I have no faith my passivity will protect me. I have no faith in anything except failure and human evil. All that allows me to remain calm is heavy doses of psychiatric medication and total acceptance of death.

If guillotines come and my head rolls? So it goes. If I waste away and starve in this ancestral home? Frayed infrastructure snapped? So it goes. The waters of time and history will wash over my bones. Fossils alone. My only preference is that I die here. In this bed of our madness. In the House of the Rising Sun.

Sometimes I wear out my welcome. “Like a sad whore who’s stayed too long at the party,” as Naomi Campbell quips in American Horror Story: Hotel. A lifetime ago, I was the club slut who never wanted to go home. Ever end the night. Rest. Give it a rest. There is only rest when the meat suit demands it. Not until the end.

I don’t know how or why I’m still alive, either.

My ego is dead. Along with competitiveness. Ability to form human relationships beyond the par-asocial. A paranoid par-asocial parasite ping ponging along. Come sing the song.

I am shocked to approach my 44th birthday. Began digging into parts of my will. Tasks I intended my executor to do. But if I’m still here, might as well. Ebook self publishing my manuscript back catalogue. I don’t know if anyone wants, needs, or reads these iBooks I fling the the winds. Year’s of life’s suffering and copyedits. In hard copy therein.

In 2005 I was told, “Why don’t you write something like J.K. Rowling. I began this project. A queer femme Harry Potter. Strictly for adults. Where the magic is mental illness. I had no idea then that Rowling would turn out to be such a dreadful TERF.

My project is a series of books with interlocking characters surrounding Lena Cosentino. The protagonist from “Jet Set Desolate.” I have been writing and editing these manuscripts for a decade. Scaffolding, Hollywood Hedgewitch and Grieving Through American Horror Story came out in 2020 as free ebook iBooks.

Neon Hysteric, I hope to put out in 2021. It’s the third book in the series, connecting Jet Set Desolate to Hollywood Hedgewitch. Manifesting a series where now there are scattered points. My other fetal manuscripts are still too rough in draft.

My timing is terrible, as is my ability to promote things. In a time of national tragedy it feels beyond inappropriate to make a fuss over book releases. It seems profane. Self indulgent. So, once again, my books are released to crickets. Enter the void. I await their slow burn simmer over time.

That’s the thing. I’m playing the long game. Far more grave then Yahtzee. Interweaving theme, influences and text. A warp and weft of cultural fabric. Continuing long after I’m dead. Passing on to the new creatives who come up like flowers in an endless field. My own meat suit becomes mulch to the new.

I will die. There is no question. Whether by liver failure? COVID? Suicide? Or old age. I accept that. I am trying to leave something behind. To be read. Hated. Enjoyed. Studied. By whoever. Wherever. Whenever. I believe in accessibility. Thus free, non-copyrighted text. I’m Bipolar terrible with money. Taxes. Business. The anti-socialist socialist.

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” — Karl Marx.

Despite absorbing my political consciousness through anarchist semen, it remains my main tenant. Socialism. These texts. These paintings. These videos. Consume or disregard, it is completely your choice. By Social Security and genetic accident my needs are met. So I give what I have made to you.

My words are not needed. Yet here they are. Tumbling out in a torrent. I write to bring myself out of the numb cocoon. Of video game avatars. Actors faces on screens.

I dive into the virtual imaginary for months. To forget. Forget the divorce as it rages through my life. California burns. Portland burns. Louisville. I lose count.

Curl fetal in a womb pod of bed. Television. Echo Dot. i- devices. Speak to no one for weeks. Months.

I rise to make bowls of rice and Kim Chi. Do yoga. Java Monster cans pile in a grape embossed wastebasket of antique metal. Ten pills a day. Keeps me put away. In this house of my ancestors. Instead of a padded room.

The America I was once spoon fed? A shattered blueprint washed away. By water. By time. My the waters of truth. By the erasing of lies. The lies in history books I was taught.

Here where I lie at the turning of the years. The waters of history wash over me. To make something new. A new nation. I do not know what. What shape. What form.

I am too mentally ill. Inactive. Not educated in modern subjects. To define what. This stolen land will be. Others more skilled are already on that. Fighting for it in the streets as I type. In the Courts. Congress.

