At that time, Janet was the only other kid I knew who lived in a closet, a walk-in closet mind you. You may even say we were blessed with the Mercedes-Benz of closets, but closets through and through. "You're lucky", she'd say, "at least you have a window." "A window", I'd retort, "It's an air vent". And despite the upstairs neighbors' bathroom noises, the good eves dropping location, and the neighbor's secrets I held close to my own, she was right, it was better. It gave me breathing room. It wasn't until later, when I tried to tutor an upstairs neighbor, that I learned how lucky I was.
It was latter that I met Jade, and learned to appreciate my own situation more. Jade was younger than me, and had learned to play hooky, before she could read. Her dad would come knocking at our door, periodically, for decades to come, looking for Jade. The perpetual runaway. "Look at how comfy my bed is", she said at my first glimpse into her apartment, with no discernible sense of irony. All smiles. She opened up the closet door, and showed me the dirty laundry she "got" to sleep on. It was spilled over on top of a pile of spiky tan high heels and a number of thread bare beige trench coats languished over stinky work boots, too long for the vertical space. Her mother was always half-worried, half-far away, smoking, and always wearing a trench coat in doors on sunny days. It speaks to the self-centered nature of my father, and the other men on the block, that they would spend time smoking cigars, or pot, and drumming with the dude. "He's Cuban", they would say. "He's really got some chops." "He has rhythm." "Ah. He's a good guy." Really, what about his catatonic wife? His girl sleeping in dirty laundry? The faded black eyes seemed to be invisible to the hippies. My parents loved to say, "It's none of our business", a gallant way of bowing out of taking on an adult sense of responsibility for enabling bad behavior.
Back to my friend Janet's dad, practical jokes and bad puns seemed to be among his worst vices. He used to put us in this square carrier, attach it to the hitch on his bike, and drag our skinny gap toothed selves from Venice Beach to the Santa Monica Pier and back. He was the kinda guy who would have lengthy debates with me about the nutritional value of Fruit Loops, but he'd always win with a declarative statement and a big smile. Yeah, but they're delicious and full of vitamin C, look. He'd be pacing the kitchen with a milk mustache, and my friend would ask him if he was okay. Then, he'd start worrying out loud about the poor kid on the back of the milk carton, until we'd distract him with a song or a game. If I were more cynical back then I would have been wrongfully mistrustful of him. There was a homeless guy he befriended, who would knock on the front door at the same time each night, and then walk straight into his coat closet and go to sleep. His daughter was very proud of her kindly, if slightly eccentric summertime dad.
We used to play photographer and model, which became Motorcycle Pimp and Aspiring Actress the summer she decided to stay the whole year. I was so upset that she had to go to a different school than I did, that I probably stopped talking to her for a few weeks, as if somehow holding a grudge against her for something she had no control of made me feel better. The pimp of our imaginations who replaced hide n' go seek, didn't do much but cruise for innocent young girls who wanted to be in the movies, sometimes he claimed to have a more venerable profession, but as soon as the girl got on the bike, it was back to his dungeon. Our version of having sex involved jumping on the bed, laying on top of each other, and kissing each other's hands while we "made out". One day, we kissed each other on the lips, and we freaked out and felt we'd gone too far. "What if my mom knows?" "What if she thinks we're lesbians?" "What if we ARE lesbians?" "Aaaaaa! Run!!" "I think we should stop, I think we should break this up, and call it quits." We were in full on panic mode. As if all the Catholic ghosts from all the nuns in Medieval Europe, were rising up from their graves, pulling us apart with their castigation and ridicule. Apparently, we couldn't see each other without a compulsive need to play Motorcycle Pimp and Aspiring Actress. In the many hours my parents left me home alone at night, I'd discovered masturbating to infomercials and it was the 80s, so there was a lot of big hair and big boobs to look at. A lot of 1-800-GIRLSSS. Perhaps, I was just too riled up to abstain from temptation.
How ever long we were apart due to our self-imposed moratorium, it was long enough to create a distance between us when we finally allowed ourselves to spend time with one another. Janet's dad got married and we didn't meet again until we were all grown up. Her Pops had went through a messy divorce where his wife took everything, and he'd died in his car, homeless in a shopping mall parking lot. His identity wasn't discovered for weeks. She hadn't seen him in years. She had blossomed into a beautiful beaming sorority sister from Florida who by her own account was living her life to fit in with the social climate, but longed to be in California. I'd read Sisterhood is Powerful with a romantic/platonic friend in high school, discovered that the patriarchy and not Eve were responsible for all the world's ills, read Mary Daly, Betty Friedan, Emma Goldman, and Adios Barbie. I'd chopped off my hair, started hawking loogies on SUVS, and began telling raunchy jokes at open mics.
For a long period my romantic relationships with women were mostly drawn out courtships of single moms that ended in poorly timed drug use, somebody becoming a stripper or someone trying to get someone else to become one, attempted threesomes, trips to the hospital, and being chased down a spiral staircase in a castle by a lunging Naomi Campbell-lookalike with sharp talons. I'm not proud of it. But at least I've tried to give myself all the GirlSplash my little heart could desire. And, I'm no longer living in a closet, quite literally.
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