Blood and Guts: Helena Lazaro

First and Last

By the age of 10 I was obsessed with the idea of the Secret Admirer, as I’d come to know it through so many volumes from the Young Adult section of the public library. I consider this proof that reading ahead of grade level can actually be detrimental to a child’s development.

I daydreamed about romantic scenarios incessantly. I wished to one day find a single rose on my windowsill when I came home from school. On Valentine’s Day I checked my box thoroughly, hoping to discover an elaborate, mysterious lace heart buried at the bottom.

Eventually, I realized that it was unlikely for me to be Secretly Admired anytime soon. So I took matters into my own hands.

I found myself a subject in the 5th grade. His name was Matt Edmonds, and at that time I think he might have been considered the second most popular boy in class (Christopher Alletta was holding sway that year). I wrote him poems copied out of books onto tracing paper using flawless calligraphy, and had them slipped into his desk when he wasn’t looking. In order to do this, I orchestrated impossibly complex schemes, involving such a convoluted chain of people and events that I was sure no one would ever discover me.

Of course, my real hope was that he would be driven to unmask my true identity–certain that we were fated–because even though I was a book worm and he was a student council kind of guy, anyone who admired him with such delicate penmanship and sweetly perfumed stationery must be a creature unlike any other.

Then I found out that he’d known all along, but he didn’t stop me
because his friends thought
it was funny.

I met Jeremy when I was 14 and he was 16. He was one of the regulars at the amusement park that was my second home. At the time, my friend Melinda had a huge crush on him. And, although he expressed an interest in me (by belching loudest or holding his pot smoke in the longest, which established his alpha-boy status), I resisted Jeremy’s charming attempts to woo me so that Melinda could have her moment in the sun.

Once her moment had come and gone, I enjoyed a flirtation that went on with Jeremy for years, occasionally receiving late-night invitations from him to come over and “pork” as he so suavely put it. Although I refused, I enjoyed the attention. He was so cute, I couldn’t help it.

And he was cute in a subversive-skateboarder-from-Anaheim kind of way. If you know what I mean, you can imagine this boy in 1994 with his enormous “fuct” t-shirt and enormously oversized mid-calf shorts. His hair was shoulder-length, stick straight and honey-brown. He had eyes warm amber, big and deep like a dog. And freckles. In all the years I knew him, he never looked any older than 14.

Once, he invited me to the Norwalk Double Feature, and I finally accepted. We sat in the back row and I gave him a hand job–which he got upset over, because he had to sit through the rest of the movie in his sticky shorts.

After that I saw him occasionally, and eventually he got to be my boyfriend. It was my senior year of high school by then, and I’d started working a part-time office job through the occupational studies program at school. I’d go to classes until lunch, then over to my office until 5. And after 5, I would go to Jeremy’s and hang out with him.

He lived with his dad in a house in Orange County. The house was big, but the decor was dated and the place cluttered, piles of mail spilling over the sprawling six-person dining table onto the mustard-yellow shag carpeting. The layer of dust on the television set was proof of bachelors. Dirty dishes occupied the coffee table, the fireplace mantle, the bathroom sink. There was a photo on that mantle (next to a cup with moldy orange juice in it) of his father, mother, and Jeremy, and they all looked very happy. After the third or fourth time I visited, I asked about her. He told me she had died of cancer when he was a toddler, and it had been him and his dad since.

After that I felt compelled to clean the house, to water the dying and dead plants in the atrium, and scrub its filmy glass. I collected the dishes from the various rooms of the house, and washed them all. I made an attempt at cooking dinner for Jeremy, and when that failed I went out and bought dinner for him. He asked for hot dogs.

In all that time, I never once saw his father. However, from the books he left lying about and the way Jeremy spoke of him, he seemed like a withdrawn type. He stuck to his daily habits and had little interest in seeking entertainment outside of his dark home, paneled in wood, with masonry like a mountain-side cabin.

Jeremy worked at Target, he had a best girl friend named Katie that I knew right away was in love with him, and his idea of a date was to take me to the street races in Compton. And still, even as he entered adulthood, he continued to refer to lovemaking as “porking,” a practice that was only encouraged by my expressing distaste for it. He reacted like that to my annoyance–with an impish smile. The most thoughtful or romantic thing he ever did for me was to save me a coveted Furby (which I wanted for my mother’s birthday gift) when the shipment came into his store. He kept telling me about Katie. It annoyed me that he spent time with her, having dinner or going out to movies, while we sat on his couch and he showed me his newest comic book. The more I fretted about it, the more he amused himself tormenting me with stories about their excursions.

One evening I stood warming myself by the fireplace, tired from work and still in my business skirt and heels, and Jeremy told me it made him want to pork.

I took my purse and left, and that was the last time I ever saw him.

it’s funny.

i have a dream where i am in cuba. i sit in the tall grass barefoot, humidity’s warm lips pressing my skin. a breeze rearranges the plantain tree leaves over me and i imagine i’m an empress being fanned. in the distance i hear music. it’s coming from a house where they are frying yucca. i can hear the grease popping. walking towards the house, my foot falls on something soft. an asp leaps from the ground and pricks my ankle with its fangs. falling to my knees, i imagine dying without ever seeing who was inside that house.

the funny part is that i keep having the dream–though I know full well there are no poisonous snakes in cuba.

This is the first short story I’ve written in a while. It’s not in my blog-writing voice, it’s in my writing-writing voice, which I think is a bit different and more serious.

When I was looking for apartments in Venice Beach, I met some interesting people. The places were interesting, too, but I remember the people much more vividly.

Continue reading Gerry of Venice Beach, via Big Bear…

I was a freshman in college. It was February.

I’d started dating this boy right around New Years named Graham. He was an English major. Welsh. Tall and thin, with a beautiful little mole on his left asscheek. He hated it when I talked about that mole. He was very modest. I might have even called him uptight at the time—although now I realize he was just a late bloomer, on the verge of blooming. And I realize this because, as I understand it, he is presently quite the ladies’ man.

He had me good. Although I tried to play it as cool as I possibly could, I secretly wrote several poems about him, and hoped that our interactions would, someday, grow to something beyond sex. It seemed doubtful, but I’ve always been an optimist at heart.

While I was seeing Graham, I met Richard.

Continue reading Candy…

We stood in the kitchen drinking wine.

Earlier in the evening, we’d walked to the Village on Vermont for dinner, to the sushi joint I love for its great deals and tasty tempura rolls. When we got there the place was packed, the crowd spilling out onto the sidewalk. They were mostly dressed like they were about to hit the clubs.

It was more attitude than I was used to at this place, but he was the one to balk, before we’d even talked to the hostess.

“What else is there to eat around here?”

Continue reading Why It Will Never Work…