Roxanne
you don’t have to put on the red light
those days are over
you don’t have to sell your body to the night.
[…] Roxanne
you don’t care if it’s wrong or if it’s right.
Roxanne, The Police

 Scene 3 – At  Sor Tino Restaurant, Brentwood.

I dodge his kiss and crush against the glass fence of the patio. The heads of the other diners turn in unison toward our table. To mask the embarrassment I throw my hands up in the air, look down at his little candle and wear the biggest smile for the shakiest Happy Birffday Roxi!!!

Some of the restaurant’s guests lazily mumble along and then go back to their dinner. So do I and look at him with the most heartfelt what the fuck?! in my eyes:

– “Excuse me?!?” –

– …so you think I’m a faggot.

– Well… either way is a no way, my dear Roxi.

– I’m looking for a girl, Linda.

– Oh… so you are a girl…

– I said I want to date a girl. Why you don’t understand a fucking word in English? Jeeez, how long have you been here in LA?!

– I don’t see why we should speak English in the first place, since we are both Italian….

– I even wrote that on my facebook page yesterday… didn’t you see it?

– I apologize but I have no time to check the daily updates on your sexual orientation… you know, I run a pretty huge business…

– …so you are divorced but not single….

– Again, that wouldn’t make any difference. This is not about me, Roxi.

– Who’s this about then?

– It’s about you; you should know. You asked for help and here I am. That’s it – that’s all.

Scene 2 – At the rooftop bar of the Huntley Hotel, Santa Monica.

– How much did you give him last night?

– Two thousand.

– Ok so, that means that my one thousand paid for half of his services.

– Linda, I didn’t pay him to…

– Yes you did, Mr. Gioia of my ass.

– He came to my bed… I had prepared the couch for him.

– I had just booked him a room at the Venice On The Beach Hotel. Why should have he been sleeping on your couch, for God’s sake?

– I had just taken him out to the Lakers and Jack Nicholson got us drunk and I didn’t want him to drive back to the hotel alone.

– Did you say drive?! Babe, that guy doesn’t even have a driving license. And your new front beach loft is two lanes from his hotel, remember?!?

– Linda, he said he’ll find a job this week… I told him he has to because we cannot help him forever…

– Well, so far we didn’t start yet…. Merd, I don’t even know who he is and why I am doing this.

– Because I’m still your business and you need to protect me, my lovely ex-ex wife.

– Or, because you promised someone a gig we couldn’t give him in change of a blow job, my dear ex-ex-ex hubby.

Scene 1 – At Gioia Productions, Venice Beach.

– Hello?!?

– Hi, it’s Roxi….

– Again?!?

– I’m sorry Mrs. Gioia, but I wanted to know if Mr. Gioia is back.

– Mr. Gioia, as you call him, is now on set and he won’t be back until next weekend, at least. And, for the record, I’m not Mrs. Gioia. Not anymore.

– I know… I’m sorry, Mrs. Linda…

– Oh, don’t be sorry – believe me, I am not! Just call me Linda… but, stop calling this office please. We’re trying to work.

– But, Mr. Gioia told me that maybe there was something for me, on that set….

– Something like what?!?

– Like a small part. You know, I studied acting in London for four years and I was on X Factor for fifteen minutes and the casting director of Glue told me that he would have taken me in zero time, if only I had the working permits for this country…

– So go get them. Good luck.

– But, how do I get them, Mrs. Linda?

– I have no idea. I got mine through Mr. Gioia a long time ago. I was seventeen, my dear.

– I’m seventeen too! So, do you think he can help me with my career as well?

– If you need help ask God, not Mr. Gioia.

– But, he is such a famous producer….

– That’s why.

Story by Liliana Isella.

Once I thought I saw you
in a crowded hazy bar
dancing in the light
from star to star.
*Neil Young, Like a Hurricane

Slowly your hands slide down on the wet garden of her cheery perversion and, one by one, each scarlet letter in our bouquet of secrets recline its head.

Today I did nothing but die on your screen, dream in your pics, live for your stage.

The show burns on and I tail your glory from under your knees, through the loud lights of your million star guitar, beyond the poisoned curtains of this starlet illusion.

