How To Read online

  Francesca Lia Block

  How to (Un)cage a Girl

  for the girls

  Contents

  Part 1: Years at the Asylum

  Thirteen: The Little Oven

  Fourteen: Europa

  Fifteen: The Canyon

  Popular Girl

  Sixteen: First time

  Seventeen: War

  Eighteen: Monster

  Nineteen: The Asylum

  A Myth of Love for Girls

  Part 2: In the Lair of the Toxic Blonde

  Lost in Los Angeles

  Toxic Blonde

  Media Queenz

  Duty: For Sofia

  Vampire in the City of Lost

  L.A. Bacchantes

  People’s Park (Escape to the North)

  Like Pretty

  My Love

  Part 3: Love Poems for Girls

  For the Girls

  Pain is Like an Onion

  Ornate

  Teenage Fairy: For M

  The Little Mermaid: For Ama

  Neptune’s Daughter

  Miniature Mouse

  For Valentina

  Valentina Screama

  As I Remember it: For Lily

  For Karen: Whose Last Name I can’t Recall

  Joanna: Wood Thorn Fairy

  Selene: The dress with the Cigarette Burns

  How to Become a Priestess

  Gretel Finds her Way

  Collage

  Miranda

  Fairy Sisters: For Sukha

  Happi Happi Joy Joy and Sad in Hawaii

  Yxta

  Titania

  The Face

  Valentine

  The Three Graces

  A Half Imagined History: For O

  Forty-five Thoughts for My Daughter and My Virtual Daughters

  How to (Un)cage a Girl

  About the Author

  Other Books by Francesca Lia Block

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PART 1

  years at the asylum

  thirteen: the little oven

  i thought my teacher was a nazi

  with hair slicked to the side

  short and germanic

  he lectured about hitler

  spittle

  in his voice

  boys with greasy scalps

  drew cartoons of me

  with a witch’s nose

  my body was so thin

  i had chopped off

  my pretty brown hair

  my skin charred and blistered

  red bumps broke out

  there was blood between my legs

  is this junior high school?

  hell?

  or somewhere worse?

  fourteen: europa

  in florence i saw the most beautiful

  man in the world

  standing by the botticelli

  birth of venus

  as if the painting had split open to deliver him

  he even smiled at me

  white teeth golden cheekbones

  on the top of the hill was david

  huge marble perfection

  exposing his penis to me alone

  can you imagine in america

  god made flesh

  but without the blood or loincloth?

  by the trevi fountain in rome

  pan himself made an appearance

  curls and a gap between his teeth

  when he grinned at me

  a hairy, cloven mystery

  lurking

  in his jeans

  the hotel overlooked a square

  the walls were thick and ghost

  white with moonlight

  shadows streaked the room

  i woke to hear my father growling to my mother

  “get onto me”

  and saw their bodies moving in the bed

  beside my tiny single

  cot

  that was when i too turned to stone

  my mouth sealed shut

  they packed me up and took me off to greece

  to introduce me to some marble goddesses

  without pubic hair

  as if that might make me feel better

  my parents with good intentions

  rolled their new caryatid onto the white sands

  of the beach

  a million perilous pulverized

  petals of pearl

  the water was such a sheer blue

  you could see right through it

  to the wavy patterns on the ocean floor

  like aphrodite’s hair

  i knew i should be grateful for this opportunity

  to see the birthplace of the goddess

  but how could i ever speak of it?

  the greek boys came to play with me

  they frolicked around

  brown and curly full of life

  when night fell and the ouzo glasses

  lit up like lanterns in the taverna

  my mother said, “kiss him, darling, it’s easy

  so natural”

  and i thought to myself, not with lips of stone

  dear mother

  not with lips of stone

  fifteen: the canyon

  steamy hot night in the eucalyptus rainwater-forged

  canyon my friend and i discovered a ruined house

  the wildflowers growing over the foundation and a

  silver ring with a king a queen a snake and a rose

  then as we walked home a boy on a motorcycle

  zoomed to a halt leonine face tall rambling body

  somehow the next thing i remember he was sliding

  his hands up and down my legs i hadn’t shaved and

  was prickly but he didn’t seem to mind later we

  kissed in my friend’s shag-carpeted bedroom with

  the water bed and beanbag chairs his hands moved

  higher i wonder where the parents were i know a

  few months later my mom dropped me off at his

  apartment in west hollywood his mother was gone i

  imagined she was very beautiful young and blond

  maybe in the sex industry no father and i was

  wearing tight jeans and a floral crepe blouse with

  fake pearl buttons and when he kissed me he said i

  tasted like garlic from the bagels i’d eaten with my

  parents at brunch this he minded though he did let

  me touch his penis and then i left that is all i

  remember though i think once in a disco parking lot

  i saw him again but nothing happened why do i

  remember only certain details and really the main

  question is where was my mother?

  popular girl

  who are you?

