Gossip [&] the Devil

April 20th, 1984, 7:15p.m.

I died as soon as I was born. I wasn’t supposed to live, having fallen out of the womb too soon. With the aid of injections, within two weeks the doctors performed three months worth of developing my heart and lungs. My heart is now a large hotel without vacancies. When a room does open up, it takes years to fill. Modern medicine really is a miracle.

January 4th, 2009, 1:53 p.m.

The Story of how I came to be in this place of virtual webspace, and on various pieces of black and white marked paper bound in books you’ve probably never read, is a long one. [Could you have guessed?] But it’s charming, or so I’ve been told. I’ve met muses, heros, lovers, haters, livers, breathers, movers, shakers and lazy makers. I’ve met the hopeful. I’ve been the hopeless.

I’ll tell my Story in parts, little whispered secrets into a very large, empty space. Let’s see if I can hear my echo. The Story begins appropriately with the first, functioning muse of my career: Billy Corgan.

January 31st, 2000, 12:00a.m.

Singer/songwriter/svengali/Smashing Pumpkins mastermind, Billy Corgan [and company] are having an autograph signing in Lawrence, Kansas. My mother won’t take me, and passes the buck to my father, who’s slumped in front of the glowing T.V. “California is a faraway place,” is his  slurred reply. Both answers are entirely unacceptable, and the beginning pangs of razor edge intuition slice right through my stomach. This isn’t a choice.

I pack the essentials in an old army backpack [The Smashing Pumpkins CD's Machina and Adore, a poster, a change of socks and a bottle of water] and set the mess next to my bedroom door, before I dress how I believe to be “elegant” [ a black slip, ripped jeans, black/gold sparkly tights and maryjanes. Fashion is presentation and first impressions are essential when you have a burning arrow in your side screaming "these are the days, these are the people who will shape your life."]. I have no clue how to arrive at Kief’s Records on Iowa Street, but I’m not scared. I am a mother protecting her potential children, the poems I’d only begun  to write. Both of us need nourishment, and I’ll be damned if I’m to be denied.

I sit, plotting and devising a way to make the four hour drive, listening to mix cassette tapes I’d make for myself recording the Pumpkins from the radio. I have no money, only a will. I call my boyfriend to coordinate and ask for advice.

“I’ll take you up there. I know it means a lot to you,” was his reply.

January 31st, 2000, 6:00 a.m.

I’m 14 and going to run away, but only for a moment. Guided by dim street lamps lining 9th Street and breath making ghost-shapes in the chilly air I walk through the wet grass to my boyfriends house.  He’s 15. Neither of us have a proper liscense, but he has a permit and has recently bought his first car from a reposession sale at Eastman National Bank. A beat up, emerald green beretta, is to be my carriage to the ball, so that I could dance with a prince far more intriguing than I at the time…