Under the eyes of everybody is your hunger for her cheap tattoos and her underage half-naked heels.
Under the eyes of everybody, splashed on that filthy smile of yours, is your appetite for her rotten liveliness.
On that filthy smile of yours all my needly needs dangle from, under the eyes of everybody.

You are
like an hurricane
there’s calm
in your eye.*

The show burns off through the dust left over in the air and I gather my last flaked diamonds to follow you in the wings.

I follow you as I followed you then – from moon to moon, inside the net of your first words, around the flatter of your funny offenses, between the thrill of your dark jokes.
I follow you as I followed you then – an unfertile, ruffled wig, beaten dream Alice in the blue wonderland of wrong notes your hands have fun to play for.

I am just a dreamer
but you are just a dream
You could have been
anyone to me.*

I walk into the backstage alone but, you’re not.
She’s in. Same tattoos, same cranky heels, same black tale smile.

As I get closer, you softly offer a glass of pink velvet to me and my hand to her.
You gently sit my nervousness next to her thighs and whisper a warm laugh into my ears.
Then, you start telling the story of our lust, to push my hesitation toward the double suite for three you already booked our red night ink in.

But, before we get into the taxi, you look at her for one second, and she is not the second anymore.
She looks at me, and I remember that spring when, my second, was your wife.
I look at you and, for the first time, I can see neither of them has ever been your second but one: me.

Story by Liliana Isella.

Paris, nuit du mois d’aout, plein été. Te voilà toi, ton t-shirt blanc froissé, ton pantalon beige et tes vieilles baskets, ta silhouette qui reprend place dans mon espace exigu. Tard dans la nuit, encore une fois, comme si les moments que nous vivons ne pouvaient exister que dans ces heures où le monde s’arrête, une parenthèse dans nos deux vies si différentes, une sorte de songe que le matin dissipe.

Ton flot de paroles, pour raconter, pour dire, la guitare maintenant, ta sœur que tu défends comme un chevalier des temps modernes, le travail et l’envie de bien faire avec des rêves en ligne de mire, ne jamais oublier les rêves, accroche toi, c’est bien comme ca, vas-y. Et des questions toutes nouvelles, aussi, que tu m’adresses comme si tu me voyais pour la première fois. « On dirait que tu as dix-sept ans », murmures-tu. Nos corps sont alors des carapaces inutiles car l’âge, comme l’enfer, c’est les autres qui le déterminent.

Allongés sur le lit, fenêtre ouverte, le cri des mouettes égarées dans la ville vient percer un silence noir, un peu de mer à Paris. Te caresser dans ce noir, juste tes mains avec mes mains et nos jambes entrelacées comme jamais. Ton corps qui me cherche, qui en redemande, tes doigts agrippés à mes cheveux, oui prends moi comme ça, caresse mes fesses, tiens moi par les hanches, oblige moi à te prendre aussi et jusqu’au bout. Et, plus tard seulement, nos bouches qui s’effleurent. Jamais baiser n’aura été plus tendre, plus intense que celui-là.

Tu dis que j’ai un grain, que tu ne m’aimes pas pour ça, mon grain de peau oui tu l’aimes et ma bouche surtout, c’est elle qui t’amène là, rien qu’elle, les mois, les années passent, je te cherche et tu me chasses et puis tu reviens quand l’été fait le vide autour de toi. Petite injection de toi, une petite dose, rien de mortel, quantité infime et bien plus perverse car elle empêche le sevrage. Tu l’as dit d’ailleurs, que tu allais « achever la bête » par tes silences, et tu sais qu’en revenant tu décides de lui infliger un nouveau supplice. « Je profite de toi », dis-tu, comme si j’étais un être à ta merci. C’est ce que tu n’as pas compris, je ne suis pas une victime, je ne subis rien, tout ce que l’on vit je le veux et c’est parce que je le veux que tu échoues dans mes bras. Tu ne me prives de rien, tu ne me fais pas de mal, tu réponds au besoin que j’ai de toi et je fais de même, d’une autre façon, on se trouve et le hasard n’y est pour rien. 

Voilà une autre nuit volée au temps qui passe, celui de tes vingt ans, celui de mes trente, oh temps suspends ton putain de vol, je m’arrête là et toi tu accélères, on se retrouve à deux dans la trentaine heureuse, on se marie et on fait des enfants qui ne nous ressemblent pas, sauf pour ta fougue et pour ma détermination.

