Yellow Camaro

  Chapter 1

    Leaving high school is thrilling. There’s freedom in departing my hometown. I have no attachments and no lingering memories. I’m excited to challenge myself. I’m an Aries. There is no greater enjoyment than transformation. I’ll miss Jesse. Creative writing class senior year brought us charisma, sarcasm and honesty. His philopeno tan skin, jet black hair and robust smile keeps me wishing I got held back to spend another year with him. I’ve spent most of high school praying for a kindred spirit who matches my soulful essence like flowers to hummingbirds. When I finally find him, I am a senior and he is a freshman. His boyish collecting Pokémon cards, rambunctious jitsu championships and organic endless hours outside roaming streets where middle schoolers play hide and seek was the boy I loved. I was possessive maybe. I was awe struck definitely. I knew our time would be short. I wanted to capture every moment. He didn’t run from the intensity. He embraced luminosity of my eye gaze. I didn’t mean to stare at him in creative writing class. He simply was my muse. I wrote all my poems about him and I wasn’t afraid to speak them out loud in front of the whole class. I try to be fearless. My father dying tragically when I was six taught me to be brave.

            One day while my father was driving metro bus on his usual route, bus seat detached from ground and hit the ground, destroying my father’s spine. Months of homeopathic treatment didn’t serve him well because when he finally went to spinal surgeon, he needed progressive back surgery. My father survived the repair of his spine but not the pain medicine. Dilaudid put him to sleep and he didn’t wake up. My mother went to the hospital morning after his spine surgery knowing something was off. When they told her my father died in the night, she was screaming. Her screams were so loud, the whole floor could hear her cries of frustration, rage and heartbreak. A meeting of doctors adjourned early so my mother could have the room to calm down. It took my mother and I years to recover from instability. We moved a lot transitioning from one apartment complex to the next.

            High school in Fairfax County is elitist in the sense of human excellence. Fairfax county has held its position in top ten best school districts in the nation for many years, being in top five for several of them. My high school completion ended with our football team winning state. I remember middle school cheerleading. Back then, I never thought those little boys would grow up to win state. Cheerleading in high school was never about competition. It was about the Friday night games. It’s thrilling, noise of wild teenagers, bright lights beaming on nicely cut grass to an ivy league professional installed football field worth millions, constant shuffling feet, dances and cheers stampeding the night, cliques and herds galloping chilly fall breeze. This was my perfect thrill, my adrenaline rush. I think about tail gates with monstrous trucks, wealthy BMWs and geek car enthusiasts combined with on going conversations about nothing important just thoughts in the moment, feelings to surf and passionate groups of dynamic people colliding into a jungle of wild things. Everything was dauntless. Parties concluding with teens jumping out windows to escape police, weed clogged in toilets, used condoms wet on the floor near sofas that smell like hard liquor, cheetos staining white carpets and alcohol bottles stuffed behind book cases, under beds and in places only wild things would hide. I’ll never forget my girlfriends first and last house party. Her parents are old like seventy, older than my grandparents. They answered the door to every person saying “There will be no alcohol and smoking pot!” He was aggressive in his strict tone of voice and yet ditsy because there was a cloud of freshly smoked weed everywhere inside Jackie’s house. It was a mist equivalent to the kicked-up dirt in the Oz when Dorthy left Kansas. Of course, neighbors called the police because the music was too loud and teens were exasperating. I don’t know why at every party when police show up everyone goes buck wild. It’s a stampede of crazed buffalos escaping the grip of police. Usually, police are chill. They’re just curious and trying to comfort bored neighbors who are oddly obsessed with teenager fever.

            My friend Danny and I hitched hike to a party once. We didn’t feel like walking so we went to the shopping arena and probed cars looking for a safe drive. We picked one that had Centreville High School Lacrosse bumper sticker. We assumed the car belongs to parents of teens that attend our school. We asked them for the ride and they were cool. They dropped us off at a hotspot where teens converge in a night of dauntless adventure. Friends and I would stay up all night walking streets with no purpose. One night, when I spent the night at Jackie’s house, we played truth or dare. Of course, I chose dare. I was dared to strip nude and walk to the stopping arena at 3am. The shopping arena is about seven-minute walk. I wasn’t’ alone. I had another girlfriend strip nude with me. She got naked just for the thrill.

