AD GRIPPED THE NEON BALL as if his hand were a claw. He bounced that shit. Couple times.
*
The phone rang. I was tucked beneath a window that framed the backyard like a Jasper Johns, an American classic. The sprinklers spit, set the beat. Picking up, “hello?” She chimed. “Oh…” she smiled, looked down at me— just as she predicted. He called. “How nice,” she said as if she could slice his dick off with the ICE in nice. “Look who it is…” she was delighted to hear from him. “To what did she,” even emotionally, she asked him, “owe the pleasure of his phone call?” God smiled upon her. Ohhh, looking down, a sports coach, right right. He wanted to play nice. He didn’t know her. Two can play that game, she thought. “How nice,” she said. She paced the kitchen with white sneaks seeking his balls, the subtext being: 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, you see, she didn’t mention me, but neither did he. Isn’t that right? Nice smile on her face. She was a shark darting back and forth, back and forth. She loved everything he was telling her, but she dropped the mask, suddenly, and squatted real low. She stuck her finger in her mouth at me: yuck. Popping back up to standing, an agile woman, she was the mother hen now, her chest puffed out. I guess, she wanted to communicate that she was pretending — big time.
“How nice…” but there she got a little dirty, a sports coach, as if revealing the underbelly of the smile… as she had no problem with ellipses. 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 so sorry, just so sorry. “Maria?!” A revelation. “Is she aroun?!” How hilarious! She couldn’t stop laughing at that question — I was right here! She was so sorry! She blamed herself, she hadn’t brought me up, right? She laughed, she really did, for a long time. The good witch. 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. “Doesn’t leave my sight,” haha, she was even generous about it, her laughter, reaching for him. “She’s right here!! Let me get her immediately!” .
I fiddled with my fingers.
She dropped the mask a little bit, “never been safer.” She meant it, you know. With her whole heart and soul, she reassured him: “don’t worry, please Nick, don’t worry…” poor man. 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 so, didn’t think I wanted to go. Not so sure. “Can you what? So many kids around,” none were, “I’m sorry I didn’t hear you?” She meant it, she wanted to, hear him that is, she was so sorry. “What did you ask? Talk to her?” She pitched high. “Of course!” 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 hadn’t even thought of it. Her responsibility of course. She was so 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? 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 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.
No, 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—right there. She brought it to her ear l, her elbow pointing high. “Thank you so much for calling, really,” she said as genuinely as she could. “Thank you so much, for calling…” all the way to the receiver. 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. We switched like that.
Then, he requested to visit.
She dimmed the lights.
In the foyer, she diffused the play at hand like a stage director meets sports coach with a vision. “We’re going to put on a nice show, a big big show.” Her arm scanned the kingdom. “The house is yours…” We had to act happier than happy, never been happier without you. This was a woman, by the way, who ended up creating a fake AOL account (years later) to contact her boyfriend (after her husband died, and I know, I know the question is: where the hell was he?) pretending that she was her cousin, to hit on him, literally. She wanted to see if he would cheat on her… so Angelica had a dark side. The front door was our target. We had to be loud, very loud, laughing, screaming, playing like crazy when she gave give us the signal. “But you have to ignore him, okay?” She said to us little girls. “Pay attention,” she pointed, the good, snappy witch. Me especially. “Not one look, okay? Not one. He does not exist,” she meant it. Just give her a magic wand, and she’d be a hilarious Disney character, as a Brazilian mastermind in a sports coach. Knock knock. Her arms flew at the front door—go. Nicole and I jumped, laughed, and shrieked in glee. Hand at her ear, she couldn’t hear us, already, you see. “More,” a conductor. We unleashed our voices with nightmarish 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? Opening the door all the way to the wall with her mouth agape. I recall these moments, almost peering at them as if I were a spectator, because this was really happening. There was nothing to hide here, you see, she communicated. She even dared him to “visit.” Like she was going to let a child molester into her house…“Here she is Nick!”Nicole and I flew by as if we were a roller coaster ride or pas de deux in state of wild abandon. 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 watched the happiest show on earth, an ecstatic nightmare. “YEAH!” Throwing fists.
