Honeysuckle Mag Issue 1: Rebel Yell

L E B E R LL E Y MARCH 2015 Issue 1 IN THIS ISSUE: Heroin: Rebel Without a Clue Luis Cortes: “I Like ‘Em Crazy” Angelina Jolie: A Rebel With Many Causes

Publisher: Ronit Pinto Guest Editor: Royal Young Managing Editor: Dorri Olds Web Content Editor: Shani Friedman Contributors Dorri Olds Lianne Stokes Tracy Lia Lynn Paige McGreevy Katie Zaun Lee Brozgol Michael Demyan Angela Caito Allegra Vera Warsager Fashion Photo: Sam Hodges Model & MUA: Melanie Radtke Photography Burn The Witch Photography Social Media Rockwell Global Media

Photo by Lucy Jane Purrington

Contact and Submissions General honey@honeysucklmag.com Photos Moxie McMurder photo@honeysucklemag.com Fiction Daniel Rumanos fiction@honeysucklemag.com Music and Books Michael Demyan musicandbooks@honeysucklemag.com Web sarahgraceblack@gmail.com info@dorriolds.com

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Letter from the Publisher:

Hello and welcome to Honeysuckle. We’re so glad you’re here.

This debut issue takes us down the road of rebellion, with writers courageous enough to explore it in every form.

If you’re like me, you probably got in trouble for being rebellious.

But on the other hand, it also probably kept you alive.

If you’re like some of our writers, rebellion took you on a road trip, to a new job, or more intensely, away from some kind of trauma or abuse.

Whatever your story, we invite you to explore the journey together.

And at the end of it, shout a big fat, Rebel Yell!

— Ronit Pinto

Photo: Samuel Clemens Long

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Letter from the Editor: Here in my father’s words a description of this image of rebellion: “This is ‘Tony’ aka Mr. Indiana from my series of portraits, ‘Hidden America: An Artist’s Trip through the Personals.’ I replied to his ad in The Prisoner’s Quarterly for the purpose of doing a drawing based on our letters. Beginning in 1983, our correspondence spanned three years. Looking back, I am struck by two qualities: my naiveté and Tony’s rage. I was the white liberal trying to rescue Tony through my professional skills as a social worker; he was 22, a kid really, caught in a system that provoked him into deeper and deeper violence.

When his copy of this drawing arrived, the prison authorities withheld it from him on the grounds that it could incite a riot.”

—Royal Young, Honeysuckle Magazine photo: Cathrine Westergaard

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Words and photos by: Dorri Olds

Rebel Without a Clue by Dorri Olds “I realize that I’ve been hypnotized.” — Jimi Hendrix Where do self-destructive impulses come from? I had romanticized images of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin but they were dead long before I heard of them.

None of my peers shot junk but the Russian roulette of it appealed to me. Since age 13, I’d been slumming. My parents and I fought mostly about the unintelligent losers I hung out with but my self-esteem was so low I guess being around good-for-nothings made me feel superior.

The first time I shot heroin was down at St. Mark’s place in 1978. I was a 17-year-old aspiring artist looking for a place to sell my Pollok-ish hand-painted T-shirts. I’d seen people leaning against the walls of Cooper Union, selling their junk on the strip between Lafayette and Third Ave.

I also had a hunger, a need to shed my dorky, studious persona and live like the dead rock stars I was enamored with. I understood pained lyrics. I had the blues, too, even though my life didn’t match the way I felt. I had educated parents who loved me. Mom schlepped my sisters and I to gymnastics meets, piano lessons and art classes. We all went to museums and Broadway shows. Mom was a writer who celebrated my creativity; she hung my paintings on the wall. Dad managed two radio stations — one soul, the other jazz. He brought home records every night: Billie Holiday, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes.

I have no idea where my self-destructive impulses came from. I was prone to dark thoughts and there’s a history of suicidal tendencies in my Russian Jewish bloodline that dates back generations.

One uncle shot himself in the chest and died before he hit the bed. His brother died from a second heart attack; he’d ignored the doc and kept on popping pills and smoking four packs a day. On the paternal side, my aunt was found with a plastic bag around her head. The topic was taboo but what’s more enticing to a teen hellion than something you’re not supposed to do?

My parents and I were fighting constantly by the time I was 12 and I wondered why it never occurred to them to demand the opposite of what they wanted. If they’d commanded me to smoke cigarettes, I would’ve abstained just to spite them.

I had romanticized images of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, both long dead before I’d heard of them. Suburbia was traumatic for me and I was sick of arguing with my parents.

I ran away at 15 and bee-lined for Greenwich Village where remnants of the sixties were everywhere. Guitars and radios played Bob Dylan, Neil Young; people singing waved me to come over. I liked the cool head shops on Eighth Street and hung around them, eavesdropping to learn about drugs and paraphernalia.

On the sidewalk across from the cube, the guy said, “If you give me $40 dollars I’ll get you high.” I had cash from waitressing so I asked him to watch my T-shirts and ran home to MacDougal Street.

I cut across Washington Square Park, comforted by the familiar buzz of conversations, guitar-strumming and harmonicas, mixed with sirens and beeping cars. There was always that soothing rhythm. I got back to Astor Place in half an hour.

I went back home briefly then graduated high school a year early. At 16, off I went to Boston University. After a year in Boston I was too homesick for the Village. I missed its flowery scarves, used record stores, Italian cafes and longhaired boys in hip-hugger jeans.

This guy I just met took my forty bucks and tied a rubber tube around my arm and told me to make a fist. He pulled out a bent spoon from his front jeans pocket and set it down on the hood of a parked car. He emptied powder out of a wrapper into it, then picked up a bottle of water stuck in his back pocket, unscrewed the lid, stuck his pinky finger in the water and flicked a few droplets onto the spoon. It felt like I was doing research for the memoir I’d write one day.

Through my waitressing job, I found a fourth floor walk-up apartment in a prime locale: 111 MacDougal Street between Bleecker and West Third. There was a constant montage of music blasting, guys telling me how pretty I was, bars, clubs, and people laughing. The sidewalks and buildings gulped in deep breaths then let ‘em out cool and slow.

I took a two-year-leave of absence from college to become a rock star.

He grabbed a matchbook out of his boot; like a magic trick he lit a match with one hand and held the flame under the spoon until the powder liquefied into the water. I noticed a sweet phosphorous smell when he shook out the match.

My heart was pounding from excitement. This was so over-the-top bad. My main goal in life was to gain acceptance from street thugs.

I’d had jobs since I was 15 and was good at saving money.

My parents sent checks for clothes and food, which I saved for drugs. I was a pro at shoplifting the things I needed. It was easy with my big brown eyes, which make me look more innocent than I am.

From his oversized button-down shirt pocket he pulled out a syringe with a mashed misshapen ball of cotton stuck to the tip. He put the cotton into the spoon, when the liquid was soaked into the cotton, he pointed the needle into it and drew back the plunger, then slid it back till it hit the rubber stopper. I stared with fascination as the needle filled up with yellowish-clear liquid. He flicked his finger against the syringe a couple of times.

So there I was standing on that strip where people sold their wares, directly across from the huge cube sculpture at Astor Place, when some scruffy dude asked me if I wanted to smoke a joint.

“Sure.” I said.

He asked, “Hey, did you ever shoot heroin, babe?”

“That’s to get the air out. If you get an air bubble, you’re dead.”

“No,” I said, “but I want to.”

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I hoped there’d be an air bubble. I’d already decided years before that there was no point to life. My urge for self-destruction is something people always want me to explain. It was just there, like my hayfever and allergy to wool.

pushed out. It was in the East Village when Alphabet City had no yuppies and you had to watch your back on every block. I went. While there, I met a six-foot, cowboy-looking, square-jawed man with a blonde mustache. He stuck out his hand to shake.

He said my vein was hard to find and slapped my arm a couple of times. It was like taking a class: How to Be a Junky. He found the vein and stuck the needle into my arm.

I was surprised it barely hurt. He drew back the plunger. I saw blood, my own blood, mixed with the yellowish clear liquid then he plunged all of it into my arm.

“Colin Earl Fisher. Earl the Pearl.”

