Chapter one - Reinvention of Myself and finding my bliss

Here is an excerpt of my Chick Lit/Thriller/Murder Mystery novel:

Chapter One

So here I am smack-dab allegorically and rhetorically phoenix-rising-from-the-dead in my new creative writing group trying to find myself! Because somehow in the past year and a half I’ve been lost. (Or so my therapist BrightAnna Winthrop tells me.)

A perfunctory Lost Soul; proverbial disjointed and discombobulated, plundering, blundering, hither and thither, a pious wake of a life, losing its heart and hearth and everything heavenly and delightful, like a posthumous artist-at-large pillow-talking its fickle way into the depths of despair and hell. Now needing to snake it’s wanderlust heartless ways back out of the Hades abyss, back into the throngs of life, of reality, but isn’t reality hell, too, sometimes?

Ah yes, my Lost Soul. How it had mired me so. It hankered to be returned to me. With the help of this new age creative writing therapy, somehow.

But my Lost Soul could have had something to do with merely ONE of the following, but more likely it was just a sad hodgepodge conglomerate of the following:

1. My uber-addiction to chocolate – which really spiraled out of control when my relationship woes began a year and a half ago.

2. My sucky-ass love life which led to the chocolate habit (see number 1.).

So really my chocolate addiction caused the downfall of my romance with Farkley Farley Farvenator III (v. bad name, but v. delicious-looking guy who owns a smattering of chocolate factories – HELLO! – can you say HOT HOT HOT?) AND my lack of love/attention/sex in the relationship, because Farkley is a workaholic (hence HIS addiction), caused me to consume even more vast quantities of chocolate (which I stole and subsequently got caught. It’s never good when you shit where you eat, and if you live there as well.).

Farkley Farley Farvenator III neglected me. So I ate more chocolate. Our romance was doomed from the start because he is a workaholic.

I ate more chocolate and got fat so Farkley lost interest. Our romance was doomed, always, because I am a chocoholic.

3. My career being in the toilet. (Again because of my chocoholic addiction!)

4. My finances. Or lack thereof. (Ditto reason!)

5. And now my homelessness. (Same!)

Homeless? Actually, technically, I’m currently crashing at Jazhette’s pad for the moment but wondering how long I can stay there amidst the empty red Chinese cartons from Wong My Jong Express (buy four eggrolls, get the fifth one free), vacant and stench-encrusted Jose Cuervo Tequila bottles with the equally egregious encroached worm within, stacks of raunchy Playgirl magazines, empty battery boxes for her Eroscillator, all the raucous parties, and the endless revolving door of vapid boytoys galore.

Or…drumroll please…number six.

6. Or it could be that I almost died last week.

You see, what feels like just a nanosecond ago, I was strapped in tightly on a charismatic rollercoaster ride to Hell.

It all happened when I was helping a friend at Gretel’s Halloween party last week. At the time, we were all ensconced having a perfectly marvelous jolly time, just having a fantastic jubiliant macabre-laden spooky Halloweenie madcap galore time…and all of a sudden my friend, Chryssa, my needy pushy freaked-out-to-the-gills agoraphobic friend, grabs me and pulls me aside amidst downing tequila shots supplied by Sabrina.

“Jara, he’s HERE, I just know it! You’ve gotta HELP me!” Rabid fear in her voice, I smelled fear. Oceans of it. Smelled like dead fishies in saccharated and saturated pondwater. And her stalker, Ryan, probably smelled it too. Well, he was probably good at sniffing that stench in the air, he’d been staking her straight for seven years, even during his stints in prison. Somehow he always got to her, always found her, or had his creepy cronies from the outside find her and harass and stalk her, but she’d always somehow survived.

“Oh!” I hiccuped. The tequila’s getting to me, I had to stop somehow. “Who – him? What? No way. I’d heard he just got out of the slammer, but HERE? Seriously?” I said. My eyes roved around but naturally, everyone was dressed in Halloween costumes. It would be difficult to spot her stalker.

“How do you know he’s here?” But then I saw her ghastly face. It didn’t matter if she had proof or not, I’d help her no matter what. Ryan had already driven her to becoming too pokey-petrified to leave her home and this was the first time I’d seen her outside of her home. She had a few overgrown hairy-ass man escorts tonight, too. But they were nowhere in sight right now.

“You HAVE to switch masks with me. I’m really scared,” Chryssa said, shaking.

“Really? No problem. I’m not scared of him, or of anything!”

