*sensitive content warning, again—

The tennis players got off to a good start. They moved in smears around our table, grunting from the effort of chasing the ball with strict focus. Their sneakers squeaked in bright tones that broke the day, just like Joy.

“Can you describe her personality?”

My bare feet dangled above the ground. We were close to one another now, positioned around the table at 6 and 9 o’clock in the shade. The ball streaked back and forth between our bodies as the tennis court was beside us, the match a poignant backdrop for a psychological drama.

Angelica mimed bringing a phone to her ear. “Ohhhhh,” she sighed like a princess in a meadow. “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you,” she rattled on, fourteen times, not four, as if love were even a joke. One of the problems I ran into was —the concept of exaggeration. Dr. J was a walking exaggeration, and people exaggerate, they do, all the time, so it was another one of these reflection moments where I wanted to ask people —listening to this story — do you exaggerate too much? This is some relinquishing of control, or some spill over into some inventive area of the psyche, perhaps, and one of my questions about Dr. J had to do with her psychic makeup. In any case, Dr. J threw “I love you” at her in quick succession like happy daggers. “BULLSHIT.” Angelica was a bull, not just a bird. “The biggest — ” She got up in my FACE. “Whore, piece of shit.” I nodded, “right,” given the circumstances. It passed. She reflected that this situation was vulgar. “The fakest human being I have ever seen.” Her eyes were demonic over her beak. She froze. Bumblebees buzzed around the flower pots.

“Not one REAL thread…”

She pinched it and showed it to me as if it were real. The fire blazed in her eyes.

“…in this bitch.”

She damned that unreal strand to hell.

My mother’s fakeness was — enraging. Made of powder poof powder, Dr. J, a record that skips made of a talc — intangible and harsh.

Riiiight, of course, I thought. A situation like this would produce a violent reaction—Angelica was embodying the gore, the messy guts of the scandal. Of course she would flip out — she’s not going to remain calm. Forget that I’m a child, in fact, it appeared too easy to forget entirely,. “I am from Brazil,” she said. She reminded me many times—she was who she was, so she’s not going to be polite, chewing on her gum and flashing a NICE fake smile. She was not going to behave well, because it was not well, and a jury, in a court of law, would probably be on her side. She acted as if she’d even reject the notion that she could act “evolved.”

She actually got wrapped up in a sex scandal. My mother wrapped her up in a sex scandal over some four-year-old girl she took home for one fucking day, so she cursed. She had a foul mouth, but it was foul. She was told that a man was raping his four-year-old daughter. A situation like this — it’s similar to tyranny, it’s a mad government. It’s insane. “RAPE,” she fired that word at me many times. “Maria,” she pointed at me, “this bitch told me rape.” Her flesh burned, because sex was real, it was really really real to this woman, so you don’t go around talking about raping a goddamn four year old and acting like some Disney princess on steroids.

I supported her divine response. I made room for her vitriol, in fact. It passed, her truth. Valid. Her reaction was valid. “The biggest,” Angelica kept her voice down but not her intensity, “liar on earth!” Yet she reflected so much truth.

The ball hit the net, “no.” A fist of defeat from player one. He bounced the ball back to the service line with his racket.

Angelica tipped her head down. A tennis player prepared for the serve. She delivered the operatic exclamation that Dr. J could fire at any time silently: “AH!” She popped, confetti, fireworks, Dr. J, on the phone. “AAH!” Dr. J called her every day for a while. Angelica mimed the phone to her ear. Never asked for me.

“DISGUSTINGLY sweet,” pop, she let it rip. Angelica flicked my mother’s sweetness off her and spilled out in her chair to pop pop — in quick succession, nothing but skill — she exclaimed, quietly, “breath like death! Maria! You died.” And then, yes, her breath. “Legendary…” Angelica looked at me with EYES, practically bringing her chair forward towards me as she spilled over.

“Maria,” she whispered down low, LOOKING at ME, “Maria, look at me. Maria.”

I could laugh, what a performance, you see, even from Angelica, a real personality.

“She breathed, and she could kill flowers…”

Angelica paused and looked the flowers in pots, bees buzzing: “dead.”

“Is there a DEAD ANIMAL in there?”

“Did she EAT a dead animal…?”

“And she wouldn’t stay away,” Angelica clutched onto the arms of her chair and shot fire out of her eyes over her beak. “She would walk right up to you and breathe all over you.” Sincerely, in a red bikini, looking hot, lol, Angelica had to ask, “Why, Maria, why?” With a fist, “why is she making it more pronounced, why isn’t she staying away?” She spurted yuck from her body, caressed the air, herself, as if my mother were made of slime. She flicked her off — her body. Handsy, Dr. J. She didn’t appear to have a sense of physical boundaries — in listening to Angelica. She kicked the chair, practically, “this bitch,” in trying to rest her Adidas sandals on the edge of her seat. Her performance was sort of genius and animal in her chair, sticking her finger in her mouth, accompanied by a ghastly, deathly sound. Haunted.