I am a woman in love! And I’m talking to you! You know I know how you feel, what a woman can do! Only love songs scored these years. Only the best. “Pay attention,” she told me many times. Okay, you see, what the hell was I supposed to do with this? I’m telling you, these idiots over the years, to get a little rough, sports rough, telling me to feel my feelings? Look— what is even happening? I don’t even recall the man trying to step a foot in her house, so one might analyze that he was knocked off his feet. I just don’t understand what I’m looking AT. It took me writing a book about these years, not even understanding what I was doing, to wake up to what was happening. I used to say, around here, to the ONE person on earth I ever spoke to about this section, which only sounded like nonsense and some woman opening a door to — my fists thrust in the air at Astor Place Starbucks in NYC, “YEAH!” No one understood what was happening. My friend, Nate, with big big eyes had no idea… and I would say, “she was crazy,” my mother.
“Why didn’t you call the cops?” I asked Angelica back at the Beverly Hills Tennis club, the players deep in, I asked her, why? I meant it. But I was nine, ten. We faced one another, seated at noon and six as at a real desk. Cloudy day. The umbrella was down, probably. Or am I shaping my memories now according to the story? We do that, we shape, it’s normal, thinking about Dr. J, as her psychology fascinated me so deeply because of what it reflected about us, normal sane folks.
She didn’t want to send me to foster care, she said. And BINGO was his NAME-O. The spectacle rang true, didn’t it? Which I knew. I felt that at four and nine. There was something TRUE about all this, but what? What did this reflect, Dr. J?
YOU KNOW I KNOW HOW YOU FEEL! WHAT A WOMAN CAN DO— bring it back, Barbara Striesand, as the “dances with wolves” Nicole and I were putting on, even artfully, could be scored to that song. You could have cut the track, and our play could have sustained the same level of intensity. I can’t even totally deal with the flashes of sex, like we’re screaming in ectascy… disgusting.
I remember I came to on the stair one night as these “Spectacular Spectacular” performances straight out of the film Moulin Rouge had a good run. This situation lasted four years. I remember we did it more than once. It was the pitch of Nicole’s scream. I was crawling over her legs. I had to do that. I had to keep touching these moments, like her leg. I was crawling up her legs that night, it happened. I sat up, what am I doing? In two places at once, yes, at four, and then thirty four.
When I started writing about these years, I started growing up, because if my child, so forget wisemen, was in this situation, I would roar. And that was the key, for me personally, in terms of getting out of hell, psychologically.
I walked downstairs and stood there to take in this snapshot: a broken man at the door, that was the message he communicated, encased in the shadows of the porch and this woman standing guard. Horror.
At the time, all I could do was wonder: was it really like this, Joy in a way? Would no one do anything even if it were real, was it that unreal? Later, I learned that families typically pretend like it didn’t happen, and the horror of it, was it a JOKE? And a sexual trauma specialist told me that I might not have known that it was happening, because I was so young? And is that true? Isn’t that the QUESTION du jour? And her foster care comment. A joke. Am I’m seeing the truth of that being reflected back at me, even the truth of reality TV, or the flimsy nature of it all. I’m sensing a past, too, no? At four.
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. What is this man doing?
Giving us her hand, we leapt to slap her palm, hard. High five! “And what are you,” pop quiz, “going to say to the lawyers?”
“I want to live with my moder…” I blurted with fists. Another high five for me—yeah! She clapped, kicked her feet back, did a little sensual move to advance, time to dance! Legs leading the way, we were really going to get that, “asshole,” she hurled in Portuguese. The three of us scurried across the foyer as if we were in a play, because we were. Games were afoot.
When I asked my father — I was nine — why he didn’t just pick me up? He says, “you hated me and I didn’t know WHY,” emphasis on the WHY. So, wait, I’d get up in the mornings, I’m sorry, so you understood the SUBTEXT? So now, put yourself in his shoes? Absurd. I’m playing like mad! Angelica Leibowitz is standing at a wide open door. And what to do with his secret dementia…that’s coming in six years…? His secret illness he kept to himself… later. But of course, at the club, his throughline totally disappeared. Why is he acting like a lunatic? No wonder, why she believes it’s true, and my father didn’t going to CHANGE his operation. Not at all.
I saw so much truth in Joy’s blue eyes, it was even spiritual, it really was. Blue as the sky. The dark became light, the light became dark. People thought it was so unbelievable, and yet, a child that’s already being abused, or taken out of their home, could be abused, even, again! Statistically, their chances are higher. It was, spiritual.
Reading the article in the NYTimes about Alice Munro’s molestation and her mother’s strange and detestable response — Margaret Atwood said, “very very likely Alice Munro was abused, if only because it is so common…” a ridiculous statement, so hold on. THAT’s WHY she acted the way she did, because it happened to her?
