lovefool

They told me ‘Sing a little bit louder hon.’
and I did
He said ‘Act like a flower sweetheart. All innocent like and naïve’
and I did.

I didn’t understand what flowers had to do with naiveté or innocence but I did it anyway. I obeyed every word that rested atop their tongues. Each one waiting to be fired at me, waiting to be listened to. That’s the funny thing about words… they’re hard to resist saying and even harder not to comply with. Except that was my opinion. I wasn’t supposed to have any opinions technically but it was fine as long as I kept them locked up inside my head. He used to tell me ‘you’re gonna be a star’ everyday of his natural born life. I pretended to believe the words he whispered but I didn’t truly; deep down in my stomach I didn’t believe one inch of it.

I was barely twelve and I had already seen everything worth seeing. I’d seen Paris and the Eiffel Tower and all the other marvelous tidbits man and God have created. I found it quite depressing. I’d done everything… what else was there to do? I could’ve dreamed up dreams all day but that didn’t interest me. It may have interested mommy but it didn’t interest me. That’s what you got, though, when you were like me. A freakish human being who had nothing to do at the tender age of twelve because she’d simply done it all. I blamed the movies. It was so easy to blame the movies. They gave me what I had back then which was all just a bunch of mush and dirt.

“Come ere,” she told me one night and I couldn’t not listen.

“Yes, mommy?” I asked her.

“You’re worthless.” she spat out chugging down another bottle of that horrible liquid

“Yes mommy.” I responded with my head hung low as a mule
She only cared about herself. I couldn’t understand why back then. I was her pumpkin; she was supposed to love me. It made me feel horrible, like I was a speck of dust that she didn’t mind sweeping up. Maybe she loved me deep, deep down like I kept myself deep, deep down.

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I was being whisked off to some unknown place again. He wouldn’t tell me where or why. I think it was for a new storyline. They started to become quite strung together around that time. I didn’t even know my roles anymore. I would come onto the set like a robot, mechanical and helpless. I acted out my parts and went home without a thought. I was so good at slipping into characters when I was young. I used to hear their voices; I saw their fears. I could taste them if that’s a proper way to put it. They were like a candy bar, all the layers were different and I had to inspect each and every one as carefully as a P.I investigates a blood stain taped to an unsuspecting wall.

I climbed the stairs to my apartment still wrapped in my thoughts. The stairway was striking compared to my seemingly perfect life. It was harsh and foreboding. The tabloids were a great artist, painting a fabulous life for the public. No one wants to read about a teenager with a drunk for a mother. It would sell for awhile but then it’d get old. Sadness gets sympathy for a short time but happiness sticks. You want to read about a star’s great clothes and car and imagine yourself in them. Who wants to pretend their mother hates them?

“Hey babe”, he said to me the afternoon we were set to leave. His hair was slicked back with that disgusting grease he used and his hands were jammed into his pockets. I hated that grease. It was the one thing that caught my attention, no matter what, when he walked into a room. It sat there like a pool of water, unmoving and stale. The kind of water that attracted mosquitoes.

“Yeah?” I asked back
“Is that all you ever ask?” he mocked. “Yeah? Yeah? Is that all you ever say?”

“S’all you’ll let me say sir.” I said, “Unless I’m getting interviewed”

“That’s right.” he said, “Unless important people are around.” He smirked. I never figured out if that slight smirk that formed on his face was real or not.
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If you dig back far enough there’s certain things you’ll find that you never had the desire to know in the first place. I can only go back as far as I can, but even that’s too much weight. I started remembering her when I was a kid. I was three, trying out for a role in an insignificant, frivolous commercial. I had to smile and play cute. There was no real acting. There were just fancy props and lighting. She was proud of me none the less. She was real proud.

She turned on me at some point. I could never figure out when. It was slow… pride turned into bitterness and sheer resentment; she despised her own child eventually. It’s easier to believe she never loved me, that it was hate that drove her. I could blame her if I trusted that. But I’ll never put my faith in that statement as long as I live and I find that I constantly blame myself for her behavior. Maybe if I had kept my foot in local commercials people wouldn’t have thought I was so cute; if I hadn’t changed to movies and shown my dimples on screen.

It’s easier to blame yourself. I saw and still do see the ugly in myself. It was near impossible, and still is, for me to see the ugly in someone else. Cause that would leave me with one less person to hold onto. And what would that leave me standing with?
Nothing, that’s what.
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My mother surprised me that day I was leaving. She decided to come to the airport with me to say goodbye. I half-expected a big fiasco to occur. A peace, however, settled amongst me and everyone else. I watched them all buy postcards for their lovers and little gifts for their kids. The scene was innocent and had nothing at all to hide. I thought myself a bit crazy because I was gaining happiness from an airport terminal of all places. Maybe it was because it was the complete opposite of what I was used to. I didn’t usually set foot in airports. I lived close enough to the movies I performed in, there was no need.

She kissed me goodbye and left without saying a word. As she stepped out the front doors I spied a camera and then I saw the person holding it. He was pointing it right at me but he had been glancing at a lady, as I was looking at him. She had come for her agenda again. I had been foolish to think otherwise; that she would have actually come here because of me. The man had gotten his million dollar shot of a loving mother bidding her little star goodbye. There might have been a tear in her eye, the juicier the better. Another horrible parent had gotten off because of the veil plastered in front of them; the same veil that kept anyone from seeing who they really were. I had saved my mother from her police shots once again; done one more thing for her. Everything I ever did was for her, never me, even if it had been on accident. ‘Stop blaming her!’ I reminded myself ‘It’s not her fault she’s that way.’ No matter how many times I told my head that, it wouldn’t fully believe me. It wasn’t as easy to sway as my heart. There was always one thought that came from it.

‘I don’t remember ever doing anything for me’
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I had had one last thought when I stepped off that plane and found myself in France. I was back to where I’d started. I saw the Eiffel Tower standing there in all its glory and I knew I had to get to the top. I didn’t care, but I had to get there. It was the one thing in life that I had to do to prove something to them. I wasn’t their toy that they could play with and call upon when they felt it fit to.

‘Maybe I’ll fly’, I thought, ‘Yeah, I’ll fly above everything and everyone and I’ll be there. I’ll be on the Eiffel Tower.’