Why do I write, by SusanJillParker?

Suffice to say that unless I took myself to school, with my mother seemingly not caring if I was dead or alive and with my half-brothers considering me nothing more than a nuisance, I missed a lot of school. Without ever seeing a dentist or a doctor, until I was either reported by the school nurse or rushed to the hospital by ambulance, I didn't see a doctor or a dentist until I paid for a medical visit myself once working. I'm lucky to still have all of my teeth in my head. With me growing up without any medical care whatsoever, I'm lucky I survived my childhood. I'm lucky I didn't die from the flu, a whooping cough, or a concussion. Obviously, I had good genes.

* * * * *

Along with a steady diet of milk, Cocoa Puff and/or Cocoa Krispy cereal, Pop Tarts, and Cheese Doodles, I was always left alone with my imagination and my thoughts. With all of us eating at different times of the day, around the clock, we ate mostly fast foods, TV dinners, mac and cheese, toast, Eggo waffles, frozen pizza, and apples and bananas. Just as there wasn't a lot of cooking going on in my house, there wasn't a lot of food either.

With everyone coming and going, mostly going, everything was hit or miss, mostly miss. Everyone ate out but with me being stuck at home and not having any money to buy what I wanted or needed, I had to make do whatever I could find to eat. Sometimes one of my half-brothers would think of me and bring me home something to eat. There was never any food until the end of the week when my half-brothers got paid and would fill the refrigerator with beer and everything else. Sometimes they threw a few dollars at me for running them an errand or doing them a favor.

Unlike all of the other kids in the neighborhood, there were no back-to-school or Easter outfits. With my mother and half-brothers never home and with me caring for myself, I was the poor kid that all the kids called names. I was the poor kid that the mothers from the neighborhood would leave a package of hand-me-down clothes or food for me at our door. Most times, until I entered high school and became more self-conscious of how I looked because of jealous girls and interested boys, I wore my half-brothers old clothes. For the longest time, wearing jeans, tee shirts, and sweatshirts instead of skirts, blouses, and dresses, I dressed more like a boy than I did a girl. With my long, blonde hair pinned back and tucked beneath a baseball cap, most people thought that I was a boy until I started growing breasts.

It would be easier for me to remember how many birthday parties, Thanksgiving dinners, and Christmas celebrations I had than I didn't have. I never had a birthday party until my girlfriend game me a surprise birthday party when I turned 21. Not knowing what to do and how to act, instead of acting surprised, I cried. Unable to face everyone who was there for me, embarrassed by the attention and sad that this was my first birthday party, I stayed out in the hall until my girlfriend coaxed me inside.

One year, with one of my half-brothers thinking that he was doing a good thing, he came home drunk with a frozen turkey on Thanksgiving morning. Unable to cook a frozen bird, with all the stores closed, my mother still in bed, and nothing else to eat, we had pancakes. It's odd that I remember having pancakes with my half-brothers while watching football as a good memory instead of a Thanksgiving nightmare. It's odd that I remember my mother sleeping being a good memory instead of her being there with her poisonous attitude and combative disposition always ready to start trouble.

In the eighteen years that I lived there, I remember sitting at a table for two Thanksgiving dinners with my mom and half-brothers before everyone started fighting and leaving and I was left sitting at the table alone. With them all drunk every holiday, they were no fun to be around anyway. When I was older, I cooked my own Thanksgiving Day dinner but, with them out all night the day before, no one came home to eat it. Spending the day watching TV, the Macy's Day parade and football games afterward, I was alone and had a better Thanksgiving dinner with myself than I ever could have with any of them.

* * * * *

Most Christmases, we didn't even have a tree or if we did have one it was an afterthought and one of my half-brothers would lug home a Charlie Brown Christmas tree that he bought at discount the day before Christmas. I remember him being so happy that he bought it for cheap instead of paying full price like all the other suckers. Only, while all the other suckers were having a good Christmas, my mother and brothers were drunk and having sex with one another in her bedroom. Then, later, with my Mom celebrating Christmas with some, new "special boyfriend," and my half-brothers God knows where and doing God knows what, Christmas was just another day. With nothing to look forward to, I stayed to myself while writing my poetry.

