remember going home.

Another wall that I ran up against —a wall in people I told the story to, wanting to get sentimental, projecting sentiment all over me, not hearing what I was saying. I was practically twisted out of sense because of it. The people who claimed to know me, know what this story was about, came from parents they sought to be around. Home wasn’t that pleasant for me. I wasn’t exactly itching to go home. Someone tried to manipulate me later, unfortunately, over this stupid story, and he said, “don’t you think you were scared?” Dr. J was scary. Angelica Leibowitz and co. were not frightening basically speaking, I was four, responding to my environment. This was a warm-blooded group of people. My house could be scary.

The exact timeframe was between 5 to 7 weeks, or a span of a few weeks, as my father typically went on his stupid work trips for that length of time, while his wife is drinking, driving, and looking for sex downtown. But Nick, dopey Nick, is going to act like the innocent guy. And yes, I came to learn, with family, with people, they could exhibit similarly offensively blind behaviors that they don’t even see. There’s no way that the situation would have been possible if there hadn’t been real money involved, another reason why I call it a sex scandal. There was a deal made, and it began at step one. Angelica was a woman who had a weakness for money, so though I don’t know the factual truth, I believe a night snowballed.

By her bitterness, if I were reading it correctly, she even thought that she was getting a nice influx of cash. I can picture her trying to refuse the money, Dr. J whipping up her tornado of sparkles, insisting on it, only right, so sorry. Dr. J was spouting money, chauffeured in limos daily, a glorified tax attorney. Even the people I attempted to speak to about all this couldn’t compute the story from step one, so imagine if it was happening right in front of you, and if I’m being brutally honest, many people might not respond appropriately to something blatantly happening right in front of them. They might not be able to see it. She was hard for translate in real life. She didn’t sound real. This did not sound real, just like Twin Towers going down— didn’t feel real, did it??

Angelica didn’t dress me up like a doll, I didn’t like those clothes. I didn’t want to wear this stupid dress, I wanted to play, feel softness against my baby skin, t-shirts, easy.

As I heard “did she call?” fall from people’s mouths at least three times, beginning at Barbara Streisand, her voice returns to my mind. My emotional journey, over and over again!! “Call?” “What?” “Did she call?” For a long time, I could not lie, not at all, so when people asked me, “did she call?” I could get entangled ever further, because I would have to admit, sitting forward with a smile on my face, a sincere one, because I was angry, needing to take another step forward into this and defend myself. “She did,” it’s a riiiiiight…they’d usually go “oh,” as if there were hope, maybe. “All the time,” I smiled. “Never asked for me.” Their faces of puzzlement, confusion, that’s impossible. I tried to say, “this is not one of those stories…” everyone was designed to find an exit, and there was no exit. “Nothing I’m going to say is going to make you feel better,” I tried. In the beginning, Dr. J called every day, “and…” these people over the years, “she didn’t ask for you?”

Taking a breath, by this point.

“No,” I’d say, like, are you listening? Sometimes, I could act like a dumbbell, with hands falling on either side of body, “why would she do that?” They would look at me as if I were an alien because I played it for real, “why would she do that?” As if their innocence didn’t appear just as perturbing. “Why would Dr. J call me?” That’s not on her vocabulary. She’s not a normal person. The psychology of it escaped people. My mother was a case, the actual story did not register. It was hard to become real because of it. Amazing that words mean something, real, reality, yes. Reality is real. There are many. But we’re not always gifted at seeing across realities, as we’re hierarchical in design. Psychology. I remember, I was four, I would hear the phone ring, and I knew it was Dr. J. What is she doing? I was living somewhere else now. I remember peeking round a corner, just to catch a glimpse of her body…

“Can you describe this phone call?”

Angelica’s hand came up to her ear, holding an invisible phone, dramatically, “ahhhh,” she hit the high note, for shits. The tennis court behind her in soft focus, a man pulled a funky move to fling at the ball. She sighed “I love you” fourteen times. My mother would throw I love you at me, too, in happy daggers, in a poof powder of sweetness, it made Angelica cringe. “Disgustingly sweet,” Dr. J. And sighing around, professing it. “You’re so wonderful, my baby, my lovers, you don’t even know, you’re my best friend, here’s like 1000 bucks.” Lavish praises, sticks, nonsense. Punch of sex, like, Angelica’s face, splattering it at me in her chair at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club. “Why is she talking to me about her lovers?” She bought herself a confidante. “Ohhhhh my baby…” She even mocked motherhood. “Oh my baby, my poor baby, anything for the world,” her eyes reaching the stars, “for the baby. Only the world for my baby.”

