If you have been so kind to read my writing with any sort of regularity over the past years you may have noticed that I spent a long time traveling back and forth to Paris, which abruptly stopped the last time I left France in March of 2011. I have decided that it has been long enough that I can write up what happened there, and why I may never be able to go back there. I do this for posterity, to clarify how I feel about it, and perhaps as a personal reference. For a long time I wouldn't talk about leaving Paris and why and how, because the sadness weighed so heavy on me the only option was to block it out of my mind and crawl into bed (or someone else's bed). Even some of my closest friends new only the vague details. I realize based on that paragraph it may sound that something awful and dramatic happened in Paris, and while I suffered many little tragedies that is not the case. But if failure and disappointment could hold a weight I never would have been able to check my luggage coming back home. Since I was a little girl I dreamed of moving to France and living life as an expat there. I thought I had planned my life in such a way that it was inevitable. But life often has other plans for us. I have started writing the piece and I think it will be three parts, so perhaps another mini series. It may take a bit to finish putting it together but I will try to post it as I complete it. I'll put a link in the sidebar as well. I hope you read it and enjoy it, so that at least something good can come out of this, the most difficult time in my life. As usual thanks for following this little blog, even though my writing has dropped off significantly these past few years. Perhaps starting with this will inspire me to write more like I used to. Bisous partout -Lucie PS I am also updating my favorites for the last two years in the favorites list, for easy viewing
Anyone who knows me knows that I love playing with identity. One of the ways I like to do this is by dressing up and playing with all my wigs. so I have decided I am going to write a little bio for each of my characters created from the various wigs in my collection. Little profiles for my multiple personalities. What do you think? Watch this space.
Ps I also added photo links to the various series I include in the blog, as well as the 2010 links for my favorite scribbles. Enjoy!
[ed note: This is my favorite story I wrote in high school: not because it is amazingly written, or a wonderful short plot. I love it because when I was young my best friend was a military brat and moved to Mississippi when I was just 12 or 13. Thereafter I would go to see her every summer- by myself! When I think of being young in the summer, I think of Mississippi times. This story just brings everything back for me- I remember that night so vivdly- though most nights ended the same way. Hope you like it <3 ]
Click!
“Shhhh, they’ll hear you!”
“They are asleep. Its 3 AM.”
“But they’ll wake up!”
“From one little click?”
“Yes!!”
“Shhh you, they’ll definitely wake up if you want to get angry about it!”
She threw a pillow at me. I held it against my face to keep from giggling too loudly. It smelled like eucalyptus. Everything in the room smelled of faint eucalyptus and watermelon. It was a pleasant smell- a comforting smell.
The click had come from the window. It clicked each time it was slid open. The air from outside started penetrating the room: hot and sticky, but in a good way. There was a tiny breeze that would blow your hair just a little if you stood the right way, and it always felt amazing.
She went to the nightstand and turned on the stereo very softly. She pushed ‘repeat’ and the CD was spinning.
Round here... We all look the same...
“What good will that do?” I asked.
“It’s... important.” She answered.
“Well are we going? You are letting all the mosquitoes into my room!”
“Fine, lets go. But be quiet!”
We climbed out the window, slowly and carefully. I gasped as my foot brushed a pine cone and she giggled. I took a hair band out of my pocket as she closed the window almost all of the way. I pulled my hair into a sloppy bun at the nape of my neck. It was tangled and dirty, but I just wiped it out of my face without a thought, brushing a mosquito off my shoulder.
“Is it secure?” I asked.
“All systems go,” she replied.
We ran around the side of the house. The sky was covered with a million silver stars and the moon was full, directly above us. The damp grass flirted with my feet as I dodged ant piles. As we walked past the driveway the motion detector lights went of. We squealed; she grabbed my hand and we ran across the yard. My bun slipped out of the elastic band and my hair bounced as we stumbled into the darkness.
We met the road. The rough asphalt was a harsh change from the soft, tickling grass. We continued running for a few strides but stopped when our bare feet began to sting. We then slowed to a nervous walk.
“It’s kinda chilly” I said.
“Not really.”
I tugged at my sagging, worn jeans and pulled my tiny camisole tank top over my tummy. “Do you have a hair band? Mine must have fallen out.”
“Nope, sorry, this is the only one I have,” she said, pointing to the mess of almost white-blond hair piled on her head.
Besides our quiet talking, it was almost silent. The bugs were screaming as usual. The mosquitoes were buzzing, like always. The streetlight we were almost under was emitting an annoying bizzzzzz every few seconds. I looked down at my shadow. It dances in front of my on the road. I lifted my hand just to see its bent equivalent.
