Repetition

When something is a good idea people duplicate it, replicate it...  don’t worry what other people do or the reasons why they do it or  anything happens to them unless it affects you or you are their family & friend. It’s their life and path. There’s no reason why you need to do what they do. Indeed sometimes the risk is in not replicating what you’ve seen before... and some people will tell you that while copying someone else and posting a million of the same photos. I personally love a little replication in my photography now and again... but I usually credit my source of homage if it’s not myself. Actors call it mirroring when they copy people so it’s truly not uncommon to copy someone or copy yourself.  It’s truly up to you what you do or how you forge ahead in life. Don’t let people convince you of what you want to do. Especially people that do the same thing they’re judging you for. To each their own. Don’t listen to anyone judging you for what works for you.

Do you post the same type of thing everyday? Like a certain type of selfie over and over or do you change it up? 

Here’s one about mirroring... from the novel. 

Mirrors

(posted 9-27-2010)

“Tell me you love me,” she says before gently grabbing my face and placing tiny little kisses on my lips. Delicate soft flits against mine. It’s 6:30 pm and I’m at a reading with the infamous Chloe St. Claire. Model turned actress turned model slash singer turned artist slash humanitarian actress. It’s the TV thing that wasn’t supposed to stay a thing for very long. My three and a half pages have become six pages and soon there will be none. We’re standing side by side with the writers, the actors, the directors, the producers and anyone else who isn’t necessary for participation at a reading. But this is different. Andrew fill-in-the-blank writer extraordinaire has called for a walkthrough reading.

She tells me “I hate how I have to be sad to play a happy character. It’s like lying and telling the truth at the same time. It’s not me.”  

Boy likes girl. Girl likes boy. While I’m here reading the pages out loud I wonder what happened to the old celluloid fairytales where love would conquer all in the end. Not like this. A girl is kissing another girl on page 15 while this man watches and then they’re all talking about it over dinner on page 16. At this moment I’m glad it’s Chloe’s turn at reading and not mine, but I keep following along with it anyway. Chloe is in true form the embodiment of the character I’m reading for but she’s already playing this other part like she’s me. I can’t help thinking that she’s better than me. Even when I lean in and kiss her while Andrew whatever-his-name-is, the writer says it’s not working I wonder if it’s my fault.

“How can I be less myself and more like you?” This is what Chloe says over the table when I first met her six months ago.  No one could mistake Chloe for me or vice versa. She’s tall naturally blond sun-kissed and I am an average height brunette without much sun. But she sat in front of me with the very serious question and I just smiled without knowing what to say. It was the first time anyone had ever wanted to be me. Even I didn’t want to be me.

“Mirroring. This is what actors do when they meet someone normal.” Alton explains this to me over lunch one day in the Sunset eight months ago. I’ve just told her I’m moving to LA to be an actress. She’s telling me this warning while wearing my Prada mules and my Chanel jacket with the same color hair and style that I have. Who are you if you aren’t your best friend?  I think that this is what people do when they meet someone new. Steal all the parts they love and copy them until you can’t tell where one begins and the other ends. It’s a bit like leaching if you ask me. But no one asks me. You take enough parts and what’s left over isn’t worth anything. If you suck the one you truly love dry in a matter of months then where will you find it next?

Mid lip-lock with Chloe trying to get the scene right for the third time, I’m thinking about how this moment mirrors me and her. She’s no longer blond. Still sun-kissed. My paleness is warmer now and we both have the same length and color of hair. Am I the copy or is she? Her hands move in and she presses hard. More yells this writer. She grabs my waist and holds even longer. I wonder what’s she’s thinking. This has nothing to do with the lines.

So at this moment while Chloe is groping my breasts and Andrew what’s-his-name is screaming for more intensity I realize that she’s really me and I’m pretending to be someone else now. And it doesn’t matter when I wipe her saliva away from my face and he yells, “That’s it! Can you do that with Inza tomorrow?” Because she’s done it. Become me. A better version. And I’ve become someone else. Me with my three pages left, a mere walk on cameo in this TV thing can’t compare to the other person I’ve fallen into. That’s the real version of me, instead of her. That’s mirroring 101.

 “Do you want to come over?” Chloe asks me in the bathroom while doing a line of blow off the counter. I take a tissue and wipe my lips clean before reapplying more color. I’m watching me watch her in the mirror. Every detail down to her eyebrow shape is a slightly accentuated version of mine. There’s nothing original about her. She’s taken my nervous twitch and smile. Pursing her lips that same way I do. Lifting her eyes with the same arch and curve. These little unnoticed pieces are now her. She is me. Standing next to me in the mirror she says she’s impressed with my ability to jump into character after pushing her breasts up in the vintage Gucci halter. I think she’s lying because I need to prepare to be someone else now. But I say ‘why not’ instead of excusing myself.