Ce qui est atroce, après, et que je ne mesure jamais assez au moment où nous nous vivons dans la nuit, c’est le manque qui va s’ensuivre. Elle est là, la vraie blessure, dans ces heures qui viennent lorsque tu n’es plus là, alors que tu as rempli mes veines ma peau mon ventre mes yeux de toi. Elle me déchire les entrailles, elle gicle sous mes paupières, elle griffe tout ce que j’ai de plus beau, tout ce qui m’est cher, elle l’annihile. Je suis une ombre dans la lumière crue du jour, je marche, respire, bouge, parle, enveloppe vidée qui voit ta silhouette partout dans la ville, dans chaque rue que j’aborde, dans les cafés où je me pose, les cinémas où je suis censée me distraire ; la table où j’ai déjeuné, tu étais là, à mes côtés, avec ton t-shirt froissé, ton pantalon beige et ton sourire carnassier. Le manque pourrait alors me faire hurler.

Viendra le moment où cela cessera, ce n’est qu’une question de temps, encore une fois.  Toutes les fleurs, même les plus coriaces, finissent par faner. Peut-être parviendras-tu enfin, d’un simple geste, d’un seul silence, à couper les racines de cet amour tordu. En attendant ce moment-là, je veux voler à ce temps qui ne fait que passer toutes les nuits à venir, avec les jours qui restent.

God, take my will and my life.
Guide me in my recovery.
Show me how to live.
Amen.
3^rd Step Prayer

From Miss Junk’s fb chat:

♠: Hello beautiful, how r u?

♥: Hello doll… how are you?

♠: I’m ok… u?

♥: Kind of….

♠: …so, Rich Rod wanna fuck you, huh?

♥: I… don’t know….

♠: He DOES.

♥: He only asked for my phone number….

♠: I know he wants to fuck you.

♥: he just texted me last wed to ask if I was the one who told him of a video where there’s nothing but someone walking.

♠: what an excuse.

♥: no. it’s not. friday at dinner after the meeting I told him about Wrong, the new Depeche Mode video… it’s amazing. He remembered that and thought the other video was my suggestion as well, I guess….

♠: men in DAA are horny bastards.

♥: …?!?…

♠: You’re a hottie. Everybody in DAA wants to fuck you.

♥: …are u sure he wants to fuck me?

♠: he said so. when you left dinner he said in front of everybody “I know you all saw me asking the number to a newcomer and that’s TOTALLY NOT OK BUT she is so smart and funny….”

♥: …well, he is not my type and I have someone else in mind anyways….

♠: do you like someone in Drug Addicts Anonymous?

♥: kind of :)….

♠: who?

♥: The Prophet….

♠: oh, the prophet would definitely fuck you.

♥: really?!?

♠: yes

♥: how do you know that?!?

♠: we are good friends.

♥: …oh, so he told you he likes me :)?!?

♠: No. but I won’t tell him. don’t worry.

♥: …I’m not worried… just curious… how do you know he likes me :), then?

♠: I know ‘cause he tried to fuck me too.

♥: …

♠: for two years.

♥: …

♠: …but I have a little obsession on The Tortured Brain instead.

♥: …and… he wants to fuck you too….

♠: no. we are friends.

♥: well, you were friend with the prophet too and….

♠: The Tortured Brain is different. he’s so intellectual. so machiavellian.

he just went through a tough break up.

♥: so, maybe he’ll try to fuck you soon, right?

♠: hey, they are not all like that. he’s not. we used to chat a lot and then I gave him my number and he backed off.

♥: good for you. you picked a good one.

♠: The Prophet is good too.

♥: well, it’s hard to believe so, after what you told me….

♠: hey, he stopped asking me to fuck.

     he’s good now.

♥: …did you tell your sponsor about the prophet?

♠: no way! they are good friends. they’ve been in DAA together for like 15 years or so.

they got clean at the same time I think.

♥: I cannot believe your sponsor has 15 years under her belt… she’s always crying over the smallest shit… what a drama acidhead… is she any good?

♠: at fucking for sure.

♥: ….excuse me?!?

♠: she shares about it at meetings sometimes. she slept with a lot of fellows in DAA before marrying The Emperor.

she says she had to fuck no matter what. it was kind of compulsive, you know….

