Erica Lorraine Scheidt
When I was a kid all I did was write. I dropped out of high school and attended the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University where I was surrounded by writers and artists.
But then, in my early twenties, I got a job. I worked hard at that job for 15 years and didn't write a word.
Then this happened: I walked into a bookstore and bought two books by Francesca Lia Block. No particular reason, I just liked their covers. Then I read everything she wrote. I read all the YA I could. I still do. I think the world that happens between 13 and 17 is everything.
I quit my job. I studied writing. I spent three and a half years writing Uses for Boys. Now I'm working on a new novel and it's like falling down a hole. Writing my first novel taught me nothing about writing the next one.
Now I write. I live with my girlfriend and her daughter and when they come home we make dinner and walk the dog and dance around the kitchen and the next day I get up and I write.
“She's never been touched by a boy who knows what love looks like.I picture Sam's parents, his mom resting her hand in the center of his dad's back and the way his dad leans back against her.”
“Sam's house is everything I wanted, but didn't know to want...I want to wrap myself in this house like a blanket.”
“I want Toy to know that I know. That no matter how many boys tell her they love her, how many boys tell her she's beautiful, how many boys crawl into her window at night and make love to her, it doesn't help. That I know it doesn't help. She is my sister and I love her. Like I want her to love me.”
“All of me, I think. I still have that.”
“Alone is how our story starts. But then I came along and changed all that.”
“If you give boys what they want, they give you what you need. Right?”
“And then he hugs me. Really hugs me. Like he thinks that there's only one of me and I'm special and I'm enough for him. Like he doesn't need anything else. Like he was alone and then I came along.”
“I belong here, I tell Toy. I'm hungry for every city block. Every brick building. Every crowded intersection. Electric. I feel brand new.”
“Toy is talking and this is why I love her. She can go on about herself ceaselessly and like the scratching of a branch against the window at night, the steady insistence of it is comforting. She has stories without beginnings, stories that trail off, stories that crisscross and contradict and dead end.Toy is the star of her stories. Events orbit her like a constellation.”
“In the tell-me-again times, (…) when my mom and I lived in a little apartment in a little building downtown, I slept in her bed. It was a raft on the ocean, a cloud, a forest, a spaceship, a cocoon that we shared. I could stretch out like a five-pointed star and then she'd bundle me back up in her arms. I'd wake in the morning tangled in her hair.”
“I want to go back to the tell-me-again times when I slept in her bed and we were everything together. When I was everything to her. Everything she needed.”
“It doesn't matter what story we're telling, we're telling the story of family.”
“Then suddenly it's a hot day and we're at my apartment and my dress is off and nobody is saying but. He's not saying slow down. He's looking at me and we can't wait. We can't help ourselves. He's everywhere. He takes my nose, my ear, my whole breast in his mouth. He slides his hand under my arm and between my fingers. He feels the bones down my chest and cups the skin on my stomach. We're on my bed. It's so early that, without any lights, my room is bright and he can see everything. He touches every part of the front of me and then turns me over and touches every part of the back of me. He feels in between my toes. We have sex again and again and again. He's always ready.”
“And the stories we tell ourselves are not the only stories.”
“In the happy times, in the tell-me-again times, when I’m seven and there are no stepbrothers and it’s before the stepfathers, my mom lets me sleep in her bed. Her bed is a raft on the ocean. It’s a cloud, a forest, a spaceship, a cocoon we share. I stretch out big as I can, a five-pointed star, and she bundles me back up in her arms. When I wake I’m tangled in her hair. “Tell me again,” I say and she tells me again how she wanted me more than anything. “More than anything in the world,” she says, “I wanted a little girl.”