In this world today, nothing is real, but everything spiritual, so why not do it to Enya? You couldn’t take the music out of that house, as these years were scored exclusively to the best love songs… but in this case, let’s do it to Nicole’s favorite: ENYA, as family became mysterious to me, I guess, I’m supposed to say that, which I also didn’t need to, I don’t know. But she was my PAS DE DEUX partner in these soirées of — leaping, screaming, and charging through the house acting SO HAPPY IT’S CRAZY WITHOUT YOU, while her mother stood guard beside a wide open door.
So, the reality of it is difficult to believe. The spectacle of it is hard to believe. Amy Griffin, actually adds to the convo: how could you forget? WHAT is repressed trauma? As I don’t know what I’m FACING exactly, and no offense, I met idiots — pretending like they know, who led me down a road that maybe I didn’t need to go down?
Cue Enya. Let us turn the foyer on Miracle Mile with a crystal chandelier, Jose Leibowitz the star, into a night to truly remember. Remember the other NY Times article about “the mother who abandons her child being the anti-heroine of the moment?” Here’s the buffoon piece about it.
We were already in a theatrical conceit, and I learned something very true about the truth, as if it was one of my proverbial files in my drawer with a fourth grade label on it: undercover investigation. The truth— what a subject. Some things are so true, you have the license to push it over an edge — so make these FOYER performances even better, more choreographed, because that way, I could at least make a statement.
The Catholic priest in it played by Jose Leibowitz. He’s Jewish, sexy, sure, able to dance between his mother’s Jesus and Mary candles. Oh they were Jewish, ohhhhh.
There was something much deeper turning, as we danced these years through — through the same rooms — as Dr. J, to me, reflected that our perspective on sex, or our nature, needed an update, forget our software. Whitney Cummings going right up to teachers, “are you a pedophile?” The comments I received from people I knew — no no, not true—before I even finished the story were alarming. And was it unbelievable? In a Jewish house, too? Considering what happened to them?
“Very very likely” everyone in the USA is getting molested. That was stated casually. So, according to Atwood, my mother did this because IT happened to her, and we should understand HER. It’s really okay, Jose Leibowitz flashing his palm, backing up, like it’s all cool, gravy, right?
So the door opens on another night, another show. Jose Leibowitz in sports gear and a gold chain. Angelica had six children, and they were all born to dance and they know that. Nicole and I are chasing after one another, peeking around banisters, and Michelle, the blond, coming around the wall, as if we were in The Sound of Music, but really. “If you really want to,” Enya’s “Only If.” And to that song, after we move through the foyer as if some splendid meaning were to be found in domestic scene, we could assemble around Jose Leibowitz in formation — and they could start dancing as if in a pop music video, backing up, embracing their sensuality like pop stars in unison, “if you really want to, you can seize the day,” or bend reality… with Jose Leibowitz’s HEAD. They’re honoring the bodies their mother gave them, dancing real cool. I would be among them, one of them now, and it made them laugh, that I could dance, so. Children are sacred… to la la da..ahhhhhhh.
There was so much music in that house, that it splashes in my mind — Lady in Red, Through the Years by Kenny Loggins… but the lambada reigned supreme, king. The lambada was an overarching canopy, as I ended up in this house the year that Kaoma’s Lambada took the world by STORM! 1989. It was the closest thing you could do to sex with your clothes on…and as this is all happening, these “soirées” of playing HAPPY for some dunce standing at a wide open door, we’re partying all the way through…we’re dancing…and it was the lambada regardless of the song. And in this house, sex became good, so much more than just the act itself, but the force… the force that brought all these people into this room, so it was spiritual. Lambada, eh, lambada… my mother’s name was Joy, you know.
The Lambada, I read, was born out of a time of oppression. It was liberation. Angelita Leibowitz, she’s going to have to do some BEYONCE battle dance — to Enya — as sex is sacred, isn’t it? In my opinion, that's the word that’s out of whack. What else was I supposed to do except push the play as far as it could go? This was such a farce. And I’m only at the beginning of the story. Not the end. The spectacle of it? It’s going to be a SPECTACLE from beginning to end.
