He sat next to Barbey. “You girls live in El Cajon?” His accent confused Barbey, causing her to wonder where he was from.
They both nodded. “Do you?” Sage asked, trying to be polite.
“Actually I’m from Tijuana.”
“Really?” Barbey looked at him perplexed. “You don’t look Mexican.”
“I from Tijuana, but I European ancestry. They are many Europeans in Mejico. They are many white. We immigrate to flee persecution from our countries before I born.”
Barbey was feeling more confused, but this guy was certainly intriguing.
“Please do not think I rude. I ask you to write your telephone number so I win this game my cousin make for me. Not true number—just pretend. Then he think you want me to call you.” He handed her a little piece of torn paper and a pen. “Really I like it to be your true number, but it your decision.” His eyes breezed over her softly like wind brushing her cheek.
“Sure, it’s no problem. Why should you lose a bet?” She looked at the paper and paused, trying to decide if she should write down her correct number. “What the heck,” she said aloud as she scribbled her number down and handed it to him. “It’s my real number,” she whispered shyly and looked up at the phosphorescent lights above feeling out of place, but slightly hopeful.
He grinned. “What your names?”
“I’m Barbey and this is my best friend, Sage.”
He shook hands with them and got up. “My name is Miguel.” As he walked away, he looked back at Barbey, winked and kissed the piece of paper with her phone number playfully.
34
Everything seemed empty and black without Rave.
For the next couple of weeks, Barbey went through the motions of life—going to school during the day, attending cosmetology school in the evenings, and partying with Kimberly and Elvira in Tijuana on weekends.
Everything seemed empty and black without Rave.
In her despair, she began writing her thoughts in a daily journal and taking photographs of grotesque absurdities.
Everything seemed empty and black without Rave.
One day while she was walking on the pier that Rave had jumped off the night she met him, she saw vomit on the bench where they had sat, so she took a picture of it. Empty and black. On her way back to the car she saw a child with red paint on his hands and face crying, so she took a picture of him. Empty and black. While she was driving home she saw a stop sign with a condom hanging from it, so she took a picture of that. Empty and black.
She began hanging these pictures on her bedroom walls and this comforted her making her feel as if her life weren’t so bad. Often she took notes in her journal about her pain and observations of pain in the world. This also seemed to comfort her.
As time progressed, she began to see images of Rave almost everywhere she went. She would see men who looked like him on the streets, on movie posters, in magazines. She saw the shape of his face on the moon, in the clouds, in the stars, and even in the lumps on her bedroom ceiling. Once she sat watching the television with the cable disconnected just staring at the snowy static screen seeing Rave smiling back at her. She was afraid to turn off the television for fear that she would lose him again.
One day, she tried to call him another time just so she could get some clarity on the situation. It just didn’t make sense to her that he didn’t say goodbye or give any explanation for abandoning her. But when she called, Parker answered the phone. “Barbey?” He paused seemingly uncomfortable.
“Yes. Is Rave there?”
“No, Rave’s not available. I need to talk to you. Can I pick you up and we’ll talk at Sunset Cliffs?”
“That sounds good,” Barbey responded, holding back tears as she pinched her face hard to keep from crying.
Barbey tried her best to act unaffected and cheery around Parker as they sat in his station wagon on the cliffs overlooking the ocean. “Rave got back together with Suzie Albers.”
“Oh,” Barbey pretended not to care.
“I’m really pissed at her. When we all went to her party—remember?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“I heard her asking her friend if she looked good when she saw Rave. She was trying to fix her hair and lipstick. They’re always playing each other. It’s always been that way.”
“You know, life is weird,” she said getting out of the car. She walked over to the edge of the cliffs and looked down wondering what it would feel like if she could fly away. The ocean roared and laughed and threw a fit and she realized that she wasn’t the only one suffering. She wondered if she had been more open with Rave, if he would have stayed with her. Maybe he left because I didn’t tell him that I love him? Maybe he didn’t realize how much I could have helped him. I should have told him. She felt like slapping herself, but didn’t want to appear crazy in front of Parker. The salty air seemed rancid and intense and the hotdog that a boy was eating next to her reeked so strongly, she felt like she was going to vomit.
Parker walked up to her and put his hand on her shoulder and kissed her on the neck. “You want to get high?”
She looked at him feeling confused and a bit repulsed. “Ok,” she said, walking back to the car.
