The Sunset Strip Diaries (2 page)

So not only did my scent, social skills, clothes and makeup application suck, but my hair sucked. I was determined to use mousse, as Tiffany Nixon had in the sixth grade. I couldn’t figure out how to use the stuff, so I just put a big puffy glob of it in my hair and let it dry. I had crusty, oily, wavy bangs and an all-around assholey hairstyle. I had to invent that word just for my hair.

Okay, so I was down because of the whole pre-pubescent hormones thing and the not-fitting-in thing. That was probably normal. It made me moody. But some other things started to seep into the family that poisoned me further. I will tell the story just how it looked and felt to me, because I only know it from my angle.

My mother had been very involved in my life when I was a young child. Not only had she always worked at the schools I attended, but she had always told me how 'smart' I was and was very supportive of me. I hadn’t needed to be pretty or athletic. I was 'smart.' I was really fulfilled with that identity, whether or not it was even true. My mother always seemed so impressed with me and so proud of me. But in that seventh grade year, not only did she no longer work at the school I attended, but she stopped telling me how great I was. I was surely moody and bitchy so that couldn’t have helped. Maybe she had other things on her mind and didn’t have the inclination to continue with her encouragement; understandable in hindsight, but hurtful to a twelve-year-old with already low self-esteem.

Then it got worse. She stopped communicating with me almost altogether. I was confused. It didn’t make sense that someone who had been so loving toward me in the past would suddenly stop liking me. But it appeared to be true. I thought something was really, really wrong with me. I didn’t know what I did. The few times I did catch her eyes, they were dead and flat and black. I didn’t talk about it and tried not to think about it. I even thought,
Good, who wants their mom all over them in junior high?
I went on and tried to live my life as a regular preteen. She still had talks with me about puberty and from time to time tried to take me somewhere nice- she wasn’t beating me with a hanger. But something was wrong.

Our family took our last trip with our family friends
, the Ashfords, that winter. We rented a cabin at Pine Mountain and one of the things I remember most was that I had an uneasy feeling during the entire trip. Something happened to me just before that trip or during that trip. It didn’t involve the Ashfords. It was within my family. I asked my younger sister, Becky, about it.

My sister says:

“Yeah. That was the year I started staying away from home a lot.  I don't know what it was, but I do remember feeling weird at Pine Mountain too!  I remember I was really embarrassed for some reason and the dog they brought wouldn't stop sniffing my crotch. I wet my pants… and I NEVER wet my pants. I felt uncomfortable during that trip.  I kept walking out in the leaves by myself.  Mom came looking for me a few times.”

As much as my mother hurt me with her dead eyes and cut off communication, my bad feeling started to gravitate toward my father. I started to feel uncomfortable when he kissed me. It wasn’t the little dry pecks he gave me as a child. It was different. When he kissed me, I felt his moustache and a bunch of blubber in my lips and mouth. It was slobbery. I had to tighten my mouth and shut my eyes very hard. I would wipe off my mouth afterward, making sure he saw me do it. I felt disgusted and angry. It built up like a volcano inside me.

One day he held his eyes on mine from across the living room and fumbled with his crotch. I felt furious. I winced and twisted up my face in disgust. I couldn’t talk though. That’s the weird thing. My mouth wouldn’t say
stop
. My arms could never push. My legs couldn’t run. He was my dad. I kept thinking
…No…I must be taking this wrong...this can’t really be occurring. This is too bizarre.

He started to wear these Capezio dance shoes and was always tapping his feet and shifting around anxiously. I thought he was going to break out in a tap dance like Gregory Hines or something. His moods became erratic. He started acting extremely haughty, arrogant, and full of himself. He seemed to think he was very wise and started quoting Bible verses that my sister and I didn’t understand, as if the verse were some sort of code that we best figure out soon. We would be like "
Huh
?" His logic was usually lost on us.

