A little something I'm working on...
I know. It's been a minute.But when you're trying to write a book, blogs take a back seat. Fine, I've been lazy.After The Rejection Debacle - I've been licking my wounds and slow-moving with the words. It's amazing, the things we tell ourselves in order to derail our dreams, isn't it?But I'm still here and wanted to throw this out into The Universe.It's not complete, but I thought I'd share what I've been tinkering with in the old manuscript.Feel free to stroke my ego. Or tear me to shreds. Just don't tell my mom.
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I only knew Ms. Beach Barbie a month, and as annoying as her perfection was, we were instant sisters, which is shocking considering how we met. It’s always fun meeting the whore who’s fucking your boyfriend, until you realize you’re the one fucking hers. My discovery happened after finding her digits and full-length bikini photo of her perfect ass while rummaging through his shit (I don’t recommend snooping, but if you want proof your partner is cheating, and you’re high off your ass, knock yourself out).Robert was an Eric Estrada look-alike whose enormous shlong and unlimited supply of blow made me weak in the vagina. A doorman at my favorite dance club, he was always nice enough to keep from laughing in my face when checking my fake ID every night. I’m sure my sloppy dance moves to Bananarama and The Pet Shop Boys won him over.Before banging under age club goers with low self-esteem in Waikiki, Robert was a Chippendale’s dancer on the world-famous Sunset Strip in Hollywood. Yup. My man. Swinging his leopard-print banana hammock in the faces of screaming, middle-aged horn-dogs. Pinch me!I had no idea how I managed to get an apartment so young, but somehow, my bullshit charm and $500.00 a month hotel receptionist gig helped make it happen. It was a shoebox-sized shit hole crawling with roaches, but it was directly across the street from Robert’s club (priorities), and it was mine. There’s nothing like your first taste of freedom when you’re still young enough to buy all of life’s bullshit, but finally at an age where you can really fuck it up without being grounded by your parents.“Just for a couple of days.”“Of course, baby. Stay as long as you need.”A couple of days turned into two years, but who’s counting. Robert and I were living together! This had to mean he was my boyfriend – a concept as foreign to me as a flat iron was to Chaka Kahn. Sure, he didn’t want to be seen walking next to me in public, and he constantly warned me never to call him “the B word”, but I rationalized. He was sleeping in my shoebox shithole apartment (when he managed to stumble home), on my mattress on the floor, and I delivered him Taco Bell and separated his whites. If that wasn’t domestic bliss, I didn’t know what was.If he weren’t such a drug addicted, abusive, cheating son of a bitch, Robert would’ve been a real catch. And if his profits weren’t snorted up his nostrils sooner than you could say eight ball, I’m sure he’d have been a fabulous salesman and loaded like his idol, Tony Montana in Scarface (the irony that he was boning a girl with scars on her face was not lost on me). Well, maybe not Miami mansion wealthy, but he definitely would’ve had more dough than the spare change I managed to find in the pockets of his MC Hammer pants. But that’s where I came in. Robert moving in, supplying me blow in exchange for rent-free digs and hot sex was a match made in co-dependent, drug addicted heaven.After the initial heart-stopping shell shock of horror in discovering Angela’s bikini photo in Robert’s briefcase during my frenzied cocaine fueled poke-around, I reeled in my breath and read the hand-written love letter saying she was moving to Hawaii from Los Angeles; that her aunt lived just outside the city in the town of Kahala, how she couldn’t wait to see him, and that “every time I see the Teddy Bear in that Snuggle fabric softener commercial on TV, I think of us.” He’s an “us” with someone other than us? It’s one thing to snoop blindly because you’re suspicious of your lover schtupping other babes, but to have concrete proof in your trembling palms, to see the flesh of the other woman (while fighting every urge to picture them grunting naked), is to finally swallow the lover’s poison you’ve been swirling around in your mouth ever since you felt that first pang of fear.As the bitter venom slowly dripped down my esophagus, I tasted its concoction of two parts bitter, one part relief. I’m not fucking crazy! He is the bastard I suspected (because he was an absolute prince otherwise)! As painful as seeing Angela’s Technicolor love bomb was, swallowing that poison was the first step in cracking the code; finding the combination to the emotional padlock which kept me prisoner in my very own straightjacket of denial when it came to Robert. On the bottom of the page at the end of the letter was a local number, and before I realized the phone was in my hand, I heard her voice, and then spoke.“Is this Angela?” “Yea.”“Um, you don’t’ know me, but do you know Robert Lozano?” Breathe, Christine, breathe. “Oh my God, yea?”“No, Lo-za-no. Robert Lozano, from LA?”“Yea, that’s the one, why?”“Well, I’m Christine. And, well, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of me, but, well, Robert lives with me, I mean, we live together – he’s my boyfriend.” I was this close to pissing on the phone and marking my territory.After an eternity of silence, Angela spoke. “Oh fuck. I knew it. I knew he was with someone! I’m so sorry Christine – this is NOT who I am – you have to believe me, I had no idea. What are you doing right now? Meet me for a drink.”“Uh…” I wasn’t counting on her being so nice.I panicked. What outfit goes with “Back off, sister, that’s my leopard printed penis?”“Please. We have to meet. There’s a lot you need to know.”I landed on my favorite black Spandex mini tank dress from Contempo Casuals and hula-hoop sized silver earrings.“Give me twenty minutes.”
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