“Thanks, Jare. I knew I could count on you! That’s right, you’re not scared of anything, after what you’ve been through…”

I was Vampira Death Goddess Blackest Whore of the Night, and she was Cleopatra, but since she insisted that her ex-boyfriend, Ryan, was stalking her again (we know how nerve wracking that can be and how it always freaked her out) she wanted to throw him off. He’d just gotten out of prison. He’d been stalking her for 7 years and wouldn’t leave her alone. She told me she just wanted a night of peace.

So we swapped masks straightaway.

It was when I was doing the hootchi-cootchie on the dance floor when all of a sudden someone grabbed me and started swirling me around. Which wasn’t a good thing to do because I’d just had scads of tequila.

I was getting incredibly dizzy so I tried to wrench myself away from this Casper the Way Too Friendly Ghost, when he refused to let go of me and then grabbed my arms.

I screamed. I flailed my arms away from him but he lunged for me.

I was trapped on the dance floor and I couldn’t get away. There were too many people dancing and the band was rip-roaring road-rage hellbent on fucking wheels tonight. Gloria was up there playing the bass guitar badly and Sheena was singing lyrically, madly. But my good time had ended for the night.

Casper lunged for me again. I felt a warm rush of blood in my arm as he stabbed me with what I imagined was a sharp stiletto.

I screamed again. I lurched out of the room, clutching my bleeding arm. I felt him come right behind me so I started knocking people out of the way. It was just too goddamned crowded.

Other people on the dance floor screamed. I felt blood surging out of my body. I scooched out of there and through the dining room, bumping into people, who called out after me. I scooted out of that room then and into another.

It was such a maze, Gretel’s damn blasphemously big house.

Gretel yelled at me in the séance room because I skirted through, interrupting her hard work at it, as the gypsy that she was. I saw Jazhette dressed in her warped witch costume, but couldn’t stop as she called out my name wistfully, but she didn’t come after me. I thought I saw Sabrina in there, too, but I wasn’t sure. I was wrenching in pain at this point. Chryssa was seated at the table, too, because I recognized my original mask. She waved as if nothing were wrong which seemed a bit unusual but I had no time to mull that over. She’d probably drank as much as I had, too, though.

But couldn’t they tell that I was in trouble, clutched over, bleeding, and running around like a crazy woman, sceaming my fucking head off? Out of control? And that someone was chasing me?

Didn’t they hear me scream?

Jesus.

My hurt lurched in my throat and I felt the warm flush of blood gust out. It was some kind of wonderfully bad cut. I couldn’t even look at it. I had to escape. I couldn’t stop to explain to Gretel or any of my other friends.

So I kept running throughout the vast house, pushing past the mass of people streaming in every room. The house loomed larger than ever, maze-friendly suddenly swarming into pseudo rat-in-a-maze syndrome.

Where was the exit? The stabber wearing the Casper the Friendly Ghost mask chased after me with a real knife, my blood squirting from it.

The next thing I remember was waking up in the hospital, which was a week later. Apparently I’d gotten stabbed again above the chest and almost died. I’d lost a lot of blood.

It appeared to be a case of mistaken identity. They could never prove Chryssa’s ex did it. They couldn’t even find him.

So this is a fresh start for me. Start over. Somehow. Forget about the near-death experience. My therapist and the docs all gave me a clean bill of health anyway. Aunt Aganesia’s relieved. Oh, I told them all, I’ve had worse. And I have.

“Write about your friends.” Says the moderator of our creative writing group, a guy named Gil, dreamy, 30 something, somewhat laid back, blazing blue eyes. Mel Gibson’s effervescent younger and fleshier cousin, probably likes the chocolate doughnuts too much. Which means that with my chocolate addiction we’re already like best friends!

He sits across from me and I just stare. I gaze longingly into his gorgeous baby blues. I swoon.

My page is blank though. He looks pointedly at it and winks.

“Jara? You alright?” He says.

I nod blankly, still mesmerized by him. He then smiles. I melt. Swoon further sway this way and that. I’m so Jell-O Brand Jell-O Pudding, the creamy lemony custardy kind (with chocolate sprinkles on top – don’t knock it til you try it.). My stomach see-saws.

Everyone else in the group sits at our long vast table scribbling madly. Pencils scratch. Paper scuffles. Chairs shuffle. Some pencil movements sound angry, others easy, steady…most are so thar she blows and billows happily. It’s a kind hearted comforting rhythym and I like it just fine. Otherwise all is still.