Sometimes he had a lot of anger and couldn’t express it, but his eyes showed it. He tilted his head very far back and got a very serious look on his face and had his eyebrows up. His words wouldn’t come to him at those moments, but something was streaming through him that was thick and electric and angry. It looked to me as if he wanted to say something to really, really hurt me. Other days, it seemed he had an overwhelming urge to
physically
hurt me. I didn’t understand. He had always loved me so much. He was always so much fun and so sweet to me when I was little. I couldn’t understand what had changed between us.

My dad was angry one time and took my lavender chair and smashed it in a million pieces over the desk in my room. It was my special desk, where I wrote my plays and commercials. I shrank back, covered my face, and curled inside myself. He felt terrible afterwards and kept bringing it up. He said he would make it up to me. I winced. I just wanted him to stay away.

On another day, he said he was taking me somewhere special and it was a surprise. I felt totally uncomfortable at the thought of being alone with him but there was nothing I could do. My mother wouldn’t make eye contact with me and I couldn’t even identify my thoughts if she had. I couldn’t let myself have the thought that kept tapping at my mind.
NO! No. No. That is too weird.
I felt trapped and miserable. I can barely remember the night. I was so full of disgust and anger and fear, I couldn’t speak. I don’t think I said two words. We were driving in the dark for a really long time when I finally realized we were arriving at Disneyland. It was my very favorite place. But I didn’t want to be there with him. I was thinking,
Why the heck are we arriving here in the dark? It is nighttime. This place is about to close down.
  I thought it odd, because we wouldn’t be able to go on many rides at such a late time in the evening.

He took me to dinner at my favorite spot in New Orleans Square and got me my favorite dish, a French dip. After dinner, he wanted to walk around holding my hand and I felt very uncomfortable. Everything was so serious and quiet. I felt like his date. I wanted to just…
run
. I wanted someone to save me. There was no one to protect me. I can remember none of what we talked about, only that I was squirming inside and couldn’t wait to be home. I looked at my makeup in the mirror in the car on the way home and my eyeliner had slid down my face, making two black eyes. I was mad that he let me walk around like that the whole night. He said something about not caring, that he loved me no matter what. Part of me thought,
What if he really was just trying to bond with me?
and I felt bad. But my gut instinct told me I was in danger.

Not too long after that, my dad pulled me aside at my grandmother’s house, knelt down to me, and told me he loved me more than he loved my sister. I felt disturbed and confused. Why couldn’t he just be normal?!

Okay, so there I was, twelve years old. Something went down about six months prior that required someone removing my underwear and changing my clothes and now my parents were acting really, really weird.  If I were to acknowledge what was going on, I would not survive. What was I to do, run away? Go out and get a job at twelve years old? I had to go on. I depended on my father for a roof over my head, for food, for clothing. My mother was completely shut off from me and even if she weren’t, I doubt I would have confided in her because my trust level was at an all-time low. The boundaries in my life were being smeared all over the place, like paint on a canvas. It was as if suddenly everything that meant security and protection had crumbled. My perception of reality was whirling, twirling into a hurricane, piercing the blue sky and ripping it open to show a dark place. It made me feel crazy.

I started to fall into a depression. I didn’t feel safe in my house. In order to avoid running into my father, I decided that staying in my room was the safest thing to do. That room was no safer than the rest of the house, but I didn’t have many options. I completely took myself out of reality when I was in my room. I read books at a feverish pace, escaping into the stories. I pretended I was the characters I read about and made up games by myself. Sometimes I was a scullery maid on creaky floorboards talking to mice. Other times I was a child living in a manor on the English countryside. I wanted to be anywhere but in my own life.

