Thanks Bone for always picking such amazing words. I know it ain’t easy.
Here’s a link to a great op-ed piece by Paul Auster about being 21 in the spring of 68 and looking forward to graduating and being drafted.
It goes with the story I began several weeks ago.

Dinah lived several blocks from the beach now. When she finally had the choice she found she didn’t want to live on the bustling beach. Once a month or so she rented a hotel room that faced the ocean, and soaked in the smells and sounds of the ocean. Every six weeks she went back to New York for non stop socializing. And doctors and dentists.

Dinah didn’t want to be a New York elitist; her boyfriend was the town police lieutenant who teased her about her elitism but loved it and never tried to invade the space she made between her and the rest of the world. He compared her to a wave that looked as though it was going to break big time but came in gently. Rarely they would discuss the many nuances in that sentence. He was a cop with a Master’s in American Lit. His thesis had been on Capote. Somehow she found all that out when he spotted her comparing coffee’s in Kroger’s. He didn’t ask too many questions about the past she had come to a small Southern beach town to break from.

Dinah came from the world of live in the moment. Here she reflected on the past when walking on the beach, oiling the banister in her robin blue Charleston type house, or placing shells on one of the canvases that sold for way too much money. Honestly she had no idea what she was doing. People reflected about her work and made too much out of it. She just enjoyed placing found objects on canvass and painting over them with milk paints she mixed herself.

Today she couldn’t get into her work at all. It felt so meaningless. Jordy, husband one to three out of six had a new CD out, and she really hadn’t meant to memorize it. She remembered the most banal things about Jordy. The first time they had married had been a joke. She was eighteen and he was nineteen, in 1969. When her parents found out they insisted on an annulment. She refused not because she wanted to be married to Jordy but because she didn’t want to do what her parents thought proper.

The divorce had happened six months later, in the Dominican Republic, after she had walked into their basement apartment in a house on the Long Island Sound and found Jordy in bed with a girl she was kind of friendly with. He insisted it was meaningless. Dinah believed in few things but one of the things she truly took seriously was fidelity.

She would picture Jordy in bed with that girl over and over again. She tried to ignore him her Sophomore Year but wherever Dinah went, Jordy went. When she thought she was almost in love with Kent, the golden boy, they went to a school dance. Like all dances it had an absurd name: The End of the World.

Jordy’s group wasn’t supposed to be playing but they substituted for another popular Long Island college/bar band. Jordy sang four new songs she knew he wrote for her, and then “Dinah with the dancing eyes,” the song that was going to make him famous.

“Stop,” she thought. “I can’t love a man who writes beautiful songs about me. What else is there? What do we have in common? Why am I going to break up with Kent tonight?”

Because, just because.

Somebody took a picture of Dinah staring at Jordy and somehow he was reflected through her eyes. The picture would be on the album cover. If every picture tells a story that picture told more than either Dinah or Jordy could consciously process.

The draft had ended. Jordy had a high lottery number. Dinah wouldn’t marry Jordy again for three years, but she could drop out of college with him and go on his first tour.

The End of The World dance had been the beginning of Dinah’s real life.

Stumble it!

The words come from Bone. This is 3WW
This is part of a much longer piece I have been writing in my head while walking, with the words added. I really need to get a new tape recorder but first I need to find someplace to live for six months. My apartment still hasn’t sold. Wrote a post and accidentally deleted it!

The ocean was changing from winter gray to summer teal. Dinah could see infinite blues and greens that were best viewed from her sunglasses. The colors reminded her of her eyes. Some people thought she had deep blue eyes; others swore her eyes were emerald and still other people thought them violet. Like the ocean they changed with the sky, storm and turbulence.

As she walked she threw a stone into the deceptively calm ocean and watched the tiny ripples. She didn’t know why she began to think about the men in her life. None of them had understood Dinah’s need for the ocean. They could breath without salt air, sand, and ocean waves. She never really got that.

Dinah thought back to her first day of college in 1968. She had been walking past the theatre when five boys came out and said hello. One captured her heart immediately. He was the boy she had seen in her dreams forever.