I think back to the last few days before I left the city and always come back to that moment I met Alton for lunch in the Sunset. She wasn’t saying or acting any differently than she normally would have. In fact I think it was the one time she was most herself. Alton and I were inseparable aside from living arrangements several months earlier. She wasn’t me and I wasn’t her, but we were more the same than different and it could have gone on like that forever. Being me was who she was. I can’t remember the last time I’ve talked with Alton since that day. I can only keep remembering how much she looked like me and talked like me in all the other memories. Stealing my words and my look with the guise of friendship. There’s no real connection without the mirror to remind that you aren’t really you.

It’s a quarter to seven when I wake up at Chloe’s. She already up in mid tree pose and not breathing or concentrating. She’s too busy staring at her picture on the back cover of Entertainment Weekly that’s lying spread out on the foot of the bed. I smile when she breaks position and asks about the freckles on her face being noticeable in the picture. I shake my head while telling her they’re unnoticeable and then try to tell her something about the black and white contrast in the photograph when she picks up the phone and starts dialing. It’s then I decide I need a shower because she’s too busy trying to be her being a better me to listen to me.

Somewhere between the infomercial versions of Price is Right and Let’s Make Deal she’s talking with her assistant about a script adaptation for Dostoevsky that her agent sent over. She keeps sending it back and tells her assistant to call her agent about this problem. I smile and the assistant hits speed dial over the speaker. The conversation isn’t great. Chloe drops three “I fucking don’t want to’s” before ending the call. She throws the oversized script at her assistant before falling into a tantrum. The rant begins and something about her face reveals that she does have freckles. The phone rings again and her agent is on speaker once again. Her assistant hands me a cup of coffee and I start to read the Harpers Bazaar that’s on the table.

It’s fifteen after nine when my phone rings and I decide to leave the scene of dysfunction. Tucking out front door with my heels in hand and phone cradled beneath my neck I whisper into the line.

“Hel-lo.” I serenade into the line while quickly stepping into my shoes.

“Jemma darling, how are things?”

“Wayne Baby! Great.” I forget my place and scream. “Look, the place you set me up with has been fabulous. Thank you again…”

“Look Honey, I need a favor. And I couldn’t just have anyone call you for this?”

“Anything Wayne, you’ve been a…”

“Alex is coming into town today. He’ll be at the airport in four hours. Can you get him?”

“Of course.  I have a fitting in an hour and a half, but I should be able to swing it.”

“Thank you doll. I’m glad you’re enjoying things. Sorry to run, but I have to...”

“Oh. Well of course.”

“Bye Jemma.”

“Kisses. Wayne.”

“Looking in the mirror is never enough.” This is the advice I get from a woman I might call mentor if she wasn’t chain smoking and eating a McDonald’s cheeseburger.  She’s telling me that the “mirror doesn’t tell the truth” while wearing something nameless you might find in a vintage shop in the Haight, although she insists it came from Versace circa 1982. And she keeps telling the wardrobe mistress she’s a 7 not an 11. I want to laugh every time I see her. But she’s right about one thing. The mirror is not your friend.

I’m thinking about the enemies not in the mirror when the wardrobe mistress is fighting with an assistant over another actress’s size. As the wardrobe mistress verbally assaults her entourage the young woman looks uptight and it’s hard to believe she was in that BIG movie last year or on the cover of Glamour this month. I’ve never seen a person look so scared of the truth as the wardrobe mistress pulls a curtain to shut out the enemies not in the mirror.

On my end of the room the pants feel far too tight already. But I’m at a fitting to make them tighter because the physical being of the character hasn’t truly been captured by my performance. As they are fitting me for the next smaller size of pants because this is what “the character” would wear, I realize that it’s how you see things.

Perspective is a way of life, maybe the only way? We all live inside this tiny little image of ourselves. It’s not how they see us at all. That doesn’t matter. It’s only how you see yourself that matters most in the world. “But how can you ever really know who you are if the mirror lies?” it’s what I’m thinking when I must have said it out loud.

“Take a picture.” This tiny little girl with the schedule for shooting whispers and hands me the latest script revision. It’s now three less pages most of which will land me on the cutting room floor. She smiles and leans in again. “Cameras don’t lie. And it’s not the mirror that lies… it’s your mind.”

On my last day in the city I took a bus and then a walk down by the Presidio and ended up by Crissy Fields. There’s this place in the city that I like to go to. It’s past the Marina before you get to Crissy Fields close to the Wave Organ. It’s a corner of earth where nothing looks like anything else. You look at three sides of water and see something different. Along the way there are no real residences unless you live on a sailboat or a yacht. I pass this part of the Marina where Wayne has a friend with a boat. A “somebody” who owned and lived on this boat. Passing. Remembering that it was close to where I went to this party once.