“And she didn’t ask for me once?” I asked.

Another point I had to argue with the audience, if you can imagine. I would have to repeat myself, deal with their disbelief when I have Angelica Leibowitz walking me through it. They had no idea that they were stabbing me every step of the way, putting me down, belittling me, and all I had to do was tell them off. And I could not do it. Why I put myself through that, I don’t know, but going through the world with a background like this was a nightmare. With Angelica forever seared into my brain.

“Not once,” she said with a finger between us. “Not once,” she was taken aback, clearly. So, once again, she confirmed my understanding of the situation. I remembered that. I remember her figure in the kitchen downed in light, her tense reception of this call, even her confusion over why she wasn’t asking for me. Have you ever been in a situation that afterwards becomes clear to you? That’s what it feels like to be manipulated. Where you don’t even know what happened, how you got there. She got hooked and tossed into groundless nonsense with cash, that influenced her decision making, as that was a real hook…

My father’s sister, Jane, told me about a time that Dr. J called her about her cancer as Dr. J was a fan of that disease. She was taking all these medications, she told her, Jane relayed to me. She exhibited the same haze across her face as if she had just gotten hit, and she had no idea where she was. I wondered, as Dr. J was a major pill popper, if she was trying to justify her drug habit to herself? Or, was she strictly seeking sympathy as she appeared even starved? Why the phone call to her husband’s sister randomly about her cancer medications that she wasn’t taking? I had to reiterate points such as these to people. “Did she have cancer?” “No,” but no one could follow. Jane couldn’t even respond. Chaos. She’s not calling Nick, my father, and going, “what the hell is up with your wife?” She’s not asking Joy, “what are you talking about? You have cancer? Hello?” No reality, no response, like, “hello?” Calling someone and flinging cancer in their face. So it was easy for a normal person to lose sight of reality — wouldn’t this be behavior to respond to? —wondering if this reflected something about Dr. J once upon a time. Where did she learn this type of behavior? She went on and on about her terminal illnesses, she was always dying, but again, the package was so bright. Jane’s hazy state was reflected in Angelita—the haze. What was this haze?

Boundaries dissolved, we were lost. Like shock, it should humble us to consider how vulnerable we are, that you can be thrown and not totally be aware of it. They couldn’t make connections. She told the eyewitness in church she was had ovarian cancer, and even she fell for it. She’s dying, that’s for certain, Dr. J was always dying… my father becomes increasingly bizarre as a vague entity as he remained vague for the majority of my life — I projected all sorts of stories onto him that fell in a breathless drop — on one of these freefall rides, the stomach drops, once I started putting this together as an adult. Who was this man?

The money had an effect, though, as it does, or it can, as a force powerful enough to bend one’s perception of reality. The hook was shiny: money.

I didn’t remember going home, but I remember a birthday party at my house.

When I started waking up inside this story as an adult, I became aware of this memory, but any suggestion that the story wasn’t true, you see, the weight of a lifetime of people — who were ready to destroy the story made this a living hell. I’d have to grab onto the dish soap, quickly grab onto the facts or else I felt as if I were going to split in more than one direction. “She said this, I remember this,” through a field of disbelief. Once I was able to handle a new detail coming into my awareness, I could simply state it, but that was a harrowing journey.

I remember a birthday party.

Angelica described me as “the biggest bitch that ever was.” I would point and Joy would pop like a firecracker and there would be an explosion: balloons, cakes, and clowns, and of course, my mother’s breasts. If I started living with her in a snap of her fingers, however, where am I pointing? Or was she exaggerating in that moment? That these parties happened all the time? I don’t think I slept at my house anymore, but invention, to be honest, one of these words you’re not supposed to use, looked like a rather normal process in a person. People do invent, and they might not even know it, you see. People do, they invent. In the name of truth, too.

