Juliet

Juliet:  I will never take off these socks, I think to myself.

I will take them off, but I will never wash them, I’ll save them, the socks that are filling with dirt as I press my heels into the side of the hill, off the path that leads away from Griffith Park Observatory.

There are people just above us, looking out at the lights of L.A. in the distance I hope, and not down into the dark hillside to the dark shadows which are Raif and I.  This is not how I expected my first time to be.

My mouth is raw from kissing Raif, kissing that started outside the theater, as soon as we got into his car.  Kissing that almost got out of control in the parking lot outside Starbucks, then turned tender inside, where we sat in front of the fake fireplace and ignored our coffee.

I have to pee, I think.  My underwear, down around my ankles, is probably getting full of dirt.  This hurts.  I didn’t expect it to hurt so much.  I’m sliding a little down the hill and rocks are scraping my butt.  We didn’t go to Raif’s apartment because he said he wanted to take me someplace special.  This is special.

Stop complaining, Juliet, this is special.  We’re under the stars.  We’re in love.  I love Raif and he loves me.  How long is this supposed to last?

That’s not what you’re supposed to be thinking, Juliet.  You’re not supposed to be thinking at all!

This is so awesome!  I’m having sex!  Me, Juliet, Never Been Kissed Juliet. 

And Raif is not old, like Michael said.  He’s twenty-four. 

Raif grunts softly, then sighs, long and deep.  Rolling to the side, staying on the flannel shirt he laid down for us, he pulls me close.  He sucks on my neck, and I realize too late that he’s giving me a hickey, which I know I should be happy about because it means I’m his, and it’s not like he’s branding me like a cow, it’s not. 

Only now I have to tell my mother.

I worry too much.

“Your skin is so soft,” Raif whispers.

“My boot!” I say as I grab for it, rolling down the hill. 

Raif scrambles down a few feet after it.  His ass is pale in the moonlight.  Skinny, the knobs of his pelvis show when he turns over.  Like me, like me!

“I think I love you,” I say, my fingers holding tightly to my boots, nervous fingers because I never said that to a guy before.

Raif smiles and kisses me.  Crushing my Doc Martens between us, and we start to slide again.  My underwear is sticky and cold, and dirty and gross.  Raif didn’t say he loved me back, but that’s okay.  Of course he loves me, or we wouldn’t be here.

“I have to pee,” I say, giggling.  

Meghan

Meghan:  has just come out of rehab for the second time, and she’s only seventeen!  Meghan has appeared previously in OGW 12/3/09 and 6/10/10.

Meghan:  Seriously.  Seriously.  Is this it?  Sitting in a damp church basement room that smells like old turkey gravy, listening to some bleached blond in a sweater set who’s trying to look thirty-something but it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s actually fifty-something, listening to her tell us that the “Our Father”, the fucking “Our Father” is really the (fucking) “Lord’s Prayer,” and we should look it up.  Seriously.  I should look that up.

     “Thank you Sharon,” the group says in one voice, like the automatons, the sober robots they are.

     “Eat me Sharon,” is what I say, but under my breath, so they don’t hear.

     In my hand, I hold on tightly to the form the chairperson has to sign to prove I came here, sat through this bullshit for a whole freaking hour of my life that I’ll never get back.  Sat through this, my first AA meeting.

Juliet

Juliet was the main character in a novel I didn't finished, Let Her Cry.  I'm reworking the novel, but this part probably won't appear in it.  Still, it's something Juliet needs to say...

Let her Cry

By Juliet Lourdes

Setting:  a small home in Los Angeles, CA

Characters:

Juliet:  sixteen

Cristina:  Juliet’s mother, late forties

Dan/Danny:  Juliet’s father, early forties

Scene one:

Juliet lies on the floor of her bedroom with her feet in the air.  Her laptop is next to her.  She types with one hand as she speaks.

Juliet

I’ll bet when people think of me, they are like, “Wow, look at her, she’s so cool with her clothes from Out of the Closet, all punky and retro.  She gets that from her mother, Cristina Lourdes, the actress.  Juliet’s mother is the coolest mother in the world…”

They don’t know us.  They don’t know that sometimes I have to lie on the floor with my feet in the air, counting…

Scene two:

Cristina and Dan enter the living room, just one thin wall away from Juliet’s bedroom.  Cristina slams the door behind them, then pushes past Dan and paces.

Cristina

They hated me!  I’m not going to get the part!  I hate me!  You hate me!

Cristina collapses on the floor, bawling.

Dan

I don’t hate you.

Cristina

They hated me.

Dan

No one hates you.

Dan tries to comfort Cristina, but she pushes him away and hurries past Juliet’s room to her own.  Dan stares after her, lost.  He goes to the stereo, puts on a Hootie and the Blowfish tune, “Let Her Cry”.   The lyrics blare, “And if the sun comes out tomorrow/ Let her cry…”

Scene  three:

Juliet, still lying on her floor with her feet in the air, gulps for air as she counts…

Juliet

Eighty-nine, eighty-eight, eighty-seven…

Juliet stops counting, looks at the audience.