35
The coffeehouse Barbey met Cherry Pennington at was artsy with books lining the blue walls of the small quaint room with round blue glass tables and high intricately designed mosaic stools depicting astrological settings whereupon they sat sipping Stardust Tea. Cherry’s voice was low and melodic, “I had this sorta epiphany one night when I was sittin’ atop this huge boulder out in the middle of the Mohave Desert.” She laid her head in her hands, her elbows upon the table, for a moment and then looked up suddenly and laughed low and wry. “And I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten there,” She brushed her long brown hair away from her eyes and tilted her head up rubbing her elongated neck as she continued. “It was strange.” She looked Barbey in the eyes intently. “I knew I had to change my life,” her whisper was almost sultry, but matter of fact.
Barbey was nervous and could hardly concentrate on what Cherry was saying. Her attention kept shifting over to a young man with thick straight black hair working behind the pastry counter and then back to the black zigzag designs on Cherry’s long powder blue dress. “It’s funny—you like dress so conservative, yet you look attractive and appealing.”
“It’s somethin’ I figured out when I was a teen. I realized a girl don’t have to let it all hang out to be good lookin’. In fact, it’s the opposite. And why should women give it all away for nothin’?” Suddenly, she appeared angry.
“I don’t know what you mean?”
“The media’s always makin’ women like prostitutes—makin’ us think we have to look as thin as coat hangers with our bodies half naked for every stupid idiot to drool over. I don’t wanna be what some horny business execs want me to be.”
“Oh. But you’re thin.” The young man behind the counter was staring at Barbey now and when she glanced at him, their eyes locked fixedly, causing her to lose all concentration for a moment. He reminded her of Rave, but his stare was gentler.
“Heck, I’ll admit it—I’m effected by the constant stream of messages flushed into my brain through mass media since I was a babe. I’m hardly above anyone else.”
Barbey turned away from the guy and nodded at Cherry who was staring into her tea now as if she were reading tea leaves.
Cherry looked up. “But, it pisses me off…” she continued, “…to see how what we see as important in life—all that consumes our daily thoughts—is an effect of the messages sent through some square box or phony magazine. I mean, should every little girl want to be a supermodel, a rock star, a dancer, or an actress?”
“I don’t think all girls want to be that.”
“Well, a lot more than should do. I mean, some people are meant to be those things, but most aren’t. And the media idolizes those careers. Not everybody strives for them, but deep down, I’ll bet a lot mor
e than should, have fantasized at one time or another to be the sexy hot lover in a James Bond film or the sultry Michelle Pfeiffer slitherin’ across the piano in her red gown in The Fabulous Baker Boys. That’s what everyone’s told is the ideal since they were able to set their naive eyes upon the TV and silver screen. You think we were given a choice of whether or not we wanted to spend our entire lives feeling inadequate because we aren’t as thin or attractive as an image in a magazine or a starvin’ lady on the movie screen?”
“Actually, I never really thought about it, but now that you mention it, I think I know what you mean,” Her mind began to itch uncontrollably and as she reached up attempting to scratch it beneath the surface, it just started spin, spin, spinning out of its musical box and this surprised her. Just then three junior high school blonde girls with the same puffy permed hair jelled up on the sides, wearing the same designer jeans with pumps and New Kids on the Block t-shirts, walked up to the counter to order. In curiosity, Barbey gazed at the girls as she continued speaking, “It’s weird, but now that I think about it, media really does control people’s minds in a way. It, like, tells you what to think about instead of just letting you think about what would come natural to you. I wonder what I would be like if I had never seen a movie or read a fairy tale in my life? Heck, I don’t even know who I am. I mean I’m named after a plastic doll.”
Cherry laughed. “You know, through media, a government or whoever, can control people’s minds in really terrible ways. That’s how Hitler came to power and was able to murder 6,000,000 Jews. The Nazi party had to first condition the public to fear and hate Jews, so that they could complete their mission of annihilation. They did this through media conditioning tactics.”
Barbey put her head down on the table—thoughts spinning out of control in her mind.
“What’s wrong with you?” Cherry asked slightly irritated.
Looking up, rubbing her hand over her forehead, Barbey responded, “It’s just that I get so upset hearing about the Holocaust. When I was a kid, we watched this film called The Wave in school that showed how easily people are tricked by propaganda and this really freaked me out to see how seemingly normal people could become so evil.”
Nodding in interest, Cherry continued, “I went to a museum recently that had do-dats and stuff from Nazi Germany. I was disgusted when I saw an actual propagandist children’s picture story book from prewar Germany that the government had the teachers read to the kids in school. The book idolized the blonde, muscular, tan German men making them look really courageous, good, and attractive, while showing the Jewish men as scrawny and hunched over with exaggerated features that looked demonic. The distortions were subtle and the author falsified practices of Jews too just ever so slightly to present them as devil-like people. It was weird because the author used certain realities and truths and then distorted them just enough to give a very false impression.”