She couldn’t remember what Jordy said to her to make her laugh so much. He could have said anything and she would have laughed. She finally met somebody who could peer past her ever changing eye color deep into her soul.

The next few months were a blur of sex, pot and anti-VietNam activities. Unlike most people they knew they didn’t do acid but mescaline. The edges weren’t as hard. Everything was funny.

One day, deep under the influence of drugs, they got into a VW bus with three of Jordy’s best friends and no particular destination in mind. They only really cared about leaving New York for the restaurants off the Jersey Turnpike.

They got points for knowing the life story of each person a restaurant was named for. Only Dinah knew Clara Barton; but she was a girl and the boys said it didn’t count. They continued the argument as they found themselves driving across America.

They would backtrack when Jordy would remember a friend he wanted to see. Often he could talk the friend into joining them. Dinah never wondered why the other guys who took turns driving would always listen to him. Later she wouldn’t be able to give examples of his charisma, but she constantly found herself drawn into it.

When they arrived in Vegas it only seemed right that they get married in one of the wedding chapels. They had picked up four of Jordy’s old friends on the way and three new ones. Dinah felt as if she were marrying a mob.

It was the first of their three marriages and divorces. Later she would realize that Jordy had planned on stopping in Vegas the whole time.

They celebrated their honeymoon with at least 25 people in the Haight, and saw Janis Joplin one night at the real Filmore.

Dinah didn’t really have any friends outside of Jordy’s circle. The girls in school, torn between wanting to be independent and finding true love envied her. She wanted to tell them she wasn’t worth envying but something always stopped her.

Stumble it!

Darn forgot: this was prompted by the words in Three Word Wednesday So is the post below where we properly thank Bone for the words. The post below is dark
Delane wanted to fall in love. She wanted it so badly she couldn’t think of anything else. All her girlfriends talked about how wonderful love was. She would see them cuddling with their boyfriends and she felt so lonely.

Her parents would tell her to give it time. Someday a boy would be swept away by Delane’s beauty and brains. She didn’t believe them. Her father would feel sorry for her and give her extra money on a Saturday for shopping. She already had two credit cards. But cash was always welcome.

That Saturday she was supposed to see her best friend Alexa. When she went to Alexa’s house, Alexa was all tangled in her boyfriend Joey’s arms.

Delane knew what girls did when they were depressed; they went to Juicy and bought some new clothes, pocketbooks and accessories. So she did. It felt as if nobody understood that she was truly depressed. They all said “someday.” Delane wanted someday to be today.

She looked real good the next day when all her friends came over. Her mother had wanted to do something really big. But Delane wanted a pool party for her eleventh birthday.

Stumble it!

March 19 Iraq War Blogswarm 3/19/03–3/19/08:
Here’s a Bush marking the five year anniversary slide show. I’ll save you the trouble, because who actually wants to look at him?. He said we’ll stay with the course while he acknowledged the cost has been much more than anticipated. Of course all the costs are much more. As I remember the war supposedly ended about six weeks after it began
Courting Destiny began as our way of protesting the RNC in New York in 2004. Our original url, freenynyfrombush.blogspot.com is one of our proudest partial lines. We didn’t know that some crazy radical rightists thought they ran the blogosphere, and yes we can admit it now, made us kind of cry. We wouldn’t back down then and we’re certainly not going to back down now.

Bush came into New York on Friday. If you haven’t read Gail Collins amazing article about his stupidity read it now. His statement reminded me of Karl Rove’s remarks when he came to New York, the city that was attacked, and said “liberals want therapy for terrorists.” Actually Bush is stupid and dangerous; Rove is pure danger–not in a good way. Wasn’t going to let the fifth anniversary go by without some Rove Rage. He might have resigned from the administration but his legacy lives on.

I am a New Yorker who can’t afford to live there. I’m a liberal who wanted nothing more than to see Bin Laden beheaded. I’m a Democrat solely because I won’t vote for a Republican now.

I wrote this story in my head while walking down some country roads. North Myrtle is the beach, burbs, country and city all in one. i didn’t want my fiction return to be dark, but 3/19 is a day for darkness It’s a 3WW. I added the words that Bone supplied. It’s a first very rough draft. Actually I don’t like this story. I want to write lighter more fun things. But today has never been one of my favorite days–began a long time before the war and I remember everything about today, five years ago.