My mother, Dr. J, she ran into church to Enya, in my mind, to “accost,” according to an eye-witness, the priest with her rapes. Every Sunday. And think about the “prolific pedophile” racking up 300 charges as Dr. J was THE GENIUS OF ALL GENIUSES. Accost—that was her verb choice, the eucharistic minister who was standing right there. In a white mink coat, the tips of her fur catching the stained glass, this woman decribed her as “Cruella de Vil from 101 Dalmnations,” in haute couture. But he, too, the priest was dressed in rich robes, about to process for Mass, or a holy performance, so they mirrored one another. She’s accosting with her blue eyes, please, begging him? To help her with her rapes? So yes, her performance was outrageous, but next to the Catholic Church’s BILLION dollar lawsuit, their normal routine is even more outrageous. Reflections. A spectacle, indeed. She reflected the truth. And did anyone help out the priest? Nope. People don’t do anything. Remember my father explaining what TAXES mean to a four year old: with hands, “a responsibility we SHARE.” It was so on the nose, this story, it made me laugh.
And then, my cousins brought up, many years later, a DOCUMENTARY about a girl who was kidnapped by the Vatican? Is that true? And we’re discussing this around a dinner table before lunch. Is there nothing sacred anymore? Forget real. What is she a sex slave? Am I being TOO real about it? Is that a joke? Why are you bringing it up as if it were UNREAL? You see what I mean? Dr. J everywhere. We’re talking about CHILD murder, even? Like are they keeping her in a DUNGEON?
CUE ENYA.
“May it be…”
Nicole and I are swimming in hoodies, the lot of us are carrying lanterns through the foyer… Nicole and I then play against the music — skipping through the foyer, moving very fast, very fast, we all gather to move through the song — quickly. We’re earching for meaning in a work out routine… He’s passing out oars so we can row to a new world — let it be… Lord of the Rings, Jose Leibowitz transparently — rowing sure — but thinking about how to create water, better. The feeling, of course. And the music turns, towards the adventure, Jose hands me — tosses me even — over the Louise so he can make his way up the stairs… very very likely, everyone is going to get molested… okay. Who cares? Its airy-fairy, a little Dr. J. Nicole and I are sparkling, skipping, laughing — throwing pillows. Jose unleashes the backdrop he had stapled the banister earlier — autumn leaves, sparkling, otherwordly. Jose is waving a light at the top of the banister… leading us home…
I had to laugh, it’s a farce, the whole situation was, but the response to child abuse, genereally, is deranged, isn’t it? In reading that article about Alice Munro’s daughter: her brother told their father, because he couldn’t handle it, and their father said, let’s not tell Munro, because he didn’t want to get blamed for ruining her marriage. This isn’t a lover’s quarrel. This is a crime. And she reminded her mother of that, when she called the police. You know, in this regard, it’s almost as if TV is more real about it than we are in real life. It’s an automatic rated R. My mother needing “time” — Only Time — to LEAVE her husband for raping a four year old? Hmmmmmmmmmmm. Hmmmmmmmmmm? You’d think that would be an automatic goodbye, hunny. That’s — Jose Leibowitz setting off sparklers, beginning to perform magic tricks. “She really isn’t being SAWED IN TWO.” You heartless bitch.
“LET THE ORINOCO FLOW.”
Market scene. Jose Leibowitz is the fish mongrel, so the cleaver smacks against the counter. He’s tossing the fish to Louise. Ah, the poetry of daily life. It moves…on.
It was as clown show. Slamming the door in my father’s face to ZILS.
Peace, Jose Leibowitz says, with two peace signs.
Time to eat.
CUE JULIO IGLESIAS and Jose Leibowitz in the back seat of the car snapping at his mother to STOP cracking SEX JOKES! Louise—SERIOUSLY!!! Louise would be the one to hold me, by the way, the future lesbian of the family. Like, WTF!
The writer of the BBC article about the “prolific child abuser,” said that the trial didn’t garner the same response because it was about child abuse, so no one cares— what? Was it not as shocking as Pelicot. Did you read? Children are being raped on TAPE — ? HELLO?
I’ve been alone with you…in my mind… Lionel Richie. Sorry no transitions—you’re just going to be SWEPT AWAY. “And in my dreams I’ve kissed your lips,” he’s shrugging, “a thousand times…” That song probably came on, again, Angelica Leibowitz was a GUTSY woman — she’s listening to the power ballads, baby. Not the soft stuff. But I was a Lionel Richie fan. The sentiment, I don’t know, the love songs added a layer of emotion, yes constructed, as you can play the NOTES, arrange the instruments, and the story tended to affect people, given the combination of ingredients. But it’s the SINCERITY of the love driving these songs… how utterly biting they are, that might just — WWF style — punch us in the face.
