Category: Memoir

Villains

Terah Van Dusen4 Comments

It was a big house but it was ugly. The house had inky-colored energy and smelled like old-people ass and chewing tobacco. True stench is thick. When you breathed you swallowed the stench. I had a bunch of male cousins growing up and my one cousin “John Boy” burped and I said “That smells so bad I can taste it!” He asked me, “Can you taste my farts too?” Boys were so gross. At six I didn’t know anyone who smelt worse than my boy cousins or my great grandparents. Fact I still don’t.

I had a special place. In Requa, I spent most my time outside, which nobody seemed to mind. Just had to be in by dark. Ish. I searched high and low for my special place. I knew my bedroom couldn’t be my special place since it was haunted. The inky-colored energy repelled me from that place. Rumor had it a woman slowly died of cancer in there. It was a bedroom Dad and I shared. We both had our own twin bed like we were brother and sister and we shared an old wooden dresser, other than that there was nothing in there. No toys. No photos. At night I would make my dad face me and watch for ghosts behind me. And I would face him and watch for ghosts behind him. Problem was my dad would fall quickly into slumber, tired from work at the road department. “Dad! Dad!” I would say, frightened white. “You’re not watching!”

There were a couple of rooms in the big, cold, inky, smelly, sad-memory-house that I wouldn’t even go in. One room had paintings of great aunt’s of mine that I didn’t really know. The one who lived on the hill behind us and talked to herself and the one who pulled her hair out piece-by-piece and the one who got away and never looked back. The eyeballs of the women in the paintings would follow me. Already an introvert, I didn’t want to be around anybody–even if they were just faces of paint. Hell, the paintings had more personality than the real women did. They smiled more.

Two other rooms had things in them that belonged to my great grandfather–I can’t even type his name out. Wayne. There. I did it. The room had Wayne’s things–rocks, stalactites, harmonicas, old newspapers, all disgusting things that I didn’t want to be around. Things I liked fine on their own but with his prints on them made me head in another direction. If only I could run in the opposite direction of him when I saw him. But I was raised up not to be rude. To respect your elders.

I didn’t want to be rude.
I didn’t want to be rude.

I tried to make the upstairs bathroom my special place but great grandma Faith had a big problem with that. I think she was worried I might drown in there, in the deep clawfoot tub. Drown like my father did. Before he came back to life. I didn’t realize the root of her concern until now. Tragedy upon tragedy.

I realllllly wanted my special place to be upstairs, because the villains couldn’t climb the stairs. But it was really just too inky up there. Downstairs wasn’t an option. Downstairs was a quiet battleground. Even when Dad came home from work I wasn’t safe cause the villains were that good. They were sneaky and I didn’t want to be rude.

Making it in Changing Times Conference Notes

Terah Van Dusen12 Comments

I made my way up to Portland (soon I won’t have to travel so far, yay!) on January 26th for a writers conference, Making it in Changing Times.

Lidia Yuknavitch was the keynote speaker and the event was organized by Jessica Morrell author of Writing Out The Storm, a book Lidia held close to her chest and kept on her bedstand during the FIRST days, weeks, and months of her writing career. She credits the book for motivating her to write. Jessica Morrell is to Lidia what Natalie Goldberg is to me.

The event was SPECTACULAR. I was high the entire time. On writing, folks, on writing. During the session I thought of you guys: my blogging community. My writing tribe. My stranger-angels.

I took notes of course, with the intent of sharing them on my blog. With you. Because you are where I am–scratching and clawing your way into the writing world. Some of you are further along than others. For some of you this information will be premature, for others it will be old news. But I hope for at least one of you, it is just perfect useful.

Over the next few days, I will post 4 conference “notes”:

1. “An Editor’s Wishlist” by Jessica Morrell
2. “Kick Start Your Writing in 2013” by Polly Campell
3. “The Worth of Risk” by Lidia Yuknavitch
4. “Signs You’re Telling Not Showing” by Jessica Morrell

Do you know these authors? What books, conferences, and authors have inspired you? Please share your thoughts, we’re all in this together. I’ve never heard of an artist being “over inspired”, have you? For me, I can’t get enough inspiration. But like love, the timing has to be just right…if you don’t get anything from these notes right off–come back. It’s good stuff.

Neurotic Fan Part II–Am I Invisible?

Terah Van Dusen4 Comments

I shuffle upstairs in my long black kimono, the show starting soon.