His sandy blond hair curled as if it were playing—running this way and that. He was so muscular I asked him what he did. He pointed to his parked pickup truck that said Fisher Roofing. He was 27 and I always liked going out with older guys. They’d pay for everything.

There was a total absence of fear. Endorphins danced in my head. My ultimate rebellion gave me a rush of excitement.

‘Ha!’ I thought. ‘I can do whatever I want and nobody can stop me.’ I smiled thinking ‘I’m such a badass now.’

We flirted while waiting in line to get our coke. I saw others slide money in, and watched their packets slide out. When I was next in line Earl asked me where I was going to shoot it.

The high hit quick. I felt exhausted and sick to my stomach.

I lit a cigarette, took a drag and watched the smoke swirl against the backdrop of the Astor cube. Then I fell asleep.

I woke up with the cigarette burned down to my fingers. I didn’t remember smoking it. When I looked at my watch it said two hours had passed. I threw up. I looked at my new “friend” and asked him what was going on. My words were slurred.

“I don’t know how to shoot it myself.”

“What do you do with it then?”

I shrugged. Feeling kind of stupid I said, “Snort it?”

“What a waste.” he said.

“Will you shoot it for me?” I asked.

“Nyahh, I don’t want to get you started on that.”

He looked at me with an amused smile, “Aw, don’t worry.

Everybody’s first time is like this.”

“I had a guy shoot me up with heroin twice already,” I said earnestly.

I was not impressed with heroin. What a stupid drug, I thought. Who wants a drug that zaps your energy, puts you to sleep, burns your finger, wastes a cigarette and makes you throw up? This went on for another five or six hours. I can’t say that it was any fun at all.

He seemed relieved and agreed to take me with him.

We got into Earl’s blue pickup truck. Almost immediately he had the packet emptied out, lit and liquefied. I noticed a smell of amonia. Hurriedly he shot himself up. I was surprised by the urgency but riveted. I imagined a movie about me and my exciting street life with junkies.

The next night, as usual, I was hanging out in Washington Square Park with a circular crowd around a guitar-player nucleus. I recognized a few neighborhood guys. I walked over, took a hit off their joint and asked them what the deal was.

Earl put on the tape cassette of The Stones “Start Me Up” then leaned back in the truck. He looked ecstatic or dead.

Whichever it was, I wanted it. I studied his hairless arms and muscular thighs under his tight, faded Levis. He muttered, “Wait a minute.” When the song ended he turned to me and said, “Your turn, Pretty.”

The guy who sold tie-dyed scarves and leather belts out of Mamoun’s falafel joint said, “You’ve got to do heroin a few times before you stop getting sick from it.”

I offered him my arm and watching his luminescent swimming pool eyes, I felt safe. With his hands so close I noticed Earl had needle marks all over his palm and inside of his elbow.

This made me trust him; I figured he knew what he was doing.

Not ready to let my romanticized notion of heroin go, I decided to try again. I went back down to St. Mark’s and found the scruffy fellow. This time I had the $40 dollars with me. He shot me up and damn it if the same thing didn’t happen again. That was the last time for heroin and me.

There should have been fear, or at least apprehension, but there was only intoxicating excitement. I stared as Earl plunged the needle into my arm and sent the coke pounding through my veins. Instantly there was a ringing in my ears that was either a death knell or a gong heralding the rising of the sun.

I moved on to shooting cocaine.

The first time I shot it was later that year. My saxophoneplaying dealer from the park didn’t have any coke that day and I wanted some to snort. A bartender on Bleecker Street told me about a place you could go where you put money through a slot in a door and a packet of cocaine was

Either way, I could hardly wait to do it again.

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“Rebellina” Interview by Ronit Pinto “Rebellina,” aka Jennifer Jones, has been painting and dancing since she was a child. As an adult, she decided to do both, only at the same time. Inspired by music and passion, with paints on her toe shoes, she dances on — and to — the canvas of life.

the grain and refused to follow the norm. I’ve been a dancer since I can remember. I’m not sure of the exact moment when I started using the name Rebellina but I do know that it fits my persona very well.

HS: How did you get into dancing and painting?

R: I’m an artist/ballet dancer. I dance–paint on canvas.

Each painting normally starts off with a subject and that subject is usually a person in my life or an event. I put together a playlist of music based on how that person makes me feel, then I pick my paint color pallet based on what I think best represents the emotions I have for the subject, I turn the music on and paint. I’ve always been incredibly passionate about dance and music, it has always been a part of my life. After a car accident that left me with some pretty extensive injuries my dance career was cut short. I knew I would need to find another way to continue with my passion. A year of physical therapy and many years later the dream of continuing my passion in dance was realized.

I would call it Dances on Canvas. I thought music and dance go hand and hand, the one element that seemed to be missing for me was something tangible that remained after the dance and music ended.

How long have you been painting and dancing?

I started my first painting in March of 2012. “The Ghost of You” I’ve been dancing since I can remember I think I was three years old when I started performing, and I started with art in middle school where I won some award for a sculpture I did.

Where did you get your training?

I spent most of my childhood in dance and figure skating lessons. I studied with a broad range of instructors however the person I give the most credit to would have to be Jeanne Meixell Former Judge and choreographer for Miss America and an accomplished dancer of her time. She was strict and I was a rebel, we had a lot of conflict throughout the years but I wouldn’t be the dancer or person I am today without her. She stuck with me when everyone else failed in the patience department. continued

Where did the name “Rebellina” come from?

Rebellina, “The Rebel Ballerina. “ Since childhood my family and friends called me a rebel. I’ve always gone against 5

Did you go to art school?

1. P ick a subject, the subject is almost always a person.

I took a few art classes however drawing, painting, sketching and sculpting was more of a hobby since I was already pretty busy. It wasn’t until I spent years apprenticing under a fine artist in Los Angeles that I really learned about art.

2. C reate a playlist of songs based on how the subject makes me feel.

3. C hoose the color pallet based on how I feel and see the subject.

What kinds of jobs do you get?

4. Tape down the canvas or plywood for whatever I am working on.

I get commissions, I do live performances that range from a small private event to performing arts center shows and oddly enough a technology convention in NYC. I’m a bit selective when asked to perform live, I’m not a circus act and I think people have certain expectations depending on the type of event it is.

5. Gesso the surface.

6. W ith socks on, I dance with paint on my feet, and I do about two colors at this stage. Dance about 2 or 3 songs and wait to dry.

Are you able to do this alone, full-time without a day job?

7. R epeat step 6 with socks but using 2 more colors.

Wait to dry.

This is a full time job. Occasionally I will take a modeling job if I have time but mostly my art is very time consuming.

It’s not just creating art it’s also running a business, performing live, doing gallery shows, building relationships, continued ballet practice and staying physically fit while trying to pave a path for what I want to do with my art.

8. This step I do with my toe shoes, adding 2 or 3 more colors and dance a few songs. Wait to dry.

9. With toe shoes on, I add highlights.

10. Sometimes step 10, I go in and crush up pastels with my toe shoes.

Where do you get all of your passion?

My passion tends to come from events in my life. Music normally triggers it. Almost every painting is about someone or a specific event in my life. I dance my emotions on to the canvas.

11. The last step is adding my signature. I only sign the painting when I feel sure I am finished.

What are your hopes for the future?

I would love to perform and show my art all over the world.

For now that’s as far as I can see for the next few years.

Who knows how those hopes might evolve. If you would’ve asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up, I would’ve never imagined I would be doing what I’m doing now.

What is your process?

Although the process varies depending on the emotions that I convey in my painting, these are the main steps that I follow to create my Art.

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White–Blonde Hair by Paige McGreevy A Conversation With My Mother That Will Never Be Had

You still see me as that white-blonde toddler in a pale pink smock dress Puttering around Always confused with other children I was your little intellectual I can’t tell you about what I have done In the twenty-five years since that time My body was violated I chose to have my uterus scraped hollow Before telling anyone of the life that hoped to form there You still see me as a failed teen Damaging my pink, perfect lungs Passed out on your lawn You woke me with a blast of garden hose, Banished me dripping to my room But you never mentioned the cocaine on my nightstand The sweet smell of weed that surrounded me Maybe you thought I would grow But I needed to be told I was a kid and I was loved And I was allowed to make mistakes Instead, I found my own way out Away from you Into the arms of tormentors Who controlled me for years Staying out until 6 a.m. every night Groped by older men’s paws in store front vestibules Getting into cars leading to nowhere Drool dripping down my face from drugs Nose bleed signals After lines inhaled on toilet seat covers

Paige McGreevy a literary salon co-host

When you see me now, what do you think?

