Neurotic

When I am in the Seventh Grade, Daddy goes back to college. He studies Psychology, which I soon find out is the most interesting subject in the world. Daddy brings home these big, interesting textbooks. There's a big black one called Introduction to Psychology. That one's okay, but there's another black one called Abnormal Psychology, and that one is fascinating.

Abnormal Psychology is the study of people who are insane. People who are insane fascinate me. There are all these rules normal people have to follow all the time, but insane people don't have any rules. Of course they have to be locked up in hospitals, because they're insane, so they're probably dangerous. How could somebody not be dangerous, living without rules like that? But isn't it kind of interesting? What must it be like to live like that, without any rules at all?

Men After My 23rd Birthday

At 27, I do the stupidest thing in my entire life, but it seems smart at the time: I tell myself that graduate school is not a fulfilling way of living, and being a college professor probably won't be either. I need a job with more meaning, I say to myself, and the right place to find this is in religion. I finish up my M.A. In History, but when I am done I leave the University. I apply to a Claremont School of Theology, to enter their Religious Counseling program, and while I am waiting to be accepted, I go home and stay with my parents in Barstow. While I am there, I substitute teach again, and pay a small rent to my mother. Now I've got more time on my hands, and with more time, comes more chance for dating. In other words, I go from my normal average of one date a year, to a new average of one boyfriend:

The first one, I meet while I am still completing work for my M.A. I am at an SCA event with Katarina. Like always, I am following her around like a little baby duck follows its mama, because I don't know any SCA people except Katarina and a couple of others, but as for her, she knows everyone. Like always, I am just hugely grateful to anyone who will talk to me and make me feel less lonely. Then I meet Henry, who not only talks to me, but is also interesting.

Men -- Before My 23rd Birthday

One time when I was like 13, my Grandma Johnson took me aside and told me I’d never get a man if I didn’t get rid of my pot-belly.  She said that’s what her parents told her, and then she did get rid of it, and after that she got a really good husband.  I don’t know what Grandma means about the pot-belly. -- Maybe she means I’m fat?  Because she’s kind of fat too, so apparently her “pot-belly” came back.  Does she mean I need to stand up straighter?  Mama and Daddy are on me about that all the time, and I just hate it, because I already stand up as straight as I know how. -- But I have no doubts what Grandma means about getting a man.  And even though I don’t really care if I ever get married, I understand perfectly well that I am a failure as a woman if guys don’t want to go out with me.

Things to Do to Lose Weight

The first rule of dieting is that if something doesn't have very many calories, you can have as much as you want of it. There's this place in the Diet Watchers' Guide for instance, where the author talks about how when she gets cravings for bad foods, what she'll do is go get a whole can of Chinese vegetables and eat it with mustard sauce on the top. Or there's this recipe for Unlimited Soup: All it's got in it, is things you can eat as much of as you want, like canned tomato juice, and celery, and cabbage, and bouillon cubes. Conceivably, you could eat a whole recipe of that stuff at one sitting, although all I've ever managed is a couple of bowlfuls.

Good Foods and Bad Foods

There is only one rule that decides if a food is good or bad, and that is if you're fat or not. If you're fat, the only good foods are tuna, and grapefruit, and vegetables. If you're not fat, anything you want to eat is good. For instance my sisters are not fat. Mama buys them delicious things like sugared cereals and whole milk. She makes them cookies, and when it's someone's birthday, they always get a slice of the cake. Grandpa Brown visits, and he takes us all out to Baskin Robbins for ice cream. Linda and Karen can have whatever they want, but Mama calls after me as we go out of the house, that I'd better watch my diet.

The Food You Eat Because You're Supposed To

I am a good eater.  I’m not picky like my sister.  I like eggs and milk (unlike Robin).  For a while there when I’m very young, I pick all the onions out of my food like she does, but I learn very quickly not to mind having them there.  They’re a little slimy, but they just taste like what they’re cooked with.  I like mushrooms.  I like fish, the broiled kind, as well as the kind fried in cornmeal like Grandma Johnson makes.  I even learn to like oysters, at least the chewy outside-parts (I leave the squishy middles for Mama and Daddy).  

There are just a few things that I really, really don’t like:  I hate lima beans cooked with ham.  Other kinds of beans are good, but lima beans have this weird sharp-taste.  Also they’re big and squishy, and kind of dry-feeling in the middle.  I always have to cover my serving with catsup so I can even eat it.  Then I’m still the last person at the table those nights, because I don’t like catsup very much either.  I don’t like squash.  Mama and Daddy have a deal with us:  You have to eat a vegetable with your dinner, but it can be either salad or the cooked vegetable, you don’t have to eat both.  So most nights when Mama makes squash, I eat the salad instead.  Only sometimes there isn’t any salad.  I eat one piece of squash.  I put it on the tip of my tongue, and I gulp it down like a pill, with lots of milk.  It usually wants to come right back up when I eat it like that, but I don’t let it, because I know I’m just going to have to eat another one if it does.

