A decade ago, I would have said, so I had a childhood, it doesn’t have to define me. Why can’t I just exist? I can’t change it. I met a person at Tiago Cafe in Hollywood at the top of the decade who confused me. I struggle sometimes, now, in a way I never have, but I feel better, too, like I’m here.
I lived abroad for a number of years, I must admit, but the “help shadow,” I call it, only entered my life in the United States.
I was just typing, trying to learn out how to write, and he breezed in. He asked me what I was writing about. I said, about my family, and I wish I never said it, but “my mother gave me away to a total stranger when I was four,” so I was writing about these four years I spent in another family’s house. I was writing about everything, to be frank, not knowing how to tackle a beast, and I don’t know what to say about my approach back then, but it was somewhat stupid, I have to admit how I truly feel now. Hm, why not read some books? I mean, to help you conceive of this book. Don’t get wrapped up in weird LA shit.
Now, at the end of that decade, about to turn forty, I would have never said that to this man. I didn’t know him. Over the last few years that I’ve been traveling, I met people who posed me the same question. I just let them drift on by… just a family story. Bye bye for now, as Dr. J would say, my mother. Her name was Joy. Call it an inheritance. One that caused me grief and pain, if I’m being totally honest. Even Dirk, a friend I met in Bangkok, he asked me, “nope,” not happening. He remarked how I was enthused, about life, and it just brought me nothing but critique. And I was just mildly upbeat.
I guarded her joy, because I saw it as, interestingly enough, considering how fake she was, the only real thing that was ever in her. I think because her joy became buffoon. I’ve made peace with it. I keep it to myself, mostly, as I’m not as open as I used to be. The person in front of me, listening to this story, often got even more affected by my attitude.
And, I thought about celebrities, actually, anyone, really, but people are people — are we consistent? Do we show ourselves here? Not there? Do we have sides? Moments when memories might affect us more so than others? I felt like I was talking to people who weren’t people — don’t you have feelings? Hasn’t anything happened to you? Had this guru ever been hurt? He’s not opening up to me. That was always my job. This created a fair amount of imbalance in my life. Also, I didn’t want to bond over this story, it didn’t help me at all. So — it’s a giant no. If we’re performing character analysis, that’s fine. That’s all I want to do, in any case.
People tended to get hooked, wanted to know more, and unfortunately, it didn’t bode well for me. Even Nate, my friend in college, I spoke to him the most, but I learned that I didn’t need to do this. The audience was an obstacle. He said, “she gave you away to save you from herself.” No, she didn’t. Yes, she did. No, she didn’t. The actual topic sentence is — she wrapped me up in a sex scandal. Basically. That took ten years.
She didn’t accuse her husband of being a child rapist to save me from herself. She didn’t wrap up a stranger, a mother of six children, in a scheme to save me from herself when I was four, not fourteen. That’s the joke. Fourteen was ten years later. People talk crazy, just like Joy, Dr. J. That’s my mother’s name. I saw her in everyone and everything. Was she trying to make herself feel better, in some capacity? I tried to understand her in the reflectons I saw in others.
I couldn’t respond for a long time, so I was stuck on some line, I think mostly because I was shocked by what people said. I had to pull up a chair with myself — we’re going to have to work this out. I had to listen to someone else. Consider their point of view. I had to, make this about, “well the truth is actually quite complex,” that’s not true for me, in other words.
The woman didn’t orchestrate a scheme to save me from herself. Be real. (I didn’t speak like this back then.) If she had properly arranged for my departure, I suppose, if she had just left her family, she might have “saved me” from herself. It sounds delusional. I encountered lots of delusions, expectations, etc., just because of these origins. But Rockefeller said, “the origins don’t make the man.” Was I a deep, wise, powerful person? I don’t know, I don’t tend to fall into these adjectives. I’m not a fan of hierarchy or presenting myself as someone with qualities, even. I do not like, did not like, any form of self-aggrandizing. This is just Dr. J. I believed in seeing the qualities in others. “What do I know?” Funny that it was my perspective. What do I know?