We’re in the back room (specially reserved, blackhouse-dark, boomingly-austere) of an intellectual-afficianado’s coffee shop hangout called Karl’s Marx, which is pretty ironic since two of the crew in our group actually look like Karl Marx. Murph: adorns a long crusty beard and looks post-acopalypse hippie with his retro peace-marked jeans and neon-thwarted-green spiraled-paisley cowboy-pocket-flared long sleeve shirt; Viv: has fiery-red tangly-angry fly-me-away hair (scary merged with cool) and bushy caterpillar come-hither eyebrows that tantalize and tease when she talks. A hubrious husband and wife team. I’ve often heard that people who live together for long periods of time begin to resemble one other. It’s true. They must eat the same things so their nutrition is similar, perhaps even their facial features are the same since they perhaps mimic each other.

At this café, they have the best non-fat mocha latte, sprinkled top-heavy with chocolate doo-dads. Mine rests happily next to me, strangely untouched. That’s how hot Gil is! He by far surpasses my latte. It is a delicious juxtaposition, having this hot, uber-intelligent leader of our group and being surrounded by warm, funny newfound writer buddies in a comforting quintessential coffee café (I know this is SO cliché but what can I say at this point in the story? I’m so Muh!). What else can possibly surpass this moment in time? Oh yeah = surviving death last week! YES!

Gil moves easily and slides over beside me in a funny comedic super-nerdy way. No more shy-guy, must be wrong about that. Everyone laughs at his hyped-up over eagerness. He’s got his flirt-on, I can tell and I smile at this. To your rescue, he says, grinning and I am hamming it up here. But dying a little too because I’ve sworn off men (like this drought will last – NOT! Did I mention I have next to No Willpower?). It’s bad enough that my dentist is HOT and always making me salivate – not fun when you are at the dentist. Dentists are supposed to look more like Warren Buffet, not Warren Beatty. Salivate and slobber vs dry mouth? They both pretty much suck ass bigtime. But now this…I was told by my therapist to get a creative outlet since I almost died and I keep getting fired at temp jobs for writing and inventing stories in my head and this is supposed to be my sanctuary. My new bliss. My haven. Not my lust-riddled heaven.

Gil says, “Just write about your closest friends. Who are they? What do they desire most? What evils lie in the hearts of our closest friends? What secrets, lies, and glory of such waxes and wanes? Go to it!” I watch his gorgeous mouth move. I am mesmerized. I sit up in my chair and start to scribble about my best friend.

Evil? In the hearts of my friends? Secrets and lies?

Really?

Are you serious?

My friends. Real pieces of work. After what I’ve been through, this should be quick and painless.

But my friends don’t have evil in their hearts! They might be weird and quirky, have many flaws, but they’re all fun-loving and affable. Sweet, really, goofy and funny, too.

Should I actually really write about my friends? Or about my near death experience? It would be too easy and too fresh to write about almost dying at the Halloween party last week so I decide against it. I don’t want to be reminded of it again. It frankly scares the Bejeezus Bolshevicks out of me. I’ve been looking over my shoulder ever since. Now I know how Chryssa feels. Especially now, with Ryan out of prison and his person being unaccounted for. He has gone missing and nobody knows anything and nobody has a clue about what to do about it. Chryssa’s locked herself up at her house again, the agoraphobia back in black as a rabid panic Mars attack.

I’ve never been scared of anything before, so this is a really weird feeling for me. Drugs zonk me out to sleep, but the nightmares still loom heavily in my head. Especially while sleeping. I quit taking the meds for a mini-moment but Jazhette’s visitors wake me up so I still have to rely on them so I can snooze.

And so I decide to write about my friends. I have six very good girlfriends, all quirky, all with flaws, all close. So here goes:

“Jazhette Zing is my best friend and she is a…sex addict.” I write.

She’d actually just lost her job because she DID IT with one of her many bosses, the VP of Finance and gotten caught – by his wife AND 36 of us because it was Brian’s (the VP’s) birthday and we were going to surprise him. We even had a giant German chocolate cake with all the candles racked up top-heavy and everything… but it got tossed with the condom wrapper.

This happened the week before my near-death experience last week.

So I’ve had a series of seriously foul weeks.

“She and I both got canned. Sacked. Yep, “gunny-sacked” how my uncle Maurice used to say after fishing on his Shrimp Boat, Lila Loves Lace, back in the heyday yesterdays of my youth.”

My cell rings. I ignore it as everyone stares. I catch some glares. “And she just got caught screwing around on a large mahogany desk and…” I continue to write as I mute my phone quickly. “just as 36 of us stride in the VP’s office with a surprise birthday greeting, along with his pregnant wife and a large birthday cake and…”

A text message erupts on my phone. I glance at it.

Naturally. It’s Jazhette with one of trillion daily and many minor-emergencies madnesses, meltdowns, and misgivings about her life. Mundane mind-numbing musings about her munsie kitten, myriads rambling morosely over the minutiae of her conquests…like I cared! Not!

