It is no surprise to me that Jeannette Wall's memoir, The Glass Castle, is a big deal nowadays. Her tale of growing up in the coal-mined hills of West Virginia seems like the most surreal of fictions unless you grew up there, too. It's about time somebody cashed in on this enseamed world of lard sandwiches, dank root cellars, and relatives who were "dropped on their soft spots." Uncles who were dropped on their heads were to be avoided at all costs, let me tell you. I used to be embarrassed to tell people I was from West Virginia until I figured out it gave me some kind of "freak cred," and made me as exotic as an eland, the African deer of which only five in the world remain. So, we fellow West Virginians clung to each other, formed tiny little clans in the strange urban streets of San Francisco and marveled at our escapes.
Jeff Westbrook had started an underground railroad at 808 Haight Street and I opened the second station when I got my first apartment all my very own in The Lower Haight. In order to save up the money for first and last, I had to walk everywhere to save bus fare and subsisted on a bag of apples, some potatoes, and Lipton tea. Every dime I earned had to go to the deposit. I had chiseled my way in to the apartment with Southern sincerity but I had to make good on my promise. Once, I was so hungry, I broke down and went to the corner store to call my mom and beg for money enough to buy groceries. She was very quiet on the other end of the phone and replied, "I'd rather see you starve than live in that sinful city. The only money I'll give you is a plane ticket home." I hung up, her words an evisceration. The Lebanese guy that ran the corner store followed me out the door, "you come everyday, and I feed you. You so nice, we be friends." I accepted the bag of groceries he handed me but I never walked on that block again; I knew I would have had to pay for the groceries in the strange-smelling back room of the corner store. I decided that every time I felt the raw, grinding ache of hunger, that it was me getting stronger, not weaker. I ceased to care about food because I had a plan -my best friend was moving out to San Francisco and needed a place to stay. And that was all that mattered.
I discovered you can get used to being hungry; it changes things. My stomach even stopped growling and gurgling. I developed hollows and angles I had forgotten about. I drank so much water and Lipton tea that I drowned my hunger for hours at a time. The only trick was to keep all this hidden. The clothes I had brought with me from West Virginia started to hang on me but I got clever with knotting and belting and HIDING.
My co-workers at the very fancy investment brokerage thought I was a bit stuck up because I never went out to lunch but worked straight through the mile-long days. My boss was proud of my fierce dedication to my work and bragged about it to another manager, "Brenda is going places in this company; she is HUNGRY." Even the social x-ray girls that strode in each day in a constant stream of new garments seemed to approve, inquiring as to my dietary secrets. This not-eating-thing was great for my career! Plus, it gave more time to poke around in the computer system, a maze of back-door access to Fortune 500 companies. I could get lost in there for hours and discovered many things I had no business knowing about
We had to be there at 4:30 in the morning to be up with stock market in New York City but that was ok, I wasn't really sleeping anyway. I found an in-between state; I called it my theta-beta slip stream. And, I had the most interesting dreams where I wandered through TransAmerican cityscapes made of marzipan, sugared butter icing, peppermint street lamps and roads lined not with yellow brick but disco flashing jolly ranchers. I learned that, while in the theta beta, I could achieve a synesthesia state of altered consciousness wherein I could travel in the astral plane, lifting out of the corroded carcass of my body, all the while experiencing an untrammeled joy. Finally rid of the flesh bag that pinned me to the planet, weighed down by chemicals sloshing around inside me and creating emotions, like fear, hate, shame, love. I grew expert at measuring the pre-dawn light levels when I would have to descend, crashing down into the supine corpus that carted my consciousness to work and back. I was quickly becoming a savant of shame, my pride preventing me from telling anyone, even the WV clan about my rental starvation mode. I refused all invitations out, preferring instead to curl up on my futon-on-the-floor nest and jack into this addictive new visionary state.
One deadly dull day at work, I took the elevator up to the roof to sip some Lipton's and get away from the overly-cheery Mordred-Stanley-ites. They were jacking into Moloch on a daily basis and I mostly couldn't stand them. I had seen the best minds of my generation, starving hysterical naked and we didn't care about the latest trendy fucking shoe! Plus, they were pressuring me to get am MBA after work, which meant I would have less time to dream and my days would stretch from 4:30 am to 11:30 pm. Soon, I was going to have to let them in on the fact that I was crazed on something, just not ambition. As I pressed the R button, a woman shot inside the elevator at the last possible second, parting the sheet-metal doors with immaculately-manicured hands. I had long ago eschewed eye-contact with the world but she was friendly in a way I found non-threatening. Even in my peripheral vision, I could see she was beautiful in a way that was not of this earth, perhaps she was a Nephilim? She gazed down at me and said, "I've been seeing you around for a few weeks now, right?"
"Ummmm, yeah, almost six weeks now."
"Where are you from? Texas? I can't quite place the accent. My boyfriend says the most beautiful women are from Texas."
I dreaded explaining that I had moved from what the early French settlers of my home place called, "hell on earth," but I could also tell she wouldn't be mean about it. More often than not, people said, "oh, you wear shoes; I thought hillbillies didn't!" That kind of tired shit made me wary of providing strangers with too much information that was inevitably used against me.
"I'm from West Virginia, along the Ohio River. It's really pretty there but I moved here so I wouldn't have to be a truck stop waitress."
"Ohhhhhhhhh," she cooed with her pink, pillowy lips. It seemed to excite her. "My name is Barbara Jean, nice to meet you."
"My name is Brenda; where do you work in this building?" I asked. We shook hands, my nail-bitten ones rough against her satiny skin.