Now, it’s a different story, I feel as though I reconnected with myself, I had to defend myself back then, too, and I had to evolve. I was in a sex scandal when I was four. Both my parents were ill. I’ve gone through enough resistance about it.
I’m here today thanks to Hannah Arendt because she might have taken an interest in my case; she would have — smoking — read my life story, maybe, read through my utter mess, even if I wasn’t hindered by political oppression. I was, hilariously, the daughter of the “whitest woman I have ever seen,” that was the fairytale debut. “She was the daughter of the whitest woman” anyone had ever seen. She might have started there, I don’t know, because my story isn’t over. Her work really did support me.
In thinking about college, even, that was the time when I began to disappear — not appear. And that would be the moment when we step into the world and appear. Not me. At this point, I cannot wrap my mind, exactly, on what began to happen here, but my parents were still my parents, and I was in a second surrogate situation by then. Personally, I feel more sensical, I feel closer to myself, and if that means, I was abused back there, got manipulated again, I don’t know.
Some people that I met in “the world,” though there’s more than one, luckily, had a hard time with my story. My cousins in Italy didn’t believe the step one, even, “she gave me away to a total stranger.” I don’t know how it reads on the page, but people didn’t seem to be able to grasp that. I had to adjust how I presented it, I’ll use the film producer office as a case in point, as I ended up in a production office in Istanbul, Turkey — and I told them about what happened. Just the silence, I could feel it.
“Is it true?” I laughed. People didn’t understand; this wasn’t the first time I had done this. They acted as if they were the only people in the universe I had ever spoken to.
However, at lunch, my cousins in Italy casually — even with odd smiles on their faces — mentioned about how the Vatican kidnapped an eleven-year-old girl. She still hasn’t been found? Putting my napkin down. So, we’re discussing child abduction and rape and most likely murder, casually, at dinner. That’s possible. There’s even a documentary about it. Is it true? It’s even entertaining. This scenario is Dr. J to me. We’re “unreally” referencing a horrific crime, related to sex and a child, committed by the papal authorities. But my mother, no, she could not have done it, some watered-down version of it.
“Absurd,” Rosa said, sort of laughing. So, I’m confused, what was wrong about me laughing? Are there not shades of laughter? Do you even know how absurd this was? We weren’t exactly sinking into the tragedy of it, and why? Because there’s nothing we can do about it. What’s wrong with me being able to move on? I still can’t get that story out of my head. Shouldn’t we be charging the gates? If she’s never been found? Either way, true or not true, as that story sits upon, what I call, “a hinge point” psychologically, we’re sick. The reality of it — monstrous — the spectacle of it — monstrous — the documentary a constructed form of “real,” and if it’s not real, it’s Wag the Dog. These four years I spent in this other house did become, indeed, a spectacle. We put on spectacles for my father. The spectacle of child abuse.
I keep veering between taking a step and taking it back—just putting this story out there. I’m writing about it behind the scenes, but I haven’t been able to surface, because I don’t know how to shape it, especially since it was comic: parody, satire, buffoon, horror, the spectacles, it was a blend of styles. The humor was even nostalgic, heartwarming, as these years were scored to classic love songs, the lambada, too, as she was Brazilian, and they were Jewish. She converted. So they sort of belonged, as this miracle of a family, also, because of their cultural mix. But she wasn’t Jewish, a real Jew broke it down for me at one of their famous dance parties. “But she converted.”