“HEP!” Reads the text. She misspells HELP meaning she is in dire straits AGAIN. Lately we always seem to be bailing each other out of trouble.

I text back: “BUSY. Ttyl.”

Wonder what it is THIS TIME? She’s already gotten me fired. I’m a little sore with her at the moment, and having to deal with all her bulbuous boywonders trolling in and out of her townhouse (and in and out of her hoo-ha), just so she can get her femininny fickle fix. Staying with her is torture. Agony. I feel pathetic that I have nowhere else to go. And it certainly doesn’t help that I’m not getting any, either. Or that I am recovering from being stabbed in the chest and am now on heavy meds!

I cannot always jump when she calls anyway. I have a life, too.

Actually I don’t really have a life anymore and that’s absolutely my biggest problem. I need to GET A LIFE. That is what I want most on this earth. To get a life, a normal life. No more weirdo workaholic witless boyfriends. No more shitty sullen sophomoric (sycophantic) dead end jobs. No more annihilating near death experiences. No more moving in with drippy doldrum rain on the parade boyfriends who dump me and leave me high and dry, virutally homeless.

I sigh thinking about it all as I continue to write about Jazhette. My fucked up sex-addicted pornographic brain-addled best friend, who has her own set of issues, come to think of it.

“I first learned of Jaz’s sex addiction at summer camp when she’d gotten caught by the resident director for having cheap beer in her room (illegal), Simple Simon’s pizza splattered on the wall (defacing property) and a boy in her room (he was underage, too). Naked. With used condoms smattered on the floor. Actually half a box. Since she was staying with me for the summer, my Aunt Aganesia (who still does not approve of Jazhette and snorts loudly and humphy-hoo-hoos everytime I bring up her name) had to somehow explain the egregious explosion of Jazhettes-coming-of-age in a burst of blast to Jaz’s seemingly displeased parents. Actually I suspect that Jaz’s mom, an ex-stripper, ex-bad B movie actress, and ex-showgirl and ex-model and ex-fashion designer, was proudly pleased. Jaz’s dad was livid. (He skipped town that year, never to return.) When she started she started hard-core and it’s been downhill ever since. A rocky road to disentangle her and rescue her, etc.” I continue to write.

Jaz text back to me: “Urgnt. Has to do wit a body.”

Good grief. I don’t have time for this. I’m trying to retrieve my Lost Soul and experience my creative writing therapy, Goddammit!

A body? There she goes again. She’s probably at our neighborhood liquor store, Slam Dunk N Drink, checking out some hot studmuffin’s body. Yet again.

“Everything allright, Jare?” Gil says, raises his dark brows up quizzically.

“Oh, sure, Gil. Just fine.” I say. I melt again looking at him. Feeling warmer and red-faced by being noticed again by him. Let me stand next to your fire.

I breathe deeply and continue to write one of my favorite type of character sketches: “In a world that has seven supposed wonders, here is Jazhette’s own list of Seven Wonders of Her World:
1. Russel Crowe tied with George Clooney tied with Clive Owen (on any given day she’d vascillate between this worthy trio)
2. PlayGirl magazine (the ultimate!)
3. The Eroscillator vibrator (previously endorsed by Dr. Ruth in the 90’s on the internet)
4. Corsets (especially the kind you can buy at www.CorsetCopia.com, but Jazhette, a fashionista, Renaissance Costumer Designer, and fashion designer, creates her very own concoction)
5. Goth music (Jazhette is pseudo-adult goth, when she wants to be, did I mention that?)
6. Sarah McClaughlin’s music (Random Book of Insults)
7. Tequila (3rd place: Cuervo Gold! 2nd place: Agave from Mexico! 1st place: Petrone – a smooth blast of heaven!)

Next!

My brain’s on fire! I’m loving this. Who’d have thought that I would be writing, getting a life again.

Ah! To the beginnings of getting a life!

“Gloria is a starter magician. But she is awesome and glorious. She totally rocks. She changed her fumbling career as an administrative assistant so that she could be on stage and since she has virtually no talent that any of us were actually aware of – she can’t dance, act, sing, or make people laugh, she recently and secretly took an interactive internet class (supplemented by some of those Dummies and Idiots’ Guide books) about how to become a magician. It’s not like you just morph into one, you know, so she’s told me.