I go to the bathroom to piss out my beer and stand in line, nobody talking to me and me talking to nobody. I think of what a little city Eugene is. People say it’s a real friendly city. I’m not entirely convinced. I remember bathrooms down on the border of Mexico and how they came practically stocked with cocaine and how that really brought the women together, really opened up the lines of communication, har har.

Eugene needs more drugs, for sure. Women here care about health and spirituality and jogging. Fucking. Jogging.

I emerge from the bathroom stall and am the only person left. Good. I wash my hands and check myself out in the mirror, remembering the young girl who didn’t check my ID. Bitch.

Then I hear a stall door open and close. And though I didn’t know it yet– I hear the sigh of Chelsea Cain’s pre-show nervousness or boredom, I don’t know, but it was a sigh…a famous-author-sigh and Famous. Authors. Are. People. Too.

“Oh. Hi!”

I perk right up as Chelsea Cain emerges in her pink lipstick, short nighty and fuzzy bunny slippers.

“Hi!” She smiles her bright, gorgeous smile.

“I like your nightgown. Very vintage.” I smile back. Again.

“Oh, thank you.”

“Well, have fun!” I wave while leaving the bathroom.

I look for Lidia but she’s hiding (she does that) and I think, gosh, I hope Chelsea knows I know who she is. All I did was talk about her clothes. I could’ve mentioned her books.

But the truth is, I hadn’t yet read her. But I liked her–just for being her–she was perky and charismatic, I knew that. A week later I would read her memoir Dharma Girl, which wasn’t a struggle, not at all, it was very well-written and introspective but lacking a little spice and danger.

Reading Dharma Girl after reading The Chronology of Water reminded me of when I replaced methamphetamine with cocaine (we’re talking daily use here). So mellow it was hardly even potent. But it’s all relative–if I did cocaine now I’d be swimming the clouds. Back-strokes n’ shit.

I’m sure, no I’m certain Chelsea Cain’s murder mystery shit is potent as hell.

So I look for Lidia and she’s still nowhere to be found. I get in line for a stuffed animal and I’m the only one there and there’s an empty box behind the deserted foldy-table.

Oh well.

I join the fifty-thousand fucking horny college kids with their iPhones and now their huge cheetah and lion stuffed animals that they’re literally making hump eachother.

I sit on the floor cross-legged with my faint close-lipped smile that says I’m approachable and someone elbows me in the mouth and a round girl in front of me scootches back to make room for her friend, a sexy blonde in a black kimono and they snap a picture together and they’re so close I could lick the backs of their heads. I shift uncomfortably and think Am I invisible? Like, really. No, seriously..am I invisible?

Neurotic Fan Part I

Terah Van Dusen4 Comments

I missed out on the free stuffed animal cause I wanted a beer and the line for beer was zilch and the line for a free stuffed animal was around the block and down the hall.

I was disappointed.

I thought I was part of a bite-size group of people and after the show we’d all sit around in someone’s cramped apartment drinking straight whiskey and maybe doing a little coke.

I thought I’d get to talk up my book and maybe Chuck Palahniuk and Lidia would ask me to join their writers’ group.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve got no experience–all that matters is you’ve passion, and you do, I can see it in you they’d say as I’d shoot back the whiskey hollering Fuck yeah I do! sticking out my tongue and shaking my head back and forth. We’d all cheer and laugh. There aren’t enough writers out there, Chuck would tell me.

I thought I’d be the only girl in a black kimono and that Lidia might point me out to the audience, telling everyone what a good writer I was and some hot guy would spot me and think I was super sexy. Then he’d approach me and we’d fall in love and we’d both be writers and we’d make writer love.

It didn’t matter that I was already in love, and with a writer. Things could always get better.

You already know how this ends: in near full disappointment.

After standing in line with fifty-billion fucking college kids watching them text and say Like and grab eachother’s asses we filed inside where I slipped away to the WOW Hall’s basement bar missing my chance at a free stuffed animal (free to the first 100 people).

It was so quiet down there the bartender had her back to me and was on her knees stocking the cooler. I cleared my throat, ordered a Sierra Nevada, and sat in the corner and read Dora.

I knew Lidia was upstairs signing books for all the, like, college kids and I tried to summon her downstairs with my mind. Cause down in the dark basement bar was where Lidia should be. And, you know if it were twenty years ago it’s where she woulda been. But it wasn’t twenty years ago.