These parties always happened there but this one wasn’t great, filled with people that didn’t like each other like Reggie and Ashton and important people who mattered like Wayne. Adrian was there with me. Things were ok then before we left for there and... Most of the parties weren’t great then but you don’t know that until you’ve left them. That was when the tourists would show up. When things stopped being great the scene tourists always managed to appear. The teenage girls and boy with their Ugg boots, Converse and laced up jeans matched with some dying pieces of Heatherette matched with a laced up tank from Diesel under a vintage bomber jacket produced by Levi Strauss. Elitist brats wasting time and drugs on this party in the Marina for kicks wearing their faux scene clothes trying to imitate the scenesters who were already bored and leaving.

One time at these parties a body was found dead after the tourists arrived and left. The newspaper reports were of multiple rapes and assaults among the children before this body was found drawn and quartered hanging over the side of a boat in a net. A boat that someone who was somebody owned in the Marina. It was the rawest form of survival of the fittest. Baby scenes picking away the competition that looks exactly the same. The whole mess and scandal forced the owner of the boat to sell. There’s a rumor that you can hear the cries of the rape victims and see the pieces of dead flesh floating around in the waters of the Marina. Even in the chill of the breeze the view is spectacular. When I walk alone to the edge of the water I’m almost expecting to hear the screaming voices echoing through the organ.

Everything the same in nature is different without trying. Reflections in the mirror are nothing like the things in nature. Animals don’t have mirrors to see themselves. How can they know what they look like? By looking at each other. It’s in the similarities of each other that animals know what they are. There is no need for begging and borrowing.

“You have to go. I can’t.”

“But you’re….”

“Shh. I can’t be happy for you and let go.”

“Don’t do this. I don’t want to let go.”

“Then don’t. You know I love you.”

“No, I don’t... Tell me you love me.”

Thirty seconds of jaw dropping silence follows the scene. It’s like real-life imitating art, imitating real-life. Inza’s back on set for the shooting and the intensity between her and Chloe is unmistakable as they struggle to break away from the kiss. It’s hard to believe that there’s no love between them. I can see why Chloe misses her. Maybe that’s why I went home with her. There’s just that piece missing in her that wants to be seen. To be loved. The mirror lies. The camera doesn’t.

I’m on a boat to Staten Island with this friend of Andy’s who I’ve only met five hours ago. Being on boats reminds me of Jemma and being in the Marina where those kids killed those other kids playing scene. I need a hit just thinking about killing and Jemma and looking for something in everything. I’ve been everywhere and no where trying to find something in everything. Alex hasn’t been at Andy’s since 4am and doesn’t answer his phone. Someone at Andy’s says he went to LA already. We weren’t leaving until tomorrow night. And I’m still trying to remember what happened when I was losing something somewhere this morning while taking a hit outside of Tiffany’s and what you were doing when the car disappeared. I keep thinking I need some candy to handle this memory that isn’t complete… while I’m ringing up Alex again the view is amazing. I tell this gorgeous woman about the view before she says that I’ll catch up to Alex in a little bit and not to take the candy. After she touches my hair she reminds me that she’s already booked my flight to LA to follow him and we’re just killing time. I like killing time with her it lets me like her smile. We’re talking about things that matter, when she giggles about the whores and Van Gogh instead of blushing like other girls might I know there’s more to this one than meets the eye.

Drive

Drive or no drive? No matter which way you go or how you live your life, someone will have some opinion about it... I like people that just tell me stories about things instead of their opinion. You can capture the same moment but it’ll never be what someone else experienced. Instead of worrying how they experience it, just let them enjoy the moment.

You can enjoy those who are on the same road as you and let the others who aren’t driven by the same impulse do their thing. 

Enjoy!

Kisses, m.

There’s No Dance Music in L.A. 

(5-6-16)

Lost. I’m lost on the highway and there’s nothing but a voice on the line. She’s been talking for a least a half hour. The woman on the line was calling and hanging up when I answered, so I stopped answering and put her on speaker. She hears me breathing and knows that someone is listening so she keeps talking. 

Confessing. Dying. Wallowing.

“Chloe, I’m sorry. I think I’m dying. I love you.”She says it with a conviction that tells me she’s not playing. I can feel you crying for her so I imagine Chloe is a bitch like Felicia to make you disappear. But you don’t. 

I released this beautiful voice to the road and decided to follow the setting sun because there’s nothing on the radio. I turned it off when the girl blowing me at the airport announced that “there’s no dance music in L.A.” and decided she wasn’t hungry anymore. I told her I wasn’t a DJ but she wasn’t amused about my being a musician so she climbed in the backseat for a nap after telling me to find Sunset. 

Somewhere on Sunset the lines on the road start to merge and the buildings around me are taller than I thought they’d be. I need a hit. But I keep driving. 

