AASTA
It just doesn’t seem big enough.
KELLER
What do you need? Do you need me to break down and tell you I was wrong? That my whole life has lead to this moment, and if I don’t grab it, I may lose it forever? Do you need me to get down on one knee and beg you to forgive me? Beg you to never look at another man? Beg you to love me my whole life until the bitter end?
AASTA
Well…
KELLER
So, what if I do get down on one knee (he gets down on one knee) and grab this rock, instead of a ring (grabs a rock). Or, is it cement?
AASTA
I think it’s cement. But it’s nice cement.
KELLER
Is this what you want?
AASTA
Is this what you want?
KELLER
I’ve been planning on marrying you, since I saw you hit that bulls eye at the shooting range.
AASTA
I don’t believe you. Why are you so mean?
KELLER
Because I don’t want you to mean to me as much as you mean to me. You’re not Rachael.
AASTA
So ask me!
KELLER
What?
AASTA
Please, please, ask me.
KELLER
It’s cement. But I’ll get you a real one, this week.
AASTA
Say it.
KELLER
(grabbing Aasta’s hand) Aasta, I love you with my whole heart and I never ever want to let you, or Danny, down, ever again. I hope you keep this rock, because it might take a while to get the ring of your dreams. I hope this moment is the big bang you are waiting for. I love you, and I want you to be my wife. Will you marry me?
AASTA
I will. Now get up.
(Aasta pulls Keller to his feet)
AASTA
I love you so much, you jerk. You better be nice, from now on! Danny and I are a tag team. Now kiss me!
KELLER
As you wish.
(Aasta and Keller kiss for lengths end. Keller grabs Aasta by the waist and spins her around.)
AASTA
You have to promise to never stop kissing me.
KELLER
Yes ma’am.
(Keller slaps Aasta on the butt and gets in the back seat.)
(Aasta gets behind the wheel.)
CANDY CANE
See, another happy ending. Now, let’s get out of here. Tinker Bella is such a witch. She’ll give me so much hell if I get fired.
(Candy Cane gets in Jimmy’s van.)
(Aasta starts the car. A cheesy semi-modern song plays on the radio.Aasta, Danny, and Keller drive off.)
(THUMP! POP! SQUEAK!)
AASTA
Sorry!
(The car comes to a halt. Everyone laughs.)
(LIGHTS DOWN.)
(THE END.)
Fragments
A Collection of Short and Fragmented Memoirs
The names have been changed, as to protect the privacy of the people who inspired these memoirs. The dialogue comes from a mixture of malleable memories, notes from interviews, and copy and pasted emails and text messages. I tried to stay as true to the moments and the people these describe, but my Sense of Place essay, is a compilation of multiple memories.
I’ll start with the more tame memoirs and work up to the explicit memoirs.
“Family”
(Written in 2014)
I was born February 24th, 1982, when movies like Valley Girl and The Breakfast Club were major blockbuster hits, and songs like “Come on Irene” and “Take on Me” were climbing the music charts. My tall, lanky, photographer father, who has a long Aquarian neck, which holds up his shaggy dark hair and stone colored eyes, took black and white photographs of my birth, and thousands more of me and my brother, as we grew up. He developed them himself in his dark room/laundry room, in our basement. I have four giant boxes stacked, in what once was my dining room, on top of the four tubs of records he gave me. They are filled with black and white, and later, color photos, which he had developed at the local Safeway. All of the photos of me, even the baby ones, are of me posing for the camera, with my golden brown hair and big coal brown eyes. A natural and very photogenic - until puberty - in which people constantly ridiculed me for my acne and greasy forehead and hair, which at one point had lice.
Like all kids, Dad was an innocent child, full of hopes and dreams. He dreamed of being an architect and would draft pictures of building designs. At the age of two, Dad fell into the swimming pool of Grandpa Sam’s friend’s house in Santana. Dad was trying to grasp onto one of the floating pool toys, and plopped right into the cool, blue, chlorinated water, not knowing how to swim. Dad’s instincts kicked in: Deeply afraid of being punished, Dad swam to the top of the six foot deep pool. Nobody paid attention to him falling in. But they heard the splash and instantly ran outside. Half of the people were infuriated with Dad. The other half congratulated him for his big boy survival tactics. It came so naturally to him, despite never taking a swimming lesson. Dad is still so proud of his natural instincts. He has survived so much more than that since then, primarily a chain of addictions, which has lead to poor health.