That was a long time ago.

Arizona

Terah Van Dusen6 Comments

Up at the house on the Winchuck River one night it was decided I’d be moving with Peggy to Arizona. We’d leave in two weeks. I told my Dad over the phone and he sounded a bit wounded but he assured me it would only be temporary until he and Lisa found a house. I’m not leaving you. You left me. Remember that, Dad I thought but didn’t say.

Peggy and I went down to the DHS office in Crescent City, met with a social worker named Pam, signed a couple papers and it was a done deal. There was no inspecting Peggy’s house, calling references, or privately interviewing me. You just looked at Peggy and knew she was the real deal. There was virtually nothing wrong with her. She was my perfect temporary guardian. She was my perfect permanent guardian but nobody wanted to go there yet. And I mean nobody. Not Peggy nor me. They talked like it would just be for the school year, but Arizona was hundreds if not thousands of miles away and as soon as we headed south I knew, I just knew the miles were coming between me and my old life. And a good part of me was really, really happy about that. The other part tried to remember landmarks for my runaway escape. Ch-yeah, ’cause that had gone so well the first time..

After a couple days of driving we ended up in Arizona. Peggy recalls what I said when we got there: “Where’s the water? No, seriously, where’s the water?” I found out the water came from faucets and deep underground, not pouring from the mountains like it did back home. We stopped off at an outlet mall outside of Phoenix and Peggy bought me some Levi’s, t-shirts, and a couple of new bras. We drove for another five hours south and finally ended up in what looked like the middle of nowhere. You could look in every direction, north, east, south, west but there was nothing there, just the horizon. We ended up in Sunsites, Arizona. Peggy owned a funny-looking little eggshell-colored house on Geneva Street. Geneva Street had a ton of funny-looking little eggshell-colored houses that Peggy called “stucco”. Stucco was this certain texture the paint had. The houses were boxy and had red-tiled roofs. Don’t get me wrong, they were nice.

School would start in three days. I would be taking the school bus to another town (El-fucking-Frida), where the high school was. Sunsites was initially supposed to be a retirement-only community but they ultimately couldn’t afford to keep the young folk out so it was ninety-percent retirement and ten-percent everything else. There was a ghost town a mile away. The nearest grocery store was thirty miles north. There was no mayor. There was a golf course which was a big deal. Tombstone was over a hill to the west and Mexico was forty minutes south.