“There’s nothing like driving in L.A. to teach you patience,” Wayne said to me when we were stuck in traffic on the 405. It’s the only last real memory of Wayne that I can conjure up without thinking of the violence. 

Violence breaks the silence when the girl in the backseat starts screaming. I think she’s hurt or something but she’s just dreaming. This girl is dreaming of the terrible things that will come to take her away from living while the one on the phone is begging for something terrible to make her stop living

Walking into the house is like a dream. Wayne isn’t playing when he says, “time’s up” and goes over to the bar in his study. He’s making a Cognac on the rocks when Gina sits me down with a push of her hands on my shoulders. I’m not sober and you fucking left again. I can see the skull of that man Wayne “handled” last year. It was an “accident” but not the kind where people walk away. It’s something of reminder that Wayne keeps when people piss him off. He leaves it out on the table with all the implications that remain with it. It implies nothing but betrayal between best friends and love for your enemies. Somehow I can’t stop staring at the skull while I take a hit my brain starts to wander...

“Alas, Poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred…” 

The dialogue of Shakespeare snaps into my brain bringing with it the sharp and quick sting of a dagger being shoved through my skin. I can feel the memory of words crawl backwards within and there’s nothing I can do because I’m losing my mind without you. It’s nothing like I thought it would be like. You’re not here and I’m all alone. Just like that girl on the phone was when she was dying with her tears looking for her lover, Chloe and all this is happening. Happening. Happening when I look at the skull on the table. I can’t help but feel the pain of knowing that I didn’t know anyone. Not truly the way that man knew Yorick. He knew him and there’s nothing and no one that I can speak the same for. It’s like watching my body leave me behind and I no longer want another hit. I just wanted you gone. And now I’m alone.

I think of getting up and leaving the room and maybe I do because I feel like everyone is gone and I just wanted you gone because all you think about is her. I finally move because that fucking skull won’t stop reminding me of dying or losing you. 

“Where are you going?” Gina sings into my ear and I keep thinking I said something or that she’s reading my mind when the thought of finding you comes back into my head. 

“Fucking Adrian, where are you? Look at me! Come back!” Gina’s pissed but you’ve taken off waiting for me to find you again and it’s always like this when things become less than clear. 

Clear. The water in the bathtub is clear when I get in. Jemma watches me as I get into the water. I’m naked and I wonder as she’s still looking if she’s thinking that we’re sleeping together. I don’t want to sleep with Jemma. But I don’t stop her from getting into the tub with me. 

“Adrian…”

“Don’t talk Jemma,” I kiss her and tell her I miss her. It’s not a lie because I know you miss her. This means I miss her too. But I can’t feel that pain of loss. I’m just in the moment holding her. She’s trembling. I wish she wasn’t living this life. It’s hard to watch her stop being herself but it doesn’t matter. She’s in my arms and she’s my Jemina again. 

“I love you.” She looks in my eyes and says it before putting her head on my chest. I can feel her warm tears on my skin as she sobs. Between her tears and breathes I want to feel like I’m home but I can’t. I’m lost. 

I’m lost.

And I’m at the beginning of the one place I can’t remember being before I decided it didn’t matter if I found you. 

The Hollywood sign. 

It’s bigger and smaller than it looks and there’s a good chance you’re somewhere dancing with the reds while the bottle of pills stays empty in my pocket. I must have said something out loud because before I can look for another color of candy a voice reaches out into the night. 

“That’s not the Hollywood sign,” the stupid spoiled whore in the backseat who won’t blow me or get the fuck out of the rental car says. “You’re parked next to the billboard on Sunset that lights up for the tourists. It’s a fucking eyesore.” The little bitch shuts up and starts snoring again. It’s then I decide I need another car. 

Focal Point

Where your mind goes is where you’ll end up. You only carry the weight of what you keep in your focus. Without a balanced mind you don’t have a focal point to devote to achieving goals. You gotta learn to find balance within yourself to be able to focus on other things. Don’t let anyone tell you not to spend time working on yourself. 

When I started writing... It was darkness. As gritty and disturbing as I could. Lightness was never a thought. Due to its nature I wrote under a pen name. Mostly because they wouldn't publish it under a woman. An attractive woman they said "shouldn't write things like this! Why not write about love?" After years of lacking the balance, I found the lightness at the urging of a colleague who doesn’t care for who I become in the darkness and now I’m capable of focus that allows me to walk between the light & dark parts of myself to create.

We all walk between lightness & darkness. It's a choice to be happy or sad or angry or calm. Darkness or Light. And... It's also a choice to create. The balance & focus to work with both at will & not be ruled by either is liberating. Creating at will rather than need to be consumed by my emotional state was a risk but worth developing. 

Change is a constant. You control the balance in your life and hone it into a disciplined focus. 

