simulacrum

[typewriterpoembooth]

If you’re looking for something unique, nostalgic, creative and memorable for your wedding, Franki Elliot’s Wedding Poem Booth is the perfect idea.

Franki Elliot, critically acclaimed poet of Piano Rats and Kiss As Many Women As You Can, has made a name for herself going around the…

[feeljoykilljoy]

Day 2

They never told me how or when they did it. I guess I had never asked.

Well yesterday, my mother said, "Wait, you've never heard this story? Let me tell you."

I guess it was fifteen years ago, so I was about 11 years old.

She said it was more like a fight, the way she proposed. She demanded, "WELL? Are you going to marry me or not!"

So they got "married." As much as a lesbian couple could while living in Chicago fifteen years ago. As much as a lesbian couple can now. A slip of paper. Two plain gold bands. "It doesn't mean much," She shrugged.

At first it was all planned out, visions of grandeur, but everything ended up being too expensive and neither of them had money. So, they did it on a whim. Nobody was invited. Just my sister, who lived with them at the time. Her and one other friend went. A photographer maybe.  

"Pride weekend," she said. It was a mass ceremony with 8 other gay couples. There was cake, flowers, of course, hugs and laughter. They didn't have drinks. Of course they didn't, they met in AA.

"Well," I said, "You should do it again. A vow renewal. An anniversary? A party so all your friends and family can celebrate it."

I imagined myself throwing them a party. I had never done a single thing ever for my mother, maybe this could be it. After all, I barely knew her. Barely know her. We're still alive and moving.

But she threw her hands up, looked at her girlfriend and said, "Ppshh. She would never do it."

Her girlfriend didn't deny it.

*

The next day (today) she surprised us with the photo album. "This is from our ceremony."

I was shocked to find that her girlfriend had chosen pink leggings and a black overcoat as her "wedding dress." She was radiant, her blonde hair long and shiny. My mother was clearly the groom, with her white slacks, white button down shirt and sea foam cumberbund.  The smile on my mother's face, the look in their eyes, was like no other.

I studied the photos for a long time. Thought about what fifteen, twenty years could do to a couple. 

I put the album down and looked at the two of them before me, with their matching pull over sweaters (hers was navy, hers was grey), their white sneakers, their red puffy coats, and knew that time hadn't been good to them. Being here, together, they were going through the motions.

I realized it's my biggest fear. To share decades with another person and still feel alone and empty.

[feeljoykilljoy]

Adventures in the Skin Trade

This afternoon I was sitting outside of a coffeeshop on Division drinking Hibiscus tea and reading a book titled "Adventures in The Skin Trade" when a man who looked to be about 70 leaned over and said, "Is that a sex book? It looks like a sex book."

I laughed awkwardly, looked at the cover which had a beer bottle with someone's pinky inside the neck of it, and said, "No, no, these are Dylan Thomas stories from the 1930s."

"You like to read books?" He asked.

I nodded.

"I ask because they say the average American reads two books a year, if that. Probably less now with all this computer nonsense."

I turned that comment over in my head for a minute. He was probably right. Nobody reads books anymore. It was a depressing thought.

"You know Nelson Algren, the famous writer? He used to live down the street. He always wrote about Ashland and Division. Him and Simone De Beauvoir, you ever heard of her?"

I looked at him in surprise. "The French existentialist? She used to hang out in Wicker Park??"

He nodded. "Oh sure...they had a secret affair." He said somebody found all their love letters in the attic of that walk up flat on Evergreen. "Johnny Depp paid millions of dollars for them. Wouldn't be surprised if he makes a picture film."

Love letters. My god, I had written a few in my time. If only people wrote more letters these days. 

He then asked me what I went to school for. I sheepishly said, "Screenwriting."

"Ahh! So you are a screenwriter then?"

"Well, no. I am a horrible screenwriter. I work in the music industry."

His face lit up. "Music!!"

He waved his arm up and down the street and asked if I knew who Clyde "Red" Foley was. I had no idea.

"He was a famous cowboy. Used to walk up and down Division with his guitar, playing outside of bars. People would throw money in his cowboy hat. At one time he was more famous than Johnny Cash."

