Saxon (Sax)

Sax, short for Saxon, is an older OG, in her twenties.  Sax writes these short blurbs about things she’s noticed or seen or felt…

Sax:  What does love smell like?  A little stinky.  Pure, like a baby, but old, like the earth.  Fallen leaves on a fall day, sunshine on your back, a snowflake on your tongue.  Squooshy as a hug, strong as a heart, peace and creation and soaring through the sky while rooted in the ground.  Home.

Sax (short for Saxon)

Sax, short for Saxon, is an older OG, in her twenties.  Sax writes these short blurbs about things she’s noticed or seen or felt…

Sax:  He had a six tattooed in plain blue ink on his wrist.  If we hadn’t been naked together and oh so close, I wouldn’t have seen it.  When I asked him what it meant, he told me that his best friend Selena gave him that tattoo because he’d broken six women’s hearts.  But what was really important was that Selena was dead now, murdered by a jealous boyfriend, and the number six on his wrist was all he had left of her.

Kayla/Somebody's Daughter

Kayla is a frequent OGW writer.  Her story, along with those of Nancy, Casey and Rain, became the inspiration for a new novel, Somebody's Daughter.  Read the first 21 pp. of Somebody's Daughter at http://www.writing.com/authors/shelley2007.  Read more from Kayla, Casey, Rain and Nancy in OGW:  10/1, 11/5, 11/12, 12/10, 12/31, 1/14, 2/11, 3/25.  Here's a little more from Kayla:

Somebody’s Daughter

Kayla:  Interview 4; recorded Monday, 9/13/10 at 3:35 pm:

I’m recording this now because Mommy you need to know this, you need to hear me, please don’t be mad:  

Here’s what happens when a heart breaks:  You feel it in your back and around my ribs.  The focal point is in your heart, a heavy coldness that spins inside, jagged edges cutting out your center, your self.  The pain extends around like a rope, tying all of you into the loss.

Your stomach feels empty, even though you’ve just eaten a small mountain of chips and spicy melted cheese hoping to fill it and be a normal teenager again, when you’ll never be normal or quirky or pretty or promising or loveable...

You can’t fill yourself, and you grasp with your fingers, without even thinking about it – your fingers open and close, reach and pull.  You want to get something, anything inside.  Even if it’s anger.  Or self-loathing.

Nothing can go right when your heart is breaking.  You get out your paints to try and show the darkness inside on the outside, and the brush flies out of your hand and is lost under the bed where you can’t reach without getting a splinter in your belly. Jesus fucking Christ Give Me a Break!  You yell in a whisper at the ceiling and at all the Gods of all the religions who let this happen to you.  

You get out another brush and paint anyway, but the color over color over color turns to mud, and it only drags your spirit into the mess of your aching body and the final picture doesn’t cover the hole inside you, it makes you cry, and before long you’re  wailing as you try to paint the canvas, and fail, and start painting yourself brown and ugly like you feel.  

You feel like everything you’ve worked for – hoping and dreaming and praying so hard – it was all a lie, a great cosmic lie.  The way you felt just hours before the party – swollen with excitement, fat with pleasure, open to possibilities, one with the whole fucking fabric of the universe or some shit, well it’s all gone now because it wasn’t just waking up and not remembering, and it wasn’t just finding the only boy you ever loved in the room with your best friend -- it wasn’t just your innocence…

It was all of you.

Kayla

Kayla is caught up in a bad situation at Brian Kepler’s party…  Kayla has been a frequent character at OGW, and is now a main character in my next book, Somebody’s Daughter.  To catch up with Kayla and her friends in earlier parts of this thread, read OGW 10/1, 11/5, 11/12, 12/10, 12/31, 1/14, 2/11.

Kayla:  I feel weird.  Everyone is looking, and I don’t like to be looked at.  I’m Rain’s best friend, but I’m not like her, especially not tonight.  She’s more than her usual self, like possessed or something. 

“Come on, Kayla,” Rain whispers.  “You want Brian to notice you!”

I look around the hot tub.  Brian isn’t noticing me, that’s true.  He doesn’t even know I’m here.  I want to pretend he’s looking at me out of the corner of his eye, and he isn’t talking to me because he respects me too much to grab my breast the way he just did that other giggling girl, oh shit, I am a loser.  I can’t believe it took me two beers and this stupid, insanely stupid, visit to the hot tub for me to realize that.  Where is Casey?  I want to just go home, so I stand up. 

Like an idiot, like a little baby, I want to cry, and I’m just standing there, shivering, when Rain stands up next to me, and she’s all “Oh yeah, you go Kayla,” and she’s bumping my skinny hip to make me dance and now everyone is looking and we look so stupid, Shit Rain stop!

She doesn’t stop.  Before I can even say, “let’s go,” she’s pulled off her bikini top!  Before I can even grab her and pull her under the water and ask her what she’s on and why she’s doing this, before I can even—

She pulls off my top!  Holy shit!  My nipples are cold and hard, and I don’t feel good, but now Brian is looking, and he’s forgotten about the other skanks, and he’s cheering us on! 

Someone hands me a jello shot, which I swallow, and then a beer, which I chug, and then I, little, meek, pathetic eleventh-grader at a senior party, not-even-invited girl, I wiggle my hips, and dance with Rain.

She says, “They want to see a show, Kayla, should we give them a show?”

My head is a little swimmy.  I see Casey coming toward us, and she looks concerned and nervous and as if she’s about to put a stop to all this.  For a moment I’m torn between the comfort of my old self, promised by Casey, and the promise of following Rain’s lewd behavior and branding myself in Brian’s mind forever -- but then Brian’s best friends Kris and Damien from the basketball team, they get in the way so I can’t see Casey anymore.  All I see is how happy Rain and I are making the boys and I’m thinking, Brian will never forget me, and when Rain squirts me with beer, I squirt her back with the beer that magically appears in my hands, and now those other girls who were in the hot tub before have disappeared, fucking disappeared!  It’s all Rain, it’s all me!  We play fight, and everyone is cheering, everyone loves us.

We put on an awesome show.  Rain spreads beer foam on me and you won’t believe this, but I lick it off her stomach, because that’s what the crowd wants!  They love me!  Afterward, when I’m sweaty and breathless and drunk, Brian – Brian Kepler! -- gently lifts me out of the hot tub and ties my bathing suit top back on for me.

“You don’t belong up there” he says. He smiles at me!  He likes me, me!  “Come on,” he says, grinning, “let me get you a beer or something.”

Arm in arm, Brian and I walk to the keg, if you can call what I’m doing walking.  Really, it’s more like I’m floating.

Jenna

11/25/09

Jenna:  Jenna is from the novel I’m writing, Spun.  Jenna is a recovering meth addict and poet.  Here she writes about being in love, of course, but also about being straight, and reconnecting with her mother.

     Me,

       I totally

       think love

       is like a heartful

       of pregnant dreams, a

       waiting room full of worries,

       hungry and hoping for something,

       like the red-faced baby who

       changes the trauma of

       laboring birth into

       a life full of

       believing.