a poorly written essay on operant conditioning

I need to write something so I can go back to sleep. It’s currently 5:12 AM in sleepy Hershey, Pennsylvania! There’s a little sister on the pull-out couch beside you and a very nice boyfriend in the bedroom. There’s a chance of showers and chocolate bars later today. At about 9 AM we see an 85% chance of insomnia-regret. Coming up next, more on sleepless wonders with fewdstamps…

I moved across the country, I moved back home to Alabama. Since I have rearranged the furniture in my “room”- the upstairs bedroom in my dad’s house. I’ve been struggling everyday with finding a balance. Accepting that I’ve moved and the decision is far-passed made, being happy and accepting happiness IN Alabama, and lastly feeling like I’m in a direction. There’s at least a moment everyday that I don’t feel balanced. Moreover, it’s become increasingly hard to feel or want to be a writer anymore. Why have I become so fearful in the past couple of years. Where is that daredevil?

It’s all necessary. I sit in my room, legs up on my short dresser that doubles as a coffee table for my typewriter and discarded clothes and find myself lost in the bare wall in front of me. Barely four months I’ve lived here- an apartment far beyond any standards or glimpse of ‘luxury’ I held before. Boxes are lined against the door, innocent to the travels we’re about to take but ready. More ready than I am. They’re necessary, more than I thought before.

I moved here a year ago and I have never felt so different in a year. Never so far with accomplishments and failures, equally. Heartbreak I would have never wished to read about. I can’t blush or cry or feel anything but pride. Though I’m aware of the pain I know is ahead. By Friday. When all the books and short summer shorts and flea market bags and club wigs are packed and the room is emptied. When I look at this ‘luxury bedroom’ bare for whoever next, just as I looked at that weird Spanish-style studio apartment with no working A/C last summer.

It’s weird to feel so different than the person I just was a year ago yet feel the exact same angst. But here it is, looking at the highway as an empty canvas, as open doors and with a new name if I want. Something like “Anne” or “Elle.”

Little Girl, Big City part 2.

Where am I going?

When should I begin?

Who will go with me? Who will stay?

I was fired/lost my waitress job last Wednesday. The same day I returned from vacation, needless to say I’ve got no money saved up and I’m looking at returning home at the end of this week. I couldn’t sleep at all last night. I went bargain shopping with my friend Jessica then hung out at her place watching shitty tv programs with her and her boyfriend. Her boyfriend is a child actor and an extensive film enthusiast. We had a pretty good time watching “reality shows” and drinking fancy tequila drinks he conjured up (with a little dash of an equally fancy joint). On my drive home I watched the Hollywood signs and lights dance past my car and into my heart, the Magic Castle, and odd corner cafes and insignificant street signs that have made a nostalgic nest in my heart. Could I love LA after-all?

It’s not fair to feel like you’ve accepted a path and your gut, your parents, your boyfriend- everyone is on board! But you’re not. You’re not ready. You’re scared, confused, and really feel like throwing your life to the fate of a coin toss. Heads we stay, tails we go. Or would it be the other way around?

I scheduled an audition at 3 pm today. Why not? It’s an extra in a crappy sounding pilot, but it’s something I’ve never done in Los Angeles and I felt like I should try to get all this done in my last week here. I’m probably going to cancel it soon. I’ve got to go, I’ve already made the plans.

I just called to cancel and the line was busy. I constantly look for a sign in everything, but sometimes things just happen and you go with it without thinking so damn much! But not me, not raised in movies with narrations and connections and signs! I’ll call again.

One year later.

“I gave you everything! I gave up everything- for you!” She cried out, pleading him to stay. But she wasn’t really pleading him. He didn’t know this of course, but it made no difference all the same. “How can you do this to-” She looked up at him, face shining, face soaking, and hushed her sobbing all at once. That’s when he walked out.

Their daughter Sophie was watching from her the crack under her bedroom door. Sophie would slide out of her bed slowly into her cushy mouse slippers and scamper soundlessly over to the door. Her tiny blue mermaid lamp gave just enough light to provide a good show of her parents feet. She did this every time they fought and on the nights before Christmas, to Sophie the yelling and crying were just part of the ballet she saw from between the floor and the door. Sophie loved ballet- almost as much as her daddy.

