For Your Pleasure: Something's Always Wrong
But let’s be real: I was in 6th grade. I didn’t know what the hell I wanted. I just wanted to escape from a bedroom that was always dark even though it was filled with pink stuff and neon-headed Troll dolls. I wanted to scrub away the patina of stability and comfort my parents offered to mask the amorphous gunk of death and dysfunction that crudded my childhood home. My dad had begun videotaping our outings to riverside parks and craft festivals, forcing us to smile as we made memories to put off the inevitable. My mom insisted we buy a Sears photo package the year before she died. By that point, you could see the disease in all of us. I’ve looked at those pictures once since they were taken. The ghosts scared me off. The date is on the back of the photos: May 1992. In 1992, I wished for a life that would make me miserable, over-analytical and hyper-aware of the tragic beauty of the human condition, but in ways that I did not currently already know. I sought to live authentically as someone else. Someone equal parts Christian Slater’s quirky love-interest and Natalie Merchant. I thought it a fair compromise.
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