For him, a real Jew, his family, he could never date one of them. He even said, this was bigger than you, me, and even family, this was religion, culture, so. But they were a miracle, that they were, the people flocked to the house on Miracle Mile for their parties. I think they were even beloved by their faith, too, but it’s to be upfront about the obvious, to some. I mean, from the most basic standpoint, I hated the Catholics, at four, this family my witness, I was so over them. I was confused, fundamentally. I had no idea what these people believed in. Speaking of the impossible. At four? This man told me he rose from the dead. I laughed. Absurd. Unheard of. I said it out loud in church, it was the final straw. I was blown away by the stories I was hearing, and no one else was. I appreciated being in another system of faith; how refreshing, and with all due respect when it came to the unbelievability of my story, wouldn’t I have sounded ridiculous in this group of people? But it was unbelievable to them, as well, to be frank. My mother was. She was “next level,” as they were pro-athletes.
A joke is: the Jews saved the baby. And when I look at photographs of myself now, I only see “The Joker’s daughter.” I look like the Joker’s daughter. In a mini-van with six pro athletes— this situation got worse, as one would expect. Ben Stiller comes to mind, because it was a comedy, so he would have been Jose Lieberman. A name you cannot compete with. He would have been able to be Brazilian and Jewish, in a sense. Picturing Ben Stiller at one of these family dance parties made me laugh, bringing an older woman to dance. The six kids — they were born to move — and they would dance together — and we all watched them. They all brought us in. I learned that the words to the lambada were about heartbreak, that struck me, young, because they were so happy.
Do you remember Nina from The Forbidden Dance? This is who Angelita was, the mother who took me home for four years. She’s dancing regardless. Sexy, that’s a first. She’s dancing sexy — regardless. So we danced through these years. She laughed at everyone, everything, she was Brazilian. 100% Brazilian, from the country of Brazil. I say that because even my cousins didn’t understand why she didn’t treat me as if I were from the country of Italy. “She’s from California.” Angelita had an accent. She was FROM the country of Brazil. The confusion — that this question can stir — where are you from? The United States, I do not know why this was so hard, of America. “I am from the United States of America.”
When this guru stepped into my life, I had turned a page. I mean, I’m hope I’m correct, on this end, but I figured I’d say with her in mind, that Maria decides that she’s not going to live an experiential life, she’s going to try and forge a career, she wants to tell her story, she wants to be a writer. If I couldn’t act, since I wanted to be a performer, originally, and I just couldn’t do it, decided I didn’t want to do it, then I would try and turn into the field this way.
And I became psychic. From an Arendtian perspective, that’s going to make sense. I came from an otherworldly story, and we’re going to skid into the nether regions. “Maria became the most psychic person.” All I had to do was show up, and you could not — not see it. “You are psychic.”
I met Barbara Harris, the legend, this decade, a genius, also mentally ill, and she, too, became supernatural. I became supernatural. We both came from “otherworldly stories.” In my opinion, these concepts are psychological, we’re operating in a world. And there is one. A real world. There might have other ways of living, organizing, as I even tried psychedelic therapy, and no, not in my case, that didn’t help me. There’s a field of possibilities, absolutely. Even in theory. But the truth is, as I ran into nothing but absolutism, this is the truth — left and right — “in the 15th century, you would have been the one to speak to animals.” I don’t think so. Someone told me that, for real. I guess I looked like that. I could play that character. But the truth doesn’t necessarily directly translate.
The phrase of the past decade was: “you create your own reality.” That had an adverse effect in my case. And it should appear obvious. Both my parents were ill. The phrase I preferred was from Viola Spolin, the high priestess of improv, as she’s called. “Reality happens between us.” That’s where I’m at now, since my relationships ended up revealing who I was. I opened my mouth to this guru, and during our first outing, afterward, he pointed to me across his living room: and he truly appeared and sounded like the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland.
“What do you wanna knooooowwwwwww…”
“What?”
“Life is not about what you wanna doooo,” shaking his pointer finger at me. “Life is about what you wanna knoooooowwwwww…” I hardly spent any time with his person. And then, we fall into some relationship I didn’t want to be in. Just because I opened my mouth. At step one, I had to readjust. Today, I wouldn’t be here, I would be evaluating him, who is this person? Do I want to hang out with this person? At that point, I would have left. I don’t need this. But people responded to me in ways I never understood, like, why are you talking to me like that?