We’re addicts. that’s it. that’s all.

♥: you’re not even 19 yet – the prophet tried to fuck you when? when you were 17?

♠: 17 and loaded.

♥: did he know that you were still using?

♠: yup

♥: …and, what did he say?

♠: he said being loaded was ok.
  as long as we could have sex.

Story by Liliana Isella.

Right before the 10 merges into the 405, she’s nowhere to be seen.

I hope the 405 will become the 101 to Hollywood.
It won’t. It just becomes a dead exit two bikers take.
From a helicopter, I follow the ferocity of their competition and I wonder why.
Why the helicopter, if I was driving.

I land on the sidewalk of the amaranth field.
Shades of giants play hockey on the sand and a miniature couple ice-skates in between.
I wonder if concrete wouldn’t be better and concrete becomes the road under my feet,
at the same ruleless speed of the bikes’ run.

Over the next scene, everything slows down in the middle of nothing.
The wild ride slithers into the motionlessness of a palm, a red land and a cold lake.
The dream, the truth and in between.

Now I can see the final place visitors have to discover, here in Los Angeles.
A shimmering shoreline of shivering divers, white Range Rovers and forest trees.
Nothing really match around the waters within I still look for what I don’t.

Unexpectedly, I catch her again.
I spot her innocence through the bicycle on the verge of the lake.
The handlebar reclined toward the sun, the wheels waiting for her sandals, the saddle afraid to slide down into the water.

She glides out of the waves and the carelessness she abandoned her paternal gift with
fades into the green headband above her blonde eyes.
Sixteen candles, elusive thin skin and pale long legs.

I follow her.
She walks into the other room; into her country bedroom.
The pink, the wood and the dolls.

She tries to call the city theatre.
A thousand difficulties pick up the phone.
A southern childhood tries to sell her something. Something she never wanted to buy; something from someone who produces porn in the Valley.

She hangs up and a white Range Rovers parks under her window.
She runs and hides under the bed.

The two dogs find her.
Freddy walks in behind and asks why she has just denied him, on the phone.
She looks down and says she didn’t know about the porn.
When she looks back up, he’s vanished.

Bella and Rottweiler start fighting.
Bella and Rottweiler.
Two heroes in her teenage years of dreaming misery.

She pushes the silver door and the black veil garden discloses its latest enchants to her red petal lips. She turns them to her faithful companions and invite their devotion into the perpetual relief of all their runs and fights….

~

An intrusive noise of blades slowly reconnects my lungs to an unusual pic of what I use to call sky. A blue uniform is holding my head up and starts screaming …she’s back!! Come on guys she’s back!!! Let’s take off!! Come on come on come on!!

My right hand tries to reach down to this afternoon of fire sinking in a pool of blood between my thighs. I want to sweetly dip it into the cold waters of the lake. But, the path to it is burst into a million little rocks by the blue uniform’s imploration: Do – not – leave!! Stay – with – me!! Girl, can you hear me?!? Ok, listen… my name is John…. what is your name??? Tell me – your – name….

His crisis waltz distracts me for a second. But, the next I’m back to the black veil garden.
Bella and Rottweiler are still fighting and, from the silver door, I invite them to follow me. One step down and the three of us will be together – once again.
I try to explain that to John but, my words have no sound.

Nevertheless, he hears them.
He hears us. Bella, Rottweiler and me.
The summers, the dreams and the screams.
The rides, the bike and the lake.
The runaway, the valley and the shame.
He hears the years, the lies and the memories.
His hand grabs mine and her voice of black flowers finds a way through my garden’s cage of silence: U-lya-na….

Ulyana.
Sixteen candles, elusive thin skin and pale long legs.
No matter what happened later, something’s never changed.

Good job Ulyana… great job!! Now, Ulyana, keep listening to me….
I try, John… but, the deaf noise of these helicopter blades mixed with what I can envision only as a thousand cars stuck in an endless line takes over…. And, suddenly, I remember it all: the 10, the bridge and the 405.
Driving to Freddy. To the Valley.
The heat. The tears. The courage. I need it.
The I-Phone.  The video. Bella. Rottweiler. And me.
The pics. That last summer.  And our song, playing forever in my car :
Wish I knew what you were looking for
Might have known what you would find….*

And then… what?
John, here, now, again.
His blue uniform.
The Ray-Bans in his pocket.