Saw a screening of a 9/11 film with a friend in Times Square. It was too soon for me. Had to review it and have no idea if it was good or not.

Six weeks before my sister and I had to run around finding money to pay estate taxes on our mother’s estate. We wouldn’t have had to pay taxes two years later. It’s hard to feel good about paying a bit for an unnecessary war. Many people have paid much more in other ways.

America is so troubled. I almost think a person has to be disturbed to go into politics. Don’t think most parents want their children to grow up to be president anymore.

Two of the words were very easy. One was very difficult.
••••••••••••••••••••••

Allie could barely remember a time Jay hadn’t been in her life. Her older sister Suzie had taken him to Allie’s Sweet Sixteen, in 1970. Allie was jealous at her own party of her beautiful eighteen year old sister who was hanging onto the most gorgeous man she had ever seen. Jay had long curly dark brown hair, and a look in his dark blue eyes that entranced Allie. He had recently returned from Viet Nam and was attending Suzie’s school.

Suzie soon moved into Jay’s apartment. Allie smoked her first joint there, and barely minded when she watched them shoot up. Suzie said all the hip kids at school did. Jay had moods where he would get real quiet and suddenly begin screaming and banging walls. Suzie said smack mellowed him.

The moods got worse and no drug helped him. Suzie and her friends brought him to the VA which immediately admitted him. His roommate was an 80 year old shell shocked World War One vet. Jay seemed to get even more moody but the VA said there was nothing they could do. Continue Reading »

Stumble it!

Thanks Bone . I might not be able to comment or post much as I’m hoping to leave next week–finally! Have taxes to prepare for the preparer, files to be cleaned and many many little things. Courting is probably going on hiatus.

Fast, unedited–and I’m going to have start taping my BFF and my conversations. Though I’m leaving which makes me both happy and sad. This is for the girl who will be my roommate at the old ho home
••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Lainey and Maris were sitting at a table in the back of the bar. Lainey was choking into her beer:
No, we’re like Grace and what’s her name on Saving Grace
Laura San Giacomo.
She has a name
Yeah, Grace’s best friend
Is that what you think of me, Maris Kane’s best friend?
Maybe, maybe not. Look at him.

They looked at a man in a tight black tee-shirt, black jeans, long black hair tied into a very nice ponytail, and earring. He seemed to be smiling at them. Maris wondered if they should try to pick him up. This time Lainey didn’t just choke but sputtered:
Girl we were retired years ago into the permanent collection of The Old Ho’s House
So? Just shows how great we are. We still have it.
You’re crazy. Look at the girls in here. All size double zero up to two.
Oh come on Lainey. Are we or we are not honky tonk angels.
Yeah 20 years ago, we were called that exactly once by a drunk…
You married him.
True but shouldn’t that tell you something?

Lainey hated to be the rational one. She wanted to believe that their looks could still pack a punch. She wanted this night at the last remaining C&W club in New York to be fun but remind them they weren’t 30 anymore. 30 did seem to last through two decades. But there had to be an end to youth. Maris was holding on so hard….

Lainey really didn’t want to watch Maris unravel, but….

Stumble it!

This was very quick as the other one is long. Personally I think I can’t win PCH as long as I live here–they see the zip code and think “all apartment buildings.” But I don’t really believe in lotteries or pennies from heaven
Every week day as she filled the PCH lotto form without once accidentally ordering anything she imagined what her life would be like if she won.

At work nobody knew she had a brain. As she filled out the data entry forms she would daydream about a world unlike any she knew.

The forms were simple. Rosanna heard people talk about her: “Simple and plain.” “Look at her; she doesn’t even try to dress well or wear make up.” “At least she’s clean.”

As she heard each slight she would imagine a comeback but she knew she wasn’t clever enough to say something that might sting.

Rosanna had been longing for a boyfriend for as long as she could remember. Even more than that, she imagined a girlfriend. Just one that she could have long conversations with, laugh with, or talk about nothing as other people seemed to do so readily.