Anyway. Here's a bit of fun from the novel... I'll let you decide how dark it is. 

Enjoy!

Kisses, m.

Dedicated

(11-2012)

“You’re leading an inauthentic life if you…” trails off the audio book in my newly detailed BMW S-series hybrid sedan that my agent has me driving for the sheer fact that ‘when you’re somebody damn it, then you’re environmentally conscious in this town’ quote unquote. 

I am somebody.

Traffic has slowed to a complete stop on the 405 while the wannabe Chopra dictates how to live a more authentic life and instead of really listening all I can focus on is the license plate in front of me that reads BIG THINGS resting above an enormous pair of balls. The larger the balls the bigger the man reads the bumper sticker resting next to the ridiculously extreme nut sack in front of me. 

Alton once told me that only the most obnoxious form of trash places those adornments on their cars. We were sitting in front of some newly opened art café in the last years oh so trendy Piedmont district when she carefully pointed out the obvious offender with two of her fingers snuggly secure in a ring containing a pair of obscenely large sapphires on her right hand.  She went on to say, “Men put their ego on display by showing off their balls and women tuck their ego neatly into a pair of overpriced shoes or a piece of jewelry,” before flashing her green finger bobbles above a pair of matching Peacock Louboutins she’d stolen from my closet. 

As I stop in the middle of the memory to wonder who she’d stolen the ring from I’m yanked forward when the traffic shifts and the Faux-pra is now telling me to “fully commit to your dream” after saying “anything is possible” before jumping back to the tagline “dedicate your life to authenticity” then disc 5 ends and traffic stops once more.

“If you want your career to go anywhere you have to be dedicated to what you are doing,” Continues Guru Zero as the traffic crawls to a stop and I realize I'm not going anywhere. “How dedicated are you?” 

On

Many years ago I was afraid to be alone. Now, I don't know what I'd do if I couldn't have time alone to reflect. I think when you are always on and trying to be what they want you to be you lose perspective of you who you are. Ultimately you start to question if it's fun. Is it still fun? I have more fun being very boring more than I do being interesting. 

Anyhoo here's an old one from my novel about being what they want you to be. A lot of people haven't read it. The ones that have keep asking me to release the book already. 

Enjoy!

Kisses,  m.

5 a.m.

(9-2-2010)

My bare skin is cold. It’s 5am when I wake up. I look over at this interesting naked man in the bed who is only wearing smeared lipstick and too much eye make-up. He looks more like a member of The Killers circa 2005 than just some guy. I roll over and start pulling the newspaper off of my arms, my face and out of my mouth. He kept trying to put this tissue paper in my mouth last night. Something about eating my words that I can’t remember. It’s not more than two feet away I see the blunt force object that he wanted me to hit him with. Flashbacks of screams pokes and paper being shoved in my mouth are at the front of my headache. He rolls over to reveal that he’s still hard. I just want him to leave already and let this be over.

I keep thinking how the mornings after the interesting nights are always the hardest to clean up. Comings and goings at all hours. Mornings though are usually spent with men in this fashion. The interesting ones, who aren’t at all concerned with why I’m spending time with them, where it’s leading, and this one is the worst kind. He doesn’t know. He thinks we are connecting. Bet he even thinks this is my place. Damn. He’s awake. Wanting more. They always want more. Maybe he’ll roll over and fall asleep again afterwards.

It’s almost always 5am. When it happens. When I wake up. I could complain like other women about being alone, but typically I’m not. I could complain that it’s another man and another bed, but I won’t. Even while this one is wanting, giving more and screaming out her name, it’s all ok. Although I want him to leave so I can be alone, I let him stay because he doesn’t know.

Its evening, another night, and another place. Its 5am somewhere else I suppose. Eight hours from now in the future that has happened yet. The bed is completely saturated in a thick sticky wetness and I’m still wearing a very large strap-on. Rolling over there’s an older man in the bed with his hands bound by leather cuffs. Next to him there’s a thin man face down with fresh contusions running up his bare back. Between his legs there’s a cord and a stop. I can feel the stickiness in my hair as I pull it forward. Pieces of my blonde look black from this wetness. I wipe the stickiness from my face and remove the brace from my mouth while getting out of bed to step out of the leather garter belt. I need a shower and a cigarette.

There’s a man standing in the bedroom doorway when I come out of the shower. He’s waiting while another man removes the boy from the room. The older man is looking out the window at the brightly lit view of Paris and masturbating. He yells in Mandarin that the view is beautiful, his favorite. The man at the door is speaking Mandarin. He is doing this for that man’s benefit. I ask him in English “what do you want me to do?” and he yells in Mandarin for me to come see the view. I go and see the view. The man at the door keeps watching. He touches my hair before telling me in Mandarin to spread my legs and lean up against the window. I do. While he comes close to finishing up, the man watching steps in and closes the door. It’s at this moment I’m pretty sure I don’t get paid enough.