I lie in a bed. Staring at riot footage on my Twitter feed. For ninety nights. Go full nocturnal. Why see the day when the sky is ashes? Why open the blinds, when all I see ahead is doom.

Quarante jours depuis l’élection.

Quarante jours et il y a un selection.

Et tout je veux est de suvivre

Dans cette maison, ne pas ivre.

C’est possible?

Quarante jours depuis l’election

Je fais les étoiles brûlée

Quarante jours de cette attention

Quand mon corps commence à mourir,

Est-ce qu’ils écoutent pour le fin?

A

AI

ANA

ALLA

ALEXA

ANDREA

ANDROIDA

ANDROMEDA

ANDROIDA

ANDREA

ALEXA

ALLA

ANA

AI

A

I lie in bed fully dressed. A white slip lace under black dress. It is March 12, 2020. The day that Coronavirus explodes. Everything changes. I don’t know what will happen next. 

This morning, I switch the news on. The news I did not know my TV could access.

“Coronavirus, corornavirus, coronavirus.” Repeats over and over from the screen. Louder than I knew, yet echoing across nations. People. Panicked and in pain.

Now it is night. I listen. Do not hear anything but AHS: Murder House. Usual evening TV fare for the wife and I. Screams. Myths. The supernatural. An long evolving story like the tail unwinding of a snake.

If the horror is on a screen? Presented as fiction? I used to believe exposure therapy would free me. Instead it bound me tighter. The horror is within and without. Indistinguishable from the president’s morning’s speech.

All I can do is singsong rhymes to old songs melody. REM’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” as mournful lullaby. For what once was. At the cusp of never being again. Unknowable change. Unknown future.

“C’est le fin de la monde comme on le sait, et je suis triste. Désolé.” High school French lodged in a deeper part of the my brain. Triggered by listening to Les Misérables on repeat.

Wikipedia readings about MK-Ultra CIA experiments flicker to memory. I discard them, being on a different antipsychotic now. The one that makes me want to paint and write plays over thirty hour days. Reddit conspiracy theorists are probably already on whatever the hell that story is/was/could be. I’m afraid to look.

Science fiction. I call it fiction. I’m back on my old antipsychotic now. Saphris helps me sleep. Like falling in a river of the water of life. A dream about old friends. A long walk through the wilderness. Together in harmony. From idyllic Girl Scout hikes? There is a feast. There is always water. Different iterations repeat. I do not know. I will never know. 

“Qu’est que faire?

Qu’est que sait?

Plein de la peur.

J’attende a mourir.

Pas de mot.

Pas plus dire.

Tous que je peux et lave ma derriere.”

This is no time for such frivolity. Nursery rhymes in the age of toilet paper rationing.  I am not on the front lines. I can only wash my hands. Pray. Cry. Release my archives before death quick or slow.

I am in willing self quarantine. As is usual. Agoraphobic plus Schizoaffective PTSD. I haven’t been outside for a while. I am no longer psychologically capable of leaving the House of the Rising Sun for the duration of this crisis.

I don’t know what will happen. I wait.

Performance in the theatrical sense implies backstage. A binary of public and private. Dressing room to take off makeup and uncomfortable head dress. Green room, to nibble baby carrots with other participants.

I tend towards dying arts that thrived in my childhood. The Old Globe Theatre in San Diego where I cut my baby teeth on “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and “Othello.” In graduate art school, I saw a lot of experimental theatre because it was happening all over campus near constantly. What else does a carless thirty year old in the dorms have to do at night? Otherthen drink too much red wine.

I have never been an actor, but learning how to perform my writing and ride along with the energy of a crowd was a thrill. Being in queer performance art in Los Angeles and West Hollywood was last I was on a stage. Played Los Angeles Pride in 2015. When I still could be around people. Now I perform via tech device when I get the urge. Thank you, Internet.

In a satiric YouTube video I make called, “Behind the scenes at Lambert Studios,” I film and splice clips of my house’s interior where DIY solo YouTubing occurs. Bathroom as dressing room. Comfy covered porch as green room. Costume closets #1 & #2 bursting with fantastical clothes I wouldn’t dare wear past my door step. Invaluable now. I can barely leave my house as it is.