Instead of receiving a gift at Christmas, I had a better chance of getting a gift from one of my half-brothers during the year. When one of my half-brothers used his five finger discount and stole something from a downtown, department store or when something supposedly fell off of a truck, they gave me what they didn't want or thought that I might like. Stolen merchandise was part of our lives. We always had boxes of unopened items all throughout the house that my half-brothers routinely sold out of their car trunks to people in the neighborhood. Toasters, coffeemakers, CD's, CD players, TV's, vacuum cleaners, irons, blenders, toaster ovens, microwaves, and stereos, crowded our small apartment.

An innocent victim, I just lived there. As if I was Sergeant Schultz on Hogan's Heroes, I knew nothing and wanted to keep it that way. It was as if we had our own black market in our kitchen, bedrooms, and living room. With this their thing, minding my own business and saying nothing to no one about anything, I wasn't party to any of that. Being that we only lived in four, small rooms, we had stolen merchandise nearly piled to the ceiling.

With my mother Hungarian and Italian, an odd combination, she came here as a baby after the war. Back then, when she was first married and before any of us were born, she was tall and strikingly beautiful. In love and happily married, it was when her husband died, the details of that were sketchy and never told to me, that she did whatever she did to survive, mostly stripping and prostitution. All of our fathers were English and Irish or English and Italian. In the vein of strongmen competitors, my half-brothers were all tall, big bodied strong, Hungarian men and were big eaters. Watching them feed was like watching wild animals eating. With their elbows out, their heads bent over their food, and with all of them chewing loudly, I knew enough to stay away from the table whenever they were eating.

A chubby kid because of all the junk food I ate, I didn't develop my hot, bikini body until I was in my early twenties. It was when I started shooting 100 baskets, three times a day, every day in the blistering, hot sun that the pounds literally disappeared to leave me with a toned, shapely figure. Of course, it helped that I stopped eating junk food and was blessed with big breasts. Enamored with them, I loved my big tits. Once I left home at 18, after my four half-brothers raped me, long story, it was then that I was finally able to put my troubled past behind me and make it on my own.

* * * * *

While watching TV, losing myself in the program and becoming one of the fictional characters, I used to imagine that I'd be rich but not famous. Always wanting to hide, always feeling self-consciously embarrassed over one thing or another, feeling so bad about myself that I never thought of myself as being beautiful, I never imagined myself being famous only rich. Never wanting the aggravation and lack of privacy that comes with celebrity, I always wanted to be rich. I'd much rather have fortune than fame. I imagined everyday being Christmas.

Truth be told, I imagined my life being much like a female version of Howard Hughes living alone on the top floor of the Desert Hotel in Vegas albeit without the Kleenex boxes for slippers. Later in life I imagined my life being much like a female version of Sean Connery in Finding Forrester when he lived on the top floor of a rundown house in a ghetto. Ultimately, in the way of Marlena Dietrich, "wanting to be left alone," I'd rather hide myself behind my mansion's walls while writing, writing, and writing. If only I were rich, while the rest of the world passed me by and while knowing that I could buy anything any time, all I had to do was to pick up the phone and order it.

"Wow! How cool is that having the whole world at my fingertips while holding a credit card with an unlimited balance?"

Only that dream of being rich never happened for me. Instead, I grew up as emotionally troubled as I was suffering poor. The six of us, my four half-brothers, my mother, and me, lived in a small, rundown, four room apartment with one bathroom and no shower or bathtub. With none of us having any privacy, we washed in the kitchen sink or showered in the gym or the public bathhouse. Filled with pent-up rage controlling my thoughts, I remember always being angry. When I wasn't angry, I remember always being sad. If I wasn't yelling and screaming at someone, I was crying. Never do I ever remember being happy. Then, with my half-brothers leaving one by one and my mother never home, I was always alone.

Just needing a place to flop at night, whenever they came home, my half-brothers didn't give a care what the place looked like. With clothes strewn everywhere, seemingly they didn't notice the dirt or the filth. As long as they bought me a washer and a dryer, which they stole, and paid me to do it, I did all of their dirty laundry. It was when I found my first roach and my first mouse that I went on a cleaning and extermination binge. Something my mother should have been doing, but never did.