Most people left exactly at five. She would wait until six as she made minimum wage and the hour overtime was a necessity. Then she would walk the ten blocks to her rooming house where she would timidly smile at whatever residents passed her.

One had once invited her to a movie. Rosanna couldn’t afford the ticket price so she had said no, and the person never talked to her again.

Rosanna knew that this was just a passing phase. She never thought how it had been 25 years since she dropped out of high school. The PCH lotto said that somebody with the initials RS in her zip code had to win, and she knew it was just a matter of time. Yes, sir, she knew it.

Stumble it!

I’m up to the interviewing potential realtors stage. A part of me feels guilty that I live in a place where my apartment seems to be coveted–my obsessive prepping seems to have worked. Another part thinks I deserve everything I get plus more
Thanks Bone for the words.
While this is fiction I have been working on versions of it for 20 years. Each time I start new. It’s rough. I’m not sure I did a great job in explaining that in 1969 cute suburban mothers didn’t expect to meet their eighteen year old daughter in the East Village at nine AM when said daughter was supposed to be in school on Long Island. Annie had obviously spent the night at her boyfriend’s and that was a very big deal then.

There are many little stories in it. Coming of age stories usually bore me. This is the prologue for a book of interconnected stories about six friends. It begins almost a decade later. Annie’s stories are all in the first person. The others are in the second or third. I would like Annie’s stories to have an urgency and immediacy the other stories don’t have. It’s called West of Broadway as the whole Upper West Side is as is much of Manhattan. Jordan, in this story, lives East of Broadway. This is very rough. I won’t be posting the other stories, but I welcome feedback on this one.
The East Village
March, 1969

My boyfriend’s building was typical of thousands of tenements in the city. As I walked up to the sixth floor I tried not to breath the usual smells; a commingling of pee, cat pee, cabbage,rancid gross meats, beer, Lysol, cigarette and pot smoke. Only the last was at all tolerable. I have an exceptionally acute sense of smell. It’s saved me, and some others, from falling into the deep sleep during a gas leak so I’m grateful for it. Then again I spend more time throwing up than most people.

By the time I reached Jordan’s apartment I would run to the bathroom. His two bedroom apartment was unexpected for a hippie apartment. It had the requisite mattress in the living room with an Indian print bedspread covering it and pillows, coffee table made of cinder block and wood and second hand chairs, but the large ashtray wasn’t overfilled with butts. There were no empty beer bottles, or garbage of any type.

Jordan had about twelve best friends, 30 next-rank friends, and we ran with a crowd that numbered at least 150.

Jordan’s room had a mattress that went from closet to windows. He painted the ceiling dark dark blue and pasted hundreds of silver glittery stars. Sometimes five of us would sleep on the mattress. Except for Best Friend # One, Fat Dave, we were all thin. The morning I woke up with Best Friend # Two Ian’s finger up my right nostril everybody but me found it funny. Some of Jordan’s best friends were girls; some of mine were boys. In the world we had made, everybody was equal.

The apartment was on East Sixth Street and overlooked an alley that faced McSorley’s. We weren’t drinkers. It was no big deal that they didn’t let girls in. It was important that The Fillmore East was down the block. When the windows were opened we could hear the music. Sometimes we would go up to the roof and listen. Other times we would go to the stage entrance and walk in with the groupies.

I had fallen in lust/like with Jordan my first month of college the previous fall. My Byronic ideal thought I was the hottest girl in school; he wanted me to be his girlfriend. It made me laugh when I thought how easily people were fooled. My clothes were different than the other girls. They were a mix of Carnaby Street, Paraphernalia the store, and East Village vintage. I felt as if I were all facade with no substance. It was a good facade. Luxe hippie/mod without a trace of Long Island.

Girls wanted to be me. The rare times I was in the dorm in the college in an estate on the North Shore of Long Island they would follow me around wanting to learn my secrets. I was nice as I hadn’t yet learned how to be cruel. I was and wasn’t intoxicated with my own aura. From the first hour at Freshman Orientation I was desired by many and hated by a few. I have never understood why some years I will be the most popular girl around, and other times nobody wants to know me. I can be pretty or very plain; lovable or not; funny as anything, and even more boring. I, Annie Roseman, am considered complex by all therapists. When a therapist tells you, you’re complex and/or interesting, run.

