Everything is fine. I’m organizing my videos and cracking up. Christmas in Naples is a Sport is going well. I feel like I heard so much advice that contradicted one another like, you don’t even need to write a book. “My mother’s name is Dr. J.” What more do you want? What more do you need? Meaning, all you need is a book proposal and sample. Then another said, well, if it’s your first book, you might want to have a manuscript. Anyway, I’m on my way.
It’s good. It’s coming together. I get caught up in some sections. But I just have to put together a cohesive whole that can then be rearranged if needed. You want to be at a party, at one point, the whole time. That I know. The dimension of that is good, the odd corners, the talk of Archimedes over Amaro. I’m fine if that’s not perfect yet, the composition of it. It’s the party—bravo! Brav. The nonstop singing. They baptize me in song; that’s just what “what’s my name…?” means. When they baptize me in song—we’re at a party the whole time, dancing, another liquor round.
I don’t find a family, exactly, do you know what I mean? They are my cousins. Franco and Flora did this turn….you’re like our kid, again, for real. Just don’t do it. But it makes for a good drama. It’s not that they don’t see me as their family but just please. Carmine isn’t going around calling me his sister. None of these kids call me their sister. So it puts me in a weird position. He looked at me when his father called me “his sister.” He’s like your brother. I flip out…go running outside. Genaro throws a soccer ball to the baby dragons, as in boys. “Who hasn’t called you a sister at this point?” He looks at me, Persephone too.
And I’ve told them this whole story. Now, if someone says that, I can take it casually, but if you were to put yourself in my shoes…………..
Didn’t want this.
Fine. it’s fine. And I felt like I had to make others feel better.
Just stop.
Bukowski, I mean, there are some parts that I’m like—whoa. On some level, I feel better about the edges I don’t know what to do with. I feel bad, okay, but I can’t go around saying “that’s like my parent.” You’re like my father, my mother. Can I? I’m not sure. I don’t want to. This thing. Like no, please don’t project this onto me. But like, the whole “find a family somewhere else” you know, I have to laugh. Now, it’s fine, I might have been better off just taking it all like a grain of salt. Valuable, you know, salt. Once upon a time.
I’m writing Genaro and Persephone’s parts because they come in media res as we’re reaching Christmas and they’ll be the relief that the reader will want, for my sake, I think. Me dressed as Santa—on Christmas Eve, Franco and Flora asked “are you calling your mother” when I never spoke to this woman on Christmas in my life. I played Santa, also. So, Genaro in this party, since we’ll be in it at that point, can come find me. He has no idea what’s going on. Neither does Persephone but they understand…better than the others. They speak English.
I called my mother in real life. She didn’t even have my number. I didn’t leave it. “Merry Christmas,” awkward. A therapist suggested. “Fuck you.” So, he could tell me to not do it, coming in, like I don’t even know what’s going on—don’t do it. It’s okay, brushing me up, a Santa this year. “Just lie,” it’s okay. Okay. It’s okay. I can’t. “Yes, you can.” Just tell them that you did. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. But I did, you know. I went into the kitchen to let them know since it had more to do with them than me. In my opinion.
Genaro and Persephone can support me in a different way. Like, our feet dancing, maybe you can rewrite the past, learn, and sort of let it all exist in the same space. Represent what I learned since the draft itself marked an end to a whole way of life. In the dance, even, the song, the romance….our romances. Meri?
It’s potentially a good set of scenes between a Hades and Persephone, since Genaro is that for me, coming in to find themselves in a story like that…with someone who also clearly isn’t totally aware of themself. They are funny. Other. He runs Apple Hungary, Spain, whatever. “Safety is key,” “yes,” you’re safe now. It’s not that I wasn’t a self-aware person but my parents were out of the picture though I said many many times that he had Alzheimer’s the whole time. So, to the reader, I suspect that it’s going to make a lot of sense, actually, before it did to anyone else. OH, they were sick, you’re father too, so you got these families. That was day one.