We walked across several streets and a highway with cars stopping and people in them staring. It was breathtaking. It was cold and soles of my feet were icy and numb but my heart was alive with heat and courage. I wasn’t a zombie like a lot of parents. I was wacko, awkward and spirited. I know why Nirvana calls us teen spirit because sky is the limit. The world isn’t small. It’s full of potential. A lot of adults act as if the world is a cage and they are a pathetic bird bred to be a helpless captive creature who knows nothing about the wilderness. Teen spirit is unctuous, gritty and unpatterned. Everything is fluid, fierce and high energy. If being an adult means autopilot brain waves, stark emotions and rigid projections, then I’d rather be this whatever this is. I’m that icky, gooey and slimy cocoon with a crushed caterpillar inside who has no shape, no body just a blab of an existence. It’s raw and closer to the renaissance then adults proclaiming to be superior being and yet lacks visionary creative acts of glory.

            I’m dyslexic. I found that out in the first grade. I got held back in the first grade. Evidently, my first-grade teacher thought I was too childish. All I wanted to do was play. Obviously, I didn’t learn anything because I was too busy climbing my imagination. They did all these strange tests on me. I thought it was rocking. I got to leave class to meet a special councilor who was more like a therapist asking me questions about how I feel and how I’m doing with coursework.

My dyslexia file is thick. Over a decade of evaluations, notes and research on me, is nice. It shows me that school cares. I was never seen as a problem. I was always recognized as a student who learns differently and that doesn’t make me disabled in the sense of weak but unique. Teachers respected my uniqueness and helped me fine tune it. I’ve learned every possible learning technique from visual learning, audio learning, read to me learning, learning using a blank card to help me focus on each sentence while reading, extended time learning, using artistic methods of learning math. You think of it, I’ve practiced that learning modality.

            I remember auditioning for the dance team, freshman year. The couch thought I had no dance experience because it took me a long time to learn chorography. Other girls learned swiftly like professions do. Then, I surprised her. When we had to show our routine for evaluation, I knew exactly what I was doing. Being dyslexic can make my brain weird. Sometimes it’s super-fast and other times it’s slow. I’m shocked by my own brain. It struggles to process new information but it’s creatively ambitious, open minded and ecstatic. I made the dance team. I was put in the front for hip hop routines. Dance team was never appreciated as much as cheerleaders. We danced at every Friday night football game but we were never adored. We were looked upon as below average even though our routines were complex and stirring. I was enjoyed sitting on wet bleachers with a rain coat in freezing air, with pom poms up and shaking to get football players motivated. Fall in Northern Virginia is a sweet warmth and then a rattling cold.

Being an athlete, gave me full access to physical therapy which is soothing. To get a free massage and receive different body healing modalities was orgasmic. School and after school dance classes or cheerleading or soccer or softball or piano had my schedule packed. I was lucky. Eventually, my mother got workers comp for the tragic death of my father. Metro pays good. We received enough funds to live comfortably. Mother and I weren’t rich but we were able to relax.

Leaving behind memories of traveling to Virginia Beach and walking warm yellow sand with dark waves that can pull you into depths of death if you’re not careful, is rad. I’ll miss carnival at Virginia Beach with radical rides, creepy fun houses and game booths with a long board walk, four person bikes that easily tip over, dirty dicks crab shake with the logo “I got my crabs from dirty dicks,” constant sound of air force jets, tiny beach houses aligning with streets that burst sandy tall grasses, Edger Cayce’s psychic research library and four hour drive that always became a six hour drive with cars stopping, blocking and crowding just because of rain or bikers making out on side of the road. People are nosey. My mother was pissed when we were stuck in gridlock for hours. We passed two bikers making out on side of road and then starting moving again. Obviously, people need some orgasmic relief or adult stores wouldn’t be on big billboards everywhere on major highways in Virginia.

