Clowny Clowny

This I only just recently realized: I am obsessed with my childhood. And for this I feel ashamed and stupid. It basically took something hitting me over the head with a baseball bat to tell me how sick I have become.

Recently I wrote about the man who sells various junk close to my home who I am getting close with, and that has not changed, but this week I bought the most bizarre lot from him yet: An old Barbie doll with a hole bore through its stomach and its head, yet another speculum, a clapper (but one from the 1970s, and I got the guy to sing the "clapper song" which was worth 20 dollars alone), and two music boxes.

One music box has a butterfly that flies around with the music. The other one features butterflies but they were plucked out of the foliage in the box and do not move. I played them both. But the second one, the one with the butterflies that were plucked away and do not fly, plays the most haunting melody. I recognized it immediately. It was the melody from my old music box I had when I was a kid. It was either from my favorite teddy bear or from my jewelry box. Either way, when I put it on I started bawling and could not stop.

Why the fuck, I wondered, was this affecting me so much? I could not stop thinking about it, and at my house now I have only two stuffed dolls from when I was a kid and I grabbed both of them and held onto them so tightly until I was able to gain composure. It was so fucking weird. Then I started looking at stuff. I looked at the walls of my room, which are covered with clown paintings. I looked at the art that I made, all dolls and kid’s stuff.

I listened to the songs that I wrote, all about my dad and childhood, but nonetheless all with an extremely twisted edge. I realized that no doubt I was ABSOLUTELY OBSESSED with my childhood. And in a completely warped way.

My ex-boyfriend told me that he had known this about me for quite some time, and I asked him why he had never pointed it out to me, but he just said he thought that I knew. He also pointed out my love of theme parks, water slides, and the like. And then he started to use some kind of scientific jargon on me and said "when you are exposed to certain stimuli, it's obvious by the way you would act and that you never really grew up." I asked him for examples of such "stimuli" and he named some, but I was still confused. But it was all becoming clearer to me now. Especially if it was so clear to someone I knew, who decided never to talk to me about it, I knew that it was true.

After going through college, I can think of two possible reasons for this sort of behavior. One is that I grew up with parents who were constantly fighting, so instead of being a child I was forced to be a mediator. So now, at 25, I am still an immature retard with clowns on my wall.

Another theory is that when something terrible happens to someone (for example, when a girl gets violently raped), she might want to live out the violent rape over and over in various sexual situations with her boyfriends to be able to better deal with the trauma.

Since I had such a shitty bizarre childhood, I think that maybe I want to constantly live it out, acting and living like a child, making childish art and songs, decorating my room like a child's room, collecting fucked up old dolls, being enraptured by Disney World and the like.

Maybe neither of the theories is true. I don't know. But this fucking TERRIBLE music box got me going this week. It hurts to hear it. It brings back all sorts of memories that I thought would never surface.

Let this be a warning. I thought repressed memories were bullshit. Now I know that they are not. I also now wonder if the weirdo who sold me this music box might be supernatural. I am scared of him but more obsessed with him now. But everyone beware this man . . . perhaps he holds the truth. And the truth is scary.

The past is even scarier. Often we want to forget it all. I know I want to.

This music box brought back a lot for me. I simultaneously want to destroy it forever and just sit in my room in a completely cathartic state and listen to it for 48 hours without leaving to do anything, even piss or shit. It is so weird. It just sits there and stares at me now. And I want to turn on the song. I know what will happen though. I will be shot immediately back into the past, into my childhood. It's like the big red button that you're not supposed to press but you do.

I am also dealing with the fact that I am afraid that this man selling items on the corner could be a serial killer or some kind of otherworldly creature sent here to fuck with me. Or maybe I'm just going nuts.

As I've revealed before, I have always assigned personalities to inanimate objects. If there were two apples in front of me and I took a bite out of one apple, I would have to take a bite out of the other apple or else it would feel sad. And I still act that way.

I just hope I don't turn into some kind of fucking Michael Jackson/Peter Pan creepy-ass pedophile mess, even though MJ is one of my idols and I adore him soooooo much, I don't want to be Peter Fucking Pan (maybe Shirley Temple, but not Peter Pan).

I don't climb fucking trees. But I bet if I somehow got famous and had unlimited access to money I would create some sort of fucked up amalgamation of Michael Jackson's Neverland and Andy Warhol's Factory--except no kids allowed.

I don't want what happened to poor MJ to happen to me. I don't know. At least I don't have vitiligo and have to walk around draped in black clothes and carry a black umbrella. All of this because of this damned music box. Repressed memories. Michael Jackson. OCD. Speculums. The clapper. A Barbie with a fucking hole bore through the top of her head and through her stomach, serial killers, weird sales, supernatural demon men, childhood obsession, never never land . . . I think I will need that lobotomy soon, doctor.