Cowboys on Division Street? "Really?"

"There were all kinds of musicians in this neighborhood, busking on the streets. Polka bands galore. Between Ashland and Damen there were 72 bars and all of'em had music and dancing."

He looked at my legs and said "You look like a dancer." Did I like to dance?

I shook my head and admitted I wasn't much of a dancer.

"Me, I was always good at two things. Dancing and stealing cars."

"Stealing cars?"

He became very serious. "Look at my face. What nationality do you think I am?"

I stared at him dead on. He had heavy lidded blue eyes, wrinkled skin sagged down his face, a prominent nose. His black and gray thinning hair was slicked back.

"Italian?"

He clapped his hands together. "Yes! Everyone says I look like DeNiro. I'm older so I say he looks like me." He winked.

"Growing up, everyone wanted me to become a gangster. Back then it had a different meaning. I knew all the men in the mob, we all went to church together. All the Italians hung out together.  When I was 17 they took me to Las Vegas. You know who was there?"

"Who?"

"Frank Sinatra and Harry Belafonte. They ran with all those mobster guys. Ole Frankie shook my hand and said, 'I better keep an eye on this fella.' And the women around them, the most beautiful women in the entire world."

"So, did you ever become a mobster?" I asked.

He waved his hand. "Naa. I became a history teacher. Taught at the University of Chicago for forty years. But me and my buddies, we knew how to steal cars. That's how you'd get the ladies. You'd have a brand new convertible to drive them around in. Take them to the drive in movies."

He asked me if I'd ever heard of the 12 inch rule. I shook my head again.

"This one time I was at a Catholic school dance...sixteen years old I was. And I saw the prettiest girl in the room. Dark hair, chocolate eyes. And the nuns, they enforced the 12-inch rule at all the dances. We could dance with girls but they would hold up a ruler between us to make sure there was space between our bodies. Said boys would get 'too excited.'"

He chuckled to himself. "Well, I drove up to the dance in a fancy new automobile, me and my friends, flasks in our suit jackets, our hair slicked back. Our father's cologne on our necks. There was a live band with a sax and an accordion. Everyone played the accordion, the Mcdonald's on Damen and Chicago used to be an Accordion school.

"Anyway, I saw this girl with the brown hair and we danced. She had the prettiest smile and she blushed the whole time. At the end of the dance I said 'Listen, let me give you my telephone number.' I didn't think anything of it."

He paused and looked me in the eye. "You ever heard of a man named The Big Tuna?"

"Big Tuna?"

"You never saw The Godfather? Well this guy was the real deal. After the dance, my buddies crowded me and said, 'TELL ME YOU DIDN'T GET THAT GIRL'S TELEPHONE NUMBER!'"

"I said, 'Why, of course I did, gave her mine too.'" I was rather proud of myself.

"That was when they told me she was the daughter of Big Tuna. HUGE guy in the mob. Boy, was I scared."

"So did anything happen?"

He held up three fingers.

"Three weeks went by and I had almost forgotten all about it. We were all in front of the candy store when a black Cadillac pulled up. A man in sunglasses and a suit stepped out, said, 'Who is VICTORIO?'  Boy, my hand was shaking but I raised it and said, 'That's me.'

So that was his name. Finally, I knew. Victorio paused to drink his coffee.  I noticed everyone around us at the coffeeshop was pretending not to be listening.  "Was he Big Tuna?"

He nodded. "Big Tuna held up the piece of paper I had given to the brown haired girl and said, 'This your telephone number?'

'Sure is.' I was stuttering, telling him I never intended to call her. I said I would never talk to her again. Boy, was I sweating.

"He walked right up to me, all my buddies around me frozen, and he got real close to my face and said, 'I know your parents, good family. I see them every sunday in church. You leave my daughter alone.'

"Then he reached into his breast pocket and handed me a card and walked away. On the card was an address with the name Juliette. He said I had one free hour."

I was confused. "So who was Juliette?"

The man let out a grin from ear to ear and laughed. "She was the most famous prostitute in Chicago and lemme tell you, I was a virgin! She told me something I'll never forget..."

"Oh yeah, what was that?"

"Kiss as many women as you can but NEVER fall in love."