Jose Leibowitz, the camera beneath him, pointing up, he’s looking up at the Tree of Life to Storms of Africa. I’m in awe. Dr. J’s personality of sparkles of splattered glass, literally, her wonderment, her eyes always in the stars… and then I look across this subject and all I see is looney tunes — And of course, the question is, “what happened NEXT?” NOT — well, you know, I think, “she gave you away to save you from herself,” okay? Cue Enya, downbeat: SAIL AWAY SAIL AWAY SAIL AWAY… Jose is skiing on step one of the stairs. Our hair is flying in a fan. Jose Leibowitz, legs crossed, thinks we need to let go of form here. The more I woke up through this story, the more enraged I became, personally. Where suddenly, forget the ethereal nature of who I was, as I needed professional help, and our dances with wolves, I’m asking real questions:
Did he really not even TRY? Try to walk into your house? How many times did these “soirees” happen. I remember that they happened for years… when did they stop? And who’s behind me? Cops, probably. Obama, people like this. The Clintons. The politicians, they know what I’m going to say. I spoke to the Russians, yes, about this story, and I said, “this is the Society of Spectacle.” That’s what a Russian is seeing through these lines. They agreed.
I don’t know what we should care about, if not about the strikingly common occurence that child abuse is, or the floaty loss of reality…where we’re turning it into some disconnected stageplay! Skidding into symbolism, somehow, thinking about Amy Griffin, recalling years of abuse with psychedelics, and it DOESN’T MATTER IF IT IS TRUE, NO. Even the THOUGHT, as that, that alone, just the THOUGHT, that someone could LIE about something like this — drove me to investigate it. I believed it was a lie my whole life to discover I could have been raped anywhere and everywhere. Molested, even. So did this actually happen to my mother? You see what I mean? Running into church and making a mockery of it — and what does this reflect? What kind of illness?
I picture this sexual trauma specialist on a BIG SCREEN in the back of the foyer, enjoying the dancing, like a deus ex machina— what are we doing? Around this subject? And it’s true, I don’t know what to say, about this subject in particular, because — a billion dollars — May it Be, cue Enya again, in holy tones… they abused a billion dollars worth of children. It was spiritual. It is.
So here we go, through this debacle, let us continue… holding my hand in the foyer in tights and puffy sleeves, a Medieval play.
Angelica Leibowitz my snappy bitchy Braziliian back up. She’s going to mesmerize you and attack you in dance — let us, pray.
**
As a note, I just threw this up, as I’m working on a piece about it, but that’s the scene where I just fell apart, all these years later, like was this true? To May it Be… Lord of the Rings. I hate the drama in it, hated it.
I was four at the time, you know, five, who knows. But reopening this investigation, at the Beverly Hills tennis Club, I tried so hard to record it, it was so memorable, even if it much of it flew over my head, and I don’t know what to say… realizing, forget remembering, Angelica asking me, God. “It wasn’t true, was it?” Kicking up her sandals. Pushing through my response as a child — WHAT? I was not the type to get shy, man, if I had someone on my side, I would have — attacked my father. He brought me home to mirrors being smashed off the walls — she did this, my mother, he said, because she was jealous? Imagine?
She lied about you being a child molester, idiot, because she was JEALOUS of a four year old? At EIGHT years old? I can’t compute that. Now, as an adult, the children at St. Jerome’s School know — they know where I’m going— the bat in the back of the trunk. They were startled to discover it, startled to… but I received so much flack for being FURIOUS. Okay? Who the fuck was this man? My father? You know, he saved the article about Dr. J in Neiman Marcus Magazine — same deal, idiot. Who gives a SHIT what this bitch looked like?! Not to start cursing, but I’m emoting right now. My parents were DISNEY characters.
The dance party, the lambada party, they were Jewish, so what can happen to a person… I really was in this situation. That’s what the sexual trauma specialist I found said, “you were already in this situation…” I’m asking this man, “could this have really happened?”
“HELLO????????????”
“IT DID.”
But I had to go through a FIELD DAY of PEOPLE going NO when they don’t even KNOW what happened, okay? No no no no no no. No one asks a question. If I’m being brutally honest, I saw delusion everywhere… since Dr. J was a walking delusion. I saw racism as delusional, it’s totally delusional, saying a person isn’t a person, but it’s real and very true, structural, so there’s DELUSION in the architecture. And around THIS, my story, this one right here, I met delusion in the world… with these phrases like “she did it to save you from herself…” after I said, she LIED, even, at the time, about her husband being a child molester. This woman, Angelica, she’s a temporary insanity plea, don’t hesitate, because she was TOLD that a man was raping a FOUR YEAR OLD and he BEGAN acting like this. And you see, all these years later, as I had to reach beyond my own life to people out there, like OBAMA, to OBAMA? This woman is just acting REALLY REALLY NICE. You see what I mean? What conversations are happening between my parents? Nothing but questions. I’ll continue sharing my conversations with my father about all this — this lunatic.