She opened her legs, even, by the jacuzzi once. She opened her legs to show me how my mother smelled down there with a kind of amusement, almost a smile, on the crack of a joke. It was funny, to be fair to Angelica, like you couldn’t really help but laugh, out of sheer shock. It was graphic, important, and even art—our conversations — because we were at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club. It was grotesque. That made sense as a style, huh, I thought. She gave me a fleshy idea of how loose and smelly my mother’s anatomy was. “Every man…” Angelica said it, with feeling, every time, eyes side to side, leaning toward me, “every man.”

Dr. J was a picture-perfect grotesque. A beauty, fashionable, girlie, disjointed. Her wrists were like flimsy hankies flopping at you. “Bye bye for now,” she’d say. Even the garlic cloves, “her candy,” the whole picture — her persona was in this style. She was a grotesque creature. Her ingratiating sweetness. Was she not bathed? I peered through this scenario. Was she a product of extreme neglect? Why was she abject? I thought, if she came from the darkest, sickest of backgrounds, why would I look away? There wasn’t a darkness too dark I wouldn’t face for a child, thinking about my mother. She was one, once upon a time, so what happened from there to here?

The jets went off. Angelita, perky as a bird, adjusted her seat to face the guests who were getting into the jacuzzi with a smile. She knew them.

I moved to the sun lounger, so I could face her. A row fanned out behind me, almost like a parallax. The players congratulated one another on a game well played, nice, smiles. We all have that mask or defense or reaction — of friendliness, or that everything is okay: a smile. Dr. J led with it, and the crack of it haunted me. Plastered on her face, it was so pretty that it was hard to tell how tight it was. She wasn’t a soft or tender person. She was, in my mind, the Joker — next generation. Her mirrors, her eyes as blue as the sky… so clear…expansive… not a spot of darkness in her. The Joker card was an unusual card to find included in the deck handed to me at the beginning of my life. But there’s good in it, there was something useful in it, I thought, for its vulgarity too, because the subject was vulgar, not ethereal. And yet, Dr. J reflected that it could be treated as such.

She even looked like a Joker. But she was a beauty, you see, not a disfigured face — that came later. She ended up being a little Portrait of Dorian Grey, actually. Today, she looks visibly twisted, hard. She was always insane, but her ugliness is pronounced. Her eyes, they were always wells, but in a picture I saw, they looked as if they could devour the whole world and still be hungry. I showed it to my cousins — “does this not look like a Joker?” They didn’t even hesitate. “Yes it does, she really looks like a Joker.”

The sky above me on a sunny day, the night sky felt so clean and cool next to her. “We tend to see the path of a villain as a fall from grace…” but hero hero, another way is possible for us all, she’d say, Joy gets it. The light could be dark, dark could be light, and there was truth in it, profound, as sex is, for instance, viewed as dirty or shameful, when it’s good, our earthly nature.

The Joker today isn’t Heath Ledger. She’s going to crack a smile without a flaw on her face. She’s even Tiktok, complete with sparkles and hearts around her figure. The Joker today is surrounded by cameras, dazzling, holding up a Bible at a protest, like Trump did. She knows what the audience is. The smile is societal — why so serious? Her white fur, business suit, rushing to the IRS — it was desperate, hysterical. Our fiscal responsibility — wee, out a limo, Joy. You see? The sweetest of them all. She gagged, Angelica… she was spectacular, a kite flying high, loose, disconnected from Earth.

There’s real truth in the yin and yang, thinking about the balance between light and shadow. It’s more about how we qualify these ideas. That was the problem with Joy, I think. She’s like the priest that molests children, in that, she’s an extreme version of innocence — the most chaste woman in the world with her eyes like an erasure that wants to devour, but if you’re looking closely, this is a diluted being, who will then show up naked and throw herself on you. It is, hm, this phrase: mentally ill, indeed. There was so much truth in it, actually, thinking about the Catholic Church’s offenses, and this sensational rumor that they kidnapped an eleven-year-old girl on her way to a music lesson…there’s even a documentary about it, and is that true? Did they? Or is that just a fun story? Dr. J—reflecting more truth. How sensational it is. Then, my cousins, in Italy, discussed it at a lunch table right before we were going to eat… as if child rape, if not slavery, or murder were not the subject at hand, as she’s never been found. Did they hear what they were saying? So, in the Joker’s tone, why so serious? Some girl is locked in some Vatican dungeon… I don’t know how to describe that disconnect. Joy’s denying it, of course. She’s never had SEX, practically, only to have me.