We both laughed. It was an incredible story. Maybe that prostitute had a point. I realized we had been talking for over an hour and it was starting to get dark outside. I stood up, saying I had to go.

He asked me my name and shook my hand.

"On your way home, take Humboldt Boulevard."

"Why is that?"

"Frank Baum, guy who wroteThe Wizard of Oz...he used to live there. Humboldt Boulveard back then was lined with yellow lamps and rumor has it that it is the real yellow brick road."

"Humboldt Avenue it is." I said.

He shook my hand again as I packed up my Dylan Thomas book and we exchanged goodbyes. 

I rode my bike home half expecting to see cowboys with guitars, accordion players, quarreling famous writers slash lovers and yellow brick roads.

Instead, all I saw were people juggling shopping bags and baby strollers and cell phones, and I saw burgers and beers and windows with views of crowds cheering at sports games on flat screen tvs.

I guess it's surprising we can even get through two books a year these days.*

[feeljoykilljoy]

Kiss as Many Women as You Can

I am so excited to announce Kiss as Many Women as You Can by Franki Elliot (aka me!) & Shawn Stucky (Curbside Splendor Publishing, 2013) 

Here's the story: About two years ago, Franki Elliot (author of critically acclaimed Piano Rats) met a Craigslist stranger at Dunkin Donuts, gave her sixty bucks and left with a 1970s baby blue Smith Corona typewriter. Soon after, she began asking people to send her topics to write about because she was tired of writing about herself. Soon after, in search of new material, Elliot began carrying the typewriter to various festivals, beaches, flea markets and let strangers come up to her, request a topic, and leave with a story. (She has most recently typed at Pitchfork Music Fest, as well as at events for Puma and Flavorpill).

As Elliot wrote, she also took pictures of her favorite stories and eventually turned them into a tear & share postcard book titled Kiss As Many Women As You Can. The stories are complimented with stunning artwork by Shawn Stucky, who is a red/green color blind artist located in Chicago. Stucky has done everything from carving eyeglasses out of wood, adorning fire hydrants throughout Chicago with his masterful art, designing tattoos, live screenprinting, mural painting and, of course, creating books. Elliot, who is Los Angeles based via hometown Chicago, is a music industry professional by day and writer by night.

PRE-ORDER it for $15.00 sale price (retail $19.99) via Barnes & Noble. 

Here is Franki Elliot in action at Venice Beach, typing stories for strangers...featured in LA Weekly...

One of the stories she wrote on the spot ended up in the book. The topic was "Nostalgia".

KISS AS MANY WOMEN AS YOU CAN...

out October 15, 2013 via Curbside Splendor Publishing.

Please share :)

[feeljoykilljoy]

los angeles, the beginning

I was on a giant bus, the kind with a bathroom and semi-comfortable seats. The kind that is meant for long rides. But I wasn't going far, I was headed from the airport to LA but I guess mentally I had come a really long way.

After about thirty minutes of just sitting in front of the airport and me slightly worried I wasn't even on the right bus, the engine finally started and we headed for the freeway. I stared out the window and took in as much as I could. I made note to myself that this was a bus ride I needed to remember, much like my first cab ride into San Francisco when I moved there years ago.

My heart quickened at the site of palm trees. I could see mountains or hills or canyons or whatever they are as shadows in the background. I still wasn't sure where the ocean was but I could feel it on my skin, maybe.

I was still staring out the window when I saw on the side of the road at the Metra station, a large crowd. I couldn't hear them through the heavy glass and motor of the bus but there was a sense of alarm written all over everyone's faces.

Then I saw why. There was a man in his thirties lying in a pool of his own blood. His shirt was soaked with it. I couldn't see his face and I still don't know if he was dead or alive but I had never seen so much blood before. It was like watching a silent horror film.

The bus whizzed past and in another second, all I saw was traffic and hills and palm trees and I could still feel the ocean sort of but my entire body was covered goosebumps. Not good goosebumps. Fear goosebumps. Superstition set in. This was a bad sign, my trip was doomed. This man was doomed. We all were doomed.

I turned to the woman next to me, who had a giant Gucci purse and an oversized straw hat on. She was very beautiful. I said, "Did you just see that????"