"Oh, I don't work here this is where my agency is and I have to come here to book jobs" She was traveling to the roof to smoke and proffered a pack of cigarettes with her picture on the back. "Oh, you're the More Cigarette Girl!" I suddenly recognized her from billboards and ads in glossy magazines where the women all looked just like her. I was not a smoker but suddenly sharing a cigarette with Barbara Jean seemed like the best idea in years. Plus, it made me kindaqueasy high and I liked it. Shockingly, she said, "I noticed you because you have great tits." I thanked her, bemused that a supermodel would notice any part of my anatomy and felt like today was my lucky day. Today, I could have MORE.
Towards the end of the cigarette, we had discovered we were the both Pisces, lived near each other, and were currently dating older men. My beau, The Vise, was on the road with his band and was not around to feed and take care of me. He seemed to think I needed shielding and protection and I resented that he sometimes treated me like I was a little girl. I suddenly realized I had not been taking advantage of my freedom to act like a big girl. Barbara Jean said, "Let's go out tonight!" and all memory of the fact that I was flat broke flew out of my head. We set our plans and I went home and spent two hours until I found just the right dress, a low-cut number that had never failed me. She picked me up in a slouchy Citroen and we lurched up Fillmore Street to a very expensive restaurant. "Uh, Barbara Jean, I should probably tell you that I don't have much money."
"I know, but we don't need money. We sit at the bar and everything we need will be provided. Men will buy it for us," she grinned leeringly, her pillowy lips now a searing red. We parked her crazy car and went into the poshest place I had even seen, me following like a duckling. I was starting to feel ill; picturing having to wash dishes to pay for food or, worse, being kicked out into the street. I slithered off to the ladies room and reapplied lipstick and steadied myself for perching on a stool, awaiting drinks and food to rain down from the heavens. Sure enough, within moments, we were set up with champagne and oysters. "Hmmm," I thought, "this does work." I envisioned my future of free food and buckets of champagne, all in return for a smile and some kind words. In truth, it was not that easy and I started feeling like I was back at the corner store. The truth was I was getting a little tipsy and a lot uncomfortable. Barbara Jean was a pro at this men-buying-you-things business and I just wanted to get out of there. At some point, Barbara Jean went out to smoke one of her More Cigarettes with the man who had bought us steaks and she never came back.
The bartender came over to me, leaned forward and said, "If you can wait until my shift is over, I can take you home." Strangely, he only lived three blocks away from me and I was more than ready to accept a ride back to my nest. I felt safe again and he provided me with my own booth; I of course, had a book in my purse and happily began reading, my stomach full for the first time in weeks. A kind of bliss took over my body and I felt stupidly sleepy. When I awoke, I had no idea where I was and felt terrified. A hangover rasped at my temples and I stumbled around, looking for shoes and purse. I looked out the window and recognized the corner of Oak and Steiner. "Fuck!" It was a little before 4 am and I had to be at work in a half hour. Grimacing, I started the long march to Market and Second Street to the octagonal building that housed the global financiers for whom I worked. I felt like a fraud, slunking along in my slutty dress, wondering if people could smell the stink of strangers and alcohol off me. It was fear alone that propelled me there and I drank coffee for the first time that morning. It tasted awful but I needed something to pull me into the world of numbers that dominated my days. I could tell from a few sideways glances that some of my co-workers did not approve of my night-into-day garb but mostly they were too preoccupied with the tickertape world of money markets. Japan was getting its ass kicked that day. "Fuckers deserve it," I thought, adrenaline-surging on coffee.
The memory of Barbara Jean and the cave-cocoon of the bartender's bedroom stored itself in the dinosaur part of my brain. I did not exactly know what had taken place but I knew I didn't like it. I focused on pulling together the reports on international shipments due into the Port of Los Angeles. Fucking tons of frozen orange juice and frozen French fries were off loading into America by a Japanese-owned conglomerate and it was a BIG FUCKING deal. I logged onto a secret server that showed every cargo loader in the Pacific Ocean, the exact destination and what was being hauled across the surface of the earth. Suddenly, I felt like I understood how the world worked and it seemed to me, it was irrevocably broken. I felt pity for Americans blindly consuming fetid foods marketed as "fresh" that came from god-knows-where. The caffeine inside me raged. I stood up and looked at the 360 degree view my company so prized in this luxurious downtown building. "I've got to do something!" I thought feverishly.
Right then, Diane, the snotty receptionist, buzzed to tell me I had a call. It was Vise, calling from Philly, where he and his band were holed up in a flea-bitten motel. I had a toll-free number at work and we took full advantage, even figuring out how to conference our friends so nobody ever had to pay for a phone call, ever. Nobody had showed up for their punkabilly swing band's gig and he needed some verbal crack. Usually, I was up for it. Tea-drinking Brenda would talk baby-talk with Vise and give unbelievably good phone on cue. Coffee drinking Brenda was a stone-cold bitch who would just as soon cut you as say hello. "How you doin,' baby?" Vise asked in his New-York-Jew-turned Cali punk accent. "I'm really busy today," I replied in a voice that could've caused another ice age. He whined nasally for what seemed like an eternity about how few people had come to the club and how people had spit on him. I refrained from explaining to him in no uncertain terms exactly why nobody would ever want to see his band and begged off. "Are you ok? You just don't sound like yourself..." I took another swig of acid-y cold coffee and promised to call later. Relieved, I hung up with a thunk.
He was causing me to lose focus and I had to get back to that server! If I could just get in that back door to the container ships, I could stop them from coming into port. This was to be used only in extreme emergencies such as typhoon warnings, or to manipulate the stock market but I had to stop all this fucked up food from flooding in and sickening the masses. And, only I could do it.
Stay tuned for Part Two: Barbara Jean Reappears and Lillian Arrives