I hadn’t expected to meet somebody like Jordan. Somebody I would intuitively understand. Somebody who felt a part of me as if we had known each other forever. This couldn’t be real. I had to be dreaming it. It wasn’t ideal. By March we had broken up and gotten back together twice.

That night it was going to be just us. Jordan wrote poetry and articles for, and was an assistant at Chute, a sort of Rolling Stone. My Lord Byron really was a poet.

I had called him at work that morning and said I needed to see him alone. When I took the train in from Long Island that afternoon I rehearsed what I was going to say but really had no idea.

He looked scared when he opened the door. I could tell he had imagined all scenarios and came up with only one plausible one.
You’re pregnant?
I missed two periods. You know how irregular I am, but…and I haven’t slept with anybody else.
I wasn’t saying….
You were possibly thinking.
This is a lot to take in
There’s a slight possibility. Probably is a false alarm.
But you could be?
I’ll go to Planned Parenthood in the morning and find out. If I am I’ll go to the nurse in Queens all the girls go to.
You can’t.
What?
You’re having our baby
And play the violin strings. Jordan, if I am pregnant, it’s a tiny embryo.

But Jordan was in some dreamland I wasn’t privy to.
If it’s a girl, we’ll name her Isle–that’s I-S-L-E not aisle. If it’s a boy, Peace.
Oh good for a second I thought we were going to have to spend a lifetime explaining she wasn’t conceived in a store. Jordan, you just turned 20. I’m eighteen. You make like two cents an hour. You’re dodging the draft–wait you don’t want a baby so we’ll have to get married and you won’t be drafted?
How could I have a baby with a man who wanted to name a girl Isle and a boy Peace? I wasn’t into traditional names like my parents, but I wasn’t even into spice or season names.

He did look shocked that I could even think such a thing.
Annie, we’re going to get married someday. It might as well be now.
Jordan your parents aren’t speaking to you. My parents will die. They’ve met about 40 of your friends but never you.
I’ll meet them. This time I won’t park near their house and throw up.
Did you ever find it strange that our reaction to almost everything is to puke?
Don’t say “puke.”

I smiled. We were sitting on the living room mattress smoking cigarette after cigarette and drinking grape juice. Donovan was playing in the background. Donovan, Melanie, “puke” was a four letter word, drugs were an abomination. I was in love with the straightest* draft dodging hippie radical in America. And he hadn’t met my parents who would have loved him.

Jordan was living under a cloud. He had been thrown out of school for “associating with known drug dealers.” In reality he had been arrested at The 67 Moratorium. An honorable arrest even my parents would have appreciated. His parents would have treated him like a conquering hero. Jordan made a face every time I smoked weed. Some of the best friends were as straight as Jordan. Others smoked and tripped, but Jordan didn’t mind. It was just me who was supposed to be the Madonna who slept around, but not recently.

Jordan and I stayed up all night talking. Usually we found it difficult to converse when alone and kissed or told soliloquies but that night we spoke. Jordan couldn’t understand why I as an adoptee could so easily have an abortion. I didn’t see where my being adopted was an issue. He was fascinated by my adoptee status. I was bored with it. My family was my family. I hadn’t had birth mother fantasises since I was twelve.

I wasn’t a great student as I didn’t go to most of my classes. My English teacher would see me and and practically accost me:
You were such a great student last semester. You’re so talented. Why can’t you just come to class? Or do the work? Don’t come to class. Do the work.
My teachers seemed to have fallen under the Annie Roseman spell. Everybody knew me. Most people forgave me my bad habits. I had forgiven the Resident Assistant and roommate who tried to get me expelled. They had my cigarettes analyzed for weed. The school security director made sure that I got my own room in the basement and was exempt from Freshman curfew–10:30 PM on week nights and One AM on weekends. My night was just beginning at 10:30.

I liked having fun. I loved going to Chinatown with 30-50 kids from school, concerts at the bandshell in Central Park, being in The East Village, hanging out in houses on Long Island Sound towns, in the lawn on campus, outside the cafeteria where Jordan and I had first arranged to meet each other after The End of The World Dance. I resisted going out with out him. He wasn’t a student and after Senior Year in high school when my boyfriend was a “former student” now activist in a more radical/SDS faction, I had resolved to date only students.