When the door slammed Sophie jumped up and ran out of her bedroom. “Daaaadddy!!” she shrieked and ran towards where he once stood. The mother stopped Sophie, scooped her up and shh-ed her saying “Quiet baby, everything’s gonna be okay now.”

*

“‘Everything’s gonna be okay now!’ That’s what she said! I wanted to say ‘what’s gonna be okay mom?! when we got no money? when daddy never comes back and it’s your fault? or is it gonna be okay when you start to hit me as i grow up lookin’ more like him than you?!”

“Sophie, I thought you said your stepFather would hit you?”

“Sure. I mean, they both did. Wait, are you here to listen to me and take notes or ask me questions?”

“I’m just here for you, Sophie. Whatever you need.”

Daddy… Sophie whispered and picked up the stuffed bear she had been talking to from the sofa. She walked calmy, dry and not-crying to her small blue garbage bin she painted a mermaid on and threw her therapist in- with all the others.

*

“Sophie!! Where’s dinner?!” her mother cried.

There’s a bar near my apartment in Los Angeles called “The Woods.” It’s dark, the people are damp and it draws you in with a mysterious thirst for adventure- but mostly a thirst to get lost. I’ve been there two times and both times I’d say I was successfully lost in boozey loud laughter and unappealing sexual glances. It’s probably one of my favorite bars in the city, though the martinis could be better.

Today is the 4th of July, one of my favorite holidays. Though, I’ve celebrated the 4th less than any other holiday. The weird thing about the US’s Independence Day, opposed to several other countries, is that no one else celebrates or chooses to acknowledge it in any festive way. Cinco de Mayo we all get drunk! Whatever St. Paddy’s day is we open the bars at freaking 6 am and little people are kings for a whole day. I was in South America for two 4ths in a row and the most celebration we got was drinking homemade fermented fruit juice and hearing a few distant gun shots. This 4th I’m visiting my boyfriend in Pennsylvania who happens to be working the PM shift in the ER. So, I’m drinking a glass of tawny and watching the Woods from his back patio.

I don’t know what it is about watching Woods, it’s not like watching a movie- I mean nothing actually happens. But there’s intrigue lying beneath those trees. Something is happening. Squirrely animals are feasting and nesting, bugs are fighting and mating, coyotes are readying for a night’s hunt. (I don’t actually know if there are coyotes in Pennsylvania, but I’ll run with it.) Maybe someone’s lost. Maybe someone’s burying a body.  Or maybe there’s an eclipse of happenings in these woods and everything is still aside from the ruffle of the trees and one girl watching and writing about this particular forest. And that’s something.

But this evening I have something to ask these woods, I’m feeling ‘here’ again. Here, in my head which is discovered, found, unraveled before another fellow. Another someone to love, I could, probably do love. And I want to hide. Run into the woods, maybe leave a note, maybe not? Disappear and get lost with myself. Running first at fast out of fear then slower and slower until I find a tree stump or rock or anything that calls my name and invites me to sit and laugh and feel free. Free of disappointment, disapproval or just discovery. Free to feel me and safe with just me. Which is the struggle between being a Woods-person or.. a People-person.  And most who believe they’ve discovered ‘me’ would say “That’s the alcohol talking. That’s why you can’t drink, can’t stay inside! You gotta get out! Socialize, get a job, be somebody.” In the Woods, you don’t gotta be nobody. You can speak with double negatives, speak to the trees, listen to the trees. You can be dark, you can be damp. But for how long before you become a fossil?

Bitter, black

blistering heat.

Swirling streams

of steam and

Tick-tocks,

droopy, dopey lids,

Cracking bones

and Splitting eggs.

6 am,

all over again.