I regressed to playing like a child again. I set up my stuffed animals as a little family and talked to them and had tea parties with them. I pretended they loved me and could hear me and listened to me. I know that sounds all “Oh, poor me,” but that is what I did. I also talked to my doll Holly as if she could really hear me- normal for a five-year-old maybe, but not for someone in junior high school. I hung with my sister if she was home and I spent time with my childhood friend Karen, but I didn’t make any friends at school because I rarely spoke. I no longer went outside. I wouldn’t join my family when they went out to dinner. I did have my days where I was okay and most days I was a normal preteen, thinking about boys and movie stars. But inside I felt…
off.
I didn’t want anyone
looking
at me. I felt like everyone could see
inside
me. I didn’t want anyone to see I was damaged and bad in my core. I wrote in a journal:

I keep ruining everyone’s time. That isn’t something I would normally do. I am not doing it on purpose. It’s just that I keep doing it, no matter how bad I don’t want to. I don’t want to swim or eat or play video games. I just can’t have fun anymore. I feel like everywhere I go I am holding my breath. I don’t like Disneyland anymore or Knott’s Berry Farm. I don’t like going to eat or joining anything. I hate going outside in the front yard or any public places, even walking to the store. I even hate the beach. I hate everywhere, except for the homes of people I know very well..

One thing drew me out of my room that year. My family went to the drive-in movie theater to see
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
. I was excited to see the movie because I could be cool at school by knowing some of the lines. I thought that maybe I could impress Mark Poletti. There was tension between my parents on the drive over, but I ignored it. I just wanted to see cute Matthew Broderick and his crooked grin.

We parked, and the next thing I knew, my dad was punching me with a closed fist. It was quick and swift and without warning and he wouldn’t let up. He was punching, punching, punching. The look on his face was terrifying, like a killer must look. I saw hate, disgust, and anger.  My mother sat there looking straight ahead. My sister was crying. My father finally gave me an idea as to why I was being hit. It seemed like he just came up with it on the spot: it was for not eating what my mother cooked for dinner.

Shit, it was technically true. I hated her vegetables. I had a gag reflex for canned French string beans. But she hadn’t cooked in ages. Several months, at least. I thought,
Wait...this couldn’t be why he is punching me. He couldn’t have that much anger toward me for not eating some shitty string beans.
Finally, my mom said, “Well, I don’t exactly cook these days…” and he stopped pounding me for a second
.
I thought,
Oh thank God...my mother is coming to my defense!
But then she said, “Even if I did, she wouldn’t eat it anyway.” He started punching me again, as if I were a man.

I tried to cover my face with the pillow I had brought from home. I thought…
Wow...this person has a very serious anger toward me. Both of them do.
I had done something
really, really
wrong to make them not like me anymore. I felt like I was being blamed
for something really big. I remember feeling so confused that my mother just sat there and did nothing while he beat me. I hated both of them. When I look back, I think that my mother might have been angry with my father for not sticking by her when she tried to discipline us, and he was trying to make an effort at that time.

My sister says:

“It just turned you inside out and you became the official family ‘problem.’  I was your playmate everyday though and I remember you as a kid. Up until then you were great – you were smart and involved and creative and fun.  You were always cool and nice.  I don’t see how all of a sudden you were the devil. All of a sudden, I started seeing hostility when it never existed before. It was a little shocking.”

One day I was really sick in my room and couldn’t move out of bed. I needed my mom for something and she couldn’t hear me because she was
screaming
in the living room at the top of her lungs, singing “Too Low for Zero” by Elton John. I kept calling for her, but she couldn’t hear me. She was having a nervous breakdown. There was a definite problem in the family that no one was talking about. It was just eating everybody and nobody would do anything about it. It just festered, right there in our house. Right there in suburbia. Right there in a family that had gone to church and ate popsicles and had camping trips.

I didn’t think about my weight at all until one particular overcast day. My dad was in one of his unpredictable moods and I was lagging on getting laundry out of the dryer. He angrily told to get off my
fat ass
and get the laundry. Then he smacked me in an angry, puppy-kicking way. I looked at his eyes and they were full of anger.
Fat.
He said…fat ass. Was I… fat? Is that why they were mad at me? I wished I could just be a kid again. I was hurt by my dad’s comment and immediately started to cry. Then I got angry.