Saturday, October 1, 2011

What's It All About Alfie?

     I was an adventurous child, and a rebellious teenager, always "pushing the envelope."  I made life choices that got me into lots of trouble.  My parents were very busy with their lives and my older siblings had moved out on their own.  My mostly unsupervised life made it easy for me to slip and slide and sneak out and experiment.  I'm sure I wasn't the only teenager who did this...I'm just brave enough to admit it and write about it.
     My shuckin' and jivin' got me into into several disastrous situations, but none as dangerous as my relationship with Raymond, a man I met on a street corner in San Francisco.  What started out as "love and lust" ended up a nightmare. I hit bottom (literally!)  That terrible experience forced me, at the age of 20, to realize I was really, really lost and unhappy.  The following is an excerpt from the manuscript, "Dear Mom and Dad, Please Send Money."

   
"I crawled out of the bedroom and curled up in a corner of the living room. I felt my eyes and lips begin to swell as I lay on the cold, wooden floor. What am I doing with this man?  How could I stoop so low? 
     I’m unsure how long I lay there whimpering. But, when I heard his deep snoring, I crawled the couple of feet to the end table next to the couch. I reached for the phone and called my sister Veda who lived on the other side of town."

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