That Blur of a Thing Called My Marriage

Several people have asked about the books I’m working on in-between travels, job searches, and posts. There are two. The first , “I Know How You Feel”, is a collection of twelve stories about women in various stages of crisis. The second, “One Happy Year”,  is a memoir which combines the story of this trip with reflections from the past. I’ll likely self-publish the story collection, but will be looking for an agent for the other. The following is an excerpt from one of the chapters in OHY. Please feel free to let me know your thoughts.

I met John at 16. I was living on my own, in a rundown studio apartment in Sunnyvale, CA, which had a daybed covered in brown plaid, faded orange carpet, and aqua-colored appliances. I worked temp jobs in factories to pay my $350 monthly rent, and spent whatever was left on bus fare, convenience store food, and cigarettes. I was high-strung and skinny – constantly fearful that someone would find out my real age and send me back to the hell I left.

I don’t think I’ve ever spoken as much or as loudly as I did then. I wanted to meet everyone, from the waitresses at Denny’s to the teenagers on the bus. The world felt new to me – I was unprepared for most of it and excited about the rest. It often felt like there were secrets I didn’t know, and that if I pressed people hard enough they’d let them spill. I’d learn how to put on makeup, stretch a paycheck, go to college, and buy a car.

Despite my desperate outgoingness, I made few friends. Bob & Jack were a drug-addicted couple who lived in the apartment complex next door. A few days after we met, they spiked my Coke with something that left me curled up on my floor in a rigid ball, afraid to move because I was convinced that men with machine guns were outside of my window. If I moved they’d shoot me, so I had to pretend I was dead. When I finally screwed up the courage to unfurl myself – and it probably wasn’t courage as much as it was physical pain – there were no machine guns but there was a cartoon. Everything from the trees to people looked overly bright and animated. Rocks moved and sidewalks rolled. My own hands felt disconnected, like feathers that might blow away if I did not keep them in my pockets. Bob and Jack thought it was funny; I did not. We remained friends, but I never ate or drank anything with them after that.

Debbie was a skinny, freckled, 19 year-old redhead who lived next door. She was fond of wearing bright purple pants or red Ditto jeans tucked into knee-high black boots. She chain-smoked camels, drank a six-pack of Tab every day, and had an elaborate process of putting on mascara which involved a heated needle, an eyelash curler, a magnification mirror, and a pink tube of Great Lash. At night, when she was getting ready to go to the clubs, I’d sit in her smoky apartment, flip through her collection of Cosmo magazines, and listen to her versions of Ten Ways to Keep Your Man Happy or The Things He’d Never Tell You that Really Turn Him On.

Ted was a Vietnam vet who lived in the back of the complex. His apartment was full of guns and homemade bongs. He scared me, but he had a bicycle that he’d let me borrow if he was awake and in a good mood. Most often, though, his curtains were drawn and my knocks went unanswered.

I first saw John on a rainy spring morning. I read a lot of self-help books in those days, and it seems to me that I was probably reading one then, and had set it down to absorb some message about how to be, act, or think in order to fit into the world with some sense of belonging. At 16, I saw the suburbs, with their manicured lawns and storybook windows as some sort of sorority that one could only join by consensus, and I worried that I would never pass muster. It didn’t matter that I spent years of my own childhood in a tri-level house with evergreen shrubs and rose bushes in the front yard. That was a different kind of club. It was dark and violent, and shrouded in lies that the Others – the people who really belonged there – could never know.

I wanted nothing more at the time than to untangle the lies – to be the kind of person my parents were incapable of being: open and free, without the burden of carefully crafted facades that left me anxious and constantly scurrying to hide the truth. I wanted to be my own person, but not the one my parents had raised to feel unacceptable, outside, and irrelevant. I didn’t really know what other kind of person I could be, so I read books and explored a world full of characters and personalities, hoping that I’d find something or someone that would act as a beacon.

John was not a beacon; he was just a man who looked like he might be. He had locks of curly hair and a trimmed, red beard. He wore a faded flannel shirt with rolled up sleeves and moccasin boots. He was short but strong looking, and there was something appealing about his unhurried walk. I watched him from my window for what seemed like ten minutes. Eventually, he rounded the corner to the back of the building and I did what any 16 year-old girl loaded up with self-help bromides would do – I threw on my shoes and went to chase after my vision.

Tagged as: Book excerpt, One Happy Year, Road Trip Notes