He’ll raise his glass once he gets the information necessary that it was indeed a very good idea that I didn’t…and they don’t get it since he’ll ask me on Christmas Eve, I think, “what happened to her…Dr…Jay? Reb? Is this German?” Since I told them, anyway. But when a woman is telling you she works for secret spies, you know, I believe it’s like, well. It just didn’t land. And I struggled enough if you would so I could do that with them since it’s more toward the end.
I’m not sure about Genaro and Persephone yet but they could help me in some fashion….get to my conclusion. Carmine too, but that’s a sort of different thing; we’re a duo. He’s leaving the band behind…he has to make a decision this Christmas. Ten years with this band, his girlfriend, a whole life. Me too, differently. If I wasn’t with the family, I was with the band. Every night. They, too, embraced me and my questions about “the music biz.” We watched them play at the good volcano AKA the mall. So there’s enough drama to go around. It’s just so beautiful, I think, Carmine and I meeting on the plane of the imagination….because that’s a real place in Naples so there’s no issue with someone like that. We do our conjugation tables on the circumvesuviana, the train tuning in…rooting me on. You can do this.
“You want a cigarette,” he said, looking over the front seat one night.
“How do you know that?” At this point.
“I imagined it.”
I laughed. He doesn’t get it. “Well, what else do you use your imagination for?”
I cracked up.
“When people talk…do you not see pictures?”
“Yes,” I said, obviously, between the two of us, but, but what? What ELSE do you use your imagination for? If you’re not perceiving in images?
And I can just hear his father. “Peter PARK.” Annoyed, sort of touched, looking at Flora with a hint of his “Julio Iglesias” fandom. Lol. Enough artists, enough, enough for now. So Carmine can cross out the words, go down the line, and pull a lyric from the skies to explain the verb, reaching with his longer fingernails for the meaning of “yearning,” and the train, you know, everyone was full of feeling, singing the song, searching for it, the word, how to describe “yearning,” what that is. “A desire, much more than a desire, I mean, what is smanie?”
It was funny, really was, and so real.
So, you’ll get flashes of my parents, but that’s it. This is not that book. And I don’t have the same sentiment that others might have. Why would I? It wasn’t my thing, though Jesus Christ, did I find families in a sense thinking I needed this. Complicated.
“Yes” Persephone will say. In the end, it wasn’t a big deal. I never heard from her. That’s the point, right? Chasing after someone who doesn’t want you? What’s the point? Who calls, who doesn’t? I let that go, I think. And then, at the end of those three days, the nonstop feasting—tennis, paddle tennis—”you don’t talk to your mother?” Angela said. I was shocked. But I’m trying…except, well, she gave me away to a stranger.
I’m biting my tongue, not wanting to roll out all these reasons. Because she does not want me. How many times. She never did. Beyond what she did, but you know, people find reconciliation…she was just never there. I was four.
I tried all Christmas, all my life, to explain it. And sure, I had my attachments, in a sense, but like, I didn’t go through foster care, people. Why are you so defensive? Vico tells me not to get agitated. They just want to talk. It just didn’t work, the way I told it, so I might as well just come out and say it. Not here, of course, with children around. That’s the point. At a dinner? They wondered you know after ten years…why are you laughing so much? Because it was that funny.
My sister said “family is forever” and that got scary.
We’ll still be dancing the whole night through and I’ll belong, still. Family still pisses you off. It’s just—we’re imperfect, you know, Genaro will have to admit. It was varied, rich, and merciless, that too, even the love and inclusion. They never stopped singing to me….and now I make stupid videos of me singing…reopening all that…wondering where this chapter might just take me. Wishing I got so much out of the way sooner. But I got here, Genaro has eyes like laser beams. Persephone’s are crystal clear blue. Their eyes float in the night, Genaro’s like laser beams.
It was a nonstop party, so much fun, and I found myself all alone at times…putting that together.