The following is an excerpt from Vanessa Roveto's forthcoming novel, The Valley (a void).
***
The giant artificial palm tree that anchors the luxury condos off Ventura Boulevard bursts into flames. Burning fronds send smoke signals upward, engulfing a helicopter in bong-ripped plumes. Blades chop through the dark-lung air. At a nearby restaurant, Reality TV celebrities in summer-wear plunge forks into raw kale and idly watch the complex catch fire. In the back alley of the restaurant, by the sewers, hungry street rats chew each other to death. Westward down the boulevard closer to the Pacific shore, a pelican swallows beach glass. Ocean salt gathers itself into pyramids, preparing for a resurrection. Time dilates as the Santa Anas swipe living palm trees, bending the trunks toward the pleated grounds of manicured grass. Bored and still feeling the effects of sleeping pills, you slowly crane your neck upward toward a strange visual. A car is suspended in the air, flying off the cliffs of Mulholland Drive.
***
VICTORIA
I have this recurring dream.
***
MADELINE
last night i ate cold cereal and listened to badly drawn boy’s first album on repeat and went to sleep at 5 am. at 3 pm i woke up in a dreadful mood.
after taking a shower for what seemed like half a day, i picked up my corpse, put on my darkest sunglasses and my gg allin “legalize murder” shirt, went to the diner on moorpark and installed myself in a corner booth. i ordered pancakes that i didn’t eat and several cups of coffee all of which i drank and stared at the wood paneling, trying to imagine a different life. i thought about this one time in 11th grade when these mean girls asked why i was dressed like a lesbian camp counselor and my knee socks were supposed to be like a french school girl look so i really felt like shit. and my twin brother guillaume who we all call guy because he is rightly embarrassed by the name drove us up to the top of mulholland to smoke weed and listen to guns n roses “don’t you cry” on repeat. guy told me i needed to be like the model stephanie seymour in that music video where she’s at a bar and a rival chick comes over and she bitch slaps her. he told me, “don’t cry. act like a fucking supermodel.” thinking of that, i began crying unlike a supermodel into a handful of cheap one-ply paper napkins. turns out, pharmaceutical drugs are not the answer to everything.
***
VICTORIA
I started having weird visualizations as a teenager. I made films in my head out of all kinds of things: a feeling, a cooked-shrimp ring, smog. Really compelling shit. But sometimes these films got mixed into reality, so I couldn’t tell if I was in them or watching them. Eventually, I found space for it all in my head, for both of these perspectives, both of me. And I lived it over and over again.
***
My ex, Dora, used to say I was impenetrable, a “mysterious lesbian.” I thought maybe she said this because of my heavy brow, my starvation rituals, my semi-permanent scowl, my weird animalistic sexuality, a gay Marlon Brando in Mutiny on the Bounty.
I dumbly thought Love could save “mysterious,” but later I realized weirdos are typically left to their own devices. I was no exception but rather part of a long, honored tradition of mangled people who are too broken to fake it.
In Mutiny on the Bounty, Brando’s lover offers him words of Tahitian wisdom: “Tahiti people say, ‘You eat life, or life eat you.’”
Life is a film that never quite turns out like the trailer made you think it would. On the blurred edges of your vision is a playground, a feral dog chewing a chocolate wrapper, a couple of queer teenagers doing poppers, someone’s grandpa sloping in the sun over a Corona. Basketball nets swish, followed by demonic cheering. You’re stuck in a broken lawn chair, trapped because you don’t know how to get out of something.
***
I know that people either find my eccentric behavior extremely annoying or incredibly endearing and that there isn’t really much gray area. I know that people who find me annoying generally dislike me with ease and can’t stand to be around me, so I find myself surrounded by people who enjoy my weirdness and therefore I never really get a lot of constructive criticism except for the voices in my head.
