me-me
I'm back in New York and suddenly facing the reality of being 'Mimi' again. When I left last August I was burnt out. I found living in New York City without stripping unbearable. I had the apartment on Mott Street, the nice, clean boyfriend who had nothing to do with my past life, I had the book deal and the great escape not just planned, but realized. But I was a husk and so I left. This is a bit from the book about that morning last August:
3am and a warm wind blew. My bags were packed, the apartment bare and clean, life disposed of in shipping boxes and black plastic garbage bags. After three years, it was surprisingly painless to leave the city. When it came down to it, I doubted New York had even registered my arrival, let alone noticed my departure. On Houston cabs crawled past, slowed perhaps, by the hour, the bliss of a cool morning wind after the treacly heat of the day. A bum emerged from behind a parked car, wandered incoherently over, sat down next to me on the stoop. I recognized his face.
“You leavin’ Manhattan? I seen you around this street, with the English guy. I do workin this block sometimes for Fer, you know Fer, the Super? Yeah, I know everyone on this street.”
His breath was hot and festering, a wet, dead rodent in the heat. “What are you doing up so late?” I asked quietly, a smile that didn’t reach my eyes, glance towards my watch where the fuck is this car
His eyes glimmered, glanced at me sharply, then the focus dimmed and the voice went low, intense.
“I have nightmares,” he shrugged. “Dreams, images, call ‘em what you want. I have nightmares, most nights. Keeps me up.”
“What are they about?” I whispered, and Manhattan was never so quiet as I waited for that answer.
“Things. Violent things. Sad things. I don’t want the nightmares, so I don’t sleep no more.”
He threw back his head and laughed, and in that black, burnt mouth the bitter charred stubs of teeth emerged and the stink, the stink - it was unbearable, like the laugh. “I have nightmares,” he repeated, and he laughed again, longer this time, harder. The car drew up. “Should I tell him you left?” he called after me, as the bags were thrown in the trunk, “He’s gonna miss you, pretty little thing that you are. You said goodbye?” and when I ignored him he let the laugh turn into something that sounded like a stifled scream. We drove off quickly down Houston.
There’s an art to leaving, a perfection, a symmetry. Whilst Mimi squirmed and howled and thrashed away inside me, the exorcism, that ritual purgation of words, was performed almost seamlessly. She left quietly - too quietly - as if one day, she might be back.
--------
I find it weird talking about that time now, as if by writing about life you consign it to a fiction, a story, something so unbearably intimate that has to become remote from your own reality in order to survive. I guess that's how I feel about my three years in New York: that by turning it into a book I changed it from reality into literature divorced from experience. I guess that's how we deal with life when it becomes overwhelming, we writers. We just turn it into something digestible and understandable when really it was never comprehendable, it doesn't make sense.
I keep getting emails from old schoolfriends who knew me when I was a nervy, nerdy, depressive, anorexic fifteen year old. They find the photos first: artfully posed with the correct lighting so I look slimmer and curvier, prettier and younger. You look so different! You look great! Hold on a sec, it's still me. Still the same person who pisses people off and has a huge mouth and offends people and acts like a dick, who oscillates between yoga ascetism and a good old booze up. Maybe you do change though. Grow harder and all that. Certainly life and its disappointments don't seem to matter so much; ideals and hopes become jaded and soured, so that a kick in the teeth can always be swiftly dodged by a wry smile and the thought Oh well, it'll make a good story....
I don't write so much on here anymore. I hate the confessional tomes of online diaries and all that shit, hate the idea that I may get typecast as some sad, neurotic bitch who can only write about her own life. One of the interesting things about my book is how much it's about other people rather than myself. My screenplay agent called it the most unusual love story she'd ever read. Maybe she's the first person to actually get it. My brother called it 'filth' with his raucous Sid James laugh. Maybe he is.
I'm back in New York in my shitty sublet with my roommates who are all young and eager and excited about careers. I like them. Memorial day hit and the weather turned hot and baked, and we sat upstairs on the roof sipping beers talking about the summer, talking about plans. New York feels odd and not right without stripping though, like I've lost some intimacy, I'm hanging out with an ex and we're engaging in conversation but we can't touch and kiss and entwine around each other like we used to. Maybe New York is a lost love for me, or maybe it's about to turn into something else. Who knows. I have these interviews, these screenplays to sell, journalism, the next book, grand plans. I need some shit though. I can't have it too easy. I need some pain and some trouble so I start to feel alive again, not just anaesthitized and numb.
Last night my roommates told me they were sad I was going. It's good living with people. I've learned now how to slip the past into everyday conversation so it doesn't seem extraordinary, though I still get the comments - whore, bitch, porn star, man stealer blah blah blah. Oh the irony! They never see me waking up at 6am for yoga looking bleary eyed like a twelve year old, wiping sleep from my eyes, wandering down Avenue B in faded stretch lycra. I want to dance again because I want to submerge myself away from all the smiley bollocks, the happy-clappy interviews and the stupid articles explaining and analyzing. Sometimes, a lot of the time, late at night when I'm finished sweating over an article and the heat rolls in from 1st Avenue in waves, I just want to be that girl who swung around a pole, pricked by the fear of never getting out, pricked by life, not suffocated by it.
I'm getting my dancer shoes out of storage tomorrow and on Wednesday I'm going to Chicago, on Saturday Minneapolis, and then maybe Fargo to dance, or direct to East Glacier Park, where I'll hire a car and hook up with Susan for some stripping action in small towns where nobody knows my name from stupid articles and publicity BS. I miss my girls. I miss Mimi.
