The first question out of everyone’s mouth is: is it true?

Wait, what?

When was it not true?

Well, Angelica is going to decide that it wasn’t true at the end of all this.

I just posted a scene about the sex scandal I was in when I was four. So please read that first, if you’re just coming to this page now.

Most people didn’t know what they were looking at with this story. I just reenacted it for Nate at Astor Place Starbucks. He didn’t understand what I was doing or why he just stood there. I think I remember that, but I said she was crazy. That always worked. It always does. This situation was riddled with larger truths, even how people can favor men, even.

This situation was only going to get worse. That’s the thing, there’s nothing about it that bodes well. Not to say there wasn’t that version as a possibility, but that didn’t happen in this case.

In general, people listened to this story as if they were watching a foreign film without subtitles. They thought they understood based on their body language, some signs in the space, but they were totally off. A conversation in Italian might appear like a blowout, an all-out argument, when they might be just discussing something. A woman relayed an argument in Japanese, utterly amazing, no expression—only shrimp.

So let me recap: a woman takes me home one day. Dr. J hooked her with money. Which I’ll get to. She says my father is abusive. She gives her more money. Angelica responds like this. She thinks, to herself, that my father might call — he might call and act nice. He might try and act like he doesn’t KNOW why I’m living with her now because we’re in “a magical world,” she understood. And— that’s what he does. He calls her to act nice: “these are my vacation plans and would Maria like to go?” And then, he requests to visit. Not to pick up his child, even. Ridiculous.

We start putting on spectacles for the child abuser—wow. The sexual trauma expert I spoke to, finally, lives eternally in my mind on a big screen above the play like a DEUS EX MACHINA. He had never heard of that one before. Just picturing his face on some screen in the back of a stage on Skype. We’d hear the call music… just a touch too long.

He was listening, he really was.

“WHY is he standing there?” I asked, I relayed this information to him as if I were contending with it as a real event. I had gone through a horrific experience a few years before. It took me four years to get to him.

I think what hurts me the most, from present time, is that I called Angelica recently to reopen all this, as I had no idea anymore, and she said, how much fun we had… I didn’t have fun. There was nothing but cruelty in a story like this, I must admit. I was even ignored by the people I tried to communicate to. I didn’t get one real “how are you?” Not one.

“Oh my God, he stood at this door,” I said to the sexual trauma specialist. He acted guilty. I had to follow her logic on the page. Of course she thought it was true about him based on how he was acting to a situation that he, supposedly, didn’t know about.

When I was writing about all this, I came to understand that. I had read and heard that people can block these traumas out, and he said that I was too young, so I probably wouldn’t have had memories, and I can’t speak for everyone, obviously, but what I went through was physical.

All this woman did was act really really nice. If I were to insert a normal father, we wouldn’t be here. She was acting weird and nice, though it was forced, but that’s basically it. She’s just acting really really really nice—to keep him away. And it sort of works.

I only remember one phone call which is why I called her again recently. How many phone calls were there? If there was only one, that’s strange, if there were more, that’s strange, so I suppose either way, it sounds guilty.

He can’t drive over to a stranger’s house and pick up his kid, but he can leave his four-year-old in the care of an alcoholic, drug addict (my mother) who is getting pulled over nightly — before the limo— for “drinking, driving, and looking for sex downtown” as he wrote in his divorce file.

It took years to get here because I was shut down. No one in my life understood. I cannot even tell you how horrific I felt for someone who “just went through a mental health crisis,” okay?

I still struggle with how people in my life responded. I wouldn’t have acted like anyone I knew. Sometimes, I don’t know what to do with that. I’ve drawn boundaries. That’s it.

I reopened this investigation to write a book about it with a cute mop of curls on my head, “do do do,” here we go, time to write about the story that gripped everyone’s attention, though they had no idea what it was, though they acted like they did. I did, too, I didn’t think it was true, but once I opened it up, it was hard not to think it was true. And do I have to keep reiterating that there was an experience I started going through? Like I’m not talking about pictures in my head. Though I had those too.

I didn’t have a grasp on all these pieces, but the story never changed. I put on some riveting performances of our Spectacular Spectacular soirees for Nate in Astor Place Starbucks but, again, Angelica Leibowitz actually got wrapped up in this nightmare. She’s going to spin around the wheel. My mother’s breasts are coming to her door. My mother’s going to bounce and leave the equation. Nicole and I are going to go to the same fancy prep school for a couple of years even… there’s no way that Angelica paid for that. So on top of it, Dr. J arranges for Nicole and me to go to the same school. Lycee Francaise, even. Just picturing her LIMO, Dr. J, going up that hill, it’s absurd.

And my father popped out of the limo one day, waving to me like an idiot, and we — Angelica too — had to partake in the strangest photo shoot after school. My father and I didn’t even take photos together, I’m almost certain of it. I don’t know what to say, because he was a pitiful disgrace, designed to “make you” feel bad for him. I never thought that there was any connection between my outrageous parents. But, it was pity. They pitied themselves, imagine? My mother, with the clearest eyes, telling people she’s dying of terminal illnesses, accosting the priest every Sunday according to an eye-witness, with her rapes. Truly speaking.

When it was a lie, to give a sense of how confusing it was, everyone asked, “Was it?” When I finally asked that question, everybody said the opposite: “can’t be.” One of these truths I cannot deny. That’s what everyone did.