For this reason, I became a poet. At 42, I teach in Last Chance, Iowa. To my students, I am a beast of burden, a lone mule across a fence that separates me from others and their experiences, a cross-eyed and unpopular type who is a lesbian not because of any innate sexual preference but rather because I scared all the men away with my animal moaning sounds. In any case, that’s what one of my student evaluations said.
***
Today I lead my students in a writing exercise. I tell them to go outside and for two minutes straight write down everything they observe, then for the next two minutes write down everything they think and then compare the two, a lesson in subjectivity, memory, note-taking.
So we all go outside and take part in the prompt. I write down for two minutes: pigeons, single smashed french fry, succulents with sun damage, my own aging hands, a pale eminem face in aztec banana king diamond shirt (euro tour) white belt dad style cutoff jean shorts black socks all white suede vans rosie o’donnell haircut. I write for two minutes more: If I was standing in this poem would I be wearing a hazmat suit and would the poem change if I took a bong rip and on the way down I grab a cloud, the clown, or another cosmic prosthesis that reminds you of your father?
One of my favorite students, Aron, a five-foot-three Turkish poet, writes: birds; no birds.
***
These days the only time I feel less lonely is in the company of other lonely poets: deeply nerdy, damaged people who were poorly socialized as children, with tattoos of their narcissistic injuries. We eat Chinese food awkwardly with chopsticks, poking at fungus and water chestnuts, trying to gain insight into the disarray of our own lives and that of the fungi, where we’re going and where we’ve been, describing the world in detail as a way to get closer to it, a loner’s existence crystallized in the chili oil-stained paper menu. The life we required for art was a life without animate companions. I’d eat dumplings forever with them if I could.
***
Hm, Iowa. What is there to say? If someone were to ask (no one ever does) I would tell them that, for me, Iowa is a soothing maternal bosom, calming, whereas my hometown—The Valley adjacent Los Angeles—is a dry-milk-duct hell, where I easily become unpredictable and mad. I would tell them about the charming food and local characters in Iowa, especially a homeless person known as Dr. Nicky, who wanders downtown at night, accosting people on the pedestrian mall, warning everyone he meets or who will listen that women are ruled by the moon, their periods synced with the tides, and to counsel the constellations before going near the fairer sex but above all to distrust them. Dr. Nicky previously worked at the Emma Goldman Clinic for women and revolutionaries. He was the town’s foremost gynecologist.
I haven’t seen Dr. Nicky since last summer, when he left the local winter shelter, which he had confused for his old office, decorating it with dusty forceps and a female anatomy skeleton. He told me how he had hand-carved MD into the door. Then excitedly he took out of his pocket a printout of a photo of a farm chicken and her three chicks. He told me these were the last babies he had delivered. On the image, there were hearts drawn in ink and the words, “My eternal thanks to the good doctor!!”
I once asked Dr. Nicky what he thought about my “nervous breakdowns.” He told me that medically speaking, there is no such thing. It’s just a fancy way of saying, “You’re nuts.” He also said to take extra Xanax before I freak out and to listen to Sid Vicious.
***
My twin brother, Will, used to love Sid Vicious. As teens, we tried to start a punk band called Aquapuke. It was supposed to be about excess and taking the extravagances of the rock and roll lifestyle to the extreme, particularly in regard to partying until puking. I even wrote out a script for a potential video, where we were wandering around North Hollywood, going from house party to house party, and vomiting non-stop in the swimming pools. Revolution, hurrrl style. In any case, we both got sent to the “happy house,” so Aquapuke was short-lived.