Juliet

“They” don’t know us.  Sure, my mother and I are close.  Sure, she’s cool.  She takes me to awesome thrift shops for clothes.  She’s my best friend sometimes.  She taught me that when I’m having a panic attack, I should put my feet in the air and count backwards from one hundred because if you’re counting, you’re breathing, plus, no one dies with their feet in the air, counting backwards from one hundred.  When I have a panic attack, it feels like someone’s going to die.

Eighty-six, Eighty-five…

Scene four:

While Juliet continues to count, Hootie continues to play in the living room – “And if the sun comes up tomorrow/Let her be...let her be.”  Dan gulps from a glass of scotch.  Cristina rushes out of her bedroom, runs to Dan and collapses against him.  Juliet is still counting.  Dan and Cristina hug-walk to their bedroom.  No one checks on Juliet.

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.

Ella

Ella read a New York Times article about posting videos of cutting yourself on Youtube.  Right Now, she is a star...
Ella first appeared in OGW 2/3/2011.

Ella:  My mother yells up the stairs, “Ella, you have to get dressed Right Now.”

She says, “Ella, the bus is coming Right Now.”

“I’m busy, Right Now.D” 

Cutting. 

Only I don’t say that part.

Duh.

Using a bent paperclip, digging in, dragging it up and down my arm.  Making a cross.

Right Now I’m making a short film.

Youtube.

Me.

Cutting.

I do this every day.  Right Now, I’m done cutting, and I check my Hits and it’s around ten thousand and that’s just since three weeks ago and I’m a star.

Right Now I’m a star, Ma.

My mother says, “I’m not driving you if you miss the bus, you’ll have to walk!”

I haven’t missed the bus.  I have time to pull a long, black sleeve down over my bloody arm, turn off the computer – password protected – tie on a choker of a fake cameo in a gothy-y cross on a ribbon around my neck.

“I’m coming!  Right Now!” I yell down the stairs, my voice running ahead of me.

I smile to myself.  What she doesn’t know will hurt her.

Only, then she hugs me, says, “I hope the rest of your day is better than the beginning,” and she means it.

Great.  Just Great. 

Right Now, I feel like shit. 

My arm stings.

oh boy

ohshit

i am a star.

there’s the bus.

Allison

Allison has both weight and self-esteem issues.  She takes most of her self-image from what others think of her, especially boys.  Here, she begins a new diet, one of her many attempts at changing herself to meet others’ expectations.  Allison first appeared in OGW 4/8/10, and again on 10/28/10.

Allison:  I’m sitting all the way back at a table by the courtyard window, nowhere near through-traffic, and yet a bag of Fritos hits me in the head.

     “Sorry,” says Soulsucking Loser Number Two Hundred and Twelve – they’re all the same, the boys in my class.

     “No problem,” I say, putting the bag on the lunchtable and sliding it towards him. 

     Before the Loser gets to it, my fist smashes down, pulverizing the Fritos.  “Sorry,” I say.

     “Freak,” he says.

     Yeah, whatever.  Go home and cry to your momma.

     Now where was I?

Oh yeah, Diet, Day One:  I’m starting on a diet of Goldfish – the cheddar cheese flavored kind, not the swimmy kind.  First, I bite off the tail, carefully so the rest of the fish stays together.  If the fish breaks, I punish myself by throwing that one away. 

     After the tail is chewed five times and has basically just dissolved – I wouldn’t consider it swallowing, more like I absorb the taste of cracker… after that, I put the fish body in my mouth, and use my tongue to position the body upright between my top and bottom teeth, and then I split the body into two pieces with a gentle bite.  I chew on these five chomps too, and then I swallow three times.  Running my tongue over my teeth, I make sure they’re entirely clean of goldfish, and then I reach into my ziplocked baggie and get another one.

     And that’s how I do it.  That’s how I get through lunch.  Day One:  Twenty-two goldfish.

Ella

Ella suffers from anxiety and depression since becoming a teenager, and it seems like no one understands her, especially her mother.

Ella:  I don’t feel like writing don’t feel like writing don’t feel like writing my mother is making me do this she says I have to stop crying and this will help she says I have to write a whole page I don’t feel like writing I don’t feel like writing Mom what’s wrong with me?  I feel like crying all the time, and sometimes I really want to do something, like, something fun, but I can’t get out of bed, I mean I can’t lie down either.  I have all these ideas of things to do but I don’t want to do anything but I want to do something but I don’t know!  Why are you making me do this Mom, it isn’t helping.  I still feel frozen.  I’m still crying.  I don’t feel like writing.  I don’t know what’s wrong with me.  I always love writing.  I finished the first chapter of Saving Ella, which I know you want me to let you read

I don’t feel like writing I don’t feel like writing I don’t feel like

Oh I don’t want to draw either.

You don’t understand!  Why won’t you listen to me?  You say you can’t understand me if I don’t stop crying, but how can I stop crying if you don’t understand?  Writing and drawing help you, they don’t help me.

I don’t feel like writing.

There, that’s a page.

I stopped crying, are you happy now? 

Oh.  You probably are.