She shook her head helplessly and said something in French.

Her husband was wearing loafers and had on an expensive gold watch. He turned to me from her side and said, "Excuse me?"

I repeated myself. "Did you see that man? He was covered in blood."

They both shook their heads.

"Blood," I said. "He was COVERED in it!" I motioned to myself to try and make them understand but they shook their heads in confusion.

And the bus kept going as if nothing had ever happened and a few minutes later we arrived in Los Angeles.

[frankielliot]

read or download for free!

Piano Rats by Franki Elliot

[feeljoykilljoy]

los angeles pt 1

He's hunched behind the counter at a book store that's also a coffeeshop that also has one sleepy cat. I, of course, have a copy of "Troutfishing in America" in my hand because I can't go into a bookstore without buying it. (It's hard to find Richard Brautigan and this was a NEW cover).

He has insane, curly grey hair, must be in his late fourties and says with an English accent (as he starts to ring me up), "You were just reading my book, by the way...but you put it down." He snorts a little instead of laughing. He has a sort of sneer to his mouth that comes naturally.

I know exactly what book he's talking about, the book was perched above a loud, neon postcard that yelled: YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK!!

I fell for the sign, picked it up and scanned a few pages for a good ten minutes.

"The Inertia Variations?" I ask, unsure of myself.

He nods.

"Okay, I'll buy that one too." He snorts again and says I don't have to but he doesn't hesitate to grab it from over the counter and says I can have a 20% discount.

"Read it in small doses and with lots of prozac," he warns.

I say, "I wrote a book too, ya know." And I pull Piano Rats out of my bag and he eats it up, grabbing it quickly and flipping it over a few times before snorting again.

"It's not much of a book, is it???" The comment comes out abrasive and rude but I play along.

I laugh. "No, it's not, I guess. It's meant to be short. But read the first page."

He reads the first page while I stand there, on the other side of the counter and finally lets out a hearty, chuckle. "Ohh...this is good, this is good." He weighs the book in his hand and says he likes how it is pocket sized. He skims through a few more pages before snorting again and saying, "You're kind of a smart ass, eh?"

Customers behind me are starting to grow impatient so I take my change and the Brautigan book and his book and leave him mine.

He tells me to return next Sunday and he will put my book next to his on the shelf. I can only hope I get a similar neon green sign to go along.

[feeljoykilljoy]

Busking Story #1

The first time I ever "busked" or played violin on the street for money, I was around 20 years old and essentially homeless. I had been living in a modern, one bedroom condo with Val, an Icelandic advertising student, and our lease ran up just as Christmas break began.

Val returned to Iceland for the holidays and I was stuck packing up all of our stuff with nowhere to go.  Somehow, I ended up couch crashing in the apartment complex across the courtyard with Corey, a 19 year old animation student and Little Pete, who happened to be a midget (or as he tended to correct me: a little person).

As fate had it, Little Pete soon returned home for the holidays along with all our other friends, so I took over his room and Corey and I found ourselves spending way too much time together.

Although he was quite attractive, there is no way to describe Corey other than "mama's boy." He had a picture of himself as a young lad in a red cowboy boots holding his mother's hand tacked up on his wall and wore paw print fleece pajama pants every night that his mother had hand sewn for him.

I called these pajama pants Birth Control.

Corey only knew how to cook corn dogs and spent most of his time in flip flops working at the Abercrombie store down the road and playing guitar.

At the time, I was trying to pursue music so every day Corey and I would sit in the living room and I would write violin parts to his songs. He had a good voice and was a decent guitarist, so things turned out surprisingly well.

Neither of us had really played anywhere before (other than me getting super stoned and playing at the coffeeshop on Ridge Road in high school) so after we had nailed down three songs we decided to try ourselves out in front of an "audience."

Instead of going to an open mic or booking an actual show, we packed up our instruments, marched up Market street and set up shop right in Union Square on the corner by Macy's. It is probably the busiest street corner in all of San Francisco. My violin case lay open in front of me and Corey's guitar case open in front of him, and we each emptied our pockets to make it look like we had already made some cash.