And that was the adjustment down the line. No, no, no.
Next, I’ll tell you what happened when I met a film producer at the end of this decade. I told them what happened over these four years I spent on Miracle Mile, the sex scandal, and it illustrates the problems I ran into, and also the differences as I was speaking to the field of drama, so I felt comfortable there. So was my life idea, this guru suggested, and it’s important that I say it, as it relates to the real world, family?
I was trying to work out of it. That was a traumatic or — I don’t tend to use that word in my case — impactful story, Miracle Mile, that created a pattern — that wasn’t my life idea. It did not have to be. I felt more at home in the context of drama because I could speak without the person getting personally affected, in a sense, though I still steered into these areas, but I felt more comfortable in that context — as I struggle to write an essay, even, like, uh, I was in a sex scandal when I was four, and now, I…?
I’m sure I’ll find it, the narrative, but it was a dance party, it was the year that Kaoma’s lambada took the world by storm with the sexiest dance on earth, the closest thing you could do to sex with your clothes on. And I was there, we believed, Jose Lieberman (Ben Stiller) ready in swishy athletic gear, because my father was abusing me, sexually. Amazing, right? I didn’t really get that, until I conceived of a film, so sex became innocent, in a way, or it came to mean life force, which it does, a family…that happens to be Jewish, also. In that religion, there are rituals around remembering. Passover is about the exodus from slavery. I mean, when it comes to — being real about what can happen to a person, and yet, we’re dancing. That moved me, very young. What a time that was!
Now I…had the time of my life…this was the song that I learned the lambada to, this is what I mean, Nicole, her youngest daughter, teaches me the steps, and she was — airy fairy, Julianna Moore could have played her, somehow — just born with the ability to move like this. She was more of a Dorothy, she looked like the character from Wizard of Oz, but Julianna Moore would have captured her humor, I think, as the “Virgo” astrology prodigy in the family. She looked into my eyes, at seven years old, “what’s your sign?” I snapped, I didn’t know what this was. I was four. Angry. She went, “half horse, half human, I see that,” she smiled. She would break down her family in the backyard, with her book, into their elements, but of course there was a solar system: Jose—Gemini. “That’s why you don’t get along.”
She taught me the moves. So we were little girls dancing, but we weren’t being graphic, it was PG, Angelita, I don’t know what to say, she could have been a pop star, in a sense, in that, she’s giving it all she has, you know, so you gotta be able to hang with a sex goddess, lol, I have to laugh. She can blow your mind, and she intends to. I just loved her, I really did, because my mother was evidently wounded or something in this arena. She accused my father of this horrific crime, she showed up with her blouse undone, she told stories in this vein, and now, I don’t know what happened. She was quite promiscuous. And Angelita couldn’t have been more sex-positive. She’s dancing sexy regardless. She’s cracking sex jokes. Her kids snap at her. “Mom!” She took it too far, she could. I would laugh, all the way. Her relationship to love songs — this was athletic, school, she taught us the meaning of the song, she tipped up the volume — we had to “PAY ATTENTION. Pay attention.” And her kids all had their own way of navigating around her heat. Nicole, regarding her, “a libra.” She would break down her chart to clear up the confusion.
What can I do? It was the subject. And the ingredients — simply put — with “Through the Years” by Kenny Loggins playing constantly, their family videos, it was the Sound of Music, and sometimes, depending on the song, and what was happening in relation to my family, it struck dissonant cords, it was a love song. It was affecting for that reason. I mean, later, since I was too young at the time, I had to forgive myself. I wasn’t able to be anyone else other than myself. I didn’t behave differently, I didn’t make different choices. I made the choices that I made. And like, I’m geared to conceive of Enya (Nicole’s fav) as the soundtrack for the spectacles we put on for the child molester, as I cannot tell you how I “feel” about that. I can only put on a spiritual track, activate the characters, and drive the spectacle of it as hard as I can. And my French friend said, “child abuse, sexual child abuse in the US,” that’s his opinion, “is even mystical.” So that’s why, he’s going to agree with me, it must be Enya. As children are sacred.