***
MADELINE
i am 19 years old, i am (temporarily, fakely) blonde, and i live in the san fernando valley in a tract home. my father divorced my mom a few years ago and moved to the castro in san fran (more on why another time) and is a personal shopper for men (this is a clue). my mother, celine, has an artistic background and won some notoriety for a painting of julia child being attacked by chicken legs. she turned that into a career as a home scenic designer, which means she paints murals of magical things onto the walls of the homes of wealthy people.
she went a bit insane when my father left us, notably drawing feces all over the paintings in our house, signing them all “motherwell.” sometimes she dates men who we meet, sometimes she dates men who she only meets in her mind.
she named me madeline as in that annoying french child with tuberculosis. everyone calls me ‘mad’ as in the feeling or circumstance, as in anger or insanity.
i dropped out of college and moved back home after i stopped eating when my dad left us and became fully gay (no kidding), a hunger strike of sorts. i work part-time at whole foods and spend the rest of the time thinking my “little important thoughts,” as my mother likes to call them.
i also live with my two siblings. my twin brother guy i’ve already mentioned, the one who told me to bitch slap my bully in 11th grade. we were much closer then, even more so when we were little, concocting two-person-only games and writing the occasional duet for air guitar. these days he’s rather passionate and likes to go on knowledge rants such as how “the ancients knew that whole milk was superior to skim milk.” sometimes his passion overtakes him and he starts throwing stuff around and breaking things (which in a young woman might be sexy but in a young man is somewhat excessive). last night for example he lost a game of scrabble and subsequently kicked over the table. he then went into a rant about feminism and the family dog, sara: “sara is the sister i’ve never had!” i think he was joking but it hurt, especially because we aren’t so close anymore.
then there’s my abnormally tall and abnormally theatrical sister jewel (known as “broadway baby” by guy and me), about to turn 16 and officially ruin all our lives. jewel has an overly performative way of speaking, as though every person is an audience or, better yet, a casting agent. this happens even in casual conversation at home. just asking what’s for dinner becomes her cabaret. my mother had her at 44, and sometimes i wonder if jewel’s innate issues might be attributed to the geriatric pregnancy or an ivf snafu.
my parents named her jewel because our recently estranged father loves gaudy things and my mom loves the painter john waterhouse. her favorite of his is a painting of a tall, slim brunette woman holding a large crystal ball. i heard that when the painting was restored not too long ago it revealed a human skull sitting near the figure that a previous owner had painted over. i think the revealed skull adds a touch of symbolism to the entire family affair.
jewel is an alien to me: overly upbeat, with the energy of a jumping worm. it’s very odd in contrast to guy and me and our inborn inclination toward foreign film and lying in bed all day. guy is the only person who truly understands my morbidity.
a few years ago when i was feeling especially self-absorbed and pompously miserable he insisted my mom adopt a rabbit for me from the rabbit rescue activists who used to visit the pet store on colfax. he named it stephanie after stephanie seymour, who he always said i looked like, which wasn’t true but was a massive compliment. it turned out stephanie was actually a boy and had a fatal disease that rendered him nonexistent only 6 months after we got him. we buried him out back behind the house alongside jewel’s hamster named cheetah, who escaped her cage and got crushed by the trash compactor. guy gave a very moving speech where he pretended to be jean-luc godard, which mostly entailed him speaking in a bad french accent. for some reason, i actually cried at the funeral, my first (funeral, not cry). guy saw how upset i was and started singing “for she was a jolly good fellow.” i started laughing but kept crying, probably not for stephanie but because our dad had just left. guy held my hand the entire time. i miss that version of him.
***
VICTORIA
It’s evening (4 am), so I work myself into an obituary:
Victoria Blank, poetry professor and writer of several unpopular books of poetry and prose—notably Oedipus Complex and Electra Complex, about two crumbling apartment complexes breaking down in tandem with family structures—passed away at middle age.
The cause was brain failure, said her mother Skyla, 70, an art historian with a fairy fetish, who had died some years before.
Reared in the San Fernando Valley, she was born an only child but was joined moments later by a sibling, both of them born the same day, the season of Gemini. “The Gemini personality is either something or nothing,” Victoria was once quoted as saying in her own head. “One day I tried doing nothing for a week in the middle of the Pacific. My mind turned to pharmaceutical interventions.” The twins were followed by a theatrical but forgettable sibling, Crystal, who walked with the kind of delusional self-assurance of a woman who has never achieved anything significant in her life.