The dream, the truth and in between.
That’s where John, Bella, Rottweiler and I stand, in this cloudless moment.
The lake disappears, the silver door to the black veil garden slowly closes and the helicopter takes off from the bridge’s highest point of our four lives hanging on. Together.

Story by Liliana Isella.

Photo by Peter Lindbergh.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

*Under the Milky Way by Church

Problem is, Gary was meant to be a girl.
At least, this is what his mother-to-be wished for.

She wanted a girl just to call her Gabry.

Of all her addictions, Brad’s Gabry had always been the most dangerous one.

She was sixteen and she had a plan.
One night, she ran away from home to go see him in Hollywood.
To meet him for the first time. To chain him for life.

Actually, she didn’t really need to run away from home:  the only person in that van in a Long Beach parking lot was her mother and, she wasn’t exactly in the mood for prohibitions.

She was lying on the old couch in front of the fuzzy TV, trying to smoke a cigarette that she was too knocked out to bring to her mouth.
She just looked somewhere else, somewhere really far away, somewhere Gary’s mother-to-be tried to reach when she went down on her knees, took the cigarette away from her incendiary fingers and whispered “…Mom, I’m leaving.”

The blind throaty sound she got as a response was not even close to something that can lead to a runaway.

She slowly stepped out of their van, lit a cigarette in the loneliest of her nights and, as her golden hills were impatiently beating on the mud, her mouth was blowing to the dark sky her crave for a change.

The red car of her girlfriend finally appeared through that industrial jungle.

The freeways sped them up to the hills of fame and their fake IDs opened the doors of the entertainment boulevard.

By the time she made her way through the crowd to the front row, Brad was already on stage.

Brad.
He was rock.
He was punk.
He was God.

Somehow, Brad saw her too.
Somehow, she snuck from her private hell to his heavenly body.
Somehow, her hot, damned, undone fragility pierced his heart of lights.
Somehow, their rendezvous broke through the locked up gates of history like any other love story had done before.

He could never say no to her.
He couldn’t say no to the grip she had on his skin, to the mark she left on his lips and to all her desperate attempts to prove that, for once in her life, someone, someone like him, someone still able to experience life, really belonged to her.

Here Gary comes.
A boy was born.
But, Gabry was the name for a girl.
Gabry was the name of her song. Not really her song, as Brad wrote it before meeting her and never revealed for whom but, still, her song.

“Gary is Gabry without the middle b, after all,” she thought.
That’s how she picked it as the name for her son and she seemed satisfied enough.

Brad, instead, seemed nothing but gone and… he actually was.
By the time he held Gary in his arms for the first time, he had been sent on a tour bus for his first world tour.

As time went by, Brad’s tour bus became a private jet and their home became a real home.
Not a crumbling van parked in a corner of hell but a brand new mansion in the Pacific Palisades.

But, Brad was never there; he was always far, on a rock ‘n’ roll stage somewhere.
He was being sent on another world tour and she was being sent home.
She was sent out of his way.
She was sent to the side, and she always felt alone.
Unfortunately, she was not completely alone:  she was with herself.

When Gary turned three, Brad had already toured Europe, Asia and America for the third time in a row.

Brad.
Something had mysteriously changed him.
Now, even when he was in LA, he felt more comfortable in a room at the Chateau Marmont rather than at home with his family.
God only knows why.

She went back to that first night she ran away from home to see him in that Hollywood club.
She became that girl again.
Difference is, now she had no hope.

She was spending her days under the sun, on the deck of their Palisades home.
She was waiting.
She didn’t know for what; she was just waiting.

She waited until her biggest trouble found her.
One day, he knocked on her door.
Unfortunately, Gary was behind that door too.

This unexpected loser, this unannounced wannabe, this inconsistent nothing, this solid nature’s failure was looking for a revenge on Brad through Gary’s mother’s loneliness’ door and he found it wide open.

She fell for him right away.
Not enough, she was also persuaded that he was the only love of her life and Brad had been only a passage to him: she started saying she had probably been attracted to Brad only by the similarities they obviously had, since they were brothers.

In order to boost her new wannabe’s self-esteem, which was clearly a bit down, she never refrain to express her new feelings for him in front of the audience in the house, that was always and only her little Gary.