Her personality was SO BRIGHT you had to shield your eyes, so did that indicate a very dark past? That’s what it looked like, but Angelica didn’t see that, exactly. Joy was in a state of emergency. She kept saying, “she’s SICK IN THE HEAD,” and was it in the head? Interesting language. Someone could be saying sex, overtly, even, and no one makes a connection; she might be sick, there, but no one will take it seriously because of the delivery…

She saw that Joy was sick, but it was not an insult; it was time to get help, but she was stoning her to death. It’s not that it was not deserved, a seductive feeling, righteousness, if not true, and be careful, of course it’s “true,” but a system of punishment was fundamental, structural. This was part of the problem.

And, well, I always saw Dr. J as patriarchal, you see. MEN aren’t typically seen as “mentally ill” when they behave in parallel ways to her. Reflections. They aren’t considered ill if they’re extreme dicks, if they skip out on their families, if they rape or abuse a child. They’re seen as criminal, even. And Angelica isn’t overexaggerating. We were in a sex scandal; my mother orchestrated a sex scandal.

Why the violence Dr. J? She wants it? She’s provoking it?

Nothing but beating and rape from this woman. It was an outrageous act thus there is, an equal and opposite reaction, though that’s not always the case when it comes to human relationships, depends, people overreact. But in this case, we’re in a sex scandal. What she did — produced this effect.

I mean, in Angelica’s words: “Maria imagine! Maria, imagine?” She fired her pointer finger at me. “Imagine?” She simply offered Dr. J a playdate, and then got cash and child molesters and her breasts thrown in her face.

And why did it appear so poignant to me?

Angelica’s demonic, monstrous performance…?

I thought about it later in my pink room. Her reaction. Her guttural, vulgar reaction — it was good, you see. Sure, it’s vulgar, but it’s true, like, if it’s vulgar, it’s vulgar. But why Angelica’s performance was wise and meaningful, I couldn’t really tell. Not yet. Her demonic, but almost like shamanic, performance: did it reflect a truly gross situation? Reflections. Is that true, Dr. J? Did she actually come from somewhere gross>? Her house?

She was, she could drink whipping cream out of the carton… Dr. J, not like you can’t, do it, but it’s a strange choice… what is that? Her eating habits were….basically nonexistent, but truly. What happened here?

It was true, you see. It was indeed sick. Wouldn’t it be? Incest? Was this what I was looking at? An abusive home? Abject poverty? Where did that come from? Now, Dr. J might have taken a turn, but my father didn’t really seem to act like she changed all that much, only that “the success went to her head,” which makes me laugh. It’s just that she was so crazy, like she was reaching for the stars. I always saw Joy sort of like an Icarus, an idiot, who thought he could literally reach the sun — burn through your existence as if you were a speck. There are limits, blue eyes. And some of the coddling I received, like, “don’t say that,” was not the just path.

Sometimes, you gotta call it how it is. Stupid. A judge would be on my side here, calling ORDER, what the HELL was this?

Flying a little too high there, Dr. J, why did this appear prescient to me as some warning from above, too? There was truth in it, you see.

The TikTok filters of today, the “you create your own reality,” obsession, the manifestation techniques, the “spiritual ascent,” this desire, by “ridding one of earthly ties…” disconnection, “everything is disconnected,” people say, today, sort of disconnected, already, because you — keep saying it. The age of disconnection? Dr. J. “Wee.” That’s Dr. J to me: desperately getting into her limo, “to the IRS immediately!” That’s the real joke. She’s the keeper of taxes as a Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland. “Step on it Michel,” her driver/lover. I hear my father’s voice over this imagining, when he explained what the IRS was: “Everything works,” he said. “Everyone shares,” he drew the connection with his hands between him and everyone else, “a reponsibility in ensuring society works,” basically speaking. Just picturing the version of her as a real villain, even, she could be wearing a tiny tiny top hat angled to the side… running across a street to GET TO THE IRS… in magazine clothes, as if she stepped off the pages…looking smashing… There was a lot of reality, I’m sure, driving the fantasy of her… but what? It didn’t look too pretty. That broke my heart young.

Back in my pink room, squinting out the pink blinds, meditating on the mirror in my periphery, as this object reflected vanity, Dr. J was vain, so I didn't like it. I rejected it practically. I would live to regret it, obviously, but I had problems to work out. Evidently, it just came with the territory, unfortunately, truly. I would have preferred not having had to work out these problems — with a smile. But I did. Not wanting to get caught up in the mirror at all, actually. There was, at times, too much about her that appeared true.

I had a picture. One. Of me, as a baby, in the arms of my father’s brother and wife, at Dr. J’s family house. And my father and I were going to the east coast now, now that he was no longer a child molester, supposedly, and I was going to get the only eyes I could find that had entered this home.