You know what I mean? She instructed us to put on a happy show for my father who stood at a wide open door. For years. So, I might as well tip it over the edge, considering the subject, and the reality of the spectacle of it, and just — make them better, more choreographed, set up the foyer to be a market scene for the opening of “Sail Away.” So the girls with baskets can perform the opening stanzas as if gossiping in town. “Let me reach, let me beach.” Look, Margaret Atwood, she was quoted in the Times that “very very likely” Alice Munro was molested as a child, if only because it’s so common. So you have to assume if you grow up in the United States, that you will be molested. “It’s very very likely.” So I’m putting on Enya.
When I conceived of a film of it, I had to — it didn’t matter if it was true — identify the central drama. I had to take a deep breath, the film producer also unclear as to what happened here, and just admit it: this is about child abuse, that’s why I was there. All the, “but well this that,” I mean, I was like The Matrix. I was there, because my mother paid this woman to protect me from my father. A lot of money, too, 11k a month in value. It was 1989.
And the reason why Angelita didn’t call the cops, because I asked her, “she didn’t want to send me to foster care.” And if you look up statistics, to Enya, a child is at a higher risk of experiencing sexual abuse, and they might already come from an abusive home, traumatic circumstances, so — absolutely, we will quiet our voices. The lights will go down. And the spectacle will begin through the house… girls laughing forced, very forced laughter, screaming, we weren’t being loud enough. The name of the play was: “without you, I’ve never been happier.”
I’ll leave it on that note — to reflect on what is believable and what isn’t.
Update: Last night, I bombarded Dr. J’s email inbox with subject-line-only emails. “You told Angelita Lieberman that my father was a child molester. Was it true?” And you know what? I just didn’t care. Didn’t even realize it was tax day, sorry to bother you. “Was that true?” Amazing timing. As we are in the thematic area of our “shared responsibility” to ensure society functions, basically speaking?
I figured I’d never see her again, and I didn’t want to call her, and I didn’t want her to be confused about how I felt: was that true? I didn’t have my own bed in this house; she took it, and my father’s response was moronic.
“She did this because she was jealous.”
Please explain.
“She wanted to tear us apart,” he said, when he brought me home to her mirrors being smashed off the walls?
Please explain. I was nine. Not even. Eight.
I was in an episode of LOONEY TUNES.
Someone suggested long ago that I get angry, and this last time, that really pissed me off: a random woman reached out to me because Dr. J spoke about me so much to her? Pretending that we have a relationship? What is this woman doing contacting me? Why are your cousins contacting me over a goddamn Vogue cover? When she can’t even write an email? I got upset. I colored outside the lines because Dr. J — painted the sky with stars: Enya. I would have sued her. I would have sued both my parents. Given Angelita, in her tennis skirt, her money, even, in soft focus, behind me, yelling and pointing to her, at me, in Portuguese. Tripping over the names of her six children as if she were sneezing to get to mine with a stomp of her foot.
The premise might have been ridiculous, but she thought she was protecting some woman’s child who had a bunch of money, and 11k a month even makes the whole story sound true because why would you waste that money on a total utter debacle? This was for 24/7 — I lived with her.
I just did that, I really don’t care. It’s a positive step in my case. Because, you’re upset, maybe, and? Who cares? You’re supposed to be able to communicate through that. I am upset as well. Big flipping deal. Her escort, he does not scare me anymore, so what? Now, honestly, which is why I preferred doing a father/daughter flick instead of Miracle Mile, “The Universe Explained by Nicholas J Mocerino” or “Across the Universe,” something like that, because, this father and daughter would have to get through this. He would have to blow up— wake up — during this amazing scene where Angelita told my father (for real) that she lied about him, that he was in a spectacle, that he had really been in this situation? As a “special person?” I don’t know. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s a couple of years later, though it became Alzheimer’s, and he didn’t tell anyone, conveniently.