All those years we didn’t talk Do you wonder what I’ve done?

Do you think you were a good mother? That you did your job?

Perhaps the fact that I lived may give you some satisfaction Ignoring the problem eventually solved it But I will never forget.

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Words and photo by MICHAEL DEMYAN

Successfully Missing the Mark by Michael Demyan Growing up in a rural Pennsylvania town that consisted of only eleven long streets, a self-service gas station and mini-mart, a VFW Post, a cemetery, and one stop light; the most rebellious thing one could do was to stay out past dark without being hanged, drawn, and quartered by the local police.

a scruffy dude discussing internet start-ups through a pair of non-prescription glasses and a lopsided haircut in a cafe over organic coffee and $7 pastries.

It meant you were hip to the art scene, you were ahead of the game when it came to the direction art was going or where it should be. You simply stood for more than a style. Our artistic culture has lost its sense of community and has moved into almost complete solidarity thanks to the internet and technology.

In the mid-20th century there were collectives of philosophers, poets, painters, and the like, involved in actual movements, artistic and cultural. Today’s hipster just puts on the costume thinking it will channel the muse. Or maybe it’s just an easy way to get laid.

High school was the beginning of my disdain for establishment, authoritative figures, and the nepotism they both could wield. I watched a classmate blow a line of cocaine mid English lesson only for the teacher to look away. Yet I was suspended for unbuttoning my uniformed shirt, which was seen as a refusal to follow the dress code.

As a social pariah I joined the wrestling team. I saw it as a self-reliant sport. It was solitary as I was solitary. It suited me.

In some masochist way I thrived under these conditions.

When I think of the embodiment of the words rebel and hipster, I think of Bob Dylan and Gregory Corso, not Kanye West and James Franco (who tarnishes literature and poetry with his bourgeois film making and patchy facial hair). To the people on the outside, it is likely viewed as nothing more than a trendy superficial scene. But maybe they’re fooling everyone and it is much more layered than that and too esoteric for me to grasp; an onion which when peeled reveals a true rebellious core.

Then again, it just very well may be performance art.

But as the world of art gradually creeped in from the fringes of my small circle by way of music, theatre, and literature. I embraced them as acts of personal freedom and expression outside the established confines high school represented. I was discovering new underground music while the rest of my class still sang over played Dookie-era Green Day. I wrote poetry and read books because I wanted to not because it was an assignment, and I took on a heavy interest in the theatre.

Self-expression is a form of rebellion, maybe the best, but always with the understanding that the thing being rebelled against could suddenly be the norm. Hipsters have already started to become the culture that they seemingly tried to counter. If you take it far enough you become what you once sought to overcome.

I wrestled and wrote poetry as my way of exploring the human condition. This was significantly more rewarding than being invited to the prom queen’s Friday night house party. I didn’t do any of these things because I thought it made me cool, or some kind of James Dean. They were done out of boredom, coupled with my rejecting the notion that everyone should abide by the same restrictive structure in order to succeed. I wanted to feel, explore, question, discover and exploit. While this a rebel does not make, I found it far more interesting than standing in line at the high school cafeteria.

Marcel Duchamp turned a urinal 90 degrees, signed it R. Mutt, and put it on display to provoke intellectual interpretation outside of physical craft. The Dadaists, while they considered themselves an anti-art movement, broke off from Romanticism in grand fashion and their influence led to Surrealism, all the way through the Beat Generation, Abstract Expressionists and the New York School, coalescing here in modern day New York City where music consists of computer generated sounds, the theatre has sold its soul to Hollywood, contemporary writing has become stale academic, and you’re judged on how artistic you are by which neighborhood you live in. So going back to the black and white idea that you either conform or rebel, who’s doing what in this generation?

Rebellion can be a flexible and aggressive way to decide that the current culture is not working for an individual or group of individuals. To undermine a dominant power, be it a tiny DIY poetry magazine struggling against the works of the long-established, academy-based widely published university presses, or an independent politician finding her way in a two-party dominated government, the goal of the rebel is to raise a voice against the constant drone of mass culture.

When I finally escaped small town Pennsylvania and struggled to make it in New York City, I found the largest concentrated group with a “rebellious” connotation is the reigning hipster empire centered in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg (which seemed to consist more of a fashion sense than an intellect). I didn’t fit in their either, not entirely sure what they were rebelling against if anything other than for the sake of rebelling.

The best art is immediately rebellious. Think “Howl.” Ginsberg knocked current literature on its ass by taking the energy of the working class guy on the street who’s fed up with the status quo and express his feelings, our shared experiences in the gritty corners and backlit bodegas of the outer boroughs of NYC. While at work last night I asked my friend Ed what he thought of rebellion, he said “I think it’s an important tool to know how to use…rebellion is good because you learn to question things,” The seeds of rebellion are planted in the questioning and the courage to “begin anywhere” as John Cage put it.

There still remains this constant: rebellion in art is necessary for its preservation and innovation. Be it form or content, style or ideals, all art in a way is rebellion. No matter on how large or small a scale. “I have to retrieve a gun,” Ed said. The gun was a prop. I work in a theatre.

I didn’t need to post the words “whisky, records, coffee” in a twitter bio to prove my artistry; I wasn’t a fashion trend or some poor kid gimmick. A majority of “hipsters” were just trust fund babies rejecting the ideals of their parents, while living off their money. Perhaps this is their idea of rebellion but they’re doing it with establishment money.

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I don’t do the things I do to be recognized or categorized, I do them for the way it makes Me feel. Inevitably in life you’ll be misidentified, categorized with a label that is only just that, a label. The word “hipster” itself used to mean a lot more than

Mike Demyan is the co-founder of the great literary journal, Denimskin Ink: denimskinink.com.

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C I R T C E D L N E Y LA D A L

Photo, model and MUA: Melanie Radtke

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Cover and photo: Sam Hodges

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Model and MUA: Melanie Radtke

Road Trippin Rebel by Katie Zaun When I think about rebellion, and about growing up and lessons learned, not many memories come to mind that don’t involve a car. In Southern California, which is where I’m from, one city sprawls into the next. Driving offered me a certain freedom. A sense of escape. The land of rebellion lay just beyond my accelerator. And it was accessible to me from the age of fourteen.

never ventured too far. We’d drive the back route, through residential streets, to Starbucks or to get our nails done, or buy candy from the drive-through liquor store.

When we got our driver’s permits about six months later, our secret rides still hadn’t lost their thrill. But by then, we were more interested in riding in cars with boys than with each other. At sixteen, when we got our licenses and driving on our own actually became legal, kids started meeting up in vacant parking lots to kill time. Someone would light up a cigarette, or a blunt, and we’d hang out until we heard about a party in the hills and then take off.

But despite the fact that we were going somewhere, or searching for something fun to do, it always felt like we were fleeing, running away from some unnamed dread.

My best friend at the time was a girl named Lindsey—who, consequently, is also a mainstay in many of my memories of rebellion. Lindsey was all attitude, spunky and fun with short blond hair. Abercrombie’s denim miniskirt was a staple in both our wardrobes. Just before freshman year started, I discovered that Lindsey lived just a few blocks away from me. I was one of only two people Lindsey knew at our high school and for the first few weeks of class she never strayed far from my side. We grew tired of each other quickly and one day she turned to me and said, “You’re bugging me.”

I often was fleeing. My parents argued frequently and I fought with my mom constantly about my early curfew and how many times I had to use my new Nokia cell phone to call and check in with her while I was out. She was always nervous about letting me loose on the roads. Which only made driving that much more enjoyable. I’d jump in the car and drive around with the windows down and the radio blaring Something Corporate. I loved driving at night when the breeze was cool. I’d take the long way home, stay out a few minutes past my curfew. It made me feel the most free, out on my own in the empty, quiet dark, roads all clear. It was a sweet rebellion. Innocent enough, but it offered me what I needed: space, and a few moments when I believed I could go anywhere I wanted. I was desperate to get out of the conservative bubble of Orange County and behind the wheel I had control, if only temporarily.

