*AUNT JOYCE AND DANIEL E-MAIL* 5/27
E-mail from me to Daniel (late so I couldn’t call) with a cc to Aunt Joyce
So, my aunt sent drawings of the costumes she’s having made for us! I’ve cc’d her on this e-mail so you can write her back with your shirt size, shoe size, and pant size. Daniel, you’re gonna love the getup! Thank you, Aunt Joyce, you save us.
*ME-MOIR JOURNAL* 5/30
Daniel drags me to confession
Daniel has been trying for weeks to get me to go to confession with him. I have not been inclined. However, Daniel reminded me that he agreed to be my “straight” date for the prom, that I had used him to make Jacob think that I had a boyfriend, and that I was his friend, and he just wanted me to go with him. Heaven help me, literally. Catholic churches weird me out.
At this particular church, a huge Jesus hangs on a cross front and center. You can’t miss it. There are statues everywhere of people weeping and falling to their knees, and all this creepy decor that is outside my comfort zone. The place needs my mom to come in and happy it up a little.
Daniel told me what to do. I had to get in that sin-box and start by saying, “Bless me, father, for I have sinned. It’s been (fill in time period) since my last confession, and these are my sins.” I didn’t know what I’d list as my sins, but I planned to improvise. We had to kneel down for a while first. I was supposed to pray. I didn’t really know what to do, so I just closed my eyes and let my mind go blank. When an elderly woman carrying what Daniel told me was a rosary exited the sin-box, he told me to go in. I did. It was claustrophobic. I guess the appropriate environment for a sinner, one of God’s wayward children. Sinners need containing. The priest on the other side of the box slid a little door to reveal a screen like a fast-food worker at a drive-through. I said my line and the performance began. After an interminable silence, the priest said, “Begin, my child.”
I don’t know where this came from, but I said, “I’m a fraud.” The priest wanted me to explain. I said, “There is no explanation. I am just a fraud. I hide out. I hide from the truth.”
“And what is the truth?” he asked.
I report these facts:
“I lost my friend. I turned off the faucet in my brain that controls all her liquid memories. I pretend that a flood of truth doesn’t exist. I loved a boy who didn’t love me. I pretend like that’s fine. I violated my parents’ trust. I don’t tell them all the ways I’ve done that. I’m pretending a gay boy is my boyfriend so people think I’m loved. I take comfort in pretending to be like everyone else even though I know I never will be. I’m a disappointment as a human being.”
The priest was not a big talker; he got straight to his point: “You are not a disappointment as a human being,” he said. “That would be impossible. You, young lady, are part of the one body of Christ. The Lord does not see with the same eyes we do. Your life is a gift as it is. Say four Hail Marys and an Our Father. Good night, young lady.”
Wow. Well, I guess I could see the appeal of this religion. You can be a giant fraud and make it all better with a few chants.
When Daniel finished his thing in the sin-box, he ran over to me, that’s right, ran over to me, in a place I was sure no running was allowed, as I pretended to pray the chants the priest told me to. He grabbed my hand and said, “We gotta get the hell outta here.” I know Daniel won’t admit this, but I could tell he had been crying.
On the street, he explained that he couldn’t act appropriately in the confessional. I’m not exactly sure what he meant by that, but he kept saying it . . . that he couldn’t act appropriately in there. He said he needed to do more reading about how our psychology influences our actions, so he could understand himself better.
Anyway, this time when he got in the enclosed dark box, he started looking around and breathing in the sawdust smell and just settling into the darkness. He said something “primal” possessed him. Suddenly, he just really wanted to connect with the guy on the other side of the drive-through window. He wanted to know who he was, he wanted to “psychologically reach across that veil” is how Daniel put it.
Instead of confessing made-up sins, he started asking the priest genuine questions about his life. Like how old he was, how long was he a priest, did he like it? What was the best part of priesthood? He and the priest started having a conversation. Daniel said, “I felt like I was starting to get to know the guy or something.”
I said, “Well, that’s cool, right?”
“I don’t know. That hadn’t been my goal. I mean, it wasn’t sexy or rebellious or sacrilegious or any of the things that I come here for. It was just human. I was just talking to the guy.”
“Wow. Maybe Lisa and the social skills class is helping you connect with people in a more real way or something.”