We hadn't gotten halfway through the first song when a giant bus flew by, covering us with rain water and mud. The traffic on Powell Street was incredibly noisy and it hadn't occurred to us to bring sound equipment so we found ourselves packing up and moving to three different street corners before we could finally be heard.

We finally settled on our best bet: directly next to a hot dog stand right at the entrance of Macy's. It was somewhat quieter so we finally made it through our first song:  a 9 minute jam called "Mountain Man" that had zero lyrics.  I was shocked to find a crowd gathered around us in no time. We finished and played our next two songs and people (tourists) everywhere stopped and watched. We didn't know what else to play, seeing as we only knew 3 songs, so we played the jam song again. It didn't even occur to us to learn more than 3 songs. If we were smart we would've learned a cover or two.

Luckily it started raining, so we decided to pack up. Corey was a little crestfallen when we realized most of the money had been thrown into my violin case instead of his guitar case (I'm assuming its because I am a girl) but all was fine when we realized how much money we had made.

$17.33!!!!

"Wow," we said. "Seventeen dollars in only 25 minutes, that's not bad! Not bad at all!"

We went home, ordered a pizza with the money and decided to start a band and play some real shows.

I didn't busk again until I moved to the mission and got robbed and could no longer afford to buy groceries. That was when I met all the REAL street musicians of San Francisco.  To be continued...

[feeljoykilljoy]

french millionaire

The French millionaire held my hand somewhere in Union Square under the cold palm trees.

His eyes were tired and red when he spoke about business deals and cell phone towers, he wasn't kidding when he invited me to Aspen.

I said, come to my show tonight at this bar instead and he did, parked his $70,000 car out front, wore a wool zip up jacket.

When I got off stage I still had my violin in hand. I sat next to him and said, Tell me about your last lover.

He searched for the words in English and it came out quite nicely: "Well, there was something cheap about her, like drinking orange juice from a can." I choked a laugh but there was a distance in his eyes which meant she was more like orange soda, and everybody likes orange soda sometimes.

[feeljoykilljoy]

[feeljoykilljoy]

spanish

In San Francisco, I worked at a bookstore and a very handsome Spanish ballerina danced around me as I carried heavy books from shelf to shelf and put them in the places they belonged.

He said with his irresistible accent, "This is San Francisco, please, do you know about the beat writers? I would like to know..."

I shrugged and said, "Sure. I know them...They are OKAY except they were all misogynists."

He smiled and said, "I do not know this word, in Spain, we love all our women very much."

So I began to explain:

"Well, you know Ginsberg was only 19 when he became obsessed with a fellow student who stabbed his girlfriend. He helped discard of her body and cover up the crime. And Burroughs, he may have been gay but he has a wife anyway...that is...until he got drunk and shot her dead, right in the forehead. He barely did any jail time for it either. And Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassidy, they abandoned their wives and children (PLURAL) to travel the road, hitchhiking, drinking, gambling and fucking other women. Sure, Kerouac finally did write a "great american novel" ( I HATE THAT BOOK )  but Neil Cassidy never did a damn thing, aside from abandon his children...who else, hmmm...who else?"

The more I read about my heroes the more I realized they were just weak criminals, barely humans at all, getting bailed out by their parents while doing drugs and stealing cars.

I stopped from my shelving and said, "Richard Brautigan, though, I do like Richard Brautigan...he writes so beautifully" but the Spanish ballerina had already danced away sometime during my rant in elegant disinterest.

[feeljoykilljoy]

LA

I should probably talk about how my life has changed drastically this year. I'm not sure how this happened but I suddenly live on the west coast again. This time LA. I never dreamed I would ever go to LA, let alone move here. I always insisted it wasn't the place for me, even though I had never been there. But here I am, sitting on a sidewalk on Sunset BLVD, wearing jeans and a t-shirt at the end of October. Yesterday, I was at Manhattan Beach, tiptoeing into the ocean with a book. My first glance at the ocean still pulls at my heart every time I see it. 

The other day, I found myself at a 36 million dollar mansion, with a red carpet, award winning chef and a mixologist. I was "backstage" with a band I work with and a semi famous rapper talking about their upcoming tour and polaroid cameras. It was my first real taste of "hollywood" and the guy working the party had to point out the celebrities and movie stars as they walked past because I'm too clueless to recognize them.