[alternate ending

It tingles,

It stings

the Taste of 6 am,

all over again. ]

After a couple hours of frustration over being a waitress and feeling like a failed writer I decided to sit down and just write. Blank, nada. So I looked at my coffee and said, just write about coffee. So I did, and I like it. I think maybe I’ll do a whole hour/time of day series. We’ll see…

I wrote a life lesson on youcanbeloud today to make sense of parenting my parents. That was all to-the-point and painted white. Really, I’d like to paint it colorful- even cover it in wallpaper. And by that I mean fictionize it, make believe the story and make it beautiful, nonsensical and eventually emotional senseful for myself.

Two sisters separated. They communicate through letters to help the days pass and continue their plan to be together again. I guess I’d like the sisters to possess Cinderella-esque qualities but without Prince Charming. Something’s missing, though, and it’s leaving my words dry and sluggish. I’ve got nothing to say about them, ergo I can’t motivate myself to bring them to life. I need to do some soul searching into what these girls need. What’s hurting them and why their calling me to help them.

Ah ha! Side note to the sisters, I’ve found a new twist to my old project about the writer obsessed with her characters and working. Call it homage to the 80s film “Cool World,” real people with their real problems all over the world in different times call to the writer in her dreams so that she will feel them, know them and write their stories and help their lives. e.g. helping the two sisters come together, helping a Princess run away, an old woman die, a dog find freedom, even a zombie learn to eat his first brain? Whatever it is, she writes it and she solves it. I’ll call it “Keystrokes.” And obviously she has to have bought a typewritter from some witch doctor woman or something or other… or two doomed “star-crossed” lovers put their blood in a pen and the pen is then poured into a typewritter’s ink ribbon so other’s who possess this great love can be helped. Hm, this could be good.

In the year of 1993 when “Rock” music was taking a turn for the more feminine, technological advances were spreading quicker than the AIDS epidemic and the name “Michael” was again the most popular baby name (for girls), a beautiful young woman unpopularly named Lyn Guini was living with her family in a traveling circus. Lyn Guini had long, beautiful blond hair like a fairy tale princess and often braided it to keep the dirt from gathering in it as it drug the ground behind her. She was sweet, humble and mistakenly witty considering the average IQ of her circus family was 12. They were simple people who fit better in the hidden Georgian hills of 1939, but they made do by listening to Christian Rock rather than the screeches of “Nivanee er eny ah da junk out da soun’ bock.” However, Lyn Guini loved Nivanee and dreamed of becoming a real Rock princess.

Lyn Guini’s mom was a damn good sword swallower and her dad was half handsome, his job was to clean up after the elephants that her little sister Cappy Lini rode and danced on. Lyn Guini was the star Elephant Ballerina until she had a nightmare of being impregnated by one and could never go near the beasts again. So, they made her the ticket girl. Everyday Lyn Guini sat in her ticket box and let her yellow locks flow freely out of the window and down under the feet of the Sweaty Smellers waiting for the show.

One dreadful, hot Summer eve Lyn Guini was collecting tickets and thanking folks’ patronage as usual when one beat-neck leather-wearer tried to enter the Square Bros Circus free of charge. A despicable act to most the Circkies, but as Lyn recognized the Nivanee patches on his worn jacket she agreed to let him in only if he promised to return and make her a real Rock Princess. The beat-neck agreed and left the show after only 20 minutes.

Lyn Guini chased after her rock savior, but tripped over her hair and missed her opportunity to escape the Square Bros.

Lyn Guini ran back to her barn stable bedroom and threw herself in her haystack. “Never again, oh Balla! I nevar wannew list yer Christiay Rock er han’ yer ticks to tha Sweaty Smellers! Y’ear me! I curse yer name, oh Balla, and I cut me locks at yew!” So with tears flooding and tangling her hair, Lyn Guini snicked into her parent’s stable and stole her dad’s shaving sheers. Then Lyn Guini turned on the Soun Bock to Nivanee’s popular “Feels like Bean Merit” and cut her beautiful hair into an ugly,  rugged hair cap. She wrapped her dad’s sheers in her ball of murdered hair and prodded and padded the mess until it became a decent pillow to rest on. The next day Lyn Guini woke to squeals and whistling hill-billy cries from her circus family and received 18 lashes “fer cuttin hair falsely in the name oh Balla an’ lettin an Leather Wearer in ta their sacred Christiay Circus.”