“Well, you’re bugging me,” I replied. From that day on we were inseparable. I’d walk those few blocks over to her house and we’d count quarters and order KFC. Their Tustin Avenue location delivered. Or, we’d lie by the pool in her backyard in mismatched bathing suits as rays of sun simmered our skin. I was the oldest and the only girl and my parents were unduly strict about where I went and who I hung out with. I looked for any excuse to get out of the house. When I was back in my room at home, we’d talk to each other over walkie-talkies. One afternoon, Lindsey’s parents, Glee and Charlie, were out. They’d taken Lindsey’s little brother Cameron with them, wherever they’d gone. Summer was coming, and driving school along with it, but not nearly fast enough. Lindsey and I weren’t quite fifteen and we were restless for adventure. We decided to take her mom’s minivan to the tanning salon in secret. I’m sure it was Lindsey’s idea, but I was in the driver’s seat.

“I am not going to kill us. Stop screaming or you’ll make me crash,” I scolded.

Now, nearly thirteen years later, that urge to get in the car and go has suspiciously returned. I’ve lived in Barcelona, Chicago, and Edinburgh. I’ve spent time in London. In each city, I’ve lauded the practicality and convenience of public transportation. A car seemed unnecessary, a waste of money, unfriendly to the environment. But as a New Yorker, if I can call myself that only a year and a half in this crazy city (probably not), I long for the days when I could really get away. It makes me wonder, What would it be like to leave New York? Could I, if just for a day or two, drive somewhere far away without telling anyone where I was going? The energy in New York is intoxicating, addicting. It calls into question how anyone could possibly live anywhere else. But that’s also exactly why so many people go away on the weekends, isn’t it? At least for me, it’s awakening some long dormant desire to rebel.

To break away. Pick up and drive somewhere wild.

When we didn’t get caught, Lindsey and I started going on drives in secret. Always in Glee’s dark green minivan. We

Katie Zaun is a literary agent in New York.

“Just take the keys,” Lindsey said to me. “Let’s go.”

“It’s your parents car, why don’t you drive?” I asked her.

“Because they love you more than me,” she joked. I was the responsible, straight-A student and as long as Lindsey was with me her parents never worried much about what we got up to. If they found out we’d taken the car they wouldn’t be as upset with us if I were involved somehow.

That first drive was exhilarating. Nervous laughter echoed throughout the car. Lindsey screamed when I slammed on the brakes to avoid running a stop sign.

“Oh my god, you’re going to kill us!” Lindsey squealed and laughed.

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Luis Cortes

Intro by Ronit Pinto Interview by Dorri Olds I met Luis Cortes while building movie sets. Once homeless in Central Park, the 50-year-old Cortes now works as a set dresser for films all over New York. It was his gregarious personality and love of women — “I like ‘em crazy,’” he once said — that made me laugh. The more he told me of his story, the more curious I became. The conversations we had while breaking down shelving and sweeping floors revealed a vivacious demeanor, yet I knew he had a dark past.

Luis was born in the Bronx in 1963 to a psychotic mother who abused him and siblings — two sisters and a brother — with coat hangers and whatever else was in the house. He left home at the age of 11, dealt drugs as a teenager in the 80’s on the lower east side where it was normal to ‘pack’ guns and knives. After years of being homeless, he eventually ended up squatting in the Puppet Theater in Central Park. During a few dark nights, Luis actually witnessed and stopped rapes and crimes from taking place there. They Mayor at the time, Mayor Koch, caught wind of the situation and rewarded him for his help.

While Luis’s life has not by any means been easy, or normal, he has in many ways become a success. He has nine children (over three ex-wives) — his oldest son now deceased — but we would consider Luis a rebel of the gods, and by that we mean he has twisted his own fate.

We asked Honeysuckle contributor Dorri Olds to sit down with him and discuss his journey.

Dorri Olds: How did you become homeless?

Where did you grow up?

Luis Cortes: When I was young I ran away from an abusive home. I lived on the streets of New York — lower Manhattan and Central Park.

Alphabet City, Avenue D. My mother still lives over there on 14th Street near Avenue B and C in the projects there.

I remember when that area was really scary.

Were you hit as a child?

Oh yeah. That’s when I was raised there.

Oh yeah. My mom used to beat us with a baseball bat, with the TV wire, whatever she had in her hand.

Did you ever speak to your mom again after you ran away?

Yeah. I call her every now and then. Once in a while I stop by and see her.

Was she on drugs?

No. She was just psychotic [Laughs]

Really?

Do you mean literally psychotic?

I called her when I was 36 and in Virginia. I was renovating a hotel over there. It was 2:00 in the morning. I’d had a few drinks. I said, “Yo Ma. You feel bad now after all those years?” She said, “For what?” After that she hung up the phone. Then she called my then wife and told her she was going to jump off a building. [Laughs]

Yes. That’s how we looked at her. Every month she would tear the whole apartment up and my stepfather always refurnished the whole place again.

He didn’t try to stop her?

There was no stopping that woman, especially because she always had a knife in her hand and was trying to destroy everything in the house.

Wow. She really does sound mentally ill. When you say psychotic do you mean she was out of touch with reality? Or just mean?

Did your other siblings run away??

Mean. She came at us with a knife and if we didn’t duck, oh man. We had to duck so that knife would get stuck in the wall. I have a few scars on my chin from my mother hitting me with a baseball. I assumed she was beaten as a child so that must’ve been why she did it. But if I asked her anything like that she would beat me some more.

Yes. We all ran away. Not together but separately, one by one. My other sister, my mother put her in a home. In those days they used to give you electric shocks to your brain.

They were doing that to her and that screwed her up.

Are you still in touch with your siblings now?

Every now and then I talk to my two sisters. My brother — we don’t talk much. My brother and I had a whole lot of issues.

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Why didn’t you report her to your teachers?

work out so I just left. That’s when I went to live in Central Park.

Back then I don’t think they would’ve cared. It’s not like these days when if you call the cops on your mother they’ll come and arrest her. So, when I ran away I sometimes lived in Central Park, in the bird sanctuary for a while and in the puppet house.

She was too jealous. I raised my children. I got myself settled. George took me to Bayview, Long Island. He showed me his house and said you can live here for free for a year, until you get yourself together. I worked with him for a long time. The parents retired and moved to Florida. He is somewhere here still. I know he owned a couple of topless joints here in Queens but I don’t know the name of them. I lost track of him.

How did you eat?

I sold drugs. I used to watch the drug dealers and watch where they put their stash at night then I’d go and take it and resell it. They used to call me Louie the Looter. Then I ran into the supervisor in the park and he used to watch me and ask how I was doing and we got along after that. He helped me out. His name was Mack McMorris and I volunteered to clean the park so they let me live in the puppet house. They let me sleep there and all they told me was I had to keep it clean and nice and make sure you’re out by morning. The homeless always slept under the canopy of the building. It was always stinking of urine. He said if you wash up and clean it I’ll feed you guys. There was another guy. He used to rob the rich.

He’d walk behind you and slice off your pocket with the wallet.

So when you reached into your pocket you had no pocket. He used to take the money and we’d go to this rotisserie place on 50th Street near Lexington and get a few loaves of bread so we could feed the other homeless in the park.

Did you ever get into drugs?

I did a Black Beauty, Quaalude, cocaine, smoked a little pot. I met Whoopie Goldberg. She used to perform in the park right in the ring. After she got famous she used to come back sometimes and say I’ll never forget you She’d just come by to say hi. A guy Charlie who worked in a movie but he died from an OD. He didn’t last long. Then there was another guy that used to do a Michael Jackson imitation. They called him the fireman because he could do some tricks like eating fire. We had some fun.

I remember one night in Central Park and I heard a woman screaming, “Help!” and I knew she was being raped. I was in the puppet house. I grabbed my baseball bat and ran out the door and kicked some ass. There were 15 guys in a gang group. I taught them. I left some of them on the ground with broken arms and broken legs. They got arrested. Mayor Koch thanked me and gave me a plaque as a reward. I was 18 then.