As a Freshman or Sophomore, a girl friend – not girlfriend - of Dad’s bullied Mom in a Cherry Creek High School restroom. Mom came out of one of the stalls. The girl pushed her back in.
“You stuff your bra!” the girl pushed Mom, again.
“No I don’t,” Mom whispered in fright.
“Then why are your boobs twice as big as they were before you went into the stall?”
“I don’t stuff my bra!” Mom defended, and ran out of the bathroom in tears.
She totally stuffed her bra, until they created Wonder bras. But by then, Mom liked her 100 pound, underweight dancer body, which she would show off in leotards during the dance lessons she gave at “The Yucky Church.” That’s what I called it. The real name of the Baptist church got lost along with my innocence.
Mom and Dad were three years apart. Mom: Born October 1st, 1952. Dad: born January 29th, 1949. Dad, a senior at the time, didn’t remember the incident in the bathroom, but he remembered the girl friend, who Mom said tore her to shreds for stuffing her bra.
Dad equaled popular kid. Mom equaled geek. I take after Mom. Even my physique.
As adults, Mom, who I take after in looks and demeanor, worked as a registered nurse, and my Father slaved away as an orderly at Craig Hospital. They knew of each other in high school, but they had never spoken to each other, until they were adults, working at the same hospital, where they finally fell in love.
Mom reeled Dad in like a fish, completely willing to take the bait. “I’m having a Christmas party at my place. It’s going to be a blast. I’d really like you to come,” she said, sly and as cute as a fox.
“Sounds fun. I’ll be there. Just tell me when and where,” he said.
“I’ll write it down for you.” She took a scrap of paper from the reception desk in one of the waiting rooms of the white, sterile hospital, and wrote down the address of her apartment in dark black ink. “Don’t forget.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Mom’s hand reached out to Dad’s. She placed the slip of paper in his palm and lingered for a while. A cliché romance ensued.
Dad knocked on Mom’s Englewood, walkup apartment door. He had a bottle of red wine in his other hand. Perhaps, he was wearing his brown, Western, button up shirt with a pink rose on it, and his tan, leather, Western, fitted coat, which now hangs in my cramped living room closet. Maybe, he was even wearing his cowboy boots and straight leg jeans. He was never a cowboy, but sometimes ex-hippies dressed up like one.
I imagine Mom answering the door, wearing something revealing and tight, but that was not the fashion of the times. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, high cut, frilly blouses, and peasant skirts were more common. Many of which she had and has passed on to me. But Mom was a fox aiming for a kill, and Dad was swimming her way. Perhaps, her clothes were more revealing.
She answered the door, in whatever she was wearing. “Come in.”
Dad came in and looked around: Christmas decorations, soft music, low lighting, and candles filled the room. But it was empty except for Mom.
“Am I early?” Dad wondered.
“I thought we’d have our own little party. Just you and me.” Mom took the bottle of wine, and shut the door behind Dad.
“Then let’s make it a big party, you and me.” Dad grabbed onto Mom’s hand.
“I made fudge,” she said with a sly smile, as she set the wine next to more bottles.
The fox reached into the turbulent river, and reeled in her freshwater bass, with her sharp paws. Her mouth reached his. The fox and the fish kissed.
Mom made fudge for Dad and us kids, every Christmas since then, until the day she died, even after their divorce.
“The Big Dance”
(Written in Fall 2014, in the voice of my teenage self)
It wasn’t one of those silly middle school dances where one, if not all of my friends, dragged me by the arms to a boy I was crushing on, and left me at his feet, where that said boy would stare at me in confusion, and I would end up running away, humiliated. It wasn’t even my first high school dance. I had been to all of the Homecomings, where our football team – Go Rebels! - would always lose the big game, but we’d go watch them, anyway, and then most of the older teens would get trashed and throw up on the dance floor. It wasn’t that special Valentine’s Day dance, known as Cupid’s Ball, where the girl was supposed to ask the guy, and I never had anyone to ask, but would still go and watch my friends make-out with their boyfriends, or watch my friend Jane’s brother John, get kicked out for throwing up in the gym. It was great that they had barrels of dried hay and woodchips to help cover up the puke. But it was much bigger than all of the dances, even Hall Crawl, which was the whole school’s chance to show up in their underwear and not get kicked out, because, hey, it was Halloween. No, it was even bigger than Hall Crawl. It was PROM! Thee Prom!