Very soon, this wannabe felt like his time to make it big had come.
But, to make what, exactly?  To even come close to the fame of his brother in the music business was impossible.
So, he tried first painting, then surfing and, at last, acting.
The only positive feedback came from the closing credits he got for being interviewed in one of the many videos about his rockstar brother.

Until, one day, it came to his mind that he could succeed in the only thing Brad had failed: to give Gary’s mother the baby girl of her dreams, Gabry.

One night, as he was watching her asleep, he felt the right moment had come. 
By the time she came back from her hangover, she would find her dream come true.
By the time she came back from her hangover, his performance would be done irreversibly.

He took his thing out.
He made it hard.
He made it sharp.
Then, he undressed Gary and began the surgery.

“That was probably the work of someone who accidentally drank a little.”
This is all Gary’s not-anymore-mother was able to tell the police, the social workers, the judges, the journalists and whomever showed up at her door with the same horrifying pictures and questions: “Could you please explain us who did this to your son?!”

“That was probably the work of someone who accidentally drank a little.”
She never had anything else to say.
To Gary, she never said anything at all.

Then, one day, she just hid all of her words under a grave of pills.

The wannabe instead, on his side, had a lot to say to the doctors who studied his chemical induced psychosis.
He was telling them that, if it was not for a few unlucky accidents (he was probably referring to the multiple and severe infections and traumas his attempt of sex change surgery on Gary caused him), that would have been the greatest art work of his life.
Though, he was blaming himself for the two beef steaks he took from the fridge as Gabry-to-be’s breast implants: they were not round-shaped enough.

At the time, Gary was six years old.
At the orphanage he was taken to, he was given a picture of his dad Brad, holding him in his arms in the bathtub of a hotel room.
His mother had taken that picture.

Gary.
The more he looks at that picture, the more he feels his mother is still there; holding that camera behind him, holding Brad’s heart, holding their family together.

The more he looks at that picture, the more illusions of compassion replace the torment of the carmine cuts on his white chest.

The more he looks at that picture, the more he turns his enormous girly eyes to you and says:
“Just call me Gabry. That’s the name my dad wrote on my destiny with a song a long long time ago….”

Story by Liliana Isella.

Father of mine
Tell me where have you been?
You know I just closed my eyes
My whole world disappeared*

You know, maybe this guy is right.
This guy is the nephew of the building manager.
He’s the one who’s letting us stay here even now, after the remodeling.

The new tenants seem to have money.
You can tell from the cars in the parking spots and from the way they look at us or, actually, don’t at all.
But Jesus doesn’t care. He just calls them The Rich Losers and lets us stay here.

His uncle has been the manager here for twenty years.
When he got this position, he couldn’t believe it; all his friends who had crossed  the Mexican border with him were still burning their backs under the sun of the San Fernando Valley—for nothing.
They were all still illegal, working as bricklayers and not even able to speak English—not yet.

Instead, he had studied hard for all his first year in Los Angeles, working ten hours a day as dishwasher in a Mexican restaurant—seven days a week.
Every day he used to get off work and run straight to his free English class for immigrants on Lincoln and Venice.
It was hard because he had no time left for anything else but it became worthy when, in the same restaurant, he was promoted to busboy. And then, to server.

One day, just by talking to one of his frequent customers, this opportunity to become a building manager came up.
He had to take a six-week training course; done that, his new job was set.
The new building company also sponsored him for a green card; that way, he obtained the freedom to go back and forth from Mexico as much as he liked.

And, it was right on one of his trips to Oaxaca that he persuaded his youngest sister, this fourteen-year-old peasant, to move to Los Angeles.
He paid the coyote the double of what they usually charge just to make sure nobody would rape her.

This Mexican little thing made it safe to Los Angels but, once here, she didn’t make it so in the little alleys of the big Angels’ City.
You know, shit happens: she found a buddy who got her pregnant but the buddy was beating her, so she gave birth alone. Then she found another buddy, but he was beating her too so, once again, she gave birth alone.
By the time she was nineteen, she had found lots and lots of new buddies and given birth for the third time.
After that, nobody knows what became of her.

People don’t even exactly know who, among all of those buddies, Jesus is the son of.
He has always been said that his mother went to study English in a school that is far away and she will be back soon.
This is a lie—of course—but, it’s true that she really needed to learn English: as a fact, she could always find plenty of buddies but never a single word, when she had to speak.