Where do you suppose you got that kindness?

I always said I don’t want to treat my kids the way my mother treated me. I had kids. I wanted to give them a better life and I have. I met a young lady in the park and Mack McMorris offered to get me into the park department. I was about to but all of a sudden they changed the rules. You had to have a driver’s license but I was too young. Then I started doing construction. I met a guy with a long Greek last name, George Banagiotopless. He gave me work. He took me in as a brother because he was an only child. He was running a construction site. I was always asking him for work. Finally he said okay and we transformed a building on 13th Street into a penthouse.

When we finished.

There was another robbery incident in my territory where I used to sell drugs on 5th Avenue at the pond. There was an old guy screaming for help. I was with my bag and picking up garbage. I saw this black guy and a white dude robbing an old man. So I took my baseball bat out of my bag and beat him across the legs. He fell and dropped the gun. I kicked it into the pond and went after the other guy who’d run off. That was the second time I met Mayor Koch for being a hero.

Cortes tells of a challenging childhood yet without self-pity.

He laughs a lot, sounds strong, and proudly told me of the times he was honored by the City of New York for heroism.

Considering where he came from, it is no small feat. We celebrate Cortes as a unique hero for the times he worked to keep Central Park safe and for the loving person he’s become today.

When I was 15 I got married in Delaware because they wouldn’t marry me here because I was too young. I was 15 and she was 16. She didn’t need parental consent but I did so my father took me to Delaware. Anyway so we lived in Delaware for a year. We had a baby, then we had a second child. Then when we got back here things didn’t

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15

Burn The Witch Photography

Burn The Witch Photography

Words by: Allegra Vera Warsager

Nothing Wrong With Livin Life Your Own Way by Allegra Vera Warsager “The people who say you are not facing reality actually mean that you are not facing their idea of reality.” — Margaret Atwood early in the morning. I could even pick up and head out of town for the week with no consequences. Bartenders were not to be tied down by modern expectations of what an adult should act like, in terms of responsibilities.

As a teenager growing up in Manhattan in the late nineties and the early years of the 21st century, I was obsessed with the idea of rebellion. I was fascinated by the street culture that I witnessed on a daily basis, and was easily captured under the influence of peers, both in my neighborhood and at school. Despite coming from a loving, close-knit family, I was drawn to those who I thought were “rebelling” against their parents, teachers and authority in general by smoking cigarettes, cutting class, and experimenting with drugs and alcohol at parties. An older girl friend took me under her wing, so to speak, and we would cause harmless havoc all over the city and throw parties at her apartment while her family was out of town. This was the beginning of what “rebellion” meant for me – doing things behind my parent’s backs.

I worked the “other” 9 to 5. When I was on the subway on my way to work, I was aware of how I existed against the timetable of much of the population. In a 24/7 city like New York, it was perhaps not felt as acutely, but was still glaringly obvious. I looked at the people who worked full time, salaried jobs and mused on how they were just finishing their day and processing it as I was beginning mine.

I made money off of their stress.

This was a power, which made it exciting. When I bartended for a living, it was doing everything that my parents had always frowned upon: staying up all night, living single lives (if I was not single, I often had to pretend to be). Even the act of serving booze as a life occupation could be taboo, and that was why there were such extreme opposing views on it. Either people wanted to befriend me because they thought I was the coolest person to know, or they looked down on me as someone who lacked ambition or goals. The act of bartender challenged society’s preconceived notions of how a person should be professionally, romantically, and socially. I lived in public.

There was something about the energy of going out and partying in New York City that led me to chase nocturnal social scenes. I was always searching to continue the good times that I had as an adolescent. And I found good times - I found the party - over and over again, once I entered the service industry. I started working in a restaurant as a hostess during graduate school, and fell into bartending after I finished. I was always nocturnal (from college and grad school days), and drawn to the lure of the night and what it held, the endless possibilities for a young woman in New York City.

However, it has become more and more obvious that few people of my generation (Gen Y, as we’ve been nicknamed) who are living in New York City want to commit to anything, be it a job, an apartment, a bar to spend one’s entire evening at, a significant other, much less a career.

The irony of a pet adoption agency using an ad that is a poster of a puppy with text that says “He’s actually looking for a commitment” definitely is evidence that it is no longer just bartenders who are rebelling against the life we were taught to choose and aspire to.

When I landed my first bartending job, I was thrilled (because I would now make tips), but it was an immediate disappointment to my parents. No parent wants his or her child to become a bartender. And I certainly did not dream of becoming one when I was an adolescent. It was not until I started to bartend and also began to date an older bartender that I became seduced by working in nightlife and also developed a taste for alcohol. Throughout my late twenties, I saw peers begin to advance in their careers, get engaged, have children – while I continued to work nights and go out and drink till the bars closed on nights that I didn’t work. I relished the fact I did not have to wake up

Allegra Vera Warsager works as a bartender, an organizer of the Brooklyn Book Festival and contributor to Guernica Magazine.

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An exclusive excerpt from the first chapter of

BELOW AVERAGE by Lianne Stokes Chapter One: Little Miss Short Bus “Only idiots work for free,” my Dad yelled as I got onto the school bus.

ing me, “You look perfect.” When I was a toddler she’d ask, “Lianne, where are you going to college?” And I’d answer, “Harvard!” like she had trained me. By five-years-old I was already showing signs of being incapable of that goal, scoring low on a standardize tests. When I got my results she said, “Well, you can marry someone who went to Harvard.”

“She’s in the first grade, Bruce,” I heard Mom say as I wiped the early morning dew from the window near my seat revealing them standing at the end of the driveway. Mom in her red Liz Claiborne pantsuit, Dad in tattered Levi’s and a t-shirt with an image of Bugs Bunny sitting on a stripper’s face. Dad had explained to us over Friday night pasta his ‘friend’ gifted him the tee from the local nudie club, Stilettos.

Before my nose grew I was a pretty cute kid. Mom put my light brown hair in perfect pigtails or a top bun. I had Dad’s deep-set grey-green eyes with the same brown streak that ran through my right iris. Dad’s looked like a starburst and mine, like a waterfall.

I was white. My skin color meant that I fit in mainstream majority America. I wasn’t going to be subject to the racism and social obstacles other children of different races would face. I just had to measure up to my mother’s high standards. I desperately wanted to be liked but still get to be me. To run around, mess up my pigtails and if I accidentally tore the bottom ruffles in my dress and still have Mom smile, like, “Lianne’s will be Lianne’s.”

Born to a plumber and a stay at home mother in West Nyack, NY, I was a 40-minute drive from Manhattan in my Dad’s dark blue Datsun, a pick up truck.

We lived an affluent community on a private road. Dad wasn’t the guy you phoned because your john was clogged.

He was in construction. It was the early 1980’s, Regan was trickling down economics and my Dad was taking full advantage of the new money moving from the Bronx to Rockland County. Dad was also a Vietnam Vet and proud Marine. Although he had volunteered his service, Dad felt the government owed him something for having risked his life. Which is completely fair, but instead of admitting he was in mental and psychical pain, he acted out. He claimed taxes were illegal and would yell, “No taxation without representation,” on a regular basis, staying up late into the night listening to cassette tapes about how the government isn’t entitled to his money.”

My mother, a 4’11” Sicilian with red hair, was a legal secretary when she met my Dad, a Corvette-driving Americana Military man. It was the 60’s and he fit into her ideal of the American dream: that you can make something of yourself no matter what you come from.

The bus pulled into the circular drive at West Nyack Elementary School, as I sat next to Carter, ten months younger than me, blond, blue eyed and terrified for his life. He clutched my wrist and temporarily made me feel like a leader. We arrived and instantly I was underwhelmed. There was a team of bullies stealing the rich kid’s Cabbage Patch Doll’s and laughing while their plastic faces melted in the heat of the September sun. Then there were the nerds, with their Trapper Keepers, and tennis rackets. I didn’t want to hang with either, I wanted an alternative option of a crowd that blasted Olivia Newton John’s, “Lets get psychical” and could give a doodie about what people thought of us. During snack time every other first grader was completely satisfied sitting at the cafeteria table popping their bags of Dipsy Doodles. I knew it was going to be a long day when the doll thieves sat on that chip bag, causing a popping sound that set off our lunch lady, a woman we called, “make-up face” because of her layers of sea green eye shadow. She ran towards the bullies’ table as the crowd erupted in a series of chants: “Ooooooh, you’re in trouble.” It was the suburban equivalent of someone shooting a bullet. I was into bigger challenges: spit balls, making fake vomit to dodge math tests, and sneaking in Fart spray from Spencer’s Gifts. I knew there was opportunity out there for me, even in this sleepy, quaint suburb.