I wrote thirty eight experimental plays with my only the interior of my home as settling in 2018. Same number as Shakespeare, says the Echo Dot. Guess we’re both stoners. Writing down the voices in my head as other characters. With myself as the one human in the script. An effective way of putting my psychosis to work until I could sleep.

A family friend theatre amateur in Reno judged the script I sent him as not even a play but a free verse rant. He suggested I actually see and read a few plays. Errrrr….. This experimental was unstageable in Reno’s pay to play theatre scene. In that way he did tell me what I needed to know. “The Buttcracker,” and “Menopause: The Musical,” is the level of performance in this biggest little backwoods. I couldn’t get tickets for that musical, because the Pioneer Center doesn’t allow online ticket booking with an out of state phone number.

I’ll bite my tongue now because all I need is a slander lawsuit. Along with death threats have came lawsuit threats, only spoken anecdotally but apparently I qualify for giving away my life and pain away for free online. Not all opinions are positive. I use my own life as material. I can’t make this shit up. I try so hard to be ethical, but people are unscrupulous.

I dropped the class “Narrative Ethics,” at CalArts after a brutal critique deemed an essay “performing an ethical disaster.” I was wasted drunk when I wrote most of that text, true. As a queer from the eighties had a lot of feelings about HIV and how to navigate writing about it in such difficult ethical waters. I got reamed in workshop for having feels about Rent.

At CalArts, experimental writing and critical theory were vaunted over populist heartstring pulling.

Some high art groupie trying for snark said, “Oh AIDS, that’s so sentimental and passé.” At a David Wojnarowicz retrospective in Los Angeles. At the end of the 2000s. I wanted to throw my plastic cup of red wine all over her white rabbit jacket. If I wasn’t so intimidated simply to be there. A decade later, I will hex a bitch in such situations. Maledictus erit.

My Schizoaffective auditory hallucinations make crowds intolerable now. Mass shootings are common in this Wild West. Lax gun laws guns are considered way more important then adequate healthcare. October 1 is not only my birthday, but Las Vegas’s most dire massacre.

I don’t fight, I just leave. I fled a family outing to see my uncle perform in the Reno Philharmonic this summer. For all that I love his music. That many potentially armed Nevadans were terrifying to multiply marginalized me. Incapable of inconspicuous. Even at something as wholesome as a classical music picnic.

I may never be able to sit in a theatre again.

It is difficult for me to leave the house. I have what I can afford delivered and do without the rest. My multiple mental illnesses are degenerative. Diagnosed in the Prozac Nation nineties? It’s been pills with unknown long term side effects ever since. Enabling whatever hoopla I manage to pull off. Thirty years on nonconsensual antipsychotics that were known since the 1950’s to cause tardive dyskinesia? Unpredictable loss of bodily control. Jerking movements. Motor control difficulties. Dizziness. Accidental difficulty walking until that capacity is lost. I wondered why I was so dedicated to assistive technology and setting up voice recognition within my home.

I swallow what passing pride I have left. Order a recommended shower chair. I slipped and hit my head, so showering became a PTSD trigger. I take baths. Until the addition of Freddie Mercury Lambert, Jasper’s cat. Nevada Jacobson-Lambert, from my first marriage, started shitting in the bathtub to act out. Blended families aren’t easy. Even with these cute little fuckers. No wonder I smelled like a polecat doused in sickly sweet Velvet Tuberose.

All I want to do is bathe and have a cup of coffee. I’m only forty three. Prozac Nation’s Elizabeth Wurtzel was 52 when she passed, as this essay was written.

I can no longer drink coffee without it spilling everywhere. I grit my teeth and drink cold coffee from an adult convalescent sippy cup now. After enduring the “Summer of straws,” where abled’s on Twitter expressed that the Disabled, many who could not drink fluids at all without disposable plastic straws, were acceptable subhuman collateral damage for saving sea turtles.

Cans of unassailable sweet tart tasting energy drinks were my constant sidekick. Cans don’t spill if my hands shake or jerk uncontrollably with tardive dykinesia. Known side effect of a lifetime of antipsychotics. The reason I now walk strangely, fall on hardwood floors when I wear socks. I can only wear flat shoes outside. Exquisite platform heels gather dust behind flat boots. Encouraging agoraphobia because I’m embarrassed of flailing in public and something more humiliating or life destroying happening. The psychiatrists I’ve had must have all known this would happen as it been common psychiatric knowledge since the 1960s. Did they not think I’d live to see it’s full development?