Spot and Rover

We used to have this place in the back driveway where we dump all our bones and meat scraps.  Our cats would go and eat them and, naturally, a lot of stray cats did too.  Some of them were kind of wild and fought our cats, but most of the strays were nice.  We liked having them there, because when one of our cats died, we could just adopt the friendliest of the strays and have a new cat.

I Am Outed As A Lesbian Only Not Really

My friend Faye works at a bookstore, and she knows how to find the best porn. It's in the Literature section, under the author name “Anonymous”. Most of it was written during the Victorian era, and whatever their reputatations, those Victorians had some dirty minds!

The year I graduate from college, I decide I am done being a good girl and being alone all the time. I want to be a bad girl and have some fun. I go to the B. Dalton bookstore at the mall, and I buy myself some porn. I buy The Story of O, which is frankly, boring. I buy Fanny Hill (which, it turns out, is all about “nasty stuff” after all). That one's pretty good, but the best book I buy is a Victorian novel about a brother and sister who's governess turns them on to spanking. That's the one I read over and over. I learn how to masturbate, to that book (and masturbation, it turns out, is pretty darn good). I keep it under the mattress when I'm visiting my parents. Then when the visit's over and I'm back at home, I just leave it out where anyone can see it.

Hell

Following rules is not a problem. Sometimes it's hard to know what they all are, but once you find out, well you just follow them, and then you're okay. Where it starts to be a problem though, is that you don't get saved by just following rules. Jesus said God isn't impressed by outward show. He cares about what's in your heart. And once I start to really think about it, I realize that what's in my heart isn't what God wants to be there.

Linda's Loser Sister

For about five years, I am better at stuff than my little sister. Then Linda starts right out in Kindergarten, getting better at stuff than me. She can already color pictures in better than me before she even starts the First Grade. – How you do it, is you use your crayon to trace an outline around the edge, and then you fill the rest in. I know, because she explains it to me. Only I never care about coloring other peoples' pictures in enough to do it her way. She quickly becomes better at making friends than I am too. We share the same friends when she is in First Grade and we're going to the same school. Then I move to a different school from her the next year, and I start doing nothing but losing friends, while she starts gaining them big-time.

How Do You Explain to People What You're Really Like?

In the fall of 1982, I start at a new college. I get a room in the downstairs residence hall nearest the cafeteria, and I get there the day before my roommate, and open the windows wide to let in cool air (of which there doesn't turn out to be any). I set up my record player and play my new Oklahoma cast album that I got over the summer.

When the others show up, it turns out most of them don't like me much. I'm in the Performing Arts dormitory, which you would think would be a good thing, because I like acting, and theatre, and that kind of thing. But it isn't, it really isn't. A lot of the kids on the hall are gay. I don't mind gay people, even though my religion says I should. Gay people are outsiders, like me, and I am always on the side of the outsiders. But after they find out I'm a Baptist, the other kids on the hall don't bother asking me what I think. They just make a lot of assumptions, and then they don't like me because of them.

Paper Dolls

I didn't like making paper dolls when I was little. I don't think I drew very well. Plus I couldn't get the clothes to fit the bodies. When I was little, I preferred my Dawn Dolls and my Fashion Flatsy's. I'd go into Mama's cupboard and I'd get out her scrap box. She let me take whatever in there that I wanted. I'd cut squares out of the prettiest fabrics. Then I cut holes in the squares for armholes, and make dresses for my dolls, and I'd put arms for holes. I cut strips to use as waistbands, and I cut out circles, with holes in the middle for my dolls to wear as hats.

I knew this wasn't real sewing. One time Mama helped me real-sew a doll's dress. It was very hard, and took a lot of sewing, and when I was done one of the arms was out inside-out. Mama sewed another one from the same pattern, which is how I knew mine wouldn't have been any good even if I had sewn it right. It wasn't really a dress, more like kind of a bathrobe, and made out of stiff, ugly pink-flowered cloth. I liked my own pretend-dresses, that were really just squares, but were long and pretty, and showed off the dolls' boobs.

I Stop Hating Karen

At first after she's born, I hate my sister Karen more than anything. She cries all the time, and she poops her diapers. And the grown-ups don't notice how disgusting she is, they just keep on liking her. They take millions of pictures of her. They never take pictures of Linda or me any more, but all Karen has to do is sit there, and out comes the camera, because that's apparently the cutest thing in the world. She sleeps in her crib. I want to know! How is that special? I sleep too, and no one ever wants to take a picture of me. She washes dishes. What's so big about that? Don't I do the same thing practically every night?