Mom had a preoccupation with status and perfection. She wasn’t the tacky woman dripping in Chanel and Gucci logos.

She was above spending her last dime to prove something to someone, but she had given birth to me in what was considered an upgrade from how she had grown up. Her father had passed away tragically when she was a teenager and she watched my grandmother go to work to keep their home and support her and her two very young sisters. Dad provided what appeared like long lasting stability in a booming economy and she wanted results on her investment.

I watched in the mornings while she carefully held a measuring cup up against the natural sunlight beaming in from the casement windows. She was calibrating the ratio of fresh fruit to wheat germ in my breakfast smoothie. Mom spent hours and Bloomingdales picking out dresses and lace socks, tell-

It seemed like all we did in the first grade was eat. At snack that particular afternoon I was feeling especially glum. Our teacher, Mrs. Stillwater, hadn’t shown up again and we had a substitute who was making us work though graham crackers time. She 20

was making us write “Good Morning” on the chalkboard 5 times each, assuring us we’d need to know this for our futures. It was so montotus, even for me, who could watch the same episode of “The Jefferson’s” six times in one day. When it was one of the one of the bully’s turn he went up and smeared processed cheese on the green slate. That was all the “good morning” he needed to know for his future, operating meth labs. Mrs. Stillwater, our real teacher finally made her debut. She was an ancient forty-ish, 5’11” and gangly. She had already broad shoulders and the padding in style at the time made her look like Frankenstein playing football. Her black hair was her nicest feature, silky and long; it bounced like a perky cheerleader’s.

Stillwater was always late and cranky with no explanation. Today I noticed she was wearing one red leather pump. I giggled.

moo cow products!” she told the whole class. When I asked Dad to explain that evening, he told me, “That’s because Marlee is from a defective gene pool and gets the liquid shits when she eats ice cream.”

I grabbed my snack pack out of my orange Muppets lunch box.

“Look,” I said, my green eyes now emerald. Marlee was infamous in Kindergarten for begging kids for string cheese.

To her, it was crack rocks. I looked to see where old Stillwater was. I located her pretty quickly, head in her hands, seated at her desk. Marlee grabbed the plastic containing the substance that was forbidden to her and started licking and chewing. That’s when Stillwater, grasping a bottle of generic brand aspirin took notice. I imagine the love Stillwater must have loved Marlee was even more than those mini vodka bottles I saw sneaking sips from. Stillwater was visibly incapacitated, barley able to sit upright, yet she managed to spring into the air and land in front of me. When you’re 36 pounds and a grown woman’s feet (one bare) hits the ground a half-inch from your body it will stay with you for life.

“Lianne! Go sit at your desk,” barked Stilwater. My ‘office’ as I’d branded it, was in the back of the room by everyone’s cubbies. According to Mrs. Stillwater I talked too much and was ‘bad’. I was thrilled to have my own private area and each day when the other kid’s approached the back of the room to get their coats or backpacks I’d ask them for the secret password which everyone knew was “Fart Capades” a spin on the then super popular, “Ice Capades”, a Manhattan show on ice featuring actors and rejects who didn’t make the U.S. Olympic team.

“No, no! ” Stillwater yelled, holding a limp Marlee in her arms.

She was caressing her cheeks and whispering into her ear, “Honey, you can’t have dairy, you know that.” Marlee, taking full advantage of the attention she was now receiving, languished moans and the hysteria of the children who had crowded around her. She was welling up and playing to the crowd that had amassed. “I wanted it so bad,” Marlee signed as the first of a series of loud farts came from her bottom.

After how bad she made me feel, her audible gas was like a Smurfs marathon as far as I was concerned. The class had crowded around and each kid was now pointing and laughing. “I made her make the boom booms come from her butt,” I said. More giggles from the crowd and a few thumbs up in my honor. Mom praised me when I was pretty and Dad loved it when I was loud like him but laughter was something I had all to myself My standing up to Marlee was groundbreaking for my peers and I. No one had every stood up to her before and I had never felt so good than when I had done something that made people laugh. I was finally able to be me in that moment: imperfect, in-need-of-validation, raw, bad.

It was my first true rush. From that day on I would dance for people, when they laughed, they liked me but I still had to deal with how to be a savvy rule breaker.

My charms never worked on the most popular and intimidating girl in class, Marlee Kaminski. She had a pretty face, perfect blonde ringlets as pigtails, and at six-years-old managed to spring up to 5’1”, a height I wasn’t promised to reach in adulthood. She looked a cherub on ‘roids. “I was in the middle of pretending I was He-Man, holding my no. 2 pencil up in the air like a sword. You’re not He-Man!” she said, kicking my brown Mary Jane’s. She yanked my left pigtail braid so hard, my eyes started to well with salt water. I caught Mrs. Stillwater starring, and she was smirking. Marlee had bragged to the lot of us that Stillwater had her over for dinner and bought her a fresh new pack of Crayola’s and a Glue Stick.

“I am too He-Girl,” I told Marlee, head aching, knowing I had no one to protect me. As her hot, smelling-of-Chef Boyardee breathe breathed on me; I decided to get all commando on her like Dad had taught be from his days fighting in the jungles of Vietnam. “Never turn your back to an enemy,” Dad cautioned me. Time to strategize.

“Do you know what you did?” Principal Balty asked. He was nerdy, even for an Administer of Education. The 80’s had eluded him as he sat there in his plaid 60’s suit and hornrimmed glasses.

“Hey Marlee, my Mom got me that new cheese and crackers snack pack,” I said, while wresting her thumb out of my eyeball socket. Her big blue eyes grew from orbs to alien-sized.

“I think so,” I said. I was fully aware I had broken the rules, but I was having a blast.

“The one with the CHEESE and the PEANUT BUTTER?!” she said. Her arms fell at her sides. I remembered Dad telling me, “When I went into the village and pointed a my riffle at the old man selling fruit he always backed down, and sometimes I got a free banana.” I could tell Marlee was laying off me. My mouth began to curl up at the sides as my insane, devious father’s warped ideology and mentoring coursed through my brain. On the second day of school Mrs. Stillwater had made it clear that Marlee cannot have any dairy. “No

“Marlee is very allergic to cheese, and yogurt, milk, and ice cream….” I, the new, Jerry Sienfeld should not be subjected to this level of sadness. That’s when I heard it. “Where’s my kid? My child is innocent!” Dad broke through the door.

I looked up. He was wearing his usual blue jeans, a solid blue V-neck tee, and fuzzy Sasquatch slippers. He padded through the office right up to a shocked Balty, who at this 21

and he was taking me for pizza, “Sicilian slices, thick and saucy like your mother,” he said. Mom said we’d talk about it when we got home. I knew she wouldn’t like my being bad like Dad did and I’d be punished.

point looked like he was going to make in his pants. “My kid will be tried fairly!”

“Mr. Stokes.” Balty was stuttering. My Dad had placed his right fuzzy slipper foot, complete with tan stuffed claw on my Principal’s desk. Even at six-years-old I knew Balty was a modest man: ‘work, church and home-style’ as Dad would say. I tugged at Dad’s sleeve to try to calm him. I was cool now. No need to make a fuss.

Back home Mom had the verdict from school. I was going to have to write “Good Morning, West Nyack Elementary! It’s (insert degrees out today”) on the main black board in the school’s lobby. I looked at Dad who made a dismissive wave with his hand.

“Let me interrupt you, Balty. That little bitch set her up!”

“They’re giving you probation. It’s this thing people do so they don’t have to go to jail.”

“Mr. Stokes!” he said. His eyebrows arched so high, they sat at his widow’s peek.

“Each day you can remember to be better. Plus, practicing writing will help your spelling and penmanship,” said Mom.