Every day for 22 days Jordan worked his charms. He would buy little presents for me; kaleidoscopes, sparkling anythings, neon yoyo’s. It didn’t feel like a courtship or I didn’t see it as one and yet…..When I caved in, I fell all the way. I had no choice. He was the boy I had dreamed about all my life.

Why was I saying:
Jordan if I am pregnant and that’s a big if, we can’t go through with it. We like to have a good time besides everything else.
Annie, if you go through with it, I’ll throw myself down the subway tracks.
You have vertigo, and can’t even look at the tracks.

I knew he was being melodramatic and wouldn’t go through with it. It was a lie. Jordan specialized in “slight lies.”

Jordan was on time for work the next day. That was a first. I took my time dressing. I had an elitist edge and didn’t want to be taken for just another hippie girl. I wore a purple velvet jumpsuit, silver parachute material boots, and a silver velvet coat. When I left the house I walked near The Cooper Union Museum. I saw a group of middle aged affluent housewives get off a bus. One looked a bit too familiar. She never would have seen me if I hadn’t screamed:
Mommy, mommy.
Every woman turned around. One ran toward me. I wanted to tell her why I was there but she screamed as she pounded me, then grasped me. I was six inches taller than my mother but she had the strength of the madly angry.
You’re supposed to be in school—on Long Island
Mommy
Don’t mommy me.
Her friends, who all knew me, got her off me.
You will call tonight. Your father has to know and I can’t be responsible….

My mother, my adoptive and only one I had ever known or wanted to know, knew there was no way in hell I had come in from Long Island that morning. Her good fantasy daughter was gone. In her place was an East Village hippie who was obviously coming from the “unknown” boyfriend’s apartment.

I never made it to Planned Parenthood but went back to the apartment and cried. That night I got my period. I looked in the toilet and stared at a huge clot. Was it? By the next morning I had stopped wondering.

*I’m using “straight” in the 60’s sense of not being cool. It’s different than being a nerd. There weren’t any positive connotations to the word. Not in my world.
This is dedicated:to the boy who
was 19 and perfect and the man who is an amazing friend. Still ironic
you were born on my father’s birthday–in a good way.

Stumble it!

I took down the post above this. Someday I will get blogging right 3WW is of course brought to you by Bone In my Italics beneath the post I was really upset about my apartment–which should be ready for prime time next week. When I get upset about something I obsess over blogging–makes real life easier.

Everything was going wrong. She tried and tried and tried to get her life together. Most people didn’t understand. Life was simple to them. They made things happen or didn’t. No big deal Young girls pontificated over love, but everything else–simple.

They didn’t yet understand they had it backwards. Boys and men were simple. It was the rest of life that was hard. Her sleep had been disturbed by some dream not remembered. The windows were too tantalizing close. Direct hit from the nineteenth floor. Too messy.

She could walk the hour walk to the George Washington Bridge but by that time she would probably talk herself out of this mood. So many responsibilities. So many people on her payroll. She was losing money by the second but nobody cared about that. if she dissolved the company they would be out of work and there weren’t many jobs around, and even fewer that paid well.

She had always believed in doing the right thing. The right thing for her would be to end the company before it went bankrupt. She knew the people who worked for her well. She knew their families, even their lovers. Their problems were her problems. Her problems belonged to her only.

She had let this go on too long. She was covering bills from her personal accounts, and still people were asking for raises. When she finally tried to explain that the company hadn’t turned a profit in three quarters–”not my problem. I do my work.” “Yeah, when you feel like it,” she felt like screaming.

The company had been successful when she began it. Never trust an overnight success, she had thought 25 years ago. In heart she still felt like a fraud, a flash in the pan that just happened to last 24 years. She had been too young then. Too eager to please. Too caring.

Somehow she had never lost the people pleaser caring person. She could do hard negotiations as long as it would benefit the company and the people who worked for it. Sometimes she felt like a frigging benevolent dictator.