Big pause.
“Holy crap. Take that back right now, Danielle. That is just the devil talking right through you.”
“What? I’m just saying it’s possible.”
“No. That woman has done no good for me whatsoever. Her purpose in my life is for her to be the receiver of my witty mockery. She is mere entertainment. I gotta go. I’m going home to rub one out, so I can forget about what you said about Lisa. Danielle, seriously, that is so disturbing.”
Daniel went home and who knows what he did or if it was a success. LOL. He called me later and asked if I’d come over and have dinner with him. I did.
We wrote a song together about angels, even though we are a couple of devils. It won’t translate properly if I add it to my writing collection because I can’t make a page sing or strum a guitar. But if I could, Daniel’s talent would be evident. He plucks a guitar with the kind of tenderness that a man should give a woman or a man should give a man (in Daniel’s case).
*CLASS ASSIGNMENT* 6/1
Why I Stand Out
(Everyone in my class was forced to write this essay because Ms. Harrison wanted us to see ourselves in a powerful light before college or something.)
Danielle Levine
English 12
Ms. Harrison
Period 4
What makes me stand out is all that I have had to abide. I know my peers are aware of a certain ugliness that defines me, and because of that, I am nervous to read this essay aloud. They know my ugliness, but they don’t know how I came to be this way. I have created a separation from my classmates to save them and me from the truth. However, there is no barrier strong enough to protect you from life. It finds you. Friends come even if you are not looking for them. Loss finds you even if you aren’t ready.
I met my best friend, Emily, in the second grade when her family moved in next door to us in Orange County. We dug a hole under the fence that separated our yards, and we slid back and forth daily into each other’s domains even when we were supposed to be doing homework or folding our laundry. We were yelled at many times for how dirty our school clothes got when we forgot to change before we rolled around in the dirt. We played lifeguards, store owners, cheerleaders, waitresses, rock stars—I sang into a vacuum sweeper and flung the cord around with verve while Emily played her oboe.
I’ve never met anyone else in my life who played the oboe. And she played it so well at such a young age. She was a child prodigy, truly. It used to make me mad that she had this talent. I said bad things I regret now because I was jealous of that oboe, which got more of her time than me, I used to think. Her talent brought out the worst in me and, for that, I have deep regret.
But on the weekends, she still found all the time we needed to jump on the trampoline she had and swim in the pool that I had. We had sleepovers all the time. We had this friendship together, we had all this, until we were in eighth grade.
One night during an eighth-grade sleepover at her house, we pretended to sleep under Emily’s juvenile Dora the Explorer sheets until her parents fell asleep. We were excited to sneak out and go “crap shopping,” as we called it, at the convenience store not far from our houses. We wanted Sour Patch Kids and Red Vines with a large Coke (to dip the Red Vines in), and all the fixings for s’mores. We planned to devour it all under the sheets with flashlights, like we were on a camping adventure.
It took forever for her parents to settle so they were asleep enough to not know we were gone; we didn’t leave until midnight. Equipped with flashlights, stuffed animals, and a camera to capture our adventure on film, we walked into the store. Minutes later, with our treats overflowing in our hands, we were in line to pay. I looked over at the entrance when the door opened and a bell rang. A man in military fatigues walked in brandishing a weapon (an assault rifle, I later heard someone say). He was shouting orders to who knows who. He ducked around the magazine rack and kept shouting. He was yelling coordinates that meant something to him, and he seemed really afraid, but I, to this day, have no idea of what.
Emily dropped all the candy she was holding, and I don’t know why, it was an instinct, I guess, but I dropped down and tried to gather up the candy. As soon as I dropped down, the gunman peeked around the corner and aimed his rifle right at Emily and opened fire. Pow. Pow. Pow. Emily’s camera clicked, clicked, clicked because her finger was on it when she was shot. Her final view of life was captured in those pictures, freeze-framed horrors, emblazoned forever on film.
Her last photograph, the one she snapped as she turned and looked in my direction before she fell to the bloody ground, was of me. I saw the picture because her mother couldn’t destroy any of them, couldn’t let them go, even though they are horrible and disturbing. She can’t let go of the symbols of her daughter’s last moments on Earth. I wish she could have destroyed that picture of me because it is a shameful snapshot, an indictment of my helplessness. It is the ugliest picture I have ever seen. I was caught on film living.