Victoria was the type of woman who could only be believed when she was being most unbelievable, a mirror held up to another mirror in the dreams of others. She would complain of the wind blowing through her hair, giving her a bad hair day, but there was no wind. Her weathervane was inside, shifting depending on which phantom she was speaking to. Which mood or dimension would overtake her, ordering the meaningless days? She could hardly guess. Boo hoo.
I read this out loud and suddenly remember: I forgot to take my antidepressant this morning!
***
My biological father named me after Vincente Minelli. Victoria was the closest female name he could come up with. Theatrical, Italian, and, later, homosexual, much like Vincente, my father gave me a lot to work with and through. His eyes would well up with tears over a single perfect spaghetti strand, yet his ducts would go dry when confronted with a child’s booboo. He was hairless. His breasts, no bigger than baby’s fists, were always, somehow, exposed.
My father didn’t come from money, nor did he move toward money, unless it was someone else’s. He did, however, teach me how to make the most of a can of Italian tuna, how to get dinner for free (find your own hair in the eggplant parm), how to shoplift VHS gay porn. For my 16th birthday, he stole an erotic lesbian calendar from Le Sex Shoppe and made me open the gift at Pinocchio’s Restaurant. I remember the embarrassment gnawing away at me as he grabbed and waved the gift, shouting to the perplexed patrons, “So proud of my GAY daughter!”
Later, during the quiet ride home from dinner, a free eggplant parm in my lap, he asked with genuine curiosity, “Why don’t you ever celebrate me?”
***
Honestly, my father’s theatrics would often amuse me, the way he lorded over his small amount of knowledge with a great sense of pride and verve. “I’m the original feminist in this family! I read Italian Vogue! I’ve seen all of Barbra Streisand’s films at least twice!” he would say, just before leveling an insult about my weak smile. Each time it was a little different, but somehow I was always moved in one way or another by this character he was playing. I was absorbed in his self-absorption, absorbed by a princess who liked to strut his stuff. He’s not entirely unlike his estranged child Crystal. We’re all an audience to their one-woman shows.
***
Much to my father’s working-class disappointment and that of all the gendered ancestors, the descendants of sausage-making peasants back in the old country, I got my MFA in poetry. My thesis was, naturally, all about him: a poem inspired by Marguerite Duras, David Lynch, Lily Tomlin, PTSD, Monica’s Vitti’s face in Red Desert, stimulants and cookies, years alone at sea, aids, Artaud, shoulder pads, lesbian psychosis, pricked balloons and entropy, cells unwinding in the blood.
But I’ve soured on ambition. I’m all for humility, a monk essentially. Sorry, I meant drunk. So I throw myself nightly into a bottle of Everclear with a chaser of mashed pills. On a good evening, I’ll write a few perfectly polished sentences in the voice of my father:
I was Elizabeth Taylor. Now I have no friends. I belch I fart I am the unstoppable star and I am star
***
Sometimes I dream of my father and I meeting, each bringing a piece of paper with an inventory of the things we wish we could say out loud to one another.
“I’ll begin,” my father says:
- I wanted to see the world.
Then a long period of silence. He finally says he tried to make a larger inventory, but then showed it to a friend who helped him boil it down to its essence.
I read mine back to him:
- It’s okay. I forgive you.
- On more than one occasion, I stole money out of your pants to buy toys you wouldn’t get me. One of those toys was a doll I called “Bad Daddy.” She was my favorite doll.
***
All the Valley dwellers have become sensitive. You join them and become a prepper, too. You’ve gone from “as if” to “what if.” Instability brings about everyone’s rampaging for jarred capers, electrolytes, boxes of instant cranberry bread. Bearing long biblical beards and thinness, you’re all suddenly radical as fuck, yelling out improvised poems from cars, developing personal slogans that all amount to Bereft of Life. Against cloudless skies, any of the available disorders are at your disposal. The desert air crisps up the context.
