The last scene: Angelica Leibowitz launched the “nice game.” Dr. J, my mother, told her that my father was abusive towards me, and now, so she agreed to protect me. She brought me into her room, and said, we’re going to play a nice game with him…”

So this is a chunk, about 11,000 words

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.