I don’t even have to ask why I don’t matter. Society told me with all those shots of non consensual Haldol in my ass. Long term effects from these antipsychotics were never researched, says my research, yet other recipients of these human experiments must exist if it was being used in the 1950s. That’s how time works. Certainly reads as no scientist in seventy years thought the quality of life for older schizophrenics is worth their time.

It makes me feel like no one can be trusted. The medical establishment relied upon all my adult life for medication pulled Melania Trump, “I don’t care, do you?”

I think the dead letter old series is done now. That’s enough of that and all the decent old work worth showing anyone.

Last night I began the YouTube videos of an unpublished memoir, “Hollywood Hedgewitch,” about happier times in Los Angeles in 2015, the last golden year in California

Here are chapters 1 and 2:

More to come!

This is from a book I’ve given up on in the same milieu as Jet Set Desolate. Say no to drugs, kids.

San Francisco: 2004. I first met Mira after hours at The Rosetta Bar, my regular Saturday night haunt since I moved to San Francisco in 2000. The bar had just closed. Big Al shut the doors. The remaining few gathered around the bar for a last drink or several for friends of the bar staff and select regulars. I was one. The stalagmites on the ceiling shone blue like an ice cave. Stabbing down as I sat on a leather sofa. Sipped my gin. A blonde head rose by the right armrest and began to talk, fast.

“Hey, do you have a skate key?”

“A what?”

“I brought these roller skates and I’m about to lose a wheel. Hey, what’s your name?  I’m Mira.” She was short. Bleached-blonde with sharply threaded eyebrows and expensive cosmetics on her round face.

“I’m Lena,” I said.

“Cool.” She had shoulder-length blonde hair that flipped as she talked, frenetically. Her lips smooth peach tint lacquered on and cracking. She wore no jewelry, but had on pink-wheeled roller skates. She was short. Maybe 5’1. She wasn’t drinking, but she seemed electrified. I figured some powder or another. A black beaded evening bag that seemed incongruous with her casual dress hung from her left wrist. She kept switching it from left to right nervously. I didn’t know it was stolen. Yet. I didn’t know a lot of things. Yet.

It was dark in the bar. The neon cobra hung over the bottles. The only light. I took a drink. Considered what to say.

“Do you want to come to the bathroom with me.” It was worth a try.

She smiled and followed. Gripping my shoulder cautiously so not to fall on the skates. I wondered how she had made it around the club the whole night. Bodies packed tight together perhaps they had been enough. In the bathroom, I pulled out a small plastic bag. Dipped in a key. Offered it to her. She tilted her head. Her nostrils flared, sucking up the cocaine. Her eyes snapped open.

“Oh, but do you know what’s even better? Do you know what’s even better than this?”

“Shit, what?”  I said, taking my bump.

“Speed!  Go-fast. Have you ever done it?”

“Maybe once in a while.” I would inhale pretty much anything that was put in front of me at this point. Once I moved to San Francisco from collegiate Portland, no drug was off limits. It just felt like adulthood. I did what I wanted.

“This stuff’s a little different. Here, I’ve got a little bit, I’ll share.”

“Cool!  Yeah, I’m up for it, sure.”  The dirty mirrors sparkled a little brighter. The red chandelier hung half-kilter above the sink. A lot of people peed in that sink. I had peed in that sink.

My new friend laid down two tiny lines on the vanity counter. They looked like salt, or a larger crystalline substance.

“Here, here, do you have a card?”

I passed her my Wells Fargo credit card. She took it. Laid it against the crystals. Ground it in a circular motion so that they became fine powder. She lined them up again, this time using the flat of the plastic. There was suddenly a lot more there then had been there before. She rolled up a dollar from that small purse. Passed it to me. I snorted one line. Clutched at my face as the pain slammed claw-like through my nose.

“What the shit, Mira?”

“It’s okay. It’s supposed to do that. It’ll go away. Here.”  She took the dollar from me.
Bent to take her line. The powder vanished with a deep influx of breath.