“I’m here.” A feminine voice intoned. Dammit. It was her. I was starting to enjoy the show. My mother had managed to enter the room in a new, freshly pressed suit jacket and pencil skirt. “I’m sorry Principal Balty. Lianne was feeling bullied

by Marlee. I told her to stand up for herself. This is my fault,” Mom said. I was asked to leave the room so the adults can talk. I had no idea how Mom came up with that defense, I’d never communicated how I felt to her, repressing it out of fear of her not thinking I was fitting in perfectly.

“Your Mom always sides with yuppies,” Dad said.

Between her and my Dad’s conflicting views, I didn’t know what was right. Was I going to be a rebel like Dad or play by the rules like Mom? All I knew is that if I got away with making someone poop her pants, I was going to see what else I could do to get attention.

It was an easy ride home in the front seat of my father’s 1981 blue Datsun pick-up truck. Mom drove her Cadillac home separately. Dad assured me that I had done the right thing

An exclusive excerpt from ‘BELOW AVERAGE,’ Lianne Stokes’ debut memoir from Heliotrope Books. Lianne is also a contributor to Interview Magazine and Hello Giggles.

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Hollow Hall by Tracy Lia Lynn

Inspired by a triggered memory from childhood Somewhere in the hollow hall, I smell him. His stink never fails to alert me to his presence. I’m older… a whole year ... since I last vomited, from the acid like sweat he dripped into my mouth as he hovered over me. I watched two beads swell from his temples. They plumped, further than any sweet bead I had ever seen, before each succumbed to gravity’s pull.

I couldn’t hear the vulgar words he was grunting out, as long as I remained focused on the falling sweat. I wished they were his tears. I wished he would suffer endless nightmares, where demons and monsters of every breed would make him feel the terror, the fear, and the shame he burdens on me. So far its a tie.

Both beads are traveling neck and neck down his cheeks. I gag. I make no effort to hide my disgust, and I allow my body to react without remorse. I gag again. I taste bile. Suddenly I’m struck with the urge to spit in his face, I don’t know why I didn’t. I swallowed it down, and I heard that, now too familiar voice, for the first time. It said, “ That’s right bitch, eat your vomit. Your fucking pathetic. You earned this by being so fucking chicken shit! Fight back!!!”

I didn’t. I just laid frozen, replaying the voice and wondering if it was my own. I didn’t know. I still don’t.

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Survivors Tale: Escaping the Darkness of Domestic Violence

by Angela Caito In 1999 I met a wonderful man and became entangled in a relationship with him. In the beginning, he was so nice all the time. He would bring me flowers or buy me expensive gifts just because he would see me look at something in a store. In all the years I had dated, no one had ever paid so much attention to me. He told me he loved me just a couple weeks after we started dating. He was younger than I was.

He was 18. I was 28.

that, it became frequent. He began to talk on an invisible walkie-talkie sometimes.

He and I moved to his parent’s old farmhouse in the middle of miles of cotton and soybean fields in Louisiana. There were no neighbors and it was almost a two and a half hour drive from the house to get to the main highway which led to the nearest town.

Far out on the Louisiana bayou, there where no neighbors to run to and a corrupt police department I would discover were against women’s rights entirely. He could do whatever he wanted to me and no one would ever know.

My entire life people told me how beautiful I was. Long blonde hair and thin and always a smile on my face. My Mom used to tell me she had never known anyone as happy as I was. He was 18 with a youthful, clean shaven face.

He was around the same height as me (5’7”) and weighed maybe 160 pounds. He was very muscular from a life he had spent working in his parent’s cotton and soybean fields in Louisiana.

The air was always dry and hot.

He and his family hunted, day and night. There were always dead animal carcasses laying around in their yard. Dusty and dirty with no grass. The house itself was disgusting with dirt covering the floors from where he and his brother and father would farm or hunt all day and then track mud and dirt through the house. There were shotguns and rifles sitting in every corner of the house and laying on tables. He and his mother and one of his brothers screamed at each other daily and I was always scared that one day someone would end up shooting someone during one of the fights. They did shoot at each other many times, but they always missed.

During the first months, he always smiled. He was never mad or upset about anything. He never argued or disagreed with me on any topic at all.

Nearly a year after we were together, I found myself pregnant.

My boyfriend, who had always treated me with kindness to the point of spoiling me, began to beat me. Before the day that he first hit me, I had always wondered why a woman would stay with a man if he hurt her.

I survived brutal beatings, stabbings, rape and total degradation at his hands. Once, he buried me in a cage in the ground for almost a week. He spent a day digging a hole in the backyard near his dog cages. I tried my best that day to stay out his way. That evening he led me outside so he could “show me something.” I followed him to the yard.

On past dates, if the man said something out of line or acted like he an angry person at all, I would end the relationship on the spot. One man I dated got mad at a guy in a bar and they got into a physical fight. Seeing his violence was enough to turn me away. I was a peaceful person.

It started with a phone call to his family so he could tell them we were expecting a baby. I could hear his mother yelling at him. When he hung up with his mother I was going to tell him that I loved him. Just as I started to speak, he turned around and without saying a word, began to punch me in the face. I was in total shock. I had no idea what was happening. I felt like I was going to pass out or even die.

Somewhere in the midst of him hitting me I realized he was pulling my clothing off and then forcing himself on top of me. As he was having sex, he still beat me. Pulling my hair out in chunks. He cussed me as he did it.

He had placed a dog cage in the hole he dug and he shoved me down inside it and then locked the cage door with a padlock. I survived and somehow kept my unborn son alive during beatings so brutal that I am truly surprised I lived myself.

From 1999 until April of 2005, I was one endless bruise.

The obsession of a man who believed that he owned me and could do anything he wanted. Had he ended my life, he showed me many times where he would place my body parts. The house we lived in was right on the bayou and he often told me “I WILL KILL YOU one day and feed you to the alligators or water moccasins.”

I was bruised for almost two weeks after.

He cried within moments of his horrific act. Like an idiot, I forgave him. I assumed it was a one-time occurrence and would never happen again. Less than 2 weeks after the first assault, the same nightmare happened again, and after

In December of 2001, I gave birth to my son. For some reason I hoped my man would change after our son was born.

Yet He grew more violent with me and even began hitting 24

me in front of people. I tried to breastfeed my son but each time I would try to do that in front of my husband, he would demand sex. When I refused he snatched my son out of my hands and wouldn’t let me feed him at all. I hated him. I hated every single piece of him. His scruffy brown hair, his evil brown eyes and his voice with his Louisiana accent. I despised him in every way possible.

I hid away for several years. I rented an apartment for a little over a year because there were neighbors and I felt safer knowing that if something happened, someone might hear and they could help. After the apartment my son and I moved out of state from Louisiana to Minnesota. 1600 miles away. I still kept padlocks on my doors, burglar bars on my windows and never left the house after dark out of fear that he would somehow be in the bushes. I am scared that one day I’ll come home from the store and he will be in my driveway. I’m scared that he might find out where I live and show up in the middle of the night to kill me.

One night when my son was almost a month old, I was driving my ex and I through the town near the farm road and he started to hit me in my head and stomach as I drove. I jumped out of the car, grabbed my son and ran to the local Sheriff’s Department, and they forced me to go home with my abuser. I was surrounded by six Officers and was told that “women do not take babies away from their Daddies here.

Go home like a good girl should.” Even with bruises on my face and neck, the police would not protect me.

It’s been 9 years since I got away from my abuser, and he still haunts me. Thanks to the courts when I filed for full, sole custody of my son, I received full custody and he received nothing at all. The only inclusion to the custody order was that he could have contact with our son, and from 1600 miles away he is able to speak to our son on the phone, but I will never allow him to visit.

Had the courts not placed orders stating that he could contact our son by telephone, he would have no contact at all.

It took me almost three years after that night to finally escape without the help. I talked him into allowing me to have a job at a local retail store. I even got him a job at the same store although I hated him being near me at work as well as at home. I spoke to my managers and explained to them what was happening, not in full detail because I was too embarrassed, but enough to let them know I needed help getting away from him. I had to plan carefully. My managers were great working with me to get away.

They, along with a friend that I made at the store planned to schedule both my ex and myself to work the same shift.