It’s 8am. Adrian’s awake again. This time he wants me to sit on his lap while we eat breakfast. Tells me something about being able to connect. I don’t want to eat after he says this. I don’t want to eat while doing this, but I do. I ask him about her, the one he screams about while we’re eating breakfast. While I’m sitting on his lap, connecting I ask because he doesn’t know. It’s ok to ask because he doesn’t know. He doesn’t’ want to talk about it and finds another way to ruin breakfast for me.

After I’ve showered again and removed the pieces of cereal from my hair I call the airport for his flight change while he rinses the pieces of toast and eggs off. My instructions were explicit that he leaves town today between three and eight. The airline rebooked his flight for 3:15 and I’m trying to find his passport when I find something interesting in another pocket of his jacket. The other interesting thing peaks my interest as I read the name from his passport to the woman on the line. I flip it over and try to figure out why he’s holding it in his pocket. The woman confirms the flight and he comes out of the bathroom as I hang up the line. I ask him about her again, Felicia. He drops his towel and asks me if I want another shower. I think why the hell not. If we’re going to go another round it may as well be in the shower.

It’s 10am and not long after another shower when I surprisingly feel more connected to this man. It’s after a moment of raw emotion that he shared instead of using me. A moment when he trusted me and confided in me some of his war-torn damage experienced at the hand of a woman he loved.

“You want to know about her?” he says between biting and pulling at my bottom lip.

“Uh-hmmm,” I moan while water pulsates against my back in a circular pattern.

“6 months.” His tone changes along with his hand movements.

“And…”

“I thought that was...” He gets a little rougher.

“Don’t.” I hold his face to stop him from pushing. “Just tell me.”

“There was always… always another.”  He stops and I understand there’s pain.

There’s nothing left to say when this man breaks. No words to help with this release. I just wrap myself tighter around his body and hold him, letting him fall through the cracks.

We’re lying on the floor and he’s playing with my waist. Telling me about the imaginary lines that come out of my abdomen and lead me around in the world. Leading me to him. Then him to me to another shower.  There’s laughter instead of tears when he’s telling me this. And I’m glad he doesn’t know.

Somewhere it’s 5am when I’m naked, standing on the edge of a balcony in the middle of LA. Its 80 degrees and a man behind me is whispering in my ear and pressing himself against me. Telling me that he’s only happy when it rains while he leans in then wraps his hands tighter around my waist. Another man is spraying us with a large water hose while he leans in further. I try to shift my weight while his happiness interferes with my balance. The water feels good on my warm skin while the man’s laughter hurts my head. But he’s so happy. And this is what that feels like.

The happy man isn’t happy for long and decides that Vicodin chased by a hand job from a Korean Masseuse is a better idea instead of me, the blonde from behind on the balcony while he pretends its raining. The masseuse arrives and he decides that I can’t watch but the man with the large water hose can. I’m in the hall calling back the woman who arranges these things. I’m on the seventh ring when the happy man is on all fours getting spanked by the large water hose man while the Korean girl is trying to do her job. I turn away to handle my business.

“Annie, it’s me.” I whisper in the line.

“I’m glad you called. I’ve got another one that’s interesting.”

“I’m tired of interesting.”

“You’ll like this one. It’s in France.”

“Why France?”

“This one travels. Business.”

“Why me?”

“He has some specifics that… you’re the only one of my girls that doesn’t have restrictions. Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Has anything changed? No. I’m just tired of interesting. When do I leave?”

As I hang up the Water hose man and the Korean girl are the outside of the happy man’s sandwich. This is what happy feels like now.

Lunch is in a tiny sandwich place around the corner from the brownstone in Brooklyn I’m supposed to live in. Adrian seems happier today than yesterday. Much more like a person. I think this is the first time I’ve called anyone by their name afterwards. Or had lunch with them. He smiles a lot and I think it’s charming. He tells me about his friend Alex and mentions a girl Jemma he used to date but is friends with. Tells me about going to LA. Then he talks to me about Andy and asks how I know him. I tell him the truth. That we’re associated by some business. He keeps smiling and so I tell him about Rembrandt instead of Van Gogh to change the subject. He loves discussing art and I’m not ready to ask about the interesting thing I found in his pocket this morning.

We’re walking around the park talking about the Met, my work and then he somewhere between two trees he kisses me. I don’t know what he’s thinking but it’s nice. I decide that its time I asked him about the interesting something from this morning. That tiny piece of paper that rested so neatly between the two folds of his pocket has a story to tell and there’s no way it could go unnoticed.