Lyn Guini didn’t care though, she believed her leather-wearer would return and make her a real Rock Princess like he promised. Despite what all the Circkies said, Lyn trusted the Soun Bock. One day Lyn Guini’s very own voice would get to speak in the Soun Bock, she just knew it.

Three years passed and the leather-wearer never returned. Lyn Guini was banished from the Tick Box and forced to clean the PoppyCocks after every show, though she didn’t really mind this because she was able to keep her hair short as it made more sense for cleaning PoppyCocks. Everyday she would sweep the Sweaty Smellers’ filth while her Pa cleaned up after the Elephants and Circkies in the middle ring. Life was just as meaningless as it was in the Georgian hills of 1939, when Lyn Guini decided to ask her dad if they could venture out to the far river to see what they could pick up on the Soun Bock.

“Jes after we finish up here, Paw. It want take long and we ken be back fer Maw, Cappy Lini er any ah tha Circkies even know!”

“Ain’t no way, Lil’ Guini! Do yew know what lines yew put in fer yer maw an’ me!? Well hell, Lil Guini, ya ma almost chocked on one a’ her swords last night jes thinkin’ bout what yew done three yars back! Ain’t nothing on that Soun Bock we needa-”

“Paaaawww!!”

Lyn Guini screeched and ran towards her father but tripped over a bucket of left-over PoppyCocks. It was too late. One of the elephants got tired while her Pa was cleaning his behind and sat down on Lyn’s poor father. Pa Guini was gone, wasn’t even a shoe left when the elephant stood back up.

Without the respect of her father around, Lyn Guini was left to the mercy of the Square Bros. Many Circkies whispered around that Lyn would be traded or maybe even made to dress like one of the baby elephants for dancin. For Lyn Guini, she just wanted to go out to the far river and go to sleep forever with her Soun Bock. That’s exactly what Lil Guini started planning for the afternoon after her Pa’s Lovin’ Memory Chain Speak Easy. And much to her surprise everyone was preoccupied enough with her Ma’s Sword Swallowing Love Sonnet that she easily slipped out the back and headed towards the West Woods, Pa’s sheers in hand, when the leather-wearer was walking up the path towards the Circkies’ camp.

“Is that you, Spa Ghetti?”

“No… is Lyn Guini.”

“I know. I was just pokin fun, but I guess you haven’t been out much.”

“Actually I nevar been out an YOU nevar came back! YOU promised to make me a real life Rock Princess! ‘Member? Y’aint nothing but a Leather Wearer, you! I let you in fer free an got 18 lashes.”

“I felt like I got 18 lashes just in that 20 minutes you let me into your cult camp.”

“Why’d you have to be like this, ole Leather Wearer. I believed in you an yer rock, even now!”

“Come on then, Lyn Guini! You didn’t hear my song about you on your soun bock?”

“No.. my Pa died in an elephant, but I was just out to the far river ta try an give it a listen now.”

“Let’s both go, then we’ll go and make you a real Rock Princess. And grow that hair back out, too!”

“You mean it this time? Ya gonna take me outta here, ya’ll be my rock savior!?”

“I sure will.”

At that Lyn Guini ran to her leather-wearer and jumped in his arms. With little crop-hair Lyn and her Soun Bock, the leather wearer carried them through the West Woods and down to the river’s edge where the rock static drowned and crisp sound came beating clear into the Soun Bock’s speakers.

Up next we got Leather Spender and the Dreidels with their new hit ‘Got My Girl at the Corner Circus Store.’  Somewhere in between a love song and a nightmare, we got no idea where Spender Spider got the idea for these lyrics, but we love it!

The leather-wearer leaned into Lyn Guini and whispered in her ear, “Sorry it took me so long, but I keep my promises.”