He worked in a department on one side of the store while I worked on the other side. We went to work on the planned day, at the same time, and I pretended to clock in. As soon as we began to walk to our individual departments I kept walking until I reached the parking lot and the car. I drove away and did not look back with my son.

At the time I was given full custody I was just happy to know that he could never have our son on his own. I would never have to fear that he would eventually harm him as he did to me.

I don’t date now. I have gone out a few times, but I just can’t feel a connection with men. I’ve had a couple tell me they loved me and when they tell me that I run. I suppose what I went through will always be in my mind. I have nightmares almost every night even now and I seldom sleep.

I chose to leave and start a new life. I am a survivor. I truly am, even if I live in fear forever. I know I survived what many have died from.

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Angela Caito is a freelance writer and author of the book “Survivor.”

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Written by Dorri Olds Photos: Universal Pictures

Angelina Jolie: A Rebel With So Many Causes by Dorri Olds For years I wondered how anybody could be as lucky as Angelina Jolie.

But throughout her life, she has dealt and continues to deal with many obstacles bravely.

According to the dictionary, synonyms for the word rebel include: contrary, defiant, ungovernable, and willful. Yup, that sounds like Angelina Jolie, a woman I’ve admired since long before she was the Hollywood force she is now.

the furthest thing from a white gown you can think of.

She donned pants made of rubber and a T-shirt with her betrothed’s name written in her own blood. She told The New York Times why: “It’s your husband. You’re about to marry him. You can sacrifice a little to make it really special.”

I was first wowed when she played the troubled supermodel that died of AIDS in 1998’s “Gia.” The following year, watching “Girl Interrupted,” I felt like I was in love with Angelina — and I’m straight. The actress seemed half-crazy and angry, sad, wild. She reminded me of my own disturbed youth.

Her first marriage didn’t last.

In 2000 at the age of 25 Angelina married her “Pushing Tin” costar Billy Bob Thornton. She was very public about their undying love for each other. The couple pricked their fingers, to be romantic, and put their blood in vials and wore each other’s blood as necklaces. He said he liked to wear her underwear, too, because it made him feel close to her.

I fancied myself a rebel in my self-destructive days but, unlike my twisted rebellion without a cause, Angelina Jolie became a rebel with so many causes.

It didn’t start out that way for her. Her parents, actor Jon Voight and model Marcheline Bertrand, split up before she was two-years-old. Her brother James Haven has said, “I have horrible memories of my father. He was so tough on our mother. He lived in the same town. We saw him around Christmas time or at school recitals. He was always around but he never did his job as a father.”

They split up three years later.

Meanwhile, the actress was becoming more and more successful. 2001’s blockbuster “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” catapulted her into the high pay bracket. While making that movie she traveled to Cambodia for the first time. The abject poverty she saw there launched her interest in adopting her first child, son Maddox, and becoming a UN activist.

Haven referred to his dad as manipulative and tells of witnessing his mother’s stress because Voight didn’t help out financially. It’s very sad to read about a man who’d made it huge in Hollywood but didn’t want to support his kids. The man Haven describes sounds like the deadbeat dad Voight plays on “Ray Donovan.”

Along the way she has harnessed her wild child energy and put it toward good. She credits that mostly to becoming a mom to Maddox, now 13. Since then she has adopted two more children: Zahara, now 9, from Ethiopia and Vietnamese Pax, 11.

In 2004 Angelina and Brad Pitt met on the set of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” Pitt was still married to Jennifer Aniston so it turned into the heyday of Angelina’s starring role as tabloids’ fodder. Remember those T-shirts? “Team Aniston” and “Team Jolie.” Oy.

With a dad like that, it’s easy to see how Angelina turned defiant. She had other problems, too. At Beverly Hills High School she was relentlessly teased for being skinny and wearing braces and glasses. Kids called her “Ubangi lips.”

As a troubled teen she studied embalming with the goal of becoming a funeral director.

In 2005 she adopted Zahara then Brad Pitt adopted Maddox and Zahara and the kids’ last names became Jolie-Pitt. In 2006 she and Pitt had their first biological child, Shiloh, now 8. The couple adopted Pax in 2007. Then in 2008, “Brangelina” had two more biological children, twins Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline. Naturally, late night comics had a field day with her penchant for expanding the brood.

“She was a wild child,” said caretaker Cis Rundel, Bertrand’s friend who came to help out. Angelina became anorexic.

“I carried her into the hospital…. Marcheline got scared that she wasn’t eating.” Rundel also cleared up the rumor that Angelina had an incestuous relationship with her brother — she explained the much-talked-about kiss between the siblings at the 2001 Academy Awards. “The day she kissed Jamie at the Oscars … was the first day Marcheline was treated for cancer. Nobody in the world knew that they [Angelina and James] spent the day in the hospital.” Rundel said, “They only ever had each other … and their mother.”

She has made adoption, and being pregnant, sexy and never lost her sex appeal after speaking publicly about her preventive double mastectomy, for which she was both praised and widely criticized.

In her 2013 article in The Times she said, “My doctors estimated that I had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer.” She went on to say, “I am writing about it now because I hope that other women can benefit from my experience. Cancer is still a word that strikes fear into people’s hearts, producing a deep sense of powerlessness. But today it is possible to find out through a blood test whether you are highly susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer, and then take action.” She spoke publicly again about her health as she was gearing up for preventive ovarian surgery and committed to sharing what she learned

By the time she hit 20, Angelina had tried “just about every drug possible,” including heroin — an unfortunate pit stop for the rebellious. And she was fascinated with blood. She told Paula Zahn in 2005, “I collected knives.” The actress had a ritual of cutting herself because the pain gave her a release from her feelings. Perhaps that’s part of the reason she has adorned her body with so many tattoos.

Always one to buck societal norms and forge her own path, at age 21 Angelina married actor Jonny Lee Miller wearing 27

along the way in the hopes of informing and helping women everywhere.

Commissioner for Refugees was also just named a dame

by Queen Elizabeth, which the Times describes as “the equivalent of being knighted.”

Angelina was determined to make the epic film, “Unbroken,” based on the best-selling novel about the life of Olympic athlete and then prisoner of war Louis ‘Louie’ Zamperini, even though it was a gargantuan task. She told NBC’s Tom Brokaw that husband Brad Pitt tried to talk her out of taking it on. Why? Because it had been sitting on the shelves for years — nobody was daring enough to tackle it.

Directing “Unbroken” Angelina said was “the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” She told Brokaw she had to “pitch my butt off” to get it made. Her star power was challenged because this epic movie was only her second turn as a feature-film director; her first was the 2011 critically acclaimed “In the Land of Blood and Honey.”

Last summer Angelina got married with six kids in tow. It was a great year for her despite the challenges of making “Unbroken,” which opened on the most sought after day for movie releases: Christmas. She hit another life milestone when her oldest kid, Maddox, became a teenager and asked if he could get a tattoo.

“It’s funny,” she said. “I feel as wild today as I have ever been…. I think the big change was getting out of myself and not thinking about myself as much. That happened the first time I went to a war torn country because when you grow up, especially when you grow up in this town of L.A. you get upset about very mediocre things, very, very silly things. You are dark and you are depressed and you want to do this or that and then you go to a place where you realize that you really want to smack yourself in the face, and just say, ‘How dare I ever, ever be so blind as to think that I could complain and that I could want for more, when so many people have so little and are suffering so much.’ And so as soon as I became aware of that, I was so ashamed that I had been so conscious and so worried about my own issues. And to change completely and to remember that every day of my life.”

Currently she is directing her hubby in a movie she wrote called, “By the Sea.” They play a fictional couple with marital discord. The last time they played a married couple was 10 years ago in “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” when Pitt was still married to Jennifer Aniston and the tabloids went apoplectic.

For years I wondered how anybody could be as lucky as Angelina Jolie. But what we see on glossy magazine covers is flat and illusory. The real Angelina Jolie, throughout her life, has dealt and continues to deal with a myriad of obstacles and faces them with bravery.

And so Angelina continues to break barriers as a rebel for the good of the world. A few years ago she said, “I am still at heart—and always will be—just a punk kid with tattoos.”

This Oscar-winner, philanthropist, Special Envoy and former Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High

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