I never was into porn. I had a friend whose mother was freaky. Her mother has nasty magazines of large and in charge men with supernatural penises that looked painful. Those naked men in magazines seemed artificial and heartless. They had filthy auras. I knew that sex wasn’t supposed to be like that. Sex is loving not neurotic.

I heard sexual moaning for first time sleeping on pull out couch with my girlfriend. Her mother’s room was above us in the loft. Sex sounds weren’t kind or affectionate. They were vicious and animalistic. My girlfriend had sexual problems. We were only thirteen and she was too fascinated with older men. She was tainted by her mother’s sex addict boyfriends. Her name was Lisa. She was like me, mixed with multiple races except she was close with her African American family while I had a white mother who didn’t know how to comb my hair and African American family that disappeared along with my father.

Lisa introduced me and Lele, my soulmate, to an online sex search. She made profiles for us and taught us how to talk to men on the phone. We spent a lot of hours after school talking with men fulfilling their sexual perversions. My mother eventually figured out we were using dark internet. She emailed owner of sex search basically telling him that if he doesn’t remove our profiles, she’d press charges against site for promoting miners. Immediately, he removed our profiles.

I never looked back. I knew it was wrong. I was reckless. We even met some of the horny men outside Glory Days. We thought it was game. We were addicted to adrenaline rush of almost getting kidnapped. I don’t understand, looking back, why Lisa, Lele and I were dangerous. We all had problems at home. I was fatherless. Lisa didn’t know who her father was and had a bunch of different men come and go. Lele had an alcoholic mother who would die from liver failure. We thought adrenaline was a cure to our pain.

We were all mixed girls. Lele was more white than colored. Her hair was blonde and curly and her eyes were green and blue. She had pink cheeks and soft skin. Lisa had very course hair, African distinct features and yellow brown skin. I am an intersection. My eyes look Spanish some days and Egyptian other days. My nose is Cherokee. My round face is like my German grandmother. My skin is honey gold and some think I’m middle eastern.

I’m not sure what was wrong with me from ages thirteen to fifteen. Luckily, freshman year sunshine began to burst through dark clouds of obsession with danger. For Lele, she turned to drugs and Lisa became pregnant. It’s very easy to slip into a hole. I forgot about Lele and Lisa. They fade away. Even now, I can’t remember much about our lives together. I have vague images of drinking gin from one of Lele mother’s drinking parties. She had drinking parties every weekend in her second floor two-bedroom apartment overlooking community pool. Lele’s mother had a lot of random people come and go. Most of them were low vibe with worse addictions than alcohol and didn’t have dreams, hopes or wishes for something positive to occur in their lives. They gave up. They settled into the cage and became birds without wings. They allowed whatever trauma they had inside them to decay allowing them to become rotten people. I hope they find their will but I can’t allow myself to be pulled into dirty holes where flesh reeks and toxicity dominates.

I’ve always been a strong willed. I am an independent thinker. I strive for excellence. I’m glad I had rough experiences dealing with Lisa pulling out my first and last weave out of jealousy. I don’t regret kissing that forty-year-old man with Lele in woods when we were thirteen. I crossed the line and went into the red zone. I dropped into a rabbit hole that didn’t take me to a magical land but a realm of disgust. I learned how to elevate and evolve. I don’t drink alcohol or do drugs because I know other’s pain. I know redneck man with tattoos all over his face who’d punch Lele and I in face in his little game. I know Lele’s mother and my mother being followed home from a late-night club by a drunken, emotionless and outdated southern man triggered by the fact two beautiful white women have mixed children.

