By Beauty Damned

WTMI

Can't say I've been feeling like writing. Listless I guess.

I've been reading religiously. I've read so many good (and one or two not-so-good) books this year. Just finished Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi and am now reading Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Two completely different genres, so it's pretty odd to go from one to the other, but that's how my reading is these days. I am totally non-discriminate with the exception, maybe, of romance novels or trashy suspense, which I will not read unless it is absolutely the only thing available to read. I have read a good deal of both fiction and non-fiction, from contemporary to relative classic.

Helter Skelter was amazing. My dad sent me a copy recently after he went to an Alumni gathering at UCLA and saw Vincent Bugliosi speak. He bought the book and had Bugliosi make it out to me. That was pretty exciting in itself. But the book blew my top. I have never read a true crime story as thoroughly accounted in such exact detail, as to the circumstances of the murders and the investigation and the trial and every single thing in between. It really is a masterpiece. Maybe It sounds naive, but probably because law has been a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember, (mostly due to the number of family members in that field, and the fact that I also chose the legal field as my business), but I was deeply impressed by Bugliosi's ethics, his profound cool, and his genuine desire to perform every single task before him with diligence and tact and integrity. I highly recommend the book. At 670 pages with hundreds of footnotes, it is a mildly intensive endeavor, but well worth it in order to understand that particular story. It is a wild one.

Read on?

Now I am reading Lolita. This book is pure perfection. The prose the man wrote was (and still is) ingenious and hilarious. It has the flair and slight theatrics of Oscar Wilde. Not to mention that it hits really close to home. A friend lent me this book specifically because they felt that I could really identify with it. And on one level, I really, really do. On the level that when I was 13, I fell in love with a man 23 years old. I know. I know. Gasp. Horror. What on earth would a young man want to do with such a little girl? Well, aside from the fact that I wasn't exactly the average 13 year old in that I was very tall, had a lot of sexuality brewing and I was in a huge hurry to grow up and be independent (that being the only thing I ever really wanted in life), I guess there was that strange allure between a budding, gawky young girl and a determined young musician who just happened to be ten years apart in age. And that was it. We were together for three - tumultuous - years. I was his "virgin princess." He was my "rockstar." I was young and stupid, he was an insufferable, but not unemotional, creep. We had no business being together. But we were together, and no one could say anything about it because that is how strong was our will to be with eachother. We felt like Romeo and Juliet. Or Elvis and Priscilla. It was crazy. He even wrote a song about me that ended up on an album that he made with RCA. Track number eleven. Titled for my middle name, Luz De Luna.

Point to that whole tangent being that Lolita is an easy book for me to get inmeshed in, for all of the things about it that I really connect with. It brings many curious memories to mind.

Like a time when I was sixteen, standing outside the Old Ashland Armory where my parents rented office space and where there was also an auditorium that frequently featured shows and live music. I was smoking a cigarette (back when I was dumb enough and desperately cool enough to smoke Lucky Strike filterless) and observing the warm summer night (most likely wearing an impossibly short skirt as I often did as a teenager), when I was approached by my parent's office landlord. His last name was Pugh. As in Pepe Le... He tried to start a conversation and mid sentence he stopped and stared at me. I thought he was going to lecture me. For what, I don't know. But the words he uttered were unexpected. He said "God. You are smoking that cigarette harder and faster than I'm growing older." He sounded both incredulous and enchanted. Such is the power of a long legged, trash mouthed, cigarette smoking lolita. Something about the obvious badness of it is so appealing. I later told my mother and she told me Mr. Pugh was a little bit of a perv. On a different occasion, one of my dad's clients said to him "wow man, your daughter really knows how to turn on the magnets..." Luckily for him, my dad is a very laid back fellow who was able to laugh about it with me. I saw that same client on a different day and he offered me a ride in his shiny forest green jaguar. I allowed him to give me a ride to my destination and reveled in the obvious fact that he was absolutely dying as he watched me get out of his car. He was no good at hiding his interest, despite his supposedly being a devout muslim and having what looked to be two wives (my family and I once visited their house for dinner). Strange...

Another memory I have is of a brad-pittish fellow of about 22 who did some construction work on my parent's house (often shirtless). I thought he was irrisistable and at 14 (despite my boyfriend) I hung around when he was working and occasionally made bedroom eyes at him and swooned over him like the crazy teenager I was. He was not that stupid and did not give in. Well a few years later, when I was 17 (sans boyfriend), he did succumb to my so-called charms. I messed with his head for a couple months, whereafter I promptly discarded of him. He was satisfactorily despondent. It was completely Evil. I still feel bad about that. Not nice at all.

Of course, I don't see myself in that light presently. It is but an entertaining and sometimes even slightly uncomfortable memory. Now I am a grown up. No longer an unruly lolita, but succeeding at being a relatively decent young woman, a professional in my job, a faithful girlfriend, a good cook, an avid reader, writer and sometimes artist... I still curse like a sailor. I still cause an occasional bit of trouble. But most of the short skirts are gone, the skinny, shiny, childhood limbs are gone, the devilish joy of inspiring desire in older men is definitely gone. But I am still the same bad bad girl I guess. You can't wash that away.

Posted by Maria at November 26, 2003 05:53 PM