Fireworks

Today, as I write, it is the fifth of July. It was pointed out to me today that I desperately sleep with the biggest weirdos on holidays. I started thinking back to recent holidays in the past couple of years, and I realized he was completely right.

My festive-time peculiarity started two years ago on Halloween when I went home with a drunken Polish man who discovered that his cat was dead upon our arrival and we had this impromptu funeral for the animal. He shoved it in the freezer, and we had sex.

Then there was the Thanksgiving after that, where I got really drunk in this Puerto Rican bar and wandered the neighborhood and cars kept stopping and trying to pick me up and drive me home safely (or rape me, who knows). I kept telling them to get the fuck away from me, but finally one stopped in front of my house and I decided to get in. I got a ride to a 53-year-old man's house--who still calls me who is quite scary--and I had sex with him in his twin-sized bed in between bouts of vomiting from being so drunk.

More recently, on Memorial Day I brought home a guy who was too drunk to have sex (which was fortunate, because I was dating a total wiener of a whiny Jewish boy at the time). He did not give me sex, but he did leave me a present when he urinated in my bed. I thought it was quite funny and endearing and even cute, like a baby. I washed his clothes and was very nice. And then there was yesterday . . . the Fourth of July.

I live in quite an interesting neighborhood, and on an even more interesting block. Mostly everyone here is Puerto Rican, there are some blacks. I am one of two white girls in the neighborhood. I have a lot of friends here, and I really like it.

On the third of July, I was torn from bed at 3am by a loud bang. It was not a firework, nor a gunshot, two typical sounds where I live. It was a fucking bomb. And then there was another one. And then another and another.

I went outside and felt like I was transported to the Vietnam War, with dynamite blowing off in all places. It was fucking scary. I heard a woman yell out her window, pleading "Please! It's 4am . . . I have children . . . STOP THE NOISE!" Then some guy promptly told his friend to throw five quarter-sticks right outside her window, and it sounded like an atom bomb blew off (I'm sure you can't hear an atom bomb, but I'm trying to say it was really fucking loud).

Amongst the noise and the smoke I managed to find my mechanic friend and walked around with him through the terror and the bombs. It was weird too, because NO police came by. I asked my friend why they weren't over here regulating, and he informed me that they were afraid of being blown up. It was sheer madness.

So I retired to my stoop, sat down, and watched the neighborhood crumble while drinking vodka and cranberry juice. A dark, very skinny African American stopped by. His name was Junebug. We talked for about three hours. He informed me that he had just gotten out of prison on Friday for selling crack, and then showed me a stash of crack that he was holding under his tongue.

Junebug said he was only selling crack so that he could get money to go to Iowa so that he could get out of the city and urban life and settle down. My roommate came down and contributed to his traveling funds.

I continued talking to him and I was very happy that he was not hitting on me or all over me, because that makes me sick. I mostly asked him a lot about prison, and it was weird but we started kissing. Then I remembered he had a bunch of crack under his tongue. I inquired about it, and he had already thought to take it out of course, and it sort of reminded me of a warped version of when I was 16 and had to take my retainer out before tongue kissing a boy, only this guy had to remove his stash before kissing me.

I hadn't had sex with anyone except the Hebraic pottyface I had been dating for the last half year, and this guy was the bizarro-world opposite. I just spent six months fucking the biggest whiner pussy I had ever encountered, and now I was about to knock boots with a crack dealer who just got out of prison, had a bunch of gang tattoos, was a member of the Maniacs (the main gang on my street), had two kids, and had never slept with anyone but a black woman in his life.

We hung out in my room for a while. My roommate had just given me this book about prisoners' inventions that was really interesting. In the book it explains how to make a simulated ass and vagina using folded garbage bags filled with warm water and rolled up sheets to simulate a body, some real MacGyver shit.

I asked Junebug if he knew how to do that. He thought it was really funny and said he did not, but hopefully he will not end up back in prison, but if he does he'll know how to make a woman. I thought the sex would be a lot rougher than it was. It was weird because the sex with my wussy boyfriend was a lot rougher than the sex with this guy who most people would probably refer to as a thug.

When I woke up, Junebug was gone. That's the way I like it the best. I really hate morning awkwardness. I don't know if it was another holiday thing, or if it was that I just got out of this relationship with someone that I loathe and regret dating so much that I had to fornicate with his polar opposite, but I tend to think it is both.

My roommate wrote me a note asking me to pencil him in for Labor Day, half being an asshole, half being serious I think. Maybe I should lock myself inside for holidays, because my track record for the men I sleep with on holidays ends up being the most diverse, bizarre, perverse group of people ever.

Come Labor Day, I'll make sure I chain myself to my toilet until it is over.