On the flight back from Paris I realize that it’s actually 5am somewhere I used to be. I keep thinking about the colors in the morning when dawn breaks across the horizon as I check my email from Annie. She has another interesting job that I might be able to help her with. I respond that I need more money for that last job. I’m ordering a Vodka Martini from the steward when her response back tells me it’s already in the account and that I need to make verbal contact with the client before taking the next job. She says it is interesting and sends her apologies. I phone the client who isn’t shy about the details. He says his name is Andrew W. and that I must call him Andy because everyone does. Then he tells me that I’m for a friend of his, but he can’t know about it. He needs me for about two days and that there are specifics I must be aware of. I tell him I’m in because specifics are what I do.

It’s a little before 5am when a man picks me up at the airport. He brings a bag of clothes and tells me to change. I do. Then I ask for Andy. He says when we get there you’ll meet him. He tells me that I’m going to be pretending to be a friend of Andy’s and that I’ll be staying at a place in Brooklyn before telling me I work at the Met for the next two days. He hands me a Louis Vuitton bag full of cards, incidental money and keys with an address for the place in Brooklyn. A place where I’m supposed to do whatever is wanted and things will get interesting. I pull on the remaining pieces of the ensemble when he wants to know more.

“What’s your name honey?”

“Is that important?”

“It is if you want to get paid? Full service. Full name.”

“Can’t I just use a fake with your friend? It isn’t like he’ll know.”

“Look, honey. Quit playing games. Just tell me your name...”

Chelsea Raye Grant. That’s what my mother used to yell at me when she wanted me. Sometimes it was when I would be out by the pool working on my tan instead of going to school. I don’t know why but when he asks for my full name I’m thinking about that last time she got mad at me. It’s been years since I’ve seen her but that feeling of nostalgia creeps into my mind for a moment and I’m remembering her face. The way her mouth curled up and her teeth showed. Recalling those final words between us is like opening an old box of photos. It’s not how you remembered but it must be the truth. The sting of her slap when I told her I wanted to go to New York and be a dancer. How much I wanted to study art and live in SOHO instead of going to Stanford for Law or Medicine like her and my father. Just like I was one of her patients, she informed me of how wrong I was that I was ruining my life. And she’d probably tell me she was right if she were here now. Maybe she was right. I don’t know.

“Honey, you ok. Sorry about that.”

“No. I’m alright. No one has used my full name in a long time.”

“See your badge. For the Met. It has your name now.”

“Oh, tell me about your friend.”

“He’s interesting.”

“I thought so.”

It’s not anywhere near 5am when we’re sitting on a park bench and watching the world around us connecting. I’m lying across his lap and he’s playing with my legs. I think we’re almost comfortable enough to talk about this interesting thing. It’s taken a while to get the courage to ask him about it but I think it’s time when he takes off my right shoe. I smile and slip my hand into his pocket.

“What’s this?” I ask him pretending not to know.

“I don’t know. Maybe you should reach a little deeper.”

“I will.” I pull out my hand and the folded paper comes with it.

“What’s it look like?” he says. I unfold it then show him.

“It’s a sonogram.”

“It’s nothing. Garbage. Throw it away.”

“If it’s nothing why do you have it?”

“Because she gave it to me.”

“Who? I don’t understand. Is it yours?”

“Felicia. Was.” He pushes my legs aside and gets up. “Throw it away. Fuck, I need a hit.”

“Come on.”I get up and touch his arm then face.

“She wanted to hurt me again. So she did.”

“I’m sorry.” I don’t have the words again so I just hold him. Further into the cracks.

The car picks up a man in front of Tiffany’s. Its 5am. I can’t believe this is what I’m doing for the next day when he stumbles in looking for someone named Alex. The man dressing me in the car introduces us. I smile and tell him good morning. He smiles and tells me I look like the Mona Lisa with blonde hair only prettier. I laugh and he keeps telling me he loves my laugh. The man in the car rubs my thigh and winks.

At Andy’s there are a handful of people that Adrian talks to but doesn’t know while doing lines. I don’t feel comfortable with the drugs, but he seems to be coherent enough. There’s a Jack, a Mina, a Michael, a Sam, a Betsy Ross Grandison from Long Island that looks like a linebacker in a pair of sole-less heels. It seems that there’s simply everyone except an Alex at this morning event. An Alex that Adrian insists on finding. Somewhere between Betsy’s shoes and Adrian’s lines, my introduction to Andy is fabulously staged. We’re simply a pair of old friends reuniting for a bit of business. Adrian stops doing lines and talks with us about his missing friend Alex. Andy pulls me aside and whispers a reminder about the details. Details about his flight being booked for LA and the overwhelming need to talk him out of it in my own interesting way. There are more details that include something about this missing Alex who hasn’t left yet and is leaving tomorrow morning instead. Andy faux kisses me before saying that he has to leave the party, but we’re welcomed to stay until Adrian’s flight later.