I forgive Emily’s mom for keeping all the pictures, though, because they are something tangible to cling to, some way to hold on to a life she loved. I understood because for weeks after that night, I couldn’t stop wandering into the convenience store and lying down on the exact spot where Emily died, near the spot where I had done nothing but stare. I didn’t care who was in the store at these times. I pushed people out of line and lay down and tried to hug the tile floor. I rubbed my face all over the dirty floor. I tried to swallow the smell and the taste of that floor. I did it every day even when adults tried to keep an eye on me; I eluded their care. I kept doing it even when the owner would call the police and have me carried out. Her life was poured all over that floor.
Being shot isn’t like it is in the movies. There isn’t a little hole in the body and a few slow trickles of blood that allow for surprise in the victim’s eyes and time to say final, profound words. No. Bullets rip and tear through flesh in an instant; blood gushes through a wound and floods an area. I had no idea a human held so much blood. I would lay on the floor and see that blood as it was in that moment and try to gather it up in my hands wishing I had thought quicker and tried to funnel that life back into her when I had the chance. Why didn’t I?
Every day I cut school the second I could and headed back to the floor of that store. I grabbed a broom one day and tried to sweep the mirage of blood I was sure was there. I tried to sweep it into a puddle and then scoop it back into her imagined body.
My parents did the absolute best they could for me during this time, but I was beyond help. They did the only thing they could. We moved from Orange County to the Valley in Los Angeles, and I started Meadow Oaks in ninth grade, and now you all know why. I was supposed to start a new life, too, but the same old tortured me had come along.
I’ve had a very hard time understanding my tortured self, but some things have occurred this year that have helped me. One of those helping moments came when we were reading the scene in Hamlet when Laertes sees his crazy sister, Ophelia, for the first time and says, “Nature is fine in love and where ’tis fine, it sends some precious instance of itself after the thing it loves.” That is exactly what happened to me. As Emily’s blood drained out of her, a piece of me was draining out, too.
Nature IS fine in love, fine, as in thin and delicate, as in not firm. We move to attach, more than we understand, to things and people we love that we feel might be an anchoring point for this fine, precious love. When those anchors disappear, a part of us disappears, too. Well, that’s how it was for me at least.
There must be a better way to love and to live, a way to be a lover of things without attaching. I don’t know exactly what that new way is yet, but when I go to college, I hope I will read more things written by smarter people than me who give me some insight into this condition. Somewhere within some kind of art must be a message worth clinging to about all these things we have to endure because of all these attachments.
While my circumstances make me stand out, paradoxically, they are what make me just like everyone else. Everyone has things that they must abide.
Comments from Ms. Harrison: There is not a thing I can say. A
*POEM*
Emily Bronte wrote, “Any relic of the dead is precious, if they were valued living.” After I read that last essay aloud in class, I went home and started going through all the papers in the back of my closet. I found this poem crumpled in a box with a friendship bracelet that is a match to one Emily had and a picture of me and Emily with her oboe. I wrote the following poem after Emily died.
I haven’t laughed in so damn long,
I don’t know what’s wrong.
Memories of tragedies belong
In a made-up song,
And I’m trying not to weep
Like a child who’s fallen down and skinned her knee
I haven’t moved from this cold chair,
Comfortable despair.
Dreams that dance around perchance to care
Can’t find me anywhere,
And I’m trying to perceive
My superhero’s innate joie de vivre.
So defend your world until its bitter end
And let all things that pass be born again.
You see, my friend, it’s not like God not to mend.
We do not die, we cannot stop
The bittersweet teardrop.
Evidence of confidence in this
Is easy to miss, so easy to miss,
And I know I must believe
Like a child who’s half asleep on Christmas Eve.
*ME-MOIR JOURNAL* 6/5
Candle Lighting
Meadow Oaks has a ceremony every year that I’ve always been both nervous and excited to be a part of during my senior year. Candle Lighting is where the torch of leadership is passed from the senior class to the junior class. (I don’t know how this senior class has demonstrated any leadership whatsoever, but we still got to have the ceremony.) Each senior pairs up with a junior and walks down the aisle together in the auditorium that is tastefully decorated with dim lights and flower arrangements. The senior lights a candle and then lights a junior’s candle. It’s pretty cool. But the coolest part is what happens before that. Ms. Harrison, who is the senior adviser, roasts every senior. She writes funny, but somehow loving, tribute roasts for each one of us. She reads it to the crowd while the roastee stands front and center to be “mocked.”