In real life, he said, “cool, she can stay here while I figure this out,” and at that point, me? I would have thrown this man out— with the child. Fuck you. Called the police. Let’s be real. This is primetime family drama.
Instead, he would have to come to, and we would have to drive home to Dr. J and her escort, okay? And as the adult in that situation, I would have thrown this man out. Called the police. Look, man, when the situation calls for action, anger, it does. He might have put up a fight, 911, Nick might show his stuff, and Maria will probably throw a chair, and the joke would be, my father will have to hold me back more than once. You’re trespassing. You see the difference? I would have gotten a bat, even, if you touched my father.
Primetime family drama. Me in platforms from Payless (I would have to be a little older, I thought about it) making a pass behind some news camera in a mini skirt. My platforms from Payless are — what I wear.
We were already in outer space. And now, we’re going to have to come back to Earth. That’s it. That’s the beginning of father/daughter movie based on this situation.
He will break down at Ikea, he will, on a bed, because my father took me to Ikea, I didn’t have a room in this house, okay? And when I started picking out my room, he pulled one of those—this is my house. You’re under my roof. My money. So he picked out my room in reality. Nick in the movie, would have to hear his father’s voice, it would have to be the case, and he will have to make new decisions, this is the power of storytelling. And that was fun, that was fun to figure out, his journey. I don’t know what it would be, but obviously, Nick comes to learn that life can be different than he thought. That’s why that one ended up grabbing me the most, even if I have no idea what to do with it. Keep it local, LA, or we go to his family, or we go abroad? But this character ended up coming alive and guiding me a bit.
“She leaves her jacket in the car,” but isn’t that? “Stop. People leave their jackets in the car.” Please don’t be that person. Okay, I thought, she leaves her jacket in the car, and he overhears me interviewing her lover, when I’m ten, you see? “So you fucked her,” I said. “She wouldn’t insult me.”
“Yeah, I fucked her.”
Just his face. Looking at this.
In reality, you see, I came to understand what happened and what didn’t, as this really happened, and no one spoke to my father. This character — he bursts onto the scene. And I laughed, picturing his face, when I say to him in the hall, again, “undercover investigation.” Like, if he hears “undercover investigation one more time.” It ended up being so much fun to think about, even my real problems, no? As I really investigated it, as I really did this, so I just brought it to the surface as no one saw them.
He was an aerospace engineer; the beginning would be Nick explaining the universe to me because I bombarded him with questions when I was four — My questions! WHAT IS IT! A PLANET! WHAT IS IT! — that sounded like a great role, great language, good monologues. And he doesn’t have to be Italian-American, he doesn’t have to be a likeable character, either, you know? He doesn’t have to be “the best guy” in the beginning, even better, he has somewhere to go. He was 70, also, reaching it, not 50, but he looked younger, he would have to, it was his thing.
In the end, I could write many stories out of that, right? So conceiving of a film really set me free. And all this guy did was hand me a bible. That’s it. I never even discussed any of it with him. I never asked for his help. I haven’t spoken to the film producer about this one— but this would be my pick. You see, me? When the bully — I see the bully — in school — I’m Dr. J’s daughter. I’m pulling a clown act. Why, why are people cruel? I wouldn’t be able to handle it, so it gives this father a lot to do, funny problems to deal with, as he has to hold me back and learn how to become a father, through this, right? And people can’t totally react because I pulled a clown act. That’s how that would go down. They would be speechless. I would flip out.
“Can I get cereal?”
“You wanna die?”
This makes me happier than anything else I have going on, directionally, so whenever I end up here, I think, I should go to LA? I can’t decide. This film producer knows a couple of people in LA, so he said he would see if he could get me a job. But NYC is closer. I’ll leave you with this poster.