11am. I‘m wondering when this will get interesting as I continue to talk with Adrian about art and reinforce the lies they want me to tell him. About my connections and the arrangements I’ve made for his flight. About this place in Brooklyn. About the work at the Met. He loves the lies. Somewhere between 11:30am and Noon after leaving his friend Alex another message he tells me he’s never ridden the ferry to Staten Island. I tell him we should go and that he has plenty of time before he has to be at the airport. It’s a lie, but we can’t sit around and wait for his flight if he’s supposed to miss it.

At the airport terminal there’s a woman that takes the itinerary and then turns it into a ticket. While I’m getting the ticket I remember how the ferry ride proved to be more difficult than interesting to get through without his candy reminded of this because I can see him trying to take a hit from the counter. Shrugging his head and missing the hit. It was the same way he shrugged when I kept asking him to put it away because I didn’t feel comfortable around drugs earlier. And then I see him trying to use his phone again while a security guard watches. Even on the ferry between talking to me and looking at the view he was trying to call his friend Alex. He kept telling me about the view of the city, how it’s beautiful and he loves it before telling me I’m Mona Lisa in the middle of the ocean. The woman says it will be another five minutes to process the ticket. And I think of him telling me about Van Gogh and the whores before telling me about his ear.

The woman is finished. It’s been ten minutes instead of five. When she hands me the boarding pass I’m still thinking about him earlier and realize that it was the longest time I’ve spent on a boat since I was a child with anyone other than my father. He looks happy when I return to him with the ticket. The flight is soon but I tell him we could do other things instead of flying right now because he doesn’t need to know why he can’t get on that plane. He doesn’t know he’s being manipulated when he tells me he wants to but he can’t. Using my best my smile I tell him there are always later flights. I rub his hand gently and tell him that he doesn’t need the candy anymore. He doesn’t know so it’s okay to say it. Then I touch his face and tell him that I want to show him my place in Brooklyn. While I keep rubbing his hand and touching his face he tells me it’s okay but we’ll need to stop for some things and I know this is where it gets interesting.

In a cab on the way to the airport he says he wants to tell me more about her. I didn’t ask to know. He just tells me this before he tells me he’s going to do a line. I look at the rearview mirror and the driver is watching. I tell him I’ll make it interesting if he skips the line and the story. He smiles and says “how interesting?” as he unzips his pants. The driver is still watching in the mirror and turning his head around. I tell him let’s get out and talk about it. This makes the driver upset and he goes back to looking at the road. Somewhere along the way I find myself kissing him in the back of the cab instead of doing anything interesting. He never tells me more about her and I’m still glad he doesn’t know.

We’re at the airport. He’s taking his time in the bathroom and I know why. I don’t want him to go. Go back to the drugs. Go back to his disconnect from the pain. I like the lie that we’ve become. It isn’t real but the illusion is so much better. He’s emerging from the men’s room dancing to the airport musak version of Big Pimpin. There’s a security guard that moves with him to the beat and a kid that gives him a high five mid shuffle. The whole moment is ridiculous, and I think I want him to stay more. But he’s leaving. Telling me that he’ll see me next time and I know that it won’t be true. Because even though I’m me, I’m really not. And because even though he’s him, he won’t be soon. For the moment he’s kissing me and I’m kissing him back before he goes through airport security and leaves when I want him to stay. Because it’s ok if I’m not alone.

“5am. Wake up.” Her words come off the line without a hello.

“It’s 3:45pm. I’m not asleep.” I tell her. The plane has only been in the air for thirty-five minutes and its time for the next job.

“Are you ready for the next one, 5am?”

“I guess so.”

“This last one wasn’t too specific I hope.”

“No. Not at all. I didn’t mind it so much…”

“How was it?”

“Anything but interesting.”

Interesting. This is more than interesting that I’ve been left alone. I take a hit while looking at a pair of diamond earrings that I can’t afford without cash in my hand but it doesn’t stop me from looking or thinking about buying them. Shopping without money in your hand isn't recommended but I can't get back into the car. Can I? There’s a man with a hat looking at me in the store window when I realize that it’s just you looking at me and Alex is really gone now. The car left less then fifteen minutes ago and only I got out. There must be a mistake is all I can think when it happens. But it happens and calling Alex’s line only gets me Andy. Andy tells me he will send a car, but it is going to take some time. I tell him that time is all I have. He tells me his friend is coming to get me. I need another hit while I wait on the curb. After 30 minutes a homeless man takes a hit from me while passing through. I can’t seem to remember what happened before Alex left but it wasn’t good because you're still hear in my head all silent and smug. It wasn’t something you said, was it? I keep wondering if I will catch up to Alex before he leaves to LA. I don’t want to miss the flight. But you tell me it’s too late when a car pulls up. There’s a man and a woman inside. I don’t know them but she’s beautiful and I want to get in. So do you. Let’s go.