I was sure I’d be an easy target for any roast. I didn’t imagine Ms. Harrison could find any loving words to describe me, but I was wrong. We each got a copy of our roasts so I can write mine here in this journal. This is what Ms. Harrison said about me:
“Danielle Levine stands out whether she knows it or not, whether she wants to or not. She italicizes all the vocabulary words in her essays as if I am too dense to know I taught her those words. Danielle stands out as a writer despite her stubborn stance against my guidelines, against a formal voice, against standard sentence structure in essay writing. But, from Danielle, I’ve learned that minds that learn differently teach others to see things differently. Also, I’ve learned the importance of reading an even number of pages in class to feed the beast that is OCD. Danielle is a liberator of sorts, as well. Thank you for bravely releasing my bandaged tattoo through civil disobedience. Mr. Resurrection can be proud that you incorporated his history lessons so well. May you, too, find liberation by similar methods throughout your life.”
Ms. Harrison is so smart and nice. She made me feel special not in a special-ed way but in a human way.
I made a point of remembering Jacob’s roast which began, “Jacob Kingston prowls around campus like the king of the jungle. His beastly persona breaks hearts and windows. We know you were the one who lobbed a rock through Mr. Chin’s chemistry lab window, but were too prideful to own your mistake. However, your parents already have because the school sent them a bill!”
Nice work, Ms. Harrison. I didn’t realize she knew what a heartbreaker Jacob is. She made other references to classmate’s behavior that I thought was deeply hidden amid teenage subterfuge, but no, Ms. Harrison was aware. She was hip to much more than I knew. Will wonders never cease?
Daniel came to Candle Lighting with my parents and Aunt Joyce. They loved it and all said they were proud of me for “my showing in the event.” My parents and Aunt Joyce drove together and, after giving me bigs hugs, said they’d see Daniel and me back at the house where we could try on our Lebowski Fest outfits that Joyce had with her. After they left and the crowd was thinning, Daniel and I were still talking at the back of the auditorium when Jacob came up to us. He said to me, “Danielle, you really are a great writer. I always like listening to the essays you read in class. That last one, the one about your friend, was that true?”
Daniel kissed my cheek and excused himself by saying, “Hey, babe, I’ll drive the car around and meet you in the parking lot.” (OMG but Daniel is the best pretend boyfriend ever.)
I didn’t know how to answer Jacob’s question. Of course that essay was true. It didn’t dawn on me that anyone would think it wasn’t. It was so difficult for me to read that essay out loud, but when I did, it was such a relief to get it out of me. I felt myself move into myself further, literally, as if I had been, for years, a cartoon drawn by a drunk, cross-eyed artist who couldn’t keep me in the lines. I lived outside myself, just barely overlapping my skin and bones until that moment when I just told the truth about who I was as simply as I could manage. I assumed everyone could see the relief and the truth of it and now know the main reason that I was such a freak. I assumed that was why nobody said much to me about it; they wanted to leave me alone while I took time to fully process my freakdom.
I stared at Jacob and he continued, “Well, because if it isn’t true, you really are an amazing storyteller. That whole situation was just wack. A bunch of us have been talking about it. You should study writing or something.”
“Okay. Thanks, Jacob,” was all I could say. Jacob Kingston couldn’t see me at all.
When I got in the car, I talked to Daniel about the whole thing. Daniel said Jacob couldn’t see me because he is a native.
I didn’t know what Daniel meant. He said he heard this story that he wasn’t sure was actually true, but he liked it anyway because it has a good lesson. He said that a long time ago Spanish ships carrying conquistadors were coming over the horizon on their way to overtake indigenous people, and the natives onshore did nothing to prepare for the attack because they literally couldn’t see the ships.
“So, I’m a conquistador in this analogy?” I asked.
“Just be quiet and listen to me,” he said.
Daniel went on to say the natives had no point of reference to even be able to process what a ship was, so they couldn’t see it. We can’t see what we don’t know was Daniel’s point.