Thank God, Jesus is always too high to wonder why his mother picked a school that is so far away, when there are tons of free classes just in the neighborhood.

In the meantime, the uncle and his wife have been trying to raise Jesus as their own son, together with their other six children.
But, it’s not easy. You know, people might not know who Jesus’ father is but, sure they can tell he’s the son of a Mexican bitch.

Because, when she disappeared, she took away her two other children but Jesus.
Because, at some point, rumors were suggesting the reason why.
Because, for those rumors, Jesus is the son of his uncle.

Yes, for those rumors, Jesus is the son of a loving brother who used to fuck his tiny innocent sister.
Can you believe that?

Story by Liliana Isella.

_____________________________________________________

* Father of Mine by Everclear.

 

Maria, who lives in Los Angeles, receives a call from her mother, who still lives in a small village in Italy.

Mother: “Your father is sick.”

VM: “Non-fat milk please…. What?”

Mother: “He turned seventy last week. I mean, seventy-one, already.”

VM: “Is this my Chai Latte? Non-fat, right?”

Mother: “He came here to celebrate together. He asked if you need anything. He always does.”

VM: “Wasn’t Hot Topic next to Starbucks?!”

Mother: “I gave him the pictures you sent. He almost….”

VM: “…”

Mother: “What do you have there you didn’t have here?”

VM: “Cheap rock ‘n’ roll clothes, mom. That’s America.”

Mother: “Did you need more clothes?!?”

VM: “…for the concert tomorrow – yup.”

Mother: “Do you sing now?”

VM: “I’m just gonna go see my married man with his new Gibson.”

Mother: “You said you’re getting married, Maria?”

VM: “…why do you always…?!?”

Mother: “…oh Gesu’, I made you too beautiful for….”

VM: “…and I took your beauty away, didn’t I? Probably my man thinks the same of his wife, when he looks at his kids.”

Mother: “Well, your intelligence comes from your father, but the beauty is from both of us….”

VM: “I wonder if she has the same scar I left on your belly.”

Mother: “I showed Angelina our wedding album the other day and she said you had never told her how much you look like your father….”

VM: “…”

Mother: “We… we have always tried to…”

VM: “Oh, there it is – Hot Topic!!!”

Mother: “…you were the best thing we have been able to do… but you were just too good for us….”

VM: “What a cool pink skirt… oh, there’s also in black and red!!!”

Mother: “I’ll see if next month I can send you something… or I’ll tell your father you need a new skirt…. How much is it?”

VM: “Nothing.”

Mother: “Come on… do you still wear our Christmas Ray-Bans?”

VM: “You know my account number, so….”

Mother: “What about that boy you met in Amsterdam?”

VM: “What?”

Mother: “Why don’t you go to his concert, instead… doesn’t he live in Los Angeles too?”

VM: “I have no idea of who you are talking about….”

Mother: “Antonio… the nice one… the one with the painted arms….”

VM: “…you mean rock icon Anthony Kiedis, by any chance?”

Mother: “Antonio… yes, just him!!!”

VM: “Oh my… he already had a kid last year.”

Mother: “Better for you.”

VM: “…I don’t even know how to….”

Mother: “He is not married. He’s a good guy.”

VM: “Mom, he is a drug addict….”

Mother: “Good! Go look for him in one of their met-tings, then!”

VM: “…you still go to church, mom?!?”

Mother: “Oh, I heard they have those met-tings in the churches too… ask around to see which one he goes.”

VM: “…but….”

Mother: “…but nothing. We are old, but you are young… and you are very good at pretending, so….”

VM: “So…?!?”

Mother: “So, tomorrow you wear your new skirt, go to the met-tings and ask Antonio if he wants to come to your married friend’s concert with you, the next time.”

Story by Liliana Isella.

All your life you’ve never seen
a woman taken by the wind
Takes to the sky like a bird in flight and
who will be her lover? * 

― “She was walking down the street as I was driving up on Western and Wilshire.
It was 1976.”

His voice is white.
White and firm as his strong, attractive head.

― “She was gliding over the sunset hour.
She walked into my life from an arch of fire.
She trapped my eyes in the density of that curve, where the sun twists its rays in the last moment of their tango.”