We reached the end of the road and climbed the rusty gate. Now the road had turned to gravel and my toes creamed at me. “Why didn’t I bring sandals?” I asked aloud, to no one. The serenity was getting to me. I had too much energy to be encompassed with silence. She just laughed as we walked onward, until finally we reached the lake.
“Come sit on the pier,” she said. She motioned for me to join her by the water. It was very still, as if I could have stood still on the gentle waves. I sat down.
“Did you bring the oreos?” I asked.
“Yup! Here,” she handed me a few. “Ask a question.”
“You first,” I said, adjusting my legs under my body.
“Sure. Ok, if the cream is on the right side of the cookie then I am going to meet the man of my dreams in the next fifteen days. If it is on the left side I’ll be marrying that guy from McDonalds when I’m forty.” She twisted and discovered the cream filling on the left side.
I laughed. “I’ll still be your maid of honor,” I said.
“Come on, lets go swimming.”
“Are you sure its not cold?” I ate an oreo and dangled my fingers over the top of the water.
“Of course it isn’t cold, it was like 200 degrees today! Lets go!” she squeaked.
We stood up, slid off our clothes, and jumped in the water. A million bubbles floated around me as I swam to the surface. I looked around for her. “You’re right, it feels good,” I admitted. She splashed me with the murky water. “Hey! Don’t get my jeans wet on the pier,” I said.
“They’re going to get wet when you put them back on anyway, unless you plan on walking back without them.” She laughed and dipped under the water. I waved my arms to stay afloat and eyed my surroundings. The lake seemed so much larger once inside it. A house far across the water had a light on in an upstairs room and it glowed yellow through the glass. I could hear a few cars zooming by on the road just past the trees.
Everything felt, and smelled, like summer.
I climbed out of the lake, pulled on my tank top and underpants, and stretched out on the pier. “Getting out so soon?” she called out from the water.
“I’m going to take your clothes and run!” I mocked, as I gently lifted then set down the heap of fabric splayed next to me. “What day is it?” I asked.
“Ummmmm... Thursday.”
“Oh.”
“Well, technically it is Friday,” she said, swimming closer to me.
“Oh, yeah. What time is it?”
“I dunno, look at my watch.”
I shifted her pile of clothes and a watched fell onto the pier. 4.32. I called out to her: “Are you tired?”
“No! I could do anything right now!”
“Okay, lets go to Italy,” I suggested.
“No-Mexico,” she said as she climbed out of the water. “We can get cheap tequila there.”
“Eww I don’t even like tequila.” I squinted my nose.
“Yeah, well, you aren’t supposed to like it. If the frosting is on the right, we go to Italy. If it is on the left, then its Mexico.” She stuck an oreo in her mouth as she pulled on her Old Navy jeans and then twisted the cookie.
“Guess I better get used to tequila,” was my defeated reply.
She tugged at her hair as I zipped up my jeans and then we began to walk back to the house. We took our time, to dry off as much as possible in the night air. For a few steps we both left faint footsteps on the road behind us. By the time we reached the window we were both fighting a losing battle with drowsiness.
I yawned. “What do you want to do now?” I climbed over the windowsill. “Tired?”
“No, you?” she replied.
“Not at all. Lets play cards.”
The cards had already been sprawled out on the bed and we joined them. The blankets smelled like eucalyptus. We both slid asleep, with the CD player still spinning:
"The whole world looks different from the back seat of a convertible," she said as she slipped on her black studded sunglasses and shifted gears. Her words floated back to me. "Where are you headed, honey?" She lifted her hand just off of the steering wheel for a second to check her nails.
It was a huge old convertible. Canary yellow. The paint was chipping and the leather of the seats was cracked.
"San Francisco" was my reply.
She was old. Her face had wrinkled from years of tanning and dark roots peaked out from beneath her heavily bleached hair. It didn't look soft. Nothing about her looked soft- her hair, her face, her synthetic clothing... I leaned my elbow on my bag.
"Oh. Another aspiring actress, are ya? I see," she said, checking me out in her rear view mirror.
I didn't want to be an actress.
"Well, honey, honestly, you aren't even going to pull commercials with a nose like that." She waved around her hands when she talked. Her long plastic nails clicked together, her clunky gold rings twisted around her fingers.
I liked my nose.
"Well, one tip for ya- don't ever let them talk you into taking your clothes off! No matter how much they offer you. You'll never live it down. I know I haven't." She looked at me again. I could tell she wanted me to ask her what she had acted in and who had wanted her to take her clothes off. After a few seconds I humored her. "Is that so?" I said flatly.