So Gloria has this show a few weeks ago BUT the person she made disappear was missing for longer than the usual time frame. Was trapped in the wrong trap door for a little over 5 hours and he is now suing her. We are trying to help her get a good attorney to help her. She is in more trouble than she’d ever dreamed and is actually a good magician, ironically. Maybe too good for her own good. She is now joking about making herself disappear. Out of the country. Apparently this man missed an important business deal, missed out on making millions and is blaming Gloria. He is trying her on gross negligence. She swears she looked for him but didn’t hear his protests. It didn’t help that he has a high pitched tenor voice that was quelled by the old building squeaks and the construction that is going on in the theatre where she did her show. Also his cell phone died because he had forgotten to recharge it. Also his wife failed to look hard enough for him or insist that Gloria and her crew look longer for him.

So after looking for five hours, Gloria finally found him. That is how big the theatre is and she did not know the inside and outskirts of the theatre she’d actually left to get the manager to get an outline of the theatre and it took one hour to drive to the manager’s house and another hour to drive back so really she spent three hours looking for the guy, who had merely been a volunteer who likes to be up on stage. The entire thing is a mess. Gloria just realized that her friend Gretel swears the place is haunted, and that some ghost is fucking with her and following her around messing up her act. So Gretel performs a Ghosthunt so she can do an exorcist.”

“Gloria’s own list of Seven Wonders of Her World:
1. David Copperfield
2. The Wonder Bra
3. Houdini
4. Idiots Guide to Magic Tricks
5. U2
6. Nikola Tesla
7. Vodka Gimlets

“Sheena has a gambling problem. We had to pull her away late last night. We staged an intervention. It was actually kinda fun. She is now being watched by Chryssa – sort of our own rehab idea. Besides, Chryssa never leaves her home. Sheena’s is in too deep. Her car got repo’d last week. She is late on her rent and might be evicted.”

“Sheena’s top seven wonders of her world:
1. Probability books
2. Society of Actuaries (she is an actuary)
3. Her favorite prized possession: her Binary T-rex Texas Instruments Calculator
4. Gambino’s Casino
5. Blackjack – her game of choice
6. some infamous card sharks
7. Whiskey, straight up

“Chryssa is a snoop and a spy and also recently got caught.” I wrote. “By me.”

That was a mess. We were trying to straighten things out – turns out she’s been snooping on the entire pack of us. She says she was practicing for her new career. She wants to be a private investigator and she wanted to practice for her new job. But unfortunately she found out some shit about some of us. Which wasn’t her intention. Or was it?

Like she found out that her neighbor Ariel was cheating on her fiancé. With the hot postman. Being so The Postman Rings Twice and Thrice, etc Good grief. She followed Ariel, tailed her like a crazyperson and then caught her and proved it by taking pictures.

And that I had a crush on Theo – who is Gretel’s new boyfriend – and that I’d been writing him anonymous love poems for the past 6 months – but stuffing them in my desk drawer. I had not even sent them and she ratted me out to Gretel! Who’s pissed. Scratch another one on the Ex-Friend Totem Pole side of life, and one off the Friend Totem Pole side of life.

And that Sabrina’s boyfriend was missing and didn’t really go to France like she’d said. She was lying and Chryssa was dying to find out why. We all were. She had all of us going off our rockers about it. Where was he? Rehab? Sabrina was just probably too embarrassed to speak the truth, that he was an alcoholic. Save face and all that I suppose.” I continued to write. Just as I wrote it I realized what Jazhette had been texting me. Something about a body.

I wrote: “Sabrina’s top seven:
1. Tim Burton movies
2. Johnny Depp (who doesn’t love Johnny Depp?)
3. Texas Chainsaw Massacre – she is a freaky fan
4. Hannibal Lector
5. Stephen King
6. Horror Movies, especially bad B-movies
7. John Waters (Sabrina was him for Halloween)

Chryssa’s top seven:
1. Aldous Huxley
2. James Bond
3. True Crime stories
4. John Le Care
5. Billie Holiday
6. Frank Sinatra
7. Martini’s – shaken not stirred

Me?
1. Edward Gorey
2. Agatha Christie
3. Addams Family
4. Mystery on PBS
5. Chick Lit
6. Chocolate (especially Godiva, Dove, and etc.) including Chocolate Martini’s
7. Gustav Klimt - The Impressionists and Impressionist art in general

Speaking of that, and the word, body, I looked at my next test message from Jazhette.

“Its a body in ur backyrd. I dug it up. Horace’s calling the cops and –“

Stop. The text message stopped right there!

Why would it stop? What was happening? I shuffled back in my chair. It scraped and everyone looked at me. I stood, shaking.

“I have to go now!” I erupted, grabbing my stuff and sprinting out of there! Like hell on a roaring river. Like madness interrupted…and wonderland wilted.