So the beginning of this fiasco might hold ambiguities and questions, like, why is she throwing a birthday party? Or, maybe she’s appearing with one because I demanded one, so every situation progresses. They would have had to meet to exchange the money.

Angelica’s anger in her chair, it sucks to feel vulnerable, to get in touch with that aspect of self as money was, at least in her case, a hook, and when it comes to vulnerability, it’s often just beneath your grasp. It’s not fair. A jury would most likely be on her side that money has that power, it’s nature, even. Now we’re skidding up basic ideas that we hold… she had six kids, but two were out of the house already, the first had married well, even, to even out that aspect of the analysis, that the number of children that she had influenced her decision making.

It was a hook for her.

But this phone call, these phone calls, sound like a game, don’t they? Dr. J. Riddle me this, riddle me that. A psychological game. Why she’s playing this game as the keeper of taxes, the savior of the fiscal world, I don’t know. It begins to inspire Moliere. It begins to inspire images of rococo ballgowns with no underwear underneath on swings with silk shoes and powdered wigs —a total farce. She’s a manipulator. I tried to explain that to people. She’s keeping her close, she hooked her with money, so technically, she worked for her now. She’s crazy, but she’s a “high-powered woman,” and she forked over serious cash. Joy might sound like a fiction. People seemed to have a hard time imagining someone could be so calculated, but we can be, and there are, in fairytale tones, as I felt as if I were talking to people who lived in a kind of fairytale, psychopaths, sociopaths, even rapists. Child abusers. Pedophiles. These people live and breathe in the world. They have a system of functioning just like anyone else. Do they know what they’re doing? The people I told this story to searched for a reason, but did they search for a reason for child abuse? Rape? Reflections. Do you give a shit about the reasons? Dr. J’s flapping her wrists around like some buffoon of all this flashy unawareness, blindness, scurrying to her limo… IRS. What a buffoon. Dr. J doesn’t care, I assure you, though she may act like she does but ACT, really ACT.

Later, I read Eric Berne’s seminal short book published in 1961, The Games People Play. As a transactional psychologist, he described the realm of human relationships as a transactional space. We’re not interacting, in other words, we’re getting something out of it, which I wished I had kept in mind, personally, over the course of my life. He went through our “hey how are you” transactions with our neighbors, to “do you know so and so” at parties, so we’re getting closer in other words. Finally, the death match —when we begin to get close. He believed that “the games people play” rooted from intimacy, either trying to avoid it or get it. But would that framework apply to, I don’t know, non-Americans? Is it true in the absolute? I found that many people believed they possessed the absolute truth, and though everyone isn’t like that, it’s a hierarchical stance. It tends to apply. People could ACT as if Berne was absolute, when it might not apply to another culture, but there does seem to be a fair amount of truth in it.

He said, “the more deranged, the harder they play,” and Dr. J is most definitely playing fucked up games. He believed we learn the games we play in our childhoods, and they aren’t trite, so what was this game?

It was almost as if the tennis players started acting…strangely. They’re playing a game, but it becomes unrecognizable. They could hop on this court precisely, follow a rolling neon ball side by side, intensely. There would be rules, in other words, and they’d be showcasing how absurd rules can get, as the absurd is a systemic response, the human responding to a strict system…immigration, for example. Bouncing on his foot on that tiny middle divider on the baseline almost like a dancer, he’d launch, yes, to make it more ridiculous, the ball with his hands. Just a twisted game, there’s room for humor. Interestingly, this warped game triggered a strange reaction in people as they were listening to the story — this would be where people acted as if they understood what it was going on, insisted on it, even, in all seriousness to me, just as absurd, as the players fly into the air mimicking fish. They would insist that they knew what it meant. “She did it because…” A cop would never respond like that, the cop is trained, theoretically, to pursue— “what is going on here?!” That would be the entry point. “This is silly. You can’t act like that.” That was the person who did not exist in my life.

They would not know what it means, they would have to investigate, not assume, but that isn’t always the case. Do they know what they are doing when they are targeting Black men? Nothing normal about kicking down doors, shooting innocent people, and yet, there are terrors out there, real terrors, it’s unbelievable what can happen to a person. I didn’t know it was shocking. At times, exhausting. What people know, don’t know, forget. The truth, the subject, is complex. There isn’t just one, obviously.