New Born

"Do you want to film me shaving my head?"
"Alice?"
"I'm going to shave my head. You can film it."
"Alice? What are you talking about? Are you in town?
"I'm at The Treetop. We can have a drink or two. It'll be an thing. Why don't you come? Bring clippers."
And she hung up.

I sat there a moment but just a moment. Alice had blown in and out of my life so many time and she was always there but always far far away. She was untouchable. Maybe because I knew it was better that way. Probably because of whatever boring hulk guy she was leaning on would pummel me if they knew she was in the same bar as me. They never lasted long though. She always came to me, eventually.

The Treetop was a hole. There were no pushers or junkies though. Mostly quiet drunks, homeless moms and the whores just lived there and turned their tricks in alleys and in cars a mile down the pocked road because they knew better. Merrily, the owner, was quick with a Yankee slugger and scared of nothin' and a soft spot in her heart for the down, out, lonely and lost. She kept the assholes out, nursed to broken hearts as she could, collected rent and sent the dead on to their next destination when the situation called for it. Alice was in room 202. The door was open.

She kissed me on the mouth like she always did but there was something different. She had lingered for just a moment. She held a handful of my tshirt on my back like she was falling. Like it might be all she had. But as soon as I was catching on, she walked away.

She was still beautiful. Tall boots with the leather all scuffed. Her bare collarbone so frail it looked like it might break. Red lips to match her hair that came to her waist.
"Clippers?"
"Yeah. When did you get in? Your mom was calling me couple weeks ago looking for ya. Not worried yet, just curious. You're not really going to do this are you?"

I laughed a little. She didn't.

She grabbed a fist full and with a pair of orange handled scissors labels "Front Desk" she separated 13 inches of hair from her head and let it fall to the floor. I grabbed my camera. The shitty florescent lighting flickered as I found her in my lens as another 13 inches fell.

I hadn't realized how quiet it was until she turned the clippers on and removed the last of the red. The AC unit rattle to a halt even though it was still sweltering. The buzzing resonated in the grimy little bathroom moments after she shut it off. The skin on her head with impossibly white, paler than her pale face, arms, legs. Her eyes found me in the mirror, through my camera. She took off her shirt.

She stood for a moment, just a moment, letting me film her in her bra, surrounded by her hair and something in her eyes that I hadn't seen before.  I couldn't decide who she was: an indian woman tonsuring to give her hair to God. A cancer survivor. A woman shamed. A witch before burning.

She turned and walked past me, grabbing a clean shirt and her bag. I followed her movements in the mirror until she said,


"Buy me a drink."


and walked out the door.

Sammy's wasn't far. I filmed her smoking, walking down the street, tossing a few coins at an old man talking to himself, touching her head and pulling a long strand of hair off her skirt. She flicked her cigarette into the gutter and had her drink ordered before I sat down next to her.

The bar was lit by every neon beer sign Sammy could get his hands on. He was leaning over the bar handing her a bottle of beer and a shot of something. He touched her face and told her she was beautiful and she smiled at him. She rested her head in his hand, just for a moment. He pulled away and she downed the shot like it was air.

She danced. The juke box that never stopped. She swayed and pulled her arms up, exposing the soft skin next to her breast and she softly spun with eyes closed. Another shot. Another. She swayed. She was beautiful. She swayed again.

I caught her and with one mascara tear down her right cheek she asked me
"What do you see in my eyes? Do you see anything?"

I looked past the green with amber flecks and found not something missing but too much. The camera ran as she dragged me into the stall, slammed me up into wall. It ran as I half carried her home. It ran as she kissed me so hard it hurt. It ran as I touch the soft skin and she tore at my clothes. It ran out of tape as we fell asleep, bruised and better then we had been in a long time.
And morning came.

By then, she was gone.

I'm a Quick Draw With my Glue Gun

This is what happens when you let me near a glue gun.