Only Juniors and Seniors could go to Prom, unless you were their date. I was a Junior, and was super excited to go, not just because it was my first Prom, but because I was nominated for Prom Princess. It’s weird how it happened. I just up and decided I didn’t want the same, preppy, Samantha or Lisa, or whomever, to win. I asked my friends to nominate me, and they all did. A young woman’s upbeat voice made an announcement over the P.A. It rang loud and clear: “And the nominees for Prom Princess are Samantha Smith, Courtney Richards, and Colleen Kellogg.” That was me: Colleen. I was on the ballot! And I had the will to win it - or so I thought.
I had so many friends, from all walks of life, from all nationalities, around the world: People from various parts of Africa. All over Asia. My gorgeous, olive skinned, big deer eyed, brainy friend Gia, from Hungary, who now works in Big Oil. My cute, little, long black-haired, with oversized, black saucer-eyes, friend Rosalinda, from South America, who I called my sister. Even popular kids, like blonde-haired, blue-eyed Courtney Richards. I had other close friends, like the musical, creative raven-haired Ishtar, who always wore bright red lipstick and combat boots. She was a Senior. I later moved in with her in a studio apartment on Colfax and High with her sister and sister’s baby, and our butch, Hispanic friend, Maat. There was Sage, the Native American and Scandinavian artist, who in Fall 2000 went to Metro with me for Fine Arts, in which we both ended up dropping out. There were the Dutch and Asian twins, Alyssa and Liv, who Courtney introduced me to in second grade. We were all in Brownies, together. Rochelle, the tall, lanky, brunette, who started out as a vegetarian, but couldn’t take the peer pressure from friends, so started eating meat, also hung out with us. Jane, the red-haired, freckled, humanitarian lesbian. Stevie, the dark-skinned, butch soccer player. Eireen, the tall, dark, curvy friend who we knew since middle school, and who went off the grid, for a few months, until we all reconciled, only to discover she had a baby. All the Stoners, Skaters, ROTC kids, Artists, Writers, Drama Club Actors. Everyone. Just not the cool kids.
I wasn’t the pretty, preppy, popular type, like all of my fellow nominees, but I was still friends, with a couple popular peeps, and was in every club I could get in: I was the President of the Art Club, in Drama, in Speech, in FBLA, and the only U.S. Citizen in the International Students Alliance. I was well-known, just not a certified, cool kid. I suppose, that was my downfall, in the end. Still, I was excited and determined to win. And all of my friends, and people who never went to dances, all the outcasts of the school, and people who just weren’t as “cool” as the cool kids, voted for me anyway. It’s the thought that counts, right? Royalty, or not, I was going to the Prom!
My friends and I all bought the fanciest, floor length, princess cut, 1940s-1950s inspired dresses. Liv was in baby blue. Rochelle was in pink. Alyssa was in red. Sage as in white. Just to recall a few. But I was in a black, satin torch singer dress, with matching black gloves that went three-quarters the length up my arm. In this dress, I imagined being a torch singer on a stage, being awarded a prize, for all my hard work and effort. “You have so much potential,” all my teachers would say. But the Honor Role was not the award I imagined. Yes, something for my singing and creative talents, but mostly an award for all the bullying I had put up with for my acne and boy haircut, and the rumors that I was gay. I imagined winning Prom Princess. I had this nervous feeling in my gut that everyone whoever made fun of me would be put in their place. Somehow, some way, I would shine, just like the star of the hit teen movie She’s All That. She was the Art Geek turned Prom Queen nominee. She didn’t win royalty, but she won the Prom King over. And I knew I could win the dance, but not the Prince. At least, I hoped I could. Plus, everybody said I looked just like her, when the movie came out, at the same time I was nominated for Prom Princess. It was serendipitous.