“But why does Jacob get to be an innocent native, and I have to be a vicious conquistador?”
“Would you stop being so rigid in your thinking! I’m just saying that he doesn’t have the proper frame of reference to see the truth of who you are. No one is a conquistador in this scenario!”
“Oh, good. But, I do like the natives, though.”
“Sheesh, Danielle. I’m trying to teach you something. Also, you are not a freak because of that event in your life. That’s not the only thing that defines you. You’re a freak for a whole lot of other reasons.”
“Good one.”
“Hey, by the way, what did Jacob write about for that essay?”
“Exactly what you’d think,” I told him.
“Did he write about football?”
“Damn right. He wrote about being the quarterback.”
“Of course he did. I hate those f*ckers.”
When we got home, we tried on our costumes for Lebowski Fest. We loved them. Also, as a huge surprise, Aunt Joyce bought our prom outfits from a designer friend of hers. My dress was a gorgeous emerald green off the shoulder (which made me nervous, but Joyce, just like Daniel, told me to shut up). Daniel’s suit had a emerald green shirt and tie, which was way cooler than a cummerbund match, according to my aunt. She also bought us matching diamond earrings. (Well, just one for Daniel. Joyce said he was completely sexy enough to pull off the one earring and still appear straight if that was his wish . . . although, he would definitely turn the heads of the gay boys, too. I agreed!) This is a miracle to report but: I can’t wait for the prom.
*MARV MISSIVE*
Letter from Marv to me
Danielle,
I won’t lie to you. I’ve been speaking with your mother and your social skills leader, Lisa. Both report that you seem happy, which is all any of us ever wanted for you. Is it true?
Marv
*MARV MISSIVE*
Letter from me to Marv
Marv,
It really pisses me off that you would talk to Lisa and believe anything she says. Her behavior caused me to kiss my gay friend in public. Don’t ask. Just know she’s a mess. Besides that, yes, it’s true, I am learning “to firm my inner smile,” which is something my yoga teacher says. But I’m no fool. I know these feelings aren’t lasting.
Danielle
*MARV MISSIVE*
Letter from Marv to me
Danielle,
I didn’t ask if you found lasting happiness, just happiness. Nothing is lasting, but I know you are aware of that as you prepare to graduate from high school. I am very proud of you. Also, your mother told me you are going to prom—bravo for you. Lisa is not as bad or as stupid as you think.
Marv
*MISSED MARV MISSIVE*
Letter I think to write to Marv but never actually give to him
Marv,
You have been a good help to me this year; although, I’m shocked to find myself thinking that. Sometimes your little notes kept me afloat on days I thought I’d drown. Still, I think you’re wrong about Lisa.
Danielle
*ME-MOIR JOURNAL* 6/11
Lebowski Fest
The month of June has several exciting events for me, and Lebowski Fest was the one I was looking forward to the most. We arrived an hour early after finding an In-N-Out Burger where I ordered the grilled cheese. We ate in the car and listened to the movie sound track to prep for the night. The Fest was in Carson at a bowling alley, and when we arrived, there were hundreds of costumed fanatics waiting in line to get in.
Joyce and Karen were big hits as White Russians because they are gorgeous and draw a crowd for that reason. One guy in line behind us was dressed as Bunny in nothing but a green bikini, blond wig, and green toenail polish, but he did not make a necessary waxing appointment before the event. He was a very hairy Bunny.
Daniel and I were wearing all black. I wore a dress with “Bereaved but not a Sap” embroidered on the pocket in white lettering. A wide-rimmed black hat with a veil covered my face (loved that). Daniel looked awesome in a black pinstriped suit with a cool gangster-style hat. He had the same embroidered words that I did on his lapel. We both had holsters and fake guns—we’re not saps! There were Dudes everywhere representing the character at various points in the film. My favorites were the robe-wearing Dudes who managed to get those clear jelly sandals that are just hideous but look right on The Dude.