I have no idea where I'm planning to wear this but I'm now the proud owner of a flower bra. The tattered, old pink bra I was going to throw away but instead I glued a ton of flowers to it.  I feel so 90's in this thing. Didn't Selena used to fun around in tights and a flowered bra?

Anyway, chock this up to my itchy fingers but I'm happy with it.

Any other ideas that could recycle old bras?

Craft Therapy and Ice Cream.

I am still here. Barely.

I've been going through a hard time lately and haven't been writing anything. Actually, I've been actively avoiding life, taking care of myself or seeing friends.  But in attempting to break myself out of this glum, I've been trying to be proactive, finish projects, take classes, etc. I'm so proud of my latest project, I wanted to share with you.


I found these shoes at Ross for $5. They were the display model, or at least that's what the sticker on the bottom said. I'm not really into this bright of a color but I knew they had potential. So I darkened them a bit with a sharpie, got out my hot glue gun and got to work. And after a ton of blisters, a semi-serious burn/open wound and half a bucket of cheap '"rhinestones" later...

TADA!!!

I really shouldn't be so excited about these but I am. They are ridiculous and over the top and I love them. It's like wearing a disco ball on my feet. Now I just have to figure out where to wear them... Perhaps I'll just go out for a free ice cream cone on Tuesday at B&Js.

Nothing cures the blues like wearing your new DIY while eating a scoop of peanut brittle.

No really. Free Cone Day. Do it!

Sex, Death and Eyeliner

I was up late watching porn last night.

Or not really porn but a documentary about porn called Inside Deep Throat. In short (sort of), Linda Lovelace (Boreman), then 22 years old, starred in a low budget, silly and wildly successful adult film. With it's success came public scrutiny, not only of the film but of the stars themselves. Linda found herself in the middle and through out her life went back and forth between allegations that she was not a willing participant (she stated matter-of-fact that Deep Throat was recorded evidence of rape) to publishing "pro-porn" books back to anti-porn campaigns then back to nude pictorials for the magazine "Leg Show". I don't assume to know what really happened. I do know that things ended badly. She was plagued with problems, from growing up in a less than stable home, getting involved with abusive boyfriends and a seemingly constant money issue (haven't we all been there?), her life at times seemed like an uphill battle. She contracted Hepatitis then was involved in a fatal car accident in 2002. She had one hell of a difficult life. And the more I think about it, the more that it makes me wonder: Is doing porn like a barrel of monkeys or a can of worms?

It's true that certain occupations have statistically higher instances of suicide, murder or both.  (see the link to the national database below) Funeral directors, doctors and dentists are all up there. But I've noticed another trend, perhaps not at such a ratio to compare to lawyers and wall street workers, but significant none-the-less.

With the horrifying ex-porn star Luka Magnotta in the news as of late, a man who streamed images onto the internet that will never cease to be, the gruesome death of a young man forever at anyone's fingertips, I see more sensational news about his dabbling in porn at the forefront, before his own abuse or psychopathy. The public seems to feel that porn is the gateway drug at times. So I started reading and asking myself: Does being a porn star ruin your life and/or shorten your lifespan?

Porn stars seem to be dropping like flies and tragically so. I started my foray into the seedy science of pornography by reading Jenna Jameson's How to Make Love Like a Porn Star. Talk about a sad story. In the book, she talked about her favorite star from the years before, Savannah. Yet another sad story. And the more people's bios I started reading, the more I noticed this trend. Here's a few.

Savannah-

Her real name was Shannon Wilsey. Best known for her platnum blonde hair, sweet girl-next-door face, giant fake tits and that X factor. (pun intended) She grew up with divorced parents, bouncing from home to home and was sexually abused along the way. She quickly rose to fame in the porn industry and just as quickly became involved in heavy drugs (coke and heroin) and heavy shopping habits.
She dated rock stars like Axl Rose and Billy Idol (famously stating that Axl was a 2 pump chump which I totally believe). Like many abused and deeply sad women of porn, she found love with another women. She claimed to be deeply in love with Jeanna Fine, another porn star. July 11, 2004 she was driving home wasted and crashed her white Corvette. She survived with a broken nose and face lacerations. She called her manager, somewhat incoherent, saying she needed plastic surgery, that her face was a mess. Maybe it was the drugs, the head injury or the fact that her beautiful face was never going to be the same again. She took a .40 Barretta and shot herself in her garage. She stayed in a coma until her family took her off life support and she died. She was 23.