When my father and I arrived to my aunt and uncle’s house in an old mining town, we pulled up to a slender street of row houses up real steps. In the inky night, winter, Adele from Malta (Queens) appeared with her simple smile. She was a black haired, black eyed, pale Italian, with “double z’s” for breasts, she even admitted, airing out her shirt, because she was sweating from cooking. She had a lovely laugh, made cannolis constantly. They were the best. She was, in our family, the star chef. Her mother was, professionally.

Gus was a carpenter, so he carved all the thresholds into curving screens. It gave the house charm. He looked like a little boxer, Gus. He was Fred Willard’s old comedy partner, appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, but he had a nervous breakdown, anger management issues, also. He was never the same. His daughters — and Adele, but mostly them — had a hard time with his touring schedule, he was at it, constantly. And then, he had a breakdown. And now, he would, without fail, leave during any family party (primetime) to prepare his stand-up routine which he delivered at the table. He would laugh, forcefully, at his own jokes. Mentally ill, yes. We were a family of comedians, we really were. I, of course, had a tape recorder that I spoke into as if this were really a show, happening before me—real life.

We were eating ziti, tomato sauce. I was a nine-year-old with seniors. My father was sixty when I was born. He was sixty eight, then, and so was Gus. I got to the point quick — sticking my fork in the rich and deep tomato sauce — that they had been to Dr. J’s — you see. “Oh yeah,” they didn’t miss a beat there. “Yes we did.” We went through the game of tennis, where they gave me a sum up of what I already knew, “wanted to meet you.” “Yeah…” I told them what had happened, “she gave me away to Brazilians…” and I suppose I heard a comedic note in it, so I delivered it as such. I was open about it, but no one heard me. And here, it’s one of these moments where my father appears as the focus of my memory, one of these, graining back, all these years later. “Did you lie?” Nick? I wondered if anyone approached him, in this family, I don’t think they did. In any case, I needed in — I needed to know about their experience at her family’s house.

“Tell me about it…”

And in front of my father, eating his ziti, they communicated how strange her home was, first sentence. “Yeah,” Adele’s nasal “yeah,” and Gus’s reply, “creepy.” That’s how he would describe “what it felt like,” as I had asked the question. “Creepy.” In this case, that’s what I was expecting. If I’m being “honest,” a word you’re not supposed to use, I also had a couple of “otherworldly” folders in my cabinet labeled “undercover investigation.”

Curiosities around the field of energy. I wondered if I might be able to feel into this house, get a feeling about it based on them. Tune into them. If I could even get a picture, not literally, though at times, I could get an image, something, as I was listening and trying to connect with their bodies, the impression it left.

“What happened?”

They spoke of walking into the house, they had just gotten there, picturing Gus’s face, as there was a freeze over his eyes, so was it cold? They were in the garage, I asked them to describe, the space. “Her sister…” walked through the door. They were still downstairs, as if they had just walked in. “Started acting strange.”

“Yeah…”

Adele had to crack up. “Yes,” I told them she could call the Mickey Mouse phone from time to time as if she were dying… this woman. “She would call you…” she began, “in a…” “yeah,” Gus interjected. “Creepy,” he said, “yeah,” she said. “Of calling you with this ghoulish sounds,” but it was a bit too involved there, they said, she acted abnormally, and I was cracking up hysterically as a baby in the next room. “Hysterically.” I still do, laugh hysterically, like, they had to leave the next day, they said. I had to stay because I could not move. They had planned to stay a few days, but no way, no way they could stay there. “12 people sleeping in the same room…” and they put THEM in the same room. “There was an uncle, a sleepwalker…”

“Uh huh…”

So fourteen people were sleeping in the same room.

That’s what I’m expecting upfront in this case. A visibly strange set-up.

I went in deep, as I said.

“So listen, listen to me,” I sang on Miracle Mile, my bare feet sliding across her white carpet, “I can feel your eyes go through meeeee… do do do do do do do do…” only the best love songs scored these years, but I permit myself the right to invent, as this fictional thread helped me through the real story. “So listen, listen to me…” the passion. “You know I love you but I just can’t take this,” picturing my fists beside her, she laughed at me a lot. “You know I want to but I’m in too deep,” and I can’t help but laugh, because she was the type of person who would crack a sex joke about that… you see, like, “not possible.” She liked it, crossing her bedroom, deep baby, and then she’d dance a little… she could got carried away. We laughed, we did. But then, is that totally true? Yes, it is, I laughed at her constantly, but this situation was so strange, I was so young, that any affection I showcased for them… wouldn’t that be ill-advised? Wouldn’t I be healthier retaining distance? Nothing was appropriate or fun about it, but life turns out to be complicated, our ties, and as I write these lines, I can feel people agreeing—but were they in a sex scandal? Were they in a situation like this? I always return to this question: what would you think about it as a parent?