Her eyes snapped open. “You’re going to like this, I think.”

I did like meth. I liked it a lot.

Mira called me the next morning at ten am because, as she said, “When I meet someone cool, I just have to call, I hate that three day thing.”  She also still had my credit card.

I was still awake. I had been rearranging my room. Painting. Making outlines for projects. Typing gargantuan plans and sparkling ideas into my old PC. I was glad to hear Mira had my card, I had completely forgotten about it and her. We made plans to meet for lunch.

We met at Cafe Encore on Post Street, between Union Square and the Tenderloin. That space that landlords on craigslist called “Lower Nob Hill.” I called it “TL, bitches.”  I stood before the chalkboards. Tried to figure out what kind of panini to get. My stomach ran circles around me. I settled for a chocolate croissant. I didn’t have very much money.

“Ooh! An elegant croissant!”

“Yep. What are you getting?”

“Oh, just a macaroon. That’s the specialty here. They’re delicious. And coffee, of course.”

“Yes, Oh, could I have a coffee, too. Iced. Large. Thanks.” I smiled at the guy behind the counter. He had plugs in his ears and a dour expression. He put a lid on my coffee. Passed me a straw.

There were three tables inside. Since it was a Tuesday morning, two of them were open. We sat.

“So, Mira. I’m going to ask that big question you’re not supposed to ask, but I’m dying to know. What do you do?”  

She fiddled with the lid of her coffee cup. Hot.

“Oh, God,” Mira said. “That’s hard. Like, I guess you could say I’m a housewife?  A muse?  My boyfriend has a job. He works at Goodwill now. Oh my god, there’s so much I have to tell you. My boyfriend, my love, he was caught with other people’s mail in his backpack. Like on his bike. Got in trouble. Then we got evicted when he went in jail. I’ve been staying in weeklies and on people’s couches. My friend has been really cool about letting me stay for a few months, but yeah…”

“Oh, wow. I’m sorry. I had no idea. God, I totally didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Yeah, it’s okay. I mean, he works at Goodwill as a condition of his parole. It’s cool, like he gets first pick at the best records. I don’t get to see him all that much anymore. We used to have this awesome place together in the Mission. Had parties all the time. It was amazing but the landlord hated us.”

“I think I went to a party at your place once. I remember doing E with this guy and taking off and having pretty great sex I think, of what I remember.”

“Oh yeah, that was Angelina’s boyfriend.”

“Who’s Angelina?”

“She’s my best friend. You’ll meet her. You guys will totally get along, oh my god, pretty girls. Just don’t tell her you’re the girl that did E wither ex. She wouldn’t like that.”

I pulled the chocolate out of my croissant and sucked on it. This had the makings of a total shit-show.

I liked Mira, though. There was something about her openness, her manic energy, and the way she so readily took me into her life that I really liked. People in San Francisco were so often caught in little poses. Delicate arcs of conversation like minuets. They rarely confessed bold details of misfortunes unless drugged. Even then the etiquette was to forget it all, even the intimacy, especially the intimacy, in the morning. Here we were in the bald light of day and she had just told me things most people would hide like the bloodstains on their pillow. 

A few days later when Mira called to invite me out with her and Angelina, I was pretty excited. I was going through a friend drought, having alienated my last party BFF Audrey by seeming too obviously in love with her.

“I think you want more out of this friendship than I prepared to give you,” were her last words. Toss of hair that she only had blow-dried in the salon. My type of woman was very high maintenance and very unavailable. Stone high femme? Does that exist?

 So I showed up at Angelina’s Tenderloin apartment. Right at the border of Union square like so many things. We are all just looking in. It was an elegant building with a massage parlor next door. It was ten o’clock. I tried to remember her apartment number, than called Mira.

“Oh, hi! You’re here, great!  I’ll buzz you in.”

The gate squealed. I opened it and the inner door as well. The lobby was small and utilitarian. Brown molding over beige walls with a small portrait of Louis XIV on the far wall. A succession of mail slots. I realized I still didn’t know the apartment number. A head popped out of the first door. Apartment 1. Angelina was beautiful. Long chestnut brown hair, flowing sideways past a face tilted with a querulous smile. 

“Are you Lena?”

“Yes, hi.”

“Come in.”