I love that this is all happening. I guess I just don't know how to deal with it and need to do what I do best: write, travel and erm, show my tits. Life's a funny old game.
3am and a warm wind blew. My bags were packed, the apartment bare and clean, life disposed of in shipping boxes and black plastic garbage bags. After three years, it was surprisingly painless to leave the city. When it came down to it, I doubted New York had even registered my arrival, let alone noticed my departure. On Houston cabs crawled past, slowed perhaps, by the hour, the bliss of a cool morning wind after the treacly heat of the day. A bum emerged from behind a parked car, wandered incoherently over, sat down next to me on the stoop. I recognized his face.
“You leavin’ Manhattan? I seen you around this street, with the English guy. I do workin this block sometimes for Fer, you know Fer, the Super? Yeah, I know everyone on this street.”
His breath was hot and festering, a wet, dead rodent in the heat. “What are you doing up so late?” I asked quietly, a smile that didn’t reach my eyes, glance towards my watch where the fuck is this car
His eyes glimmered, glanced at me sharply, then the focus dimmed and the voice went low, intense.
“I have nightmares,” he shrugged. “Dreams, images, call ‘em what you want. I have nightmares, most nights. Keeps me up.”
“What are they about?” I whispered, and Manhattan was never so quiet as I waited for that answer.
“Things. Violent things. Sad things. I don’t want the nightmares, so I don’t sleep no more.”
He threw back his head and laughed, and in that black, burnt mouth the bitter charred stubs of teeth emerged and the stink, the stink - it was unbearable, like the laugh. “I have nightmares,” he repeated, and he laughed again, longer this time, harder. The car drew up. “Should I tell him you left?” he called after me, as the bags were thrown in the trunk, “He’s gonna miss you, pretty little thing that you are. You said goodbye?” and when I ignored him he let the laugh turn into something that sounded like a stifled scream. We drove off quickly down Houston.
There’s an art to leaving, a perfection, a symmetry. Whilst Mimi squirmed and howled and thrashed away inside me, the exorcism, that ritual purgation of words, was performed almost seamlessly. She left quietly - too quietly - as if one day, she might be back.
--------
I find it weird talking about that time now, as if by writing about life you consign it to a fiction, a story, something so unbearably intimate that has to become remote from your own reality in order to survive. I guess that's how I feel about my three years in New York: that by turning it into a book I changed it from reality into literature divorced from experience. I guess that's how we deal with life when it becomes overwhelming, we writers. We just turn it into something digestible and understandable when really it was never comprehendable, it doesn't make sense.
I keep getting emails from old schoolfriends who knew me when I was a nervy, nerdy, depressive, anorexic fifteen year old. They find the photos first: artfully posed with the correct lighting so I look slimmer and curvier, prettier and younger. You look so different! You look great! Hold on a sec, it's still me. Still the same person who pisses people off and has a huge mouth and offends people and acts like a dick, who oscillates between yoga ascetism and a good old booze up. Maybe you do change though. Grow harder and all that. Certainly life and its disappointments don't seem to matter so much; ideals and hopes become jaded and soured, so that a kick in the teeth can always be swiftly dodged by a wry smile and the thought Oh well, it'll make a good story....
I don't write so much on here anymore. I hate the confessional tomes of online diaries and all that shit, hate the idea that I may get typecast as some sad, neurotic bitch who can only write about her own life. One of the interesting things about my book is how much it's about other people rather than myself. My screenplay agent called it the most unusual love story she'd ever read. Maybe she's the first person to actually get it. My brother called it 'filth' with his raucous Sid James laugh. Maybe he is.
I'm back in New York in my shitty sublet with my roommates who are all young and eager and excited about careers. I like them. Memorial day hit and the weather turned hot and baked, and we sat upstairs on the roof sipping beers talking about the summer, talking about plans. New York feels odd and not right without stripping though, like I've lost some intimacy, I'm hanging out with an ex and we're engaging in conversation but we can't touch and kiss and entwine around each other like we used to. Maybe New York is a lost love for me, or maybe it's about to turn into something else. Who knows. I have these interviews, these screenplays to sell, journalism, the next book, grand plans. I need some shit though. I can't have it too easy. I need some pain and some trouble so I start to feel alive again, not just anaesthitized and numb.
Last night my roommates told me they were sad I was going. It's good living with people. I've learned now how to slip the past into everyday conversation so it doesn't seem extraordinary, though I still get the comments - whore, bitch, porn star, man stealer blah blah blah. Oh the irony! They never see me waking up at 6am for yoga looking bleary eyed like a twelve year old, wiping sleep from my eyes, wandering down Avenue B in faded stretch lycra. I want to dance again because I want to submerge myself away from all the smiley bollocks, the happy-clappy interviews and the stupid articles explaining and analyzing. Sometimes, a lot of the time, late at night when I'm finished sweating over an article and the heat rolls in from 1st Avenue in waves, I just want to be that girl who swung around a pole, pricked by the fear of never getting out, pricked by life, not suffocated by it.
I'm getting my dancer shoes out of storage tomorrow and on Wednesday I'm going to Chicago, on Saturday Minneapolis, and then maybe Fargo to dance, or direct to East Glacier Park, where I'll hire a car and hook up with Susan for some stripping action in small towns where nobody knows my name from stupid articles and publicity BS. I miss my girls. I miss Mimi.
I love that this is all happening. I guess I just don't know how to deal with it and need to do what I do best: write, travel and erm, show my tits. Life's a funny old game.
MIMI IN NY | 8:37 PM |