You Can’t Tame A Wild Thing

Terah Van Dusen4 Comments

To the east is wild. But to the west is even wilder. Always.
Nothing is more wild than the ocean, to me.
When I was young I had a birthday party at the beach and the sun went down and the tide came in and we while we all ran around the bon fire, the waves crashed in and took with it all of the birthday presents the kids had brought. Nice gifts, from their parents. I remember Tommy’s mom who was a beautician gave me a little fancy bag full of three or four bottles of nail polish. Blue and green and purple cause that’s what was in.
I remember I’d finally gotten that certain jacket I’d wanted–but the big bon fire was so hot in the sand and we were all running around, caught between kids and teenagers and I didn’t put the jacket on I just wore my striped long sleeve shirt. Us kids played back then. 
A boy who thought he was my boyfriend (I guess I was leading him on) took me to a big log drift wood and kissed me on the lips.
Happy Birthday.
No thanks.
Cara and I wrestled in the waves and got so rowdy that I ripped her earring out–or she ripped mine out, I cannot recall. Someone bled and we laughed.

~~~

Someday I’ll really be out there. I’ll travel as far out into the wild ocean as my birthday presents did that year. It’ll be me and the insane stark white and teal waves and the whales and the dolphins and the diamonds on the water–all the diamonds–and the sunset and west, west and more west.
It’ll be me and my memories.
I’ll let them go out there. I’ll free them.
One by one I’ll drop them over the edge like excess baggage that my ship can no longer stand to carry.
My liberated soul the only anchor I’ll need.
Onward toward the rest of my life as a woman. Onward to my Womanhood, letting go, knowing that dry land and home awaits me. Solid land to the east. My home awaits me. Letting go into the ocean. Being in the wild. Letting go of the weight, the abuse the neglect like wet clothing like lead like city like smog like ego like pride like fear.
I’ll let let it go alright. Out in the waves.
But not until I finish this flipping book.
I need an ending to my story.
And then
I will go
and let go
for good.

Snakes and Blood and Sticks and Chicks and Grandmothers

Terah Van Dusen9 Comments

Last scene:

Peggy will tell you to this day that when I used to get myself in trouble she would give me two options: yard work or restriction and that I always chose the yard work.

So I’m watering roses and it’s hot and I’m drinking water out of the hose and I’m right by the front door and I’m sipping from a silver stream of water when I see a twig of a snake on the porch.

Story of my life. Though usually, they were bigger. Every now and then you saw a small one.

The damn thing has one rattle. One. Rattle.

So I drop the hose underneath the roses and remembering how frantic I was at six when I yelled SNAKE! RATTLER! into the cabin and knowing I’m ten years older now, I calmly walk around the house, through the backdoor, and into Peggy’s art studio where she is painting. I explain about the little snake.

At this point, we were always calling over boys from my school, friends of mine, to do things for us. Things like this. Things like this and moving wood piles and things like that. Man things. We didn’t have them do it cause we couldn’t do these things our self–it’s because it was more fun this way. Oops.

So we called one of the Larson twins. John I think and John, using the ol’ shovel technique pops the baby rattlers head off in one clean shot and I still can’t get over the thing having just, one, rattle.

There’s talk about oh baby rattlers are actually more dangerous cause they don’t know when to stop pumping venom and Peggy thanks John Larson and I never see a rattler again.

And I never. See a rattler. Again.

Snakes and Blood and Sticks

Terah Van Dusen4 Comments

You think my snake stories are over? Not just yet:

Arizona.

The mountains in California have rattlers but in Arizona the rattlers are in the mountains and down low and everywhere in between.

At my high school boyfriend Woody’s place we went looking for rattlers just for fun, cause it was like fishing in a stocked pond–they were always there.

And this was sad, but, they always got shot. We didn’t know any different. We didn’t know any environmentalists. Even my dad the Hare Krishna had that rattler under our porch killed; that’s just the way it was with rattlers [to us].

The fattest, longest one we killed just off the gravel driveway under a yucca and that big boy didn’t want to die you could see it in his eyes. But Woody had a younger brother and that’s how he (it wasn’t my idea) justified it. That and we were three towns from a hospital so we didn’t want anyone gettin bit.

We found a rattler in the tool shed and shot him too. Not me. Woody.

One night after dark I was heading over to his place for dinner and I parked my car and skipped up to the porch to ring the doorbell. Along the way I stepped over a long, thick stick and I thought that stick must be something Woody’s little brother picked up in the wash and then the motion light kicked on, I rang the doorbell, looked back at the stick and saw that it had the most intricate diamond-shaped pattern–it was a rattler.

Woody’s mother opened the door, I pointed at it, she screamed and the snake recoiled into the, by this time familiar to me, cow patty position.

Woody’s mother snatched a garden shovel out of thin air I guess and she pinned that giant snake to the gravel beneath it.

Someone handed her a rifle and she handed me the handle of the shovel, said Terah for god’s sake keep that thing pinned down.

She hefted the rifle up to her shoulder–closed one eye and met her target.

Oh I can’t do it she said and handed the rifle to Woody.

Agh I don’t want to do this I squealed and Woody’s mother rolled her eyes and grabbed the shovel keeping the snake pinned as Woody blew through the thing’s body in one clean shot.

I stood to the side shaking.