We finally get to Thee Dance, THEE BIGGEST DANCE! PROM. All of us are wearing the best dresses, and tuxedos, and everyone is having the time of their life, dancing in a real, beautiful, golden ballroom, with freshly polished wooden floors, and white pillars that remind me of Ancient Greece, not just one of our worn down high school gyms. There is a big, black stage, across from the dance floor, with three black, carpeted layers. Songs like “YMCA,” and anything from the super cool Spice Girls (I own all their merchandise), play in the background. I’m super nervous, my palms are sweaty. Lots of people are drinking, but not me. I’m so nervous, I can’t think. My heart flutters as they call me up, along with the other royalty. Carly and Mick just won Prom Queen and King. Samantha, Courtney, and I stand next to the Prom Prince nominees: Jason, Isaac, and Bobby. “And the winner of Prom Prince goes to Bobby Phillips!” Everybody claps and cheers. Of course, he won. He’s the most popular kid at school. I can’t stop shaking. My heart races. A surge of energy infuses my entire body, a tingling sensation from my toes up to my heart and out my head. “And nineteen- ninety- nine’s Prom Princess is…Colleen Kellogg!” I won! My heart pulsates, I begin to cry, everything I had ever dreamed of, as far as my high school career was at stake, I had achieved. “And now for the couple’s dance.” Screw Bobby. I’m off to get pictures with my friends. A flash of time develops into some photographs, and to a story that I almost feel sad to tell. Poor, popular Bobby, dancing by himself. People laugh, at both of us. But I won! I actually won! And here it was my first Prom. The Biggest Dance of All!
“THE SKY HAS TAKEN OVER”
(Fall 2010)
The sun doesn’t shine when the sky has taken over. The flame doesn’t burn when the wick is still damp. Hard to breathe sometimes when you don’t feel free. Who am I to say what liberation means to someone else? Where was I when slavery was abolished? Where was I during the late sixties when feminists were coined “bra-burners” for throwing, not burning, objectifying objects in a trash can while boycotting a beauty pageant? Where am I now as the “Don’t ask-Don’t tell” policy is trying to be done away with? And where am I during this war or any other war? I was not born or I was hidden away. Yet, am I free? Are any of us? Why does the idea of freedom still bother me? Because I still feel as though I am in the “woman’s role,” where my voice is not being heard and where I am being treated like a toy, a doll, an object; because I cannot walk down the street without people calling me a freak, a transvestite, a boy (in a dress) or a lesbian (with an attitude); because I was nowhere to be found in the oppression of any people, but I am here in the oppression of me; because I am aiming for enlightenment in a modern world.
My search for enlightenment came to me during my last hospital visit. I had been working at a music school in South Denver for over seven years. I got sick again. I couldn’t put on those poses, those smiles, any longer. I needed real, genuine, honesty. But before I quit working, I had a series of déjà vu. Summer 2010, I am lying awake shaking, still feminine, kind of fitting in, serial dating, a few regular sexual partners , not drinking, never drugs, not since I was twenty, uncomfortable, crying, then sleep, deep sleep. I prayed for God to change my life, to release me. I had a dream that I went to the hospital, to a place I had never been. I dreamt every day of the visit and sparse things that would occur months later. An odd yet charming hermaphrodite named Alex befriended me and so did three older women: Barbara, who could not communicate, but spoke many words, Tanya, who was in a wheelchair who serenaded me with a French song about black eyes, like mine, and Patty, who was a magnificent artist, but very paranoid. In my dream, the woman who spoke without conversing, told me the war was over, and then two weeks later, she said that to me in person. This began my spiritual path.
I try to teach myself lessons to aid on this journey or this path: forgiveness and patience are the main ones. How many of us struggle with these on a daily basis? As a child, I was good at posing for pictures, smiling for the camera. My father was an amateur photographer and needed a subject. I was happy, tried to be, a lot of love, but a lot of anger, as well, not just from me, but toward me. My dad was bi-polar, a junkie who got clean when he divorced my alcoholic mother and raised my younger brother and I with sole custody. He had become disabled, due to a back injury while working at a hospital as an orderly. Asking my dad these days what freedom means to him, he says, “Freedom from the chains that keep you locked down. Freedom from the pain that I can’t get around.” My dad was diagnosed with Hepatitis C just before he got clean. He is a different man, worn out, and I have forgiven him for many things. It’s the forgetting that keeps me enslaved. What keeps you in chains? What oppresses your freedom?