“That’s so weird. It’s like the Nazis planned to get everybody to hate Jews way ahead of time so that when they actually murdered them, people wouldn’t even stop them.”
“Yup. That’s what they did.”
“So, what are you saying? Do you, like, think the world should ban books and implement censorship? I, like, learned in school that that takes away freedom and is bad.”
“No I don’t believe in book banning or censorship. I just think that the public needs to be aware that they are not free when they are being manipulated by mass media.”
****
“I think people naturally want to watch what allures them and there is a lot of alluring power in the fantasy of a hot sexy woman.”
“Sure, a lot of people will likely continue to be swayed by this illusion that falsely promises happiness, but it’s a happiness that never lasts—it always burns out eventually. I bet if some media makers started producing really good quality media without destructive illusions, the public would be just as influenced by this good stuff as the bad stuff if it’s super entertaining and over time, they’d start feeling happier and acting like better people. It would be great to teach in school about how mass media controls and influences people’s minds, so then people could choose what they watch with their eyes wide open and know how it is influencin’ them.”
“Well, it all sounds fine and dandy, but good luck getting it started.”
“Hey, everything starts with a dream…”
36
One morning after Barbey’s parents had left for the day, she was searching through the boxes in the garage for a stuffed doll that she used to play with as a child. She hadn’t seen the doll for years and she started having reoccurring dreams about playing with it as a child. I must find Suzie! She had named the doll Suzie as a child because she thought Suzie was the most charming name in the world. A sudden desperation had swept over her this evening causing her to feel that she must find that doll, that this doll would comfort her in her confusion.
After searching through box after box, she still hadn’t found Suzie, but she did find a wooden jewelry box. The box was a beautiful blue like the ocean with a silver painting of cobblestone buildings on a hillside. Barbey found this box to be the most beautiful ornate thing she had ever seen. She opened the box slowly and a tiny wooden doll in a long blue dress with a scarf around her head spun around a stick to a music box tune that Barbey hadn’t recalled ever having heard, but sounded so comfortably familiar, maybe Middle Eastern, she thought. She began to cry softly as she looked through the pictures. They were pictures of her as a young child about 1 ½ years old with her brother, father, and another woman standing near a stone wall with ivy growing from the cracks and another picture of them standing before the brightest blue ocean she had ever seen. Her father looked so happy and sweet in the photographs. The woman was so beautiful with a soft, gentle expression on her face. She reminded her of a lullaby. Her eyes were the same grayish violet colored eyes as Barbey’s and her hair was long and dark like Barbey’s natural hair. Her eyebrows were as thick and dark as Barbey’s had been before she had electrolysis done to thin out her brow line.
The photographs were so peculiar to her. Where was Mama? Who was this woman? Her father seemed so comfortable around her—so different and loving. In one of the photos, he had his arm around her and was kissing her on the cheek. Was dad having an affair? The idea made her sick to her stomach, but this woman didn’t look like the type to have an affair with a married man who had children. She seemed so good and pure. I suppose good people have affairs too, especially if they’re tricked. Maybe Dad lied to her and told her he was unmarried. She began to feel dizzy and upset as if her whole life had been an illusion, a superimposed deception. It had always seemed to her that something was not quite right in her home, but she had chosen to ignore it through the distractions of her beauty and movie characters. What is reality? She decided to take the jewelry box with the photographs to her grandfather’s house and ask him if he knows anything about them.
37
Her grandfather lived on a dead end street with tall lamp posts and no sidewalks in La Mesa about a twenty minute drive west of her parent’s house. His house was tall and skinny and grey and weathered just like him. It had four floors that looked out onto the street through huge square windows that looked to Barbey like monster’s eyes with wooden square glasses. He had one maple tree in the tiny front yard that had a hummingbird feeder with red liquid inside. Beside the tree was a big round etched cement bird bath filled with water that he changed every day. As a child, Barbey had always enjoyed watching the birds gather around to feed and bathe from the big front windows.
She and her grandfather were sitting inside, near the front windows in his high back wicker chairs next to a coffee table, drinking hot tea with milk. He was born in England and immigrated with his family to the United States as a child, so in that sense, he was a real English tea drinker.
“I’ve always liked drinking tea with milk with you,” she said. “I’ve never met anyone else who drinks it th
is way.”
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