A total mess, the place was littered with empty beer and vodka bottles, trash and garbage. With us not having a dishwasher, other than me, I can't remember ever having a clean sink. The sink was always full of dirty dishes, cups, glasses, and silverware. Embarrassed by the place and by my mother and half-brothers, I never brought any of my friends home. With roach and mice traps set all over the place, every time I killed a bug or a mouse, I'd make a little tombstone, give the creature a name, and tape it to my bedroom wall. It wasn't very long before I had a virtual cemetery of little tombstones with names such as Mickey, Minnie, Mighty, Tom, Jerry, Jiminy, Raid, Rocky, and Mad Max.

Then, one day, out of the corner of my eye, seemingly as big as a small mouse and big enough to create a shadow, I spotted Roachzilla. He was poised at the very top of my window. Armed with my can of hairspray, somehow he knew I was out to kill him. With my arm outstretch and taking aim with a steady stream of Aqua Net hairspray, he jumped from the window and flew at my head.

"Fuck! I didn't know cockroaches could fly."

I sprayed so much hairspray at this thing that there was a toxic cloud of Ethanol, Butanol, and Dimethyl in my room. Until the toxic cloud dissipated, I couldn't see to find him. I feared that he wasn't dead. I feared that somehow I missed him and somehow he escaped to materialize again when I'm sleeping. Maybe he's a she, a pregnant female who will lay her eggs in my mouth while I was snoring. Only, there he was on my bed as if a prehistoric relic frozen in time. I grabbed the bedpan and flushed him down the toilet twice to make sure he was gone. I thought of showing my step-brothers, but they'd not only laugh at me but also they'd bring home another bug even bigger and put it in my room to terrorize me.

* * * * *

An inner city kid, my school was the streets of Boston and my education were all the experiences that I endured and somehow survived. Where most kids never strayed from their neighborhood, always outgoing, funny, and friendly albeit still very angry, I had friends everywhere. Charlestown, South Boston, Dorchester, Roxbury, the South End, East Boston, and the North End where I lived, I walked everywhere. I was the good kid but scratch the surface, always ready for a fight, I was a troubled kid.

A tall, blonde woman living within an Italian neighborhood, I stuck out like a sore thumb. With my long, blonde hair, big blue eyes, and D cup breasts, I was the pretty woman unlike any other woman in my neighborhood. Where most women were short with dark hair and dark eyes, everyone thought that I was Scandinavian instead of Hungarian. Then, whenever I corrected them, they'd call me Zsa Zsa. Zsa Zsa was my nickname and was what I was known by during the years that I lived there.

I was the popular woman that all the other women wanted to befriend and all the men wanted to kiss, feel, and fuck. Seemingly, even though there were some who were jealous of me and others who lusted over me, even with my temper sometimes getting the better of me, I was still well liked. Whenever I ventured out whether to buy fruits, vegetables, or fish at the market, meat from the butcher, or groceries from our neighborhood store, I was greeted as if I was a queen.

"Ah, buongiorno, Signorina. There she is, my Hungarian princess. Che bella! There's my pretty Zsa Zsa. Look how beautiful she is. Mama Mia. I'm going to fix you up with my son. You'll have lots of beautiful bambinos," the shopkeepers would say the same things to me every time he saw me.

Not realizing it back then because of my low self-esteem, just as I still am now, if I say so myself, I was good looking, an understatement. I was hot. With Boston being so snooty and proper, and seemingly with everyone having a college degree, despite my lack of education, my good looks and hot body always opened a door that would otherwise remain closed to me. While thinking that I was going to be someone special, in reality but unbeknownst to everyone but me, I was a nothing and a no one, especially after dropping out of high school at sixteen.

Literally and figuratively, with no one giving me a good example on how to live my life, I was a dope for giving up on myself so soon in life. On a path to nowhere, the same as my mother, like mother like daughter, I was on my way to a life of crime, alcoholism, drugs, whoring, and prison. If I hadn't turned my life around, no doubt, just like my mother, I would have become a stripper and/or a hooker. Imprisoned for some dumb crime or dead from an overdose, I count my blessing every day for discovering poetry, television, and the movies.

My mother told everyone that she was a beauty queen and an ex-model. Because she was tall, stunning, shapely, and sexy, many believed her. Only, she was no beauty queen. She was never a model. The only thing she did was to spin around a pole while nearly naked before giving her "special boyfriends" lap dances and more.