Anne was working for her friend at the Vantage bookstore. Vantage was a cute, eclectic book and novelty store located on a side alley close to downtown. The store was usually empty and extremely boring, but survived because of the rare, high-ticket items it sold. It was going on the third hour of having absolutely no one come in and Anne had been playing Bessie Smith on the phonograph and dancing about the store dusting the tables and shelves with her silk hair scarf. Anne’s long, dark hair was frizzy from being pinned up, but fell down her back beautifully nonetheless. Bessie Smith was turned up loud, Anne and the blues empress were belting something or other about love when the man who had been watching in the doorway began clapping. Anne whipped around, screamed and fell into a table moleskin notebooks and handmade necklaces.

“I’m so sorry, Miss! Here let me help you up.”

“No, I’m fine really. I didn’t know anyone had come in… you weren’t watching for long were you?”

“Ha! Only since you did that twirling number and grabbed the broom to sing into. You could book a number at the Apollo.”

“Oh, I get it. You come in to taunt a poor girl’s singing abilities. Well I think we probably have a book for that, so you’ve come to the right place.”

“You’re adorable. Here, take my hand.”

I’d never let a man help me up, but hell he’s so cute and he did just catch me singing the blues, Anne thought and took the stranger’s hand to stand up. They shared a strange moment looking at each other when Anne realized she was still holding his hand.

“Ah, well.. did you want to take a look at that book or were you really here for the show?”

He chuckled and handed Anne her scarf back that she had thrown at him during the scare. “No, no.. Well maybe here for the show, but I’m in town for a wedding and I left the gift back home. Just looking for a decent gift to give the newlyweds.”

“I see, well we’ve got some real neat records in the back. You know, mood-settin’ kinda music like Ella Fitz. Or if you prefer, there’s a collector’s box of a year’s worth of Ladies’ Home Journal. Men seem to think all proper wives need those. ”

“Hm, well I haven’t got much time. Could you point me in the direction of your poetry collections and ink sets?

“Agh. A much better present, sorry I couldn’t have suggested something logical like that. All the poetry’s on the far wall, let me know if you want any suggestions.

“Would you mind just selecting something for me. I’m a doctor and I don’t tend to understand beauty in words beyond describing the body. You’re music taste was good, I trust you.”

“Ha. Glad you trust me, I’ll see what I can do.”

Anne went over and selected a large hard bound journal of Eastern poetry with a silly haiku on the cover. She also chose three matching red, white and blue covered editions of poetry collected from past presidents. She met the man back at the counter with the heavy books and a beautiful feather and ink set. He laughed and Anne struggled to lift the books onto the high counter and slammed them down due to their weight.

“Did you find the most expensive ones?

“I sure did, and I think they all match nicely.”

“They do. I especially like the combination of this weird patriotic set you got with the Eastern gibberish.

“Hey now! These great American poems are a rare gem! Know one even knows how the secretaries collected them all. And the gibberish is finely translated art. You’ll have the best gift there.”

“No doubt about that. I’m glad I came in.”

Anne smiled at him and brushed her whispy bangs out of her face, “I’m Anne.”

“Nice to meet you, Miss Anne. Stephen.”

“Pleasure.”

“This is strange, but would you be interested in being my date to the wedding? It isn’t completely respected to go to a Jewish wedding alone.”

“Not kosher to arrive alone?”

“Funny. The wedding’s at 8pm.”

“I’m afraid I’ve got to stay here until 9pm. But maybe we could get coffee before you leave.”

“I’d love that, can I phone you?”

“Certainly.” At that Anne printed the receipt and wrote her house number at the top. “Here’s my number and your total.”

“Wow! So this is how you dupe men into spending $150 dollars on books, just write your name at the time.”

“You caught me.”

Anne smiled and giggled until her cheeks turned rosie. Stephen smiled back. Then he shook his head softly at her blush and took out his check book. “$200 to pay for the personal shopping and gift wrap.” Anne took the check quickly, “I didn’t say anything about gift wrap!” She handed him a bow from under the counter and smiled a crooked pirate smile at her new suitor. “Dr. Stephen Smitten, that’s a cute name.”

“Hey now, I didn’t choose it. Thanks for the gift wrap, Miss Anne. I’ll call you tomorrow.”