The page that used to be my Boudoir, the introduction to my innermost self, and the things that made me the person I am today, has been lost.
In the coming months I hope to try to rebuild it.
For now, I'll begin by saying that the song, "White Bird" best describes my youth.
I was the song before it existed...living in the fifth floor of the Royal Danelli, in Long Beach, NY,
I spent my first six years of life overlooking the Atlantic Ocean from my grandparents' apartment.
At night, the lights of the ferris wheel at the amusement park just down the boardwalk twinkled with excitement.
But, I watched the sea, imagining I could see the peasant women in Europe balancing baskets of fruit on their heads.
(Who knew that back then in my youth, that Europe was civilized?;)
Ours was the only windows in the building with wrought iron bars on the windows.
Ya see, we had this great old-fashioned fire escape, and I was a Wild Child...
One of the most vivid recollections of my youth, besides the trip to the lollipop farm,
where I got into a ferocious tug-of-war with an insane duck
who'd set his sights on my lollipop,
was the story of the modeling agency.
While I remember something about having fun swinging around poles in the waiting room,
the way it's told I single-handedly turned a room full of little angels into a scene of monsters and mayhem,
and was asked to leave. Such was my early modeling career and possibly set the seeds that have prevented me from being able to hold a traditional job with any sense of success.
By day, the boardwalk was a bustle of gamerooms and shops,
where lively skeet ball competitions and other games of chance were played.
Gypsys told fortunes, and people came to visit the baths.
While I lived with my Grandma and Gramps, my Nana and Poppy lived in that seeming otherworldly atmosphere,
a few blocks down towards the ferris wheel. It was maybe forty years later
that my many-years estranged family were together and I asked about the gypsy thing.
It turns out the fortune teller from the boardwalk lived down the hall from my paternal grandparents
and I'd spent a lot of time wandering down to visit her apartment when I was two and three...
My only memories of Nana and Poppy are from those years, and very limited.
I never saw nor heard from them again after my mom married and we moved from my beloved beach to Queens.
I was six years old. That was the first time my soul withered and died.