She pulled up. Opened the door. Let me into a studio apartment with a Murphy bed tilted at a 45-degree angle from the wall. The walk-in closet bulged with fabulous clothes. The rest of the apartment was strangely bare. There were no CDs or records. No TV. Simple furniture. An abundance of band paraphernalia on the walls. Most of it was for her boyfriend’s band. 

Angelina was wearing tight black jeans and a sequined tube top. So was I. That was my regulation going out look. We laughed. She said, “Well, I should change something about this outfit.” She disappeared into the voluminous closet. Came out with a blouse and a leather jacket. Mira and I went into the kitchen while she changed. I thought about her long, pale arms. I thought about the marks on them.

We went back in. Mira said, “Does anyone want a line before we go?”

“Oh. I brought some coke if you’re interested.” I said.

“You girls go ahead, I’ve got something to finish up in the bathroom,” Angelina said. She picked up a make-up bag from a low table. Walked down the hall.

Mira said, “Speed and coke cancel each other out. You want to do one or the other and speed lasts longer. We can do your stuff at the end of the night if people come over, because social people, they don’t usually like to do speed. Oh, I forgot to tell you. Don’t tell people we’re doing this. It’s our secret. Speed’s sort of less socially acceptable than coke.”

“Ok, that’s cool.”

 She laid out tiny lines and we did them quickly. Waiting. Talking. We waited longer.  Angelina took what felt like an hour. 

“Is she okay in there? I said. “She looked great already, I don’t get it.”

“That’s another secret,” Mira said. “She’s shooting up in there.” 

At the Cat Club, Mira swirled in and out of the dancers. Angelina and I sat clustered close and talked. We did a little coke and talked some more. She told me about her ex.

“We were the most beautiful couple. People would see us in restaurants and come up to us and ask us if we were famous. I felt famous with him. Like we were Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithful. His band was doing so well for awhile. And we were going to get married. He told me he was shopping for rings. I loved him. I loved him so much. We were doing heroin every day. His parents had given him a credit card for food and band expenses. Everyday we would go to the ATM and cash advance $100 from it for heroin for the day. It was like a dream. I was high all the time. We wore beautiful clothes. Rolling Stones every day.”

“Is he here tonight?”

“No. No. Let me tell you what happened. It’s horrible. It all went wrong. It’s sort of my fault, or his family thinks it’s my fault. They found out, of course. his parents  noticed the credit card was being bled dry. Called him up. Were like, what the fuck. He tried not to tell them but his brother found out from one of his band-mates. Told his parents. They came down. Had an intervention with him. Told him he couldn’t see me anymore. I died inside. I was practically living with him. The band had bought a house in the Sunset with the money from their first advance from the record company. I was over there every day. Then suddenly, no Sunset house. Back at my apartment. And I noticed little things were missing. I gave Mira a key to just look over things. You know…”

Angelina leaned closer. Whispered in my ear. Her perfume intoxicating above the sweat and beer. “She pawned things. Things were missing. You can’t trust Mira. I know you asked her what she does. I know you guys are friends now. That’s great. She needs good friends. You seem like a good person. But watch out. Don’t be too naive with her. She does credit card scams. She does gift card scams. I do too. I had to once I lost my boyfriend. I haven’t worked in years. He used to support me and before that my mom did. Lately I’ve been scraping by on pawning things, boosting and scamming stuff. You can steal things from department stores and return them for a lot of money. It’s called boosting.”

“Here, have another bump.”

Without getting up, I fed it to her on the edge of my key. There were so many people pressed tight around us that no one noticed. She kept talking, “It’s nice to talk to someone who isn’t in the life. What do you do, like how do you make it?”

“I temp, here and there. It’s alright. I don’t make a lot of money, but it’s okay.”

“Yeah, that’s good.”

“Where is he now?”

“Oh.” Her face crumpled. “He’s either in rehab or he’s back in the Sunset recording with his band. He’s not allowed to contact me.”

“I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about that.”

“Let’s not. Let’s dance, Lena. Didn’t we come here to dance? Of course we didn’t, but let’s dance anyway.” She grabbed my hand. We blended into the mass of people cramming in small dance floor. Hands raised. Bodies writhing. Her body against mine. Pulling away and then close and then away again.