Dorothy Stratten-
Her real name was Dorothy Hoogstraten. (I can see why she had a stage name...) This was a gorgeous girl in a very 80's kind of way. The hair, the smile and the generic good looks of a Benetton ad. Except, she was naked and creepy guys were taking pictures of her. Yet, I digress. She met Paul Snider when she was under 18 (ew) and they married when she was 20 (he was 29) and it was hell for poor Dorothy. He was controlling and psychotic; she suspected that he poisened her dog because he was jealous of the love she gave the little pooch. They seperated after a year. She moved on, he did not. Stalker McStalk-y was everywhere, even creeping up to her new boyfriend's house, Peter Bogdonovich. (director of Paper Moon, The Last Picture Show, etc) Paul called Dorothy, asking for money. She arrived at his house to give him $1000 to get him off her back for good. She sadly wouldn't make it out alive. Snider put a shotgun to the side of her face and ended her life. Then he did some other very bad things that I won't mention. Then he shot himself. Bogdonovich was said to be devastated. He married her 20 year old little sister a short time later. Hm. The film Star 80 is based on her life and death.

Lolo Ferrari -
Lolo had the largest breasts in the world. You notice I said 'had'? Things don't end well, obviously. Her real name was Eve Valois. She was born in France and reportedly had a sad childhood. No father, a mother who disliked her and at 25 married Eric Vigne, an ex-con drug dealer 15 years her senior. He was her "manager" although the cops saw it more as prostitution when they arrested the pair. Lolo had some amazingly low self esteem. It was said that her husband didn't help this problem. He pressured her into numerous plastic surgeries and in the end, she had a 71 inch bust, several new noses, giant lips and who knows what else. None of which made her happy. Her official cause of death was an overdose of antidepressants and tranquilizers. Some think her husband had something to do with it. We'll never know.
Oh, and she was a recording artist. I use the term loosely.

There are dozens more just like that. And this is not to mention all the deaths by alcoholism, drug overdose, HIV/AIDS, and an amazing amount of car accidents. And even those who survive don't have happy endings. Lori Michaels faked her own death to avoid creepy stalkers. Max Hardcore went to jail on obscenity charges. Hyapatia Lee suffers from dissociative identity (multiple personality) disorder which worsened after years in porn.

Most would point out first that many (some would argue all) have suffered from abuse, broken homes and/or addiction thus leading them to a life of pornography (not the other way around). Although, I imagine many getting hooked on drugs after starting their careers. How many people out there can do a rough gangbang totally straight? Not many. I know I would have to be coked out of head. Regardless, something about the business inherently brings tragedy.

For better or worse, it will change the way I watch porn from now on... Not that I do in the first place.



P.S. Amanda Seyfried will be playing Linda in the new film, Lovelace. I will probably see it.

Check out more porn stars fate at a strange and fascinating site:
Frances Farmers Revenge 
NIOSH and CDC database of occupations and death
LA Times article about Savannah

Forever

The longer you stay with someone the more you ruin each other.

After a particular line is crossed, you can't go back. There's no fixing some kinds of hurt. I will forever be sad about things that were said and done.

When we dance, all I remember is him walking out of the apartment in a rage.
When he says, "I love you", all I hear is, "Why did you even come here?".
When he tells me I'm so beautiful all I hear is him xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx and then me running for the toilet to throw up.

Some things can't be unsaid. Some things can't be undid. They live on forever like radio signals, forever expanding into the universe.