Things Were Better Before We Moved.

This is my back yard in Westminister. That window in back of me is my window, from the room I share with my sister Linda. We have a bunk bed, and I sleep in the bottom bunk because I'm the bigger one. Linda sleeps in the top bunk, with rails on her bed like it's a crib. One time I have this cake by my bed. It's a Little Debbie cake, that came in a plastic bag, and it has white frosting on top and white cream in the middle. I don't eat it in time and ants come into my room and get it. I tell Mama and Daddy that I know there are ants in my room because I can smell them (they smell like how blue cheese tastes). They don't believe me, but then they look, and they find them. Mama and Daddy are very impressed at me because I can smell ants.

I'm On Top of the World ...Only not really.

When I am in Sixth Grade, my school has a talent show. This isn't just the ordinary kind of talent show, where you can get up and sing, or play an instrument or whatever. This is a really serious, important one, where you have to go to practices ahead of time, and there are judges who award prizes. I really want to be in it. I like all talent shows, because I like singing. And singing in a talent show is better than just singing in Music Class, or being in Cherub Choir at church. I get to choose what song I sing, and I can do more than one of them if I want to. The prizes make this one better, but I would want to be in it just as much even without them.

Me and Jesus

Everyone knows it is very important to accept Jesus into your heart, because otherwise you won't be a Christian, and you can't go to Heaven. If you don't go to Heaven, you will go to Hell. You will burn in a lake of fire and be away from your family forever. If you do go to Heaven, you get to sing hymns and listen to Jesus' words for all of eternity. This sounds a lot like going to church for me, and it's not very interesting. But I sure don't want to go to Hell!

Before School

Channel Islands High School has three rows of classrooms. Beyond those to one side, are some portables. Beyond it to the other side, is the quad. A mural looks out over it, a painting of a Raider, which is the school mascot. Raiders, at least according to this painting, are approximately Greek-looking warriors. They aren’t, actually. They’re not anything real so far as I’ve been able to discover. Also, the student who designed the mural was not very good at drawing. I’d think the picture was an embarrassment to the school, only I don’t really think much of Channel Islands High either.

Below the mural on the quad, there are benches. I don’t like sitting on them. I bring a book and read, and I hope no one notices me.

I Turn Into a Bad Kid at Haydock Junior High School

Jesus says we should turn the other cheek. He says if someone hurts us, we should not fight back. Even if someone hurts us a lot of times, or steals our stuff, we should only give them love and forgiveness. This is a problem, because the kids that used to just yell insults once in a while, when I walked past on my way to the bus stop, now are doing it every day. Then they start throwing stones.

One day when I'm in Sixth Grade, I just can't take any more of it. I go after the kid who was throwing the stones, who's this little brat a couple years younger than me, named Richie. I start hitting Richie. Then he starts hitting me back. Then it's a real fight, and before I know it, I have Richie on the ground and I am hitting him again and again.

“You can stop now,” says this other kid from the neighborhood named Kevin. “You've won.”

I look down and he's right. Richie isn't fighting any more, he's just lying there crying. I turn around and walk the rest of the way to my bus stop, and it turns out the bus hasn't even come yet.

Mrs. Duddy

Cartooning, is one of my favorite classes in the Seventh Grade. The teacher, Mrs. Duddy is kind of old. She has a fluffy old-lady hairstyle like my Grandma wears. She uses red-red lipstick and a lot of face powder, and there's a strong smell of perfume that always hangs around her.

I like her class because I don't need to draw realistically in there. The idea is to draw pictures that tell a story, and if the people don't look much like real people, that is okay. I learn how to make angry-eyebrows, and sad-eyebrows in her class. I learn that a puff of smoke behind someone makes it look like they're running. Boobies only have to be one curved line sticking out, and another one in the middle of the girl's chest to make it look like she has two of them. I have a lot of fun drawing cartoons in the Seventh Grade. I fold notebook paper in half and draw cartoons all over it. I make funny stories and suspense stories. The other kids in class like my cartoons. Even the ones that don't like me very much pass them around, and ask for more when they're finished.

Halloween

Halloween is the best holiday after Christmas, because of Trick-Or-Treating. Some peoples' Mamas buy them cheap costumes, with masks that never look like who they're supposed to be, but my Mama always makes ours. We dress as Spanish senoritas, or little Dutch girls, or Indian maharanis and sometimes, when the costume calls for it, we get to wear lipstick and some of Mama's jewelry. I love just the look of Mama's jewelry box, and the smell of her cold cream, because they remind me of Halloween.