Snakes and Blood

Terah Van Dusen6 Comments

Five years later my dad and I find ourselves in the Siskiyou wilderness on a mini backpacking trip with a man named Rick who claimed to be our cousin (boy I hoped not) and his girlfriend whom I cannot recall the name of now, our goat Sugar, my first or second or third period, but I still didn’t know what the hell was going on, some beans, saltines, swimsuits and for the couple–a cardboard jar of rolling tobacco, which Sugar later ate, which didn’t end up well for anyone as you can imagine.

We were oh, two miles down the trail and six miles from where we were going. We each have our backpacks and my dad has a sauce pan tied to his. Sugar has a rope leash but its dragging on the ground cause he stays with us anyway.

I’m on my period so I’m not talking just sad just teenage just in between whimsical-childhood and dependent-on-everything-adulthood. There wasn’t too much of an in between for me (childhoodadulthood) but if there was–this was it. I still looked to my father for entertainment. I was at the age just before I would be stealing cigarettes from Rick and whatsherface. I’d tried cigarettes but not enough that I owned them yet. You know what I mean. That smallnarrowstage.

We were walking along over a strawberry-blond single-track trail of serpentine soil and I’m admiring the irises because its summer time again and I think I hear the creek and I hope it’s the creek and I’m so bloated and I’m going to secretly wash my crotch and thighs in the creek in a corner under a fallen log or behind a boulder. I’m going to go underwater and open my eyes cause that’s my favorite thing to do and oh I’m going to be clean and fresh.

I see my Dad smack himself in the face. Now granted my dad sometimes did funny things–smacking himself on the face wasn’t exactly one of them. Whack. He did it again.

“Bees!!!” He yells from the front of the line.

I too feel a small flying creature swoosh past my face, my ear, and we all start runnin’.

Run run run down the trail–the goat too.

Run run run until we finally outrun the bees and the two smokers are red in the face and panting.

Just as we stopped however Sugar leapt about a foot into the air on all fours–spooked by something just like a human would be–wide goat eyes and then we heard it: the steady movement of a rattle tail.

Run!!! Someone yells and we all start runnin’ again, Sugar in the lead.

Around a bend or two and we’re sure we’ve outrun the bees and the snake and we stumble into a large opening in the forest and see about four naked hippies sitting around a fire.

Bees, rattlers and now this?

My dad perks up as he naturally does with new people, especially hippies, and he gives them his warm smile which gets us an invite into the hippie circle.

We all sit down to catch our breath and I bleed my period blood onto a makeshift leaf pad in my shorts, having outrun a hundred bees and a rattlesnake but not my womanhood.

Snakes

Terah Van Dusen7 Comments

I’ve seen long fat ones and I’ve seen little ones.

Me and Jessica Philpott on the absolute hottest day of the summer–it feels like that in my memory anyway–a not-a-cloud-in-the-sky Rock Creek day. A boulders-are-so-hot-you-actually-need-shoes kind of day.

Jessica and me sitting in my dad’s little red Sprint–one of our early, decent cars–listening to Great White or Mike and the Mechanics or Tom Petty. I won’t back down. I stand my ground. Jessica said you should ask your dad if you can spend the night. (Despite my dad being an unconventional parent, he still always, up until my last day with him and Lisa on A street, insisted that I ask permission and that he knows where I am and who I’m with). I sang Okay and leapt out of the passenger’s seat (Jessica was the kind of friend who would get the front seat in my daddy’s car).

To paint a picture–the Sprint was parked in the dirt yard right in front of our cabin nearly in the garden. It wasn’t always parked there, and I don’t know what it was doing there on that day, maybe we’d been unloading seaweed from the trunk and dumping it in the garden like we sometimes did.

Anyways, so I jumped out of the car and with Jessica still in the passenger’s seat ran/skip/hopped onto the front porch which was raised up about four inches from the ground and as soon as my leading foot, my right foot landed I heard a thick rattle. I’d heard enough warnings in my life to know what it was and it was true boy howdy when I looked down right there under the porch was a fat silver rattler.

“Daddd!!” I hollered through the open cabin door, “Rattler!!”

I don’t know if my left foot even made it to the porch cause as soon as I saw that snake it was leading the way right back to that little red Sprint.

Snake! Rattler! I yelled to Jessica. Quick, on top of the car!

Sitting on the hood of the little red Sprint I said “Ohh noo I hope my dad doesn’t come out the front door!”

But my pa was quicker than that. He’d somehow detected sincerity in my voice as I’d hollered despite the many times I’d played jokes and cried wolf.

He leapt out the window of the cabin into the goose coop and hollered to us that he was going to get Fabian’s gun.

Jess and I looked at each other with horror, we hadn’t intended to get anything killed.

My dad returned with Fabian and his gun and more of the neighborhood of course.

My dad didn’t kill things. And if anyone was gonna kill anything with Fabian’s gun it was going to be Fabian. Of course.

The boys–John and Butch were so excited they were jumping up and down. Jess and I remained in our front row seats on the hood of the car.

The boys and men slowly approached the rattler under the porch.

I made a secret plea that the snake had found itself elsewhere.

The loud ramble of its rattler as the boys and men tip-toed near it told me it hadn’t.

Without a countdown or a warning Fabian fired his rifle and got the fat boy on his first shot.

Then he took the ol’ boy home and the William’s ate him for dinner.