"Oh yes doll. It'll follow you forever. You see, I played a stripper in a movie in the eighties. It was called Candlelight. I'm sure you've heard of it."
I had never heard of it. "Oh, yeah, of course," I said.
She let out a loud, short laugh. "You were probably a baby!" she snorted. "Well, let me tell you, people still ask me about it. I hear it still makes its rounds in the dorms. Just last week a young guy came up to me and said 'hey aren't you the stripper from Candlelight?' So I said 'yeah' and we had a few drinks..."
I could tell that was a lie but I smiled a little anyway. The dusty air was spinning past me and the sun was blaring down- I could feel it on the part in my hair.
"But you gotta be careful of people like that, honey. They think just because they've seen you naked in a movie once they can have you then and there! But that's men for ya... Gotta boyfriend, girlie?"
"No, no I don't," I said. I leaned my head back and let the sunshine bounce off of my cheeks.
"Oh.. Well... you aren't one of those... lesbian girls, are you?" She whispered the word lesbian as if it were a curse. "It is supposed to be hip these days, you know, to be like that. Doesn't make any sense to me. Crazy- these people are. Next thing you know they'll live right next door to you."
I just smiled. I was as much a lesbian as I was an actress.
"You running away, sweetie?" she then asked me, lowering her glasses with a fake expression of worry. "You look awfully young."
"I'm not running," I said. "Just taking a break."
"Who is it, honey? she asked. "Do your parents treat you bad? Hate your teachers? Bad break up?"
I just ran my hand over the weathered interior and sighed as she pulled over to the side of the road.
"I'll just let you off here, hun, but I'll tell you- I've run away before. Its no good. Just go find yourself a nice rich man, honey, someone who can take care of your pretty little face." She smiled a wide, toothy smile at me. I got out and stood next to the car. Her lips were an obnoxious shade of pink.
I pushed my windblown hair out of my face, and looked farther down the road into the distance. "Thank you very much," I said as I pushed the door closed.
I've decided that my algebra teacher is very unsatisfied with her life. Its because of her husband. He is very protective of her. She doesn't enjoy her job. She goes home and grades papers and dreams of beaches and sunsets and bittersweet breezes. She could be a doctor. She could be a professor. But no, she is stuck here in nowheresville suburbia. But she'll get out some day- she'll leave that worthless man and find real love: something that she can never configure with numbers on a chalkboard.
Its strange that I know so much about her, and yet she can't seem to remember my name...
(this was a story I tried to write from a male perspective)
She sat back against her pillows in her soft, dark negligee. He looked into her eyes as he buttoned up his shirt. He couldn't believe he had done it again. After all this time. After everytime he told himself he wouldn't go back again.
But Jesus, she was beautiful. Her body was a continuous line- dark brunette waves turning to soft slanted shoulders fading to the curves of her hips down the length of her leg. He could look at her forever.
She smiled her crooked smile and stood, pressing her body against his. "Lovely," she said. "Won't you stay?" She pouted her lips and leaned back a little, while gently entangling her leg with his.
"I can't" he said.
"Just as well," she replied as she slipped out of the lingerie and into a big blanket. "I'm going to Paris in two days."
He didn't want to know that. He didn't want to know anything else that she would do or had done. He wished he didn't even know her address. He resented all of this knowledge because he knew deep down that if he got that feeling again- the dark, miserable, empty feeling, he would have to see her again. He knew he would follow her to Paris if he could, if it got too bad.
There she would be waiting for him, with champagne and Vivaldi. There she would let him in and take him in her bed and eat toast in the morning. He just couldn't take it anymore. He loved her too deeply, too passionately to stand. Ecstasy was in her eyes and bliss in her blankets, and his heart continuously broke after each time. All his dreams were within her, and she didn't even care.
He went into the bathroom and splashed water onto his face. He knew he had to just go away. He knew that he had to ignore the dark feeling that came with being without her and eventually it would dull down. He promised himself he would not go back again.
He left through the window to avoid saying goodbye and feeling another kiss on his lips. The goodbye kisses were always half given: if he never received the beginning, he wouldn't have to return for the end.
I sat blankly on my bed and stared into my closet. I had a taste in my mouth that was like I had been drinking flat coke. Of course, it wasn't true, because I had been living off of grape juice and poptarts for four days. I just felt like it, you know?