On Halloween, I can hardly eat supper, I'm so excited. After supper, Daddy puts our pumpkin on the floor. He scoops out the insides and cuts a scary face on it. Sometimes Mama toasts the pumpkin seeds and makes snacks out of them, but I don't care when she does that. Pumpkin seeds are hard to open, and there's not much seed inside to make them worthwhile. Daddy puts a candle into the pumpkin, and lights it. He puts it in the kitchen window. I take big sniffs of the good smell of candle and pumpkin mixed together. This is one of the best smells of Halloween.

Creepy Moment

My sister Karen is fourteen, and there are times when it feels like she is growing away from me. Even at her young age, she knows infinitely more than I do about style and popular culture. She knows how to make friends, and boys ask her out, whereas I am a lonely loser with only a few friends, and those feeling like they are drifting away from me. I would like to look like Karen. – I would like to be Karen, I think sometimes. I'm tired of my world of dead history and literature no one else reads. Karen's world is The Thompson Twins and wine coolers and Mollie Ringwald movies. It seems fresh and alive.

Church

We go to the Bible Fellowship Church. It's half an hour's drive away from home, but it's better than the churches that are closer, that's what my Mama says. We get there at 9:00 for Sunday School, and we stay for church. We never get home until it's way past lunchtime. It has a sanctuary with plain yellow and blue windows and no stained glass. It has two rows of classrooms, and a courtyard in the middle, with an olive tree in it.

At first, I don't go to Children's Church during the worship service. I stay in the pew with my Mama instead. The only songs they have are hard, grown-up songs., that come out of Hymnals, with little writing that's hard to find in between the lines of music. They have very long prayers, and sermons that are even longer. I have to sit still and behave myself until the whole thing is finished. Mama reads her Bible and listens to the sermon, but she lets me take her hand. I run my fingers over the veins on the back of it. I like being alone with Mama for a change. I like that there are no sisters around to take all the attention.

Grandma Johnson

My Grandma Johnson has in a comfortable house with an olden-days look to it. The back yard stretches out forever, to a workshed that hasn’t been touched since my Grandpa died. There used to be all kinds of interesting tools and plumbing fittings in there. Now, I think, there’s probably nothing left except dust and poisonous spiders. The front yard has a big carob tree, that’s good for climbing. It’s got an oak tree, with acorns underneath. You have to wear shoes when you go out there though, because the oak leaves are prickly.

Inside, the furniture is green plush and maple tables, and a bookcase full of Readers Digest Condensed Books from the 50’s in one corner. There’s a cage with no bird in it (but the parakeet’s memory is still there in the pecked places on the arm-covers), and a record player that no one’s used in the entire time I can remember. The smell is dust from the air conditioner in the window, and a faint whiff of gas from the stove.

Scary Night

My Grandpa and Grandma Brown live in a wonderful town called Prescott, Arizona. You get there by driving for hours and hours, up a steep, twisting road that always makes me carsick. The best thing to do for this, my mother says, is to eat lemon drops. Lemon drops are candy, but they're not very good candy. I eat them, but they don't make me feel much better. All they do is make me hate lemon drops, because they remind me of being carsick.

Grandpa and Grandma live outside of town. There are pine trees and big rocks with moss on them, around their house. You can go out any time and find horny toads and lizards to play with, and at night, there are animals yipping, and Grandpa says they're foxes.

School Pictures

The day when our picture-orders arrive at school, is always a good day. The teacher has all our packets to pass out, and that's time she can't give us work to do. I take out a book and read, keeping one ear open to hear when my name is called. When I get my packet, I open it right away. I sort through the pictures, the little wallet-sized ones for us at home to keep, and the bigger, portrait-sized ones that get sent to my grandparents.

The Den

The best room in the house is the den. Every day, Mama makes me have a nap-time there. I think she thinks I'm going to get mad, because I'm almost six now, and that's too old for naps. She says I don't have to sleep, I just have to go into the den for an hour and rest. What she doesn't know, is that that's the best time of the day. I can close the door on everybody else and be all by myself. I can do whatever I want, and there's nobody watching.

My Daddy's Chair

My Daddy's chair is made of black vinyl. It stands on four little peg-legs, and it has nailheads that make a pattern along the back and on the arms. Sometimes I run my fingers along them. I make them into roads, but the roads always stop before my finger gets anywhere. The chair-back has a greasy feel to it. I can use my fingernail and scrape little balls of black stuff off it. This is interesting, but a little gross. There's a torn place on the upholstery. My Mama turns the cushion upside-down to hide it, but when she's not around, sometimes I turn it the other way, and stick my finger in to feel the stuffing. It's kind of brown-colored, and it feels cottony.