Daniel had a conversation with a guy dressed as Jackie Treehorn, the known pornographer in the film. In real life he was a surfing rabbi who was also a league bowler. He knew the owners of the Carson bowling alley and was scheduled to have a lane once we got in the place. We didn’t think we’d actually be able to bowl because there were so many people, and it was difficult to get a lane. We were planning to just watch everything from the sidelines. But “Jackie” liked Aunt Joyce (no surprise), and so she flirted her way into an invitation to play on his lane. (Pun not intended. I am talking about literally bowling.) She didn’t go out with him or anything, but he was normal enough, as normal as you can be while dressed as a known pornographer. When he invited us to play on his lane she said, “I like the way you do business, man,” and Daniel and I were so happy that Aunt Joyce knew the movie enough to quote it like everyone else was doing all night.
To really enjoy this night, you had to be completely obsessed with the world of this movie so you could keep up and play your part. Daniel and I did just fine. We watched the movie about ten times so when The Eagles started playing over the loudspeaker we yelled right on cue with everyone else, “I hate the f*ckin’ Eagles, man!” just like The Dude.
In a weird alternative universe like Lebowski Fest, it’s appropriate that bizarre things happen. Two bizarre things did happen (a good even number). One: I found out I was super good at bowling, even in an evening dress, and two: Iggie from social skills class was there with his two brothers who were dressed as nihilists and who were card-carrying, ordained Dudeist priests. I have to say that I learned so much about Dudeism from these two because they talked about it all night as they bowled in the lane next to us.
To summarize, Dudeism is about “takin’ ’er easy,” which is what we were all doing at the bowling alley, so I guess we were in Dudeist church in the truest sense. These two listed a bunch of reasons for the benefits of just chillin’, and while they probably didn’t do very well in school, they seemed really happy. They recommended we check out the Church of the Latter-Day Dude online. I guess they liked to proselytize, which is something I learned about years ago when I let these seemingly nice men in black suits, white shirts, and black ties into our house, and we couldn’t get rid of them. My father was furious with me. I think he wouldn’t mind the way Iggie’s brothers proselytized while they bowled and drank “oat sodas.”
It was so weird that Iggie ended up at Lebowski Fest, bowling in a lane right next to us. He personified the movie line “I can get you a toe by three o’clock, with nail polish” and was wearing a huge papier-mâché clock set at three o’clock and carried a giant sack filled with papier-mâché baby toes, nails painted green. The toes looked great and the clock had so much detail, and I realized that all those paper things he folds in social skills class do reveal a very unique talent, and Iggie should probably just be left alone to do his art and find his place in the world that way and not be forced into becoming a more social creature. What if his talent gets lost in the socialization process? Maybe he’s fine being a paper-art-genius hermit. Also, if he’s at Lebowski Fest, how off could he really be? I had a new lease on Iggie!
And now, about my bowling: either I’m a closet bowling savant, or I just had a very lucky night. Maybe due to the blessings of the Dudeist priests present or the super-chill vibe of the night, but I bowled a ton of strikes, one right after another. I had to hike up my bereaved-but-not-a-sap dress a little in very unladylike fashion, but it made everyone laugh, and then I would just stare at the pins and roll the ball and watch all the pins smash to the ground. Maybe my extra weight was a plus in this sport. Is it a sport?
While the lane spirits smiled on me, they also smiled on Daniel. One of the Dudeist priests, Jonas, hit it off with Daniel. Between rolls they poured over Big Lebowski essays that Jonas had with him in a briefcase. He was very interested in the essay that Daniel helped me write relating to King Lear. Jonas said Daniel had to get The Year’s Work in Lebowski Studies so the two of them could discuss it. Jonas would have loaned it to Daniel, but it made him nervous when the book was out of his care for too long. He said this book was one of the few things on the planet that was actually worth spending money for.
Toward the end of the night when it was Daniel’s turn to bowl, Jonas went to the bathroom, and Daniel asked Iggie if Jonas had a girlfriend. Iggie didn’t look up from adjusting some of the toes that had been tweaked in his bag when he said, “No, he’s gay. He’s totally into you.”
Daniel dropped his bowling ball on his shoe.
I was going to tell him he could get a new toe from Iggie, but instead I told him that I thought he finally found a way to be legitimately molested by a priest. And I was really happy for him.
Daniel got Jonas’s phone number before we all left. It was a really chill time.
*CLASS ASSIGNMENT* 6/12
Lessons from High School Friendships
(A-)
Danielle Levine
Ms. Harrison
English 12
Period 4