Well, anyway, I was staring at my closet wishing that maybe if I blinked I might open my eyes to something new and exciting, but every time it was the same old clothes. It made me think of the time when I was seven and I put on one of my mother's dresses, but I didn't fill out the top at all (nor the rest of the dress for that matter). I modeled in the mirror, pretending I had a figure, but everytime I looked it was just the same old boring me- so I cut all my hair off with the bathroom scissors. My mom says I get bored with things too quickly. I don't think that's true. After all, I was still eating blueberry poptarts, wasn't I?
One thing I was bored with, though, was Tony. Excruciatingly bored. The way he talked, walked, kissed, sneezed... All of it put me to sleep. So I sat in front of my closet with a clear mission: find a dump Tony outfit. Black... black... I thought, for mourning, of course. I put on a black dress that hung to my knees and added a pink sequin ribbon to hang on my hips that I had so craved at a young age.
One time I went to the mall with Tony. We were in his car, cruising through the parking lot. I saw a parking spot, it must have been about 6 spots back from the front door. But Tony said he though he saw something closer, so instead of listening to me he drove on. Of course, we lost both spots. And isn't that just like Tony? Always looking for something better than what he has right in front of his face. And it drives me crazy.
I took off the black dress and put on a pair of green pants and a black top, but the velvet swirls on the cuffs of the pants seemed too cheery for the occasion.
I remember when Tony bought me a lamp for our anniversary. He said he was trying to be different. It was the ugliest thing I had ever seen, but I put it in my room anyway. The base had painted fish on it that looked absolutely demonic. They gave me nightmares until I tied a scarf over them.
I exchanged my pants for a miniskirt and ankle boots, which of course made me change my shirt to a dark blue camisole. But it was too sexy. I didn't want him picturing me naked right before we broke up.
My mind flew back to our first kiss: It was in my backyard, late one humid summer night. He actually asked me if he could kiss me before he did. It was so dorky. So of course I was all ready for it, instead of it being spontaneous and wonderful, as first kisses are supposed to be. I recall the evening to be a disaster.
I threw on outfit after outfit, until I began to realize that I wasn't really worried about alligator belts and a-line skirts, I was procrastinating. And as I sat there, in my robe now, staring into the closet, the phone rang.
It was Tony.
"Hello dollface" he said. Oh, I hated when he called me that.
"Hi Tony" I said flatly.
"Well I was wondering if you wanted to go dancing tonight. The whole crowd should be there?"
"Well," I said. "Well... ok."
"That's great" he said. "And dollface, I love you."
Hearing Tony's amourous words across the line made my face turn pink and I suddenly and briefly forgot about all the previosly overanalyzed faults of his. So maybe he was a little over ambitious, a lot of girls like that in a guy. And so maybe he had strange taste in presents and sometimes he tended to get a little nervous. These things, I thought, are not things to lose someone over.
"I love you too Tony," I said back, smiling. "And puh-lease don't call me dollface," I said with a sigh.
"I'll pick you up at eight. Oh, will you wear that black dress I love with that weird sparkly ribbon thingy?"
As I changed back into my original outfit, I reflected on my problem. I sipped from my glass of grape juice and decided maybe I should go chopping all my hair off everytime I'm bored.
Seeing as I am (temporarily) squatting at my fathers house, I started searching for my old portfolio of short stories I wrote in high school that I used to send off to Seventeen Magazine- never had one published, though. I thought I could rewrite some of the stories to update them to a more mature perspective. I can't find my portfolio but I did find stacks of notebooks packed with (awful) poetry and scribbled with shorts. I thought I would share some here on the blog- there is a certain sweetness to the naivety (I had hardly been outside of my small southern town). Most stories are about escaping your life for something better, full of people I wish I knew in real life. Hope you enjoy them-- I'll keep digging for the portfolio...
(Ps I was in high school from 1997 to 2001, if you want "cultural context").
the paper doll girl got a paper doll boy
(he had a beret accessory)
and she fashioned him into her lover
instead of dressing him up,
the clothes came off
until the day she
looked
at his one dimensional body
and realized that
no matter how many Gucci shirts she bent over his arms
or how many wine glasses she pasted to his hand
he would always \be made out of
There once was a paper doll girl. Each time she met someone new, they would pick up the blue polka dot spring dress and place it onto her, bending the paper taps over her shoulders and hips, and stand her up somewhere. Or they would put onto her the tulle and flowers wedding dress. Or the little black cocktail outfit. Or the business suit that had been ripped a little at the waist and pasted back together.
Everyone loved the paper doll girl because she became whatever they wanted her to be.
I realize based on that paragraph it may sound that something awful and dramatic happened in Paris, and while I suffered many little tragedies that is not the case. But if failure and disappointment could hold a weight I never would have been able to check my luggage coming back home. 