In life, especially as a woman, I have struggled for years with people telling me who to be and how to do my hair, what clothes to wear, what to say, how to act, how to fit in the mold, any mold but my mold. I am often told I am not acting like a woman because of my Mohawk. As a teenager I was told to be the pure chaste Christian girl who was asked to turned her cheek every time that I was ridiculed for being too Christian, too ugly, too pimply, too weird, too original, too different, too much of a mirror for people to handle. As I grew older, I had the right hair, the right makeup, the right body, the right look, love, boys, friends, and I was miserable, suicidal, depressed, addicted to escapism, drugs, alcohol, but I looked right. I fit in. I was “beautiful,” according to my first love, “exotic,” according to my guy friends, but what is a body, what is dyed hair, perfect makeup, looks, if I’m not right in the soul, if I don’t want to live?
After my second failed attempt to hang myself, my friends were worried. Everyone had thought I had an eating disorder, which I did not, but no-one knew my misery, my feelings of failure, inadequacy, and boredom. Many times when people are depressed, it’s usually because they are bored and unsatisfied with what the world has to offer. I was tired of people telling me what to do and who to be and what to look like, just so people would talk to me. I went to the hospital and they diagnosed me bi-polar. This roughly meant I had extreme highs and lows, was super energetic, friendly, and productive, one minute, then super dreary, lethargic, depressed, the next minute, rapid cycles throughout the day. They put me on a mood stabilizer, a salt called lithium.. The lithium took away my ability to have children and made me go from one hundred pounds to one hundred and seventy-eight pounds in less than two years. I had complained about fitting into the mold, and now I had what I wanted, or did I? I lost all my friends. I spent all my time at the bar hitting on men and women. Brought a few back home and blacked out every time. I chose a boyfriend over self help.
I was in a highly unstable relationship with Kai when I was twenty-four and he was twenty. We met at a hospital. I spent two years trying to prove myself to him. Sure he or his mother would call me up saying he needed me because he was suicidal or depressed, but he rarely spoke to me, unless he was stoned and we were drinking. It was me forfeiting my life, my dreams and desires, to put a man first. Didn’t have to be a man, could have been anyone. I put everyone’s needs and opinions, including my family’s, and my own fears, before my own needs and inner guidance. My family didn’t allow me to drive until I was eighteen; got my license, but couldn’t afford a car. I still have my license but I have no clue how to drive, now. Feel controlled by my fear to drive and that is weighed down by my fear of taking public transportation at night, which has lead to being afraid of going out of my apartment after dark. Just taking each thing one step at a time; learning to gain control of my life. But still, I have fears.
What are you afraid of? What chains do you wear? What burdens do you carry? Are any of us really happy with our lives? I wasn’t for most of my adult life. I was not free, still am struggling. We all are. What path are you on? Are you right within yourself? Are any of us? I believe in God; freedom of religion, right? I know s/he/it has delivered me, and guided me to quit drinking and sleeping around. I was tired of feeling dirty. I felt wrong for sleeping with so many people I did not care about; I felt disrespected and used. But now, now I’m struggling to be me, to do the things that I want to do, to express myself, to liberate my mind and soul. But how can anyone become liberated if they oppress another? If my voice overpowers your voice, then your voice is no longer. If my judgment and hate take away from your freedom, then I too am not free. Because the ties that bind will soon bind me, or so they say. I look to my grandmother for wisdom on freedom.
My grandmother is ninety years old, sharp, loving, the strongest woman I know, wise, not afraid of death, but afraid if freedom were taken away. “What are important freedoms?” I ask her. “Freedom of religion, ideas, to not be controlled, individual thoughts and actions, to be able to enjoy the world around us without being told where you can go, freedom of speech, freedom of expression; without freedom it would be awful.” My “grandmama” has been the parent that my mom and dad could not be for me. I call her every day so we can keep each other strong. What freedoms do we have if we are told what to think and told what to believe?
“The war is over,” still stir these emotions in me. What stuck with me was that the war inside my soul was over. I had