She regretted the decision she and her husband had made not to have kids. Well, she had made it, and he finally left for a young woman who knew that you could have bits of it all, but not all of it. People couldn’t understand that she truly understood why he did that. She hadn’t exactly been faithful. Boys were attracted to successful good looking women, and she had been attracted back.

Now she was supporting a boy who thought as long as they were together he would never have to do real work. She had ordered him out at midnight. One whine over the line….

In the still of the early morning she cried

As a blogger I had many lucky breaks. But I’m not technically proficient and it’s not because I haven’t tried. Have pulled some over nighters trying to do things I’m not capable of. Courting’s a custom blog. I have no idea what happened to the RSS feed and none of the WP tricks will work.

Until my life begins to go in a better direction this will probably be the last post. I’m so close to selling my apartment and feel as if it will never happen. As misery doesn’t love company–see I’m capable of real cliches, I don’t want to inflict myself on readers.

Stumble it!

I found this prompt (see bottom after reading post) on Lissa’s blog It’s not edited, and I had many interruptions so I’m not sure how long it took–will always set that microwave clock
I go out walking, after midnight
Out in the moonlight
Just like we used to do
I’m always walking, after midnight
Searching for you

Dani needed one break. Just one little break. People had been saying she could sing like Patsy ever since she could remember. They passed the hat around at the Millersville Saloon & Grill every Friday night. On a payday Friday she would take home $100 to $150. The next Friday $35-$50 if she was lucky.

Of course Millersville was in Coal County PA, not Texas or Nashville or anywhere near where record company people lived. Mountain View was hot. Lots of New Yorker’s were buying houses in and around it, but nobody came near Millersville or Desolateville as Dani and her friends called it.
I walk for miles, along the hyihway
Well that’s just my way
Of saying I love you
I’m always walking after midnight
Searching for you

Dani thought about that as she walked around Mountain View one muggy Tuesday in August. She’d been to every restaurant and bar in town and nobody needed a singer. She was so tired of being a clerk at The Millersville Notion Shop, a kind of low class five and dime. Her boss made her open on Saturdays knowing that she didn’t get home until after three AM on Friday night/Saturday mornings. “Keeps you from drinking too hard,” Wanda her boss would say. Dani was a two beer at max girl but she couldn’t afford to open her mouth to Wanda. Wanda had never forgiven her for winning “best looking” “best voice” and “most popular girl” back in high school. Wanda hadn’t ben nominated for anything.
I stop to see a weeping willow
Crying on his pillow
Maybe he’s crying for me
And as the skies turn gloomy
Night winds whisper to me
I’m lonesome as I can be

Dani felt defeated. She wasn’t really aware of her surroundings. Mountain View was pretty as a picture, enough films were made here, but come on, it wasn’t real. Wanda owned another store here. She was determined to be Coal County’s best known female.

Dani wasn’t listening at first. Why was that man singing “Walking after Midnight?” Shit, he was singing along with her. “Oh no,” she heard herself saying, “I didn’t mean to be singing out loud.”

The man smiled. She thought she recognized him but he couldn’t be Jay Larsen, American Idol break out star. “You should be singing everywhere all the time. You have an amazing voice.”

How Dani was discovered became a favorite feel good tabloid story. If she hadn’t been unconsciously singing out loud, she wouldn’t be Dani Freeman-Larsen, the anti Britney.

Wanda wanted to tell people that Dani was a no good drunk, former high school bad girl who happened to get lucky but as Dani helped her expand her business….

Your character was lost in her own thoughts. When she snaps back to reality, she realizes she was singing out loud. Unfortunately, she wasn’t somewhere private. How embarrassing… Take it from there.

It’s rabbit rabbit day–the first day of the month and the Friday before the superbowl. I wanted to write something feel good.

Stumble it!

I wrote this last May. It wasn’t a 3WW but the words fit. There’s a much shorter new 3WW below this that I do like. I keep forgetting to say that Bone is responsible for 3WW probably because….I won’t get into an indepth analysis about his screen name that I still can’t stand but am used to.
I’m hung up on aging as I’m not 35 anymore–sometimes it takes awhile to realize that. Paisley has a project on aging that sounds fun. Continue Reading »

Stumble it!