Nobody has really questioned why I came here but I guess I'll say why anyway. One, I visited this summer for a month and something really clicked with me. I was able to get my book in several stores, see tons of concerts and make lots of new friends. I was able to get out of my comfort zone and see new things and meet new people. Two, my boss had pointedly told me I needed to move to a bigger city to enhance career. I told him not to tempt me but he was right, in my month in LA I met more worthwhile people for music and writing than eight years in Chicago. And at this point, the only thing keeping me in Chicago was my job, anyway.

Last fall/winter had been the worst in my life, causing me to re-think my friends and living situation and general mental health. Any chance to avoid winter was a godsend to me. Then, completely unexpectedly, I fell in love. I didn't even know I had fallen in love at first because I had met this guy three days into my month long trip and we were so casual with each other but at the end of my stay, I found myself hugging him and crying. SOBBING.  Where did that come from? I had known him three weeks! It seemed like I would go back to Chicago and he would stay in LA and we left it at that.

Or so I thought. Coming back to Chicago felt weird and awkward and a week after I arrived, I soon went to NYC for the rest of August. Everyone figured I would love NYC and never think of LA again. I loved NYC but didn't think twice about moving there. The garbage and crowds and lines were too much for me. I decided while there actually that I needed to move to LA.

Everything worked out too easily. I simply told my boss, OK, I want to move to LA and a month later, I moved. I found a rent control sublet in West Hollywood from a friend of a friend and somehow by miracle was able to purchase a car my first week in and I just jumped into my job, networking, going to concerts, and hanging out with my boyfriend.

I've been here a month and keep pinching myself and asking if I really live here. I guess you really can start your life all over again at the drop of a hat.

[feeljoykilljoy]

Happy Birthday Piano Rats!

A year ago today I published my first book. I had been waiting 100 years to write a book. I waited patiently for characters and plots and arcs and endings to present themselves and cursed them when they never came. Then someone made me realize none of those things were important. The most important thing was to just WRITE and I'd been writing stories since I was seven. One morning that person woke me up and over coffee he handed me 150 pages of a neatly printed manuscript with a giant paper clip. I looked down at it and said: What is this? He said: This is your book. You have a book now. The cover page read: Piano Rats. As I flipped through the pages, I cried. He was right, it was my book. All the stories I had written for myself over the years, they finally had a home. He sipped his coffee nonchalantly and said: This is good and you better print it. And after ripping it to shreds a few times, I finally did. You never know when an ordinary morning can change your entire life.

*check out Piano Rats here: http://curbsidesplendor.bigcartel.com/product/piano-rats

[feeljoykilljoy]

Hey Girl

Steven and I were walking down the street holding hands (as friends, not lovers)

when two guys in baseball caps and jerseys walked past us and said, 

"HEYYY GIRLS!"

Steven stopped in his white sneaker-ed tracks, turned around and shouted,

WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU SAY?

I swear, my heart stopped beating.

Then one guy turned to the other and they both had these self righteous smirks on their faces, and they waved at all the bracelets on Steven's wrists

and at his flat ironed bleached hair, and at the eyeliner under his furious eyes, and said,

"YOU HEARD ME. WE SAID, HEYY GIRLS. You're a girl, aren't you?"

One of them spit in our direction before saying:

"Or are you just a fag????"

I'm not sure how we did it but we just kept walking neither of us turning back, past the town hall, past the Seven Eleven, past the barber shop, not sure whether to laugh or to cry

 and I've never held someone's hand so tight in my life.*

[feeljoykilljoy]

OCD

We grew up in the same area but didn't know each other growing up. We probably had made out with the same boys, though. We probably still do, now that I think about it.

We had run in the same circle in Chicago for years but conveniently ignored each other. We knew each others' names but never said "Hi" once in the millions of times we were at the same concert or party. I thought she looked too cool for me and mean. A bitch probably. She thought I looked like a bitch, too.

Somehow though, we finally talked and realized we were both Capricorns and we grew up in that same town with those same boys (musicians, always musicians) and so here we were in my apartment one winter Sunday afternoon. It was our first hang out. She was covered in tattoos that intimidated me despite the fact she was wearing last night's make up (blurry cat eyes) and it was her birthday the night before. I had been invited to the get together, which I thought may have been an accident.