Departing everything I know to adventure into the mystery is going inside womb of Earth and being reborn. I’m moving to Nashville, TN because I want to grow as a creative person. I enjoy writing, songwriting and singing. My grandfather was blues singer. I don’t know much about him. My father’s death ended my relationship with his family. Blues has a one of kind healing. It’s a safe place, a haven for underdogs to go and find resilience, perseverance and creative fulfillment. Music is a way to alter the brain. It’s a chiropractic adjustment that stimulates neuropaths of emotion, introspection and expansion. Some sounds are healthy for the brain and some sounds aren’t just like not every food nourishes the body. When my kid’s brain was severely imbalanced after death of my father, learning to play piano corrected the imbalance. It stabilized my mental identity giving me a way of self soothing and self regulating. Some people use pharmaceutical drugs to fix the brain. I use piano. Being dyslexic, I can’t read or write music but I can mimic, learn from ear. It’s more challenging this way but I enjoy the challenge of growth. It gives purpose to existence.

I’m moving with my mother. She thought she’d stay behind but suddenly her job became unbearable. After twenty years working at same law firm with no complications, it’s a sign that change is only constant. Impermanence is freedom. There is joy in letting go. Holding onto attachments either that be possessions, family members or beliefs, makes authentic self heavy. Birds can’t fly when they’re heavy.

I was named after North American bird. Robyn is an earthy sound and reminds me of birdsongs in morning. A Robin’s vocalizing is high pitched and ethereal. We’re leasing a small two-bedroom apartment that has two levels. Driving down 440 westward is smudging everything I was. Country vastness with rolling green hills is fresh. Farms are content and roads are infinite, baren and left to roam free. There is rain of summer moisturizing my usually dry and tight curls and hydrating my vitality. I graduated high school just last month. I didn’t retrieve my diploma with friends. I grabbed my diploma, shook hands with teachers and facility, looked out into sea of faces wearing ocean blue robes and allowed everyone I know to be erased. It was a surreal experience of dissolving my past. I am divorcing my past. It’s full of intense emotions and lack of emotions. It’s the threshold, a space where life and death converse in an intention to reimagine existence.

I don’t have a university I’m attending. There’s just openness and passion for growth. I’ve always been eccentric. I desire unfamiliar while most cling to familiar. I thrive off of fear while most collapse from fear. I strive for radical reinvention of myself while most stiffen in breakdown of self. I expand in danger while most falter. I gain power from trauma while most deteriorate.

While driving words streaming through my consciousness like constant knocking on door. “The universe has your back. When all you know is lack, the universe will never let you cut the wings from your back.”

I think about Chris Hall. He might actually be first almost boyfriend. We met in advanced placement art class senior year. His eyes are bright blue, hair black as crow and skin pale, always paling. He is spectacular in a nerdy, quiet and sublime way. I knew saw him, ever. He never existed to me until senior year. I knew him since elementary but we never connected. It’s strange how you can see someone for years and never remember their face until the right moment. Our emergence started slow like building a fire. It took a while for his words to open. He is shy, timid. Senior year dropped me into a visionary quest, I didn’t know I was having. Everything became about long bike rides in nature alone. I stopped dance classes. I stopped sports. I didn’t want to be around people. Antisocial. I knew Chris was going through a similar journey because his curious eyes were always full of philosophical inquiry.

We began to sit at same table and work on our art projects across from each other. Laughter brought us together. Silliness of appreciating each other’s art work, made us helpful to each other. We asked each other questions about our art work. We never spent time together outside class. I walked hallways with Jesse. Jesse was more like my old self, flamboyant, muscular and outwardly commanding. He made me feel comforted, normal like a children’s safety blanket. Chris made me feel reserved, calm and pensive and yet I needed him.