He’s saying “we tried to make this work…” remembering this DUNCE getting out of a LIMO at the school that was ARRANGED? Nicole and I went to a fancy prep school that Dr. J paid for. And here he is waving… at me? Angelica Leibowitz frozen, look, a COP is going to get that. People don’t know how to respond. We participated in some weird ass photo shoot.
So hear me, as I had to fight my friends, even — I was in a sex scandal. Schools arranged.
And can you hear it… the build?
Through the Years!
The door opens, another night another show.
The sweetest days I found I found with you, through the years!
And these people over the years don’t get it — it’s called STAYING ON TOP OF THE SONG. Not DROWNING in it. I had enough people GETTING ALL ETHEREALLY affected by this stupid story. Jose Leibowitz, hands on his hips, is leaving room for it, as people FLIP out in tennis, and there’s a version, fiction, of JOSE LEIBOWITZ standing on a court with me — in a cute sweatband, so young, swinging this racket around, roaring at HIM. No one cares, not in this context. Everyone is just, enamoured, thinks I’m a special person destined for greatness. Yup, wow. So much force in one so young. Jose Leibowitz becomes my legal guardian because we had matches across his house, my friends. Meaning, you, the readers—my friends. Ohhhhhh yes, I flipped out, barked at people, and JOSE LEIBOWITZ would DESCEND like thunder, I would go running. I tried to run away…
I see.
Looking back on all this.
Okay.
I hid, tried to run away.
The women, the girls, Angelica jumping — they held down the perimeter as no woman wanted to deal with me, to be honest, so Jose had to — I bit, I threw punches. SO these moments were tough, remembering them, because I laughed through them, just laughed, because Jose Leibowitz was practically doing acrobatics, and I didn’t know where we were in the story. SO I DIDN’T SEEM TO HAVE THAT MUCH FUN ANGELICA LEIBOWITZ SINCE SHE SAID, ALL THESE YEARS LATER WHEN I CALLED BECAUSE I WASN’T SURE ANYMORE IF IT WAS A LIE??? She said, “we had fun.” I disagree, though life is COMPLEX, isn’t it?
Cue Caribbean Moon — the tennis player flies through the air reaching for the ball. There’s triumph, there’s disappointment, there’s anger, yes, most definitely scored to Enya. The ball flies across space, and I’m seated, calmly, vertically, in a chair, contemplating all this at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club with these spectacles in the parages of my mind… they’re there… I even felt bad, for my father, you see, as Angelica Leibowitz did. Not me. The game. At times, I wonder about the brain, how we developed as a species, as I saw us as biological machines, of course, looking at Angelica Leibowitz, as if, we’re designed, absolutely, and it’s the subject of sex in particular that got twisted somewhere. Like, the Catholic priest is the symbol of sexual abuse towards children, and they are repressive when it comes to sex. I don’t know if it’s valid, but I was a mini-psychologist there, so if you were to break it down thematically, sex is wrong, if not criminal, and children are innocent, but even our innocence — made stark and bright in her eyes, my mothers, Joy — is seen as evil. Can we trust our nature to Enya? Are we good, bad? Are we savage? And always, the civilized man turns out to be the real savage. And you know, we all have to find the good in what happens to us, I guess, I don’t know how to describe that, but in my case, I’m just embracing the searingly buffoonesque slap in the face in it — where take the soirees to the max, make it a real spectacle — heartfelt, even. If it’s true there are chilld molesters everywhere, or people in a daze… wandering through meadows with Dr. J… seeing it everywhere…making documentaries about this. I can’t tell what the hell is happening. We’re court dancing to Enya, Jose Leibowitz our mastermind.
And all together now, “turn to gold,” the Brazilian Jewish children are embracing their destiny, dancing sexy regardless…. like their mother taught them too. Even as a fuck you. I am a man, you know. A mer-man swimming through a lagoon, part man, part divine. All of us, all of us are —shimmering under the moonlight, my friends. Jose Leibowitz, back on Miracle Mile, believes, even, we should embrace beauty. He thinks we should should — with a hand — putting books on Nicole and my head — practice verticality. Ballet. Mystery.