She was curled up on my couch with my green blanket, saying over and over that she didn't feel well and was making me uneasy by saying that. I was OCD about germs and didn't know how to take care of people because I was too preoccupied with trying to not get sick myself. I don't think I have ever actually taken care of a sick person but I figure it works out fair and square, since I never felt very taken care of most of my life.

I began to worry about why she didn't feel well (was she hung over? was she actually sick?) and began to bite my nails and then stopped, realizing I must have her germs all over my hand.

I was still in OCD mode when she grabbed a pillow from the corner of the couch, tucked it under her chin and said without looking at me:

"Today is the day the man who murdered my mom gets out of jail."

She said it very nonchalantly but the words alone turned the room to ice. Of course, we weren't close enough for me to know about her mother (I had assumed that like most mothers, she was alive) and I stood there frozen in shame. Here I had been, worrying about germs when she had a much bigger burden on her shoulders.

Today is the day the man who murdered my mom gets out of jail.

Jesus, the weight of that sentence. What business did it have it in here? Who was this beautiful girl on my couch? Who was this horrible man? What had happened to her mother?

Was I allowed to ask?

She admitted the details of it all were patchy and still unclear to her, her family seemed to keep most of it a secret and I tried to figure out how to console her. The problem was, she seemed like she didn't need consoling. She seemed to have distanced herself from her mother's mysterious death or at least learned how to appear that way when talking about it.

Cool as a cucumber, the typical coping mechanism of a Capricorn, if you ask me.

She shrugged when I suggested we go back to our hometown and unearth old newspapers and figure out the truth. I imagined it being like that movie Now & Then, a movie I actually had the script for sitting in the desk of my office, sent as a joke to me from a friend.

We were quiet after that and soon a boy arrived to take her to the train, so she left the blankets and pillow on my couch and said goodbye. A few hours later, she called me to tell me she had gone home and thrown up several times. She couldn't stop throwing up, what should she do? I nearly dropped the phone in a panic.

I had not thrown up since I was sixteen. I am twenty eight.

I hung up, took a deep breath and immediately took inventory of everything she had touched in my apartment. My bed! She had layed in my bed. She had used my computer. She had sat on the couch. The pillow and blanket. The door handles. She had used the bathroom! Everything was suspect of her germs.

I immediately went into the kitchen and grabbed disinfecting supplies and began to clean furiously, not sure if I was worried more about her mother's murderer being released from jail or the stomach flu I was no doubt bound to catch in the next 72 hours.

That's the trouble with OCD, it sometimes makes you battle between being human and self obsessed with your own ticks. It makes you an unintentional narcissist. This is probably what sociopaths are made of.

I never did catch the flu and I never did find out more about her mother.

[feeljoykilljoy]

fig tree

I had never seen a fig tree before and I had never eaten a fig, so I left the party and went into the backyard, pulled up a lawn chair, stood on it and tried to pick a fig.

I figured San Francisco must be magic, having fig trees in backyards and such beautiful hills.

The problem was the fig tree was out of reach and when I stood on my tiptoes, in one swift motion, the lawn chair collapsed and I fell into the grass.

When I finally stood and brushed myself off, I found myself face to face with a Peruvian art student. He had giant brown eyes and a gorgeous accent.

He told me his name was Stephen and he picked up my glasses from the ground. Instead of handing them to me, he put them on his face.

In his thick accent he turned to me, blinking from behind my glasses, and asked very seriously, "Have you ever seen yourself through someone else's eyes?"

I hadn't.

[frankitypewriterstories]

Franki Elliot setting up shop on Venice Beach for the Hammer Museum, Made In LA art exhibit. The locals are very territorial about their spots so it took me quite a while to find a place to type. At first people were very intimidated and didn’t stop but after about fifteen minutes, I was surrounded by a crowd most of the afternoon. This was an experiment and overall, was incredibly successful. I met a ton of people from all over the world, typed about 25 stories, got rid of about 15 Piano Rats books, and left with almost $100 in tips.