* * * * *

Only resisting the stereotype, not wanting to be like my mother, I prayed to God for help. It took me to fall to my knees not to suck cock but to pray for my salvation and to begin my life anew. Turning my life around at twenty-one-years-old, the first in my family to earn a high school diploma, I earned my GED, general equivalency diploma, by walking in and taking the test. Where most test takers study for the exam and even pay to take a course with an instructor to pass the exam, I didn't. I just took a seat, took the test, and received one of the highest scores ever received.

With my big brain, I should have stayed in school. With my big brain, I should have gone to college. With my big brain, I should have realized my dream of being rich. Being that I had very high College Board scores in the tenth and eleventh grades, had I graduated high school with my class, I probably would have earned a scholarship. Yet, a product of my environment and with all of the incestuous, sexual abuse that I suffered so early in my life, with only one year of high school to finish, I dropped out of school. Hating school, hating my teachers, hating my classmates, hating my mother, my half-brothers, and everyone, my emotional turmoil overwhelmed me and the only place I felt safe was out on the streets with my friends or at home alone watching TV or writing my poetry.

If we had formed a gang back then, I would have been a gang member and a gangbanger. Definitely, I would have been in prison or dead. Only, Caucasian kids, especially girls, didn't form gangs in Boston. I can't even imagine a white girl gang. Sure there were lots of black, Hispanic, and Asian gangs in Dorchester, Roxbury, Charlestown, South Boston, and Chinatown, but not in Boston proper, two miles from Beacon Hill and Back Bay where I lived. Fortunately for me, I chose the former over the later and stayed home to watch TV and write poetry. Otherwise I'd be serving time for some stupid crime that some lowlife convinced me to commit.

Instead of continuing to hang out with my friends, drinking, taking drugs, and staying out late, I took an inventory of myself. I reevaluated my existence and I changed my miserable life for the better. Fortunately for me, even though I drank to an excess, I never took drugs. Having lost too many friends from overdoses, I saw the danger of taking drugs early. Besides, I was fucked up enough from my mother, my half-brothers, and from childhood without having to take some drug to fuck me up even more.

With my good looks and hot body, I got a job on Newbury Street, Boston's version of Rodeo Drive. I worked as a full-charge bookkeeper for a furrier. He was always hitting on me and he finally gave me a fur coat after I agree to have sex with him. Always admiring the coats, I never had a fur. Every time he had a customer, because I was so tall and so shapely thin, he'd call me to model the fur. These short, obese woman actually thought that a mink, a beaver, and/or a fox would look as good on them as it did on me. His wife worked there too and she knew that her husband was cheating on her with any woman with a mouth, tits, and a pussy but she didn't care so long as he continued making and giving her lots of money.

I worked there for several years until he went out of business. The times were changing and no one was buying fur anymore. Yet, because I was already working on Newbury Street, a woman who owned a modeling agency hired me to do her books. Good looking enough to be one of her models, I wasn't interested in having any more men ogle me. I just wanted to do her finances and go home. Even though I was constantly and continually invited to parties, I never attended. I finally left there after she made a pass at me.

"Eww! Gross. Sorry, but I'm not lesbian," I said pushing her away when she grabbed my breast and tried kissing me.

* * * * *

Instead of continuing to ruin my life, tired of being illiterately ignorant and needing to be enlightened, at 23-years-old, I enrolled in and attended night school at Northeastern University in Boston. What takes most students eight years to do with most never finishing and graduating, I earned my bachelor's degree in just five years. Just five years, I write that as if it was nothing but those five years were the most difficult years of my life. Taking four courses a semester and taking four semesters a year, there was a time that I was reading three books a day to keep up with my reading while writing, writing, and writing. My biggest compliment was making my Creative Writing professor cry when he read my final exam story.

"Wow! Seriously?"

As if I had written my own version of Angela's Ashes by Frank McCort, with his head down, his shoulders shaking, and his hand shading his eyes, I couldn't believe he was sitting there crying while reading my sad story. Sadly for me, it was supposed to be a creative writing class, a course called, Creative Autobiography, kind of oxymoronic in the title, but if only he knew there was nothing creative about my writing and about my story. No doubt shocked and pitying me, if only he knew that the story I passed in was all true. I wonder what his reaction would have been if he knew that not only had I lived through and endured all that I wrote but also that I survived my selfish, self-centered, and mean spirited mother and my sexually abusive half-brothers.