I found out he’s a serious diabetic. During our art share, he showed an art piece made of needles. I never knew he injected himself every day. He has a machine attached to his body that injects him when his blood sugar is low. I saw him walking sluggishly and yet firmly through main hallway. He looked paler than most days. I tried to get his attention but he wasn’t interested. I thought he was blowing me off, ignoring me like I wasn’t important to him. I felt foolish because it wasn’t about me. He was sick. That was my first lesson on self importance and distorted realities. It’s easy to assume you know what someone is thinking or feelings because your too scared to ask. Most people don’t know what they are thinking or feeling. Human beings are unevolved. We’re full of false projections that we place on others. Most of those false projections have nothing to do with the other person. They come from our own mind. Chris Hall taught me that the world is a product of our mind and that it takes clear view to truly understand someone.

Chris and I faded before we could blossom. I spent afternoon in his room. We watched TV. I can’t remember the show because I wanted him to kiss me. He wasn’t ravishing or fearless. He was blain. I tried to knock on his door weeks later. It was snowing and snow was thick on the ground. I wanted a friend. I was lonely. My days were spent walking for hours in snow doing nothing. Walking alone through woods, across streets, into neighbors, through open fields, down long roads wasn’t extraordinary. I was once vibrant girl and now I am still girl like naked trees in a winter cracking creeks. I almost knocked on his door but I knew our paths were already separate. He became sicker. His sickness drained him. He was too weak to express himself fully. He had to conserve his energy and I was an expense he didn’t need.

He told me about when he was in elementary school. He nearly went into a coma. A helicopter landed on roof of school to transport him to hospital. I can’t remember anything else. I barely knew him. All I retain are feelings of steadiness as we work on our art projects at the same table. Sometimes feelings are more valuable than memories.

“I loved you but I didn’t know you. Silence is steady. Breath is heavy. I have much to say. You are a missed day. I want to call but your voice has nothing for me. We’re already winter trees,” I write this lyric to Chris Hall, the boy I almost loved.

Lele and I used to spend winters in woods pretending we were Native Americans living off of the land. We watched rabbits and squirrels. We climbed trees. We made forts. Now, I don’t see what I saw before. Woods are empty. They don’t have enchantment. It was never woods. It was us. We awakened spirit of the land. Lele’s Hawaiian looking face, long hair, lean figure that every male adored and rosy smile sparks hearth inside me.

I was helpless after my father died. We moved to yet again another apartment complex. In attempt to get out of my sorrows, I went to the pool. Lele was always there. Eventually, she introduced herself to me. We went to the pool every day together that summer. We went skinny dipping at night and Lele’s neighbors called management. They’re apartment faces pool and they don’t sleep. They sit on their balcony all night in darkness smoking. They were overweight, cat people with no jobs and a bunch of trinkets that come from junky yard sales for deceased old ladies who never left the house.

Dona came looking for us. We ran. I had my clothes in my hands but I didn’t have time to put them on. Donna knew it was Lele and a friend. Her mother is popular. Everybody in the community knows of her drinking parties. We didn’t get in trouble. A part of me wanted to see Lele’s mother upset. She was a numb woman always watching Who’s the Baby Daddy, a TV show about desperate women having kids with broken men. She didn’t work, only sometimes. I think she was a substitute teacher. She mostly watched TV. Drinking parties was her only thrill. At first drinking parties were fun. To sneak away with gin or vodka, made us feel powerful. But then, stranger people started to orbit. They were dysfunctional and damaged.

We woke up early. I left over Lele’s apartment. Her mother was sleeping sitting at kitchen table. For a moment, we thought she was dead. She was cold. Her body was heavy. Her breath was shallow. We poked at her. We pushed her. We even smacked her. She wouldn’t wake from her coma. We decided to lift her to shower. We managed to carry her thick body to shower. We turned on ice cold water. It took minutes for her to wake. In those minutes of terror, we saw dysfunction of the world from abusive men to vindictive women to grief stricken people to harmful people. I never wanted a glimpse into that version of existence again. The world is suffering, according to Buddha but there is a way out of suffering. There is a choice and a method. I hope to find that.

“After the end, I have no friend. I am alone like old crone. There is vibrancy but it also has irony. Withering like a rose, where death is circling crows, I am a seed removing weeds,” I write on note pad traveling into darkness of departing sun.