The lie made it permissible to exist, but reality of it only triggered a refusal, rejection. It’s why I spoke about it openly with people my age, mostly, who wanted to hear the story. The lie made it possible for it to exist, and I couldn’t help but think about people this really happened to, as I was operating under the guise that it was a lie, thinking it might have really happened to Dr. J, my mother, even if she was a buffoon, a Joker.

So I was really in this situation, that was first. “Could she have really put you in this situation?” The sexual trauma specialist reflected that question back at me.

“Yes.”

My father was diagnosed with —and which one was it?— Parkinson’s first a couple of years later, but he didn’t tell anyone, including me, and I noticed, and I got blamed for it. Ten years later, he took a dive, and it was Alzheimer’s, which is when I called his physician, who was so angry. “I told him ten years ago…” but he had a minor, so why didn’t he intervene? I don’t know, looking at my second surrogate mother. The sexual trauma specialist — to interject — taking notes — didn’t necessarily care about his dementia, whatever it was.

“His secret illness.”

It sounds like a joke, but the sexual trauma specialist didn’t know WHERE it might have happened, but to him, my mother was so sexually unhinged that the possibilities were wide, in this case, as to where.

“You’re already in this situation, at four.”

He’s envisioning her “taking me places,” pimping me out. He’s seeing “0 to 4” as possible years where all this could have occurred. He doesn’t live in a world where sexual abuse couldn’t happen to a baby, even, and can someone hear me? I cried, I did, that night, not even for myself.

The truth is — Angelica took me home one day and got all this thrown at her. She didn’t handle it appropriately. Now, at this point, she’s getting paid up to 11k a month in value to do this, in 1989, so the money had to have influenced her decision-making. But she’ll put on a really big show for me at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club that it was never enough. And quite frankly, at that price, I would think that I would have gotten a courtesy call to a lawyer, at least. A good one. I mean, at that price. Unreal, this situation was so unreal. Sure, she went on and on and on about how she wanted to kill him.

And at the same time, this woman didn’t want to be in this situation! I mean, absurd! Do not hesitate: temporary insanity plea. In some senses, even if we skated out of a real world, you’d expect her response— crazy, even. That someone is going to go mad. But typically, “do dee do, here comes The View, do didalee do, here comes The View…” remember SNL?

It doesn’t.

I don’t know what to say, there are hard phone calls to make, but I would think, a call to a lawyer would have been a good place to start. Because they’re supposed to be able to design something. Maybe. I wouldn’t know in this case, but if they could have found a good family for me, that might have been permissible, even arguable. That’s the domain we’re in.

She said she was paid 1,200 a week for 24/7, and she might have been lowballing, I don’t know. After all, she was keeping someone’s kid, so I don’t know what to say about “the price.” But she went on and one about how it was never enough. So that equated to about 11k a month, as this was 1989, 1990, so what exactly was she spending it on? I couldn’t have gotten a courtesy call? That was cash. Not taxed.

My parents aren’t calling— they aren’t ASKING how I am. My mother is CALLING HER in ALL-CAPS, not asking for me. Spinning her up in talk of her lovers, nothing but bullshit from these two people. My father is putting on this atrocious, innocent routine act. He was retarded, for real.

That phone call he made: he didn’t even seem to CARE how I was, just wanted to throw his sentiment onto me. Inviting me to go on vacation? Absurd! Her face, when I held this receiver, when he invited me to go on vacation with him. It’s hard not to laugh. Her mouth agape, she was stunned. It’s understandable WHY she thought it was true.

Not one real question or comment is coming from the mouths of my parents.

They are acting like this with a stranger, but her husband filed his taxes with my mother, a detail. He’s getting his taxes, along with his best friend — who slept with Dr. J — filed with Dr. J. Her so-called “lover” also had a pyramid scheme that he was kind enough to show me on a napkin. I was ten when he gave me his little demonstration in a scene of baking as Angelica constantly baked rum cakes. I requested to interview him when I was ten.

All this and more is coming up.

I was thinking about other kids, criminality, lots of things. We’re going to unpack all this — in my stupid sneakers — at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club. Really juicy stuff, really really juicy stuff. Good stuff. Where all will be revealed. And yeah, I am, I’m treating it like an unreal drama.

These “midnight soirees” we put on for my father, though it was more like 6:30, I think, happened more than once. I can’t talk about my feelings about them, but I can conceive of dances (!) to Enya, even. We’re already there.

Sail Away Sail Away Sail Away. Her brother running up the stairs in his sponsor gear to release the fabric over the banister. Nicole and I in cloaks and holding baskets: a market scene. Just the “lights going on,” the quieting of our voices, the opening of the door for “the child molester,” AKA the audience.

So I’ll get there. I’m still feeling out timing, order, all these choices. I just put in a dossier to develop a show, and that, that’s helped me to go on living, quite frankly. So that’s why I’m going back to New York to start, so I can just go to an open mic, that’s it. That’s all I want to do. I want to do part comedy show/drama-comedy-farce with a chorus, not just one, of dancing Angelicas in tennis skirts. This is my vision. I come with a flock of Angelicas, Brazilian women. Love songs can come on at any time. Julio Iglesias.

I have my good days and bad days, because it doesn’t always feel great that I’ve had to cut off all honest communication with basically everyone I know, like, there’s a basic disconnect — I’ve had to let that go.

Getting on a comedy stage makes sense. I’m excited to start performing again, and I’m going to take it from there. If I get this opportunity to develop a play with this theater, then I’ll be in LA, which I’d rather be, actually, even if I hear that the industry is done out there.

I’ll be posting the next scene from my book, heading into Dr. J territory now, on Monday.