  (you are not like me)

  where do you come from?

  who are your parents?

  what does your mother look like?

  and your father—how does he make money?

  to pay for those jeans? those shoes?

  and what about your hair

  it is all about the hair

  you cannot be one without good hair

  with frizz or split ends

  what kind of shampoo do you use?

  what does your hair smell like?

  it is long and shines

  is there a rule about pimples?

  you never have pimples

  why not?

  are your hormones different?

  are you an alien?

  what are you going to be when you grow up?

  are you still going to be beautiful

  with good hair?

  even when you die?

  are you still going to be mean?


  are you going to be a beautician, wife or realtor?

  cosmo cover girl? queen? genius?

  will you get married and divorced?

  will you have popular daughters just like you?

  and why are you mean?

  why does mean = popular?

  you know about sex, too

  how do you know so much about sex?

  i can see it in the way you move

  who taught you?

  did your mother teach you?

  just by being sexy?

  is it an innate thing?

  what do you think about

  alone in your bed at night

  are you ever alone?

  or do boys come in throngs through your window

  popular boys with good hair and an innate

  knowledge of fucking

  what is your bed like?

  do you have lots of stuffed toys

  and shiny throw pillows?

  do you write poetry in your diary?

  is it anything

  (like mine?)

  are you popular because you are

  a heightened version of the norm?

  if that is the case and high school

  was an insane asylum

  who would rule?

  you

  (or me?)

  sixteen: first time

  my boyfriend took me to a party after hiking

  i heard someone say, “she’s got that outdoorsy look”

  i was dirty

  and had on hiking boots that he had waterproofed

  so the pretty soft suede turned dark and dull

  there was a beautiful blond girl

  dressed for a party because she knew she was going

  to a party

  and not on a hike

  my boyfriend said good night and put me in the car

  then he went back in for some reason

  i knew with a woman’s knowing

  though i was a girl

  that he was going to try to get a phone number

  he had photos of girls all over his desktop

  a collage of images

  my boyfriend and i hadn’t fucked yet

  i was his younger virgin

  part of his collage

  when we finally did it

  after a dinner of rare meat

  at a fancy restaurant

  the flesh stuck in my belly

  i wore a strapless flowered sundress

  we went to his gay friend’s home

  and my boyfriend sniffed some amyl nitrite

  when he came

  he noticed a tiny hair growing near my nipple

  “you better do something about that,” he said

  i was so young

  too naive even

  for tweezers

  but not for shame, of course

  that comes early

  after, i paraded in front of my friends

  in a green knit dress and high-heeled shoes

  i’m a woman now

  my boyfriend and i broke up a few weeks later

  goal achieved

  i had one night of grief

  but the virgins, my friends, were sadder

  i realized he had been

  part of my collage too

  seventeen: war

  my girlfriends and i put naked barbies

  in the strawberry jell-o

  ken had a mohawk, kilt, tiny earring and eyeliner

  we girls danced in the living room

  and had a cake fight

  there were no boys by that time

  just us all in shiny pink

  waiting for something to happen

  not expecting it to be anorexia or cancer or never

  seeing one another again

  or war

  we were like those naked plastic dolls

  swimming in a soft sweet rosy sea

  while ken waited outside

  untouchable

  hoping no one would mistake him for g.i. joe

  eighteen: monster

  just when i thought i had escaped

  the hatred of my body

  my dad told me he had cancer

  after, i went running

  down the street

  my face bloated red with tears

  the boys screamed ugly from the car

  when they saw me

  i never understood

  i had made my father’s disease

  into my body

  ugly

  even after his death

  she stayed with me like a gargoyle

  only now have i begun to slay her

  with the second corrective plastic surgery

  poetry yoga therapy

  glycolic peels

  expensive haircuts and supplements

  psychics, massage and shoes

  that clinging figure

  with the horns and forked tongue

  i forgive her

  she was trying to save me

  in her way

  make his disease something

  i could point to

  see, here it is

  help me

  kill it

  nineteen: the asylum

  when she thought of it she didn’t think

  of the mental hospital that the city was known for

  she thought of cresting the hill in the vw bug

  falling into a valley of twinkle lights

  she thought of beaches

  fields of strawberries fragrant in the heat

  as jam as cakes baking

  surfer boys with sun-bleached curls

  and sons-of-dentists teeth

  she was one of five l.a. girls

  on their way to a party

  in tight striped pink tees and tighter jeans

  drunk on keg beer

  dancing to the go-go’s

  making out with the boys

  in their parents’ strange, clean,

  bleached-sheet bedrooms

  weak-limbed weak-willed with lust

  thinking it was love

  only later

  when the boys didn’t call

  were hospitalized for cocaine

  or married the beautiful spanish sisters of the boys

  she went to college with

  when she baked her skin in the sun until it blistered

  and bled

  and her father told her he had cancer in his bones

  was she vaguely aware

  of the asylum

  a myth of love for girls

  when the father died

  parts of his body were scattered

  to the four corners

  his eyes went north

  his hands went east and west

  his feet went south

  the daughter spent twenty years searching

  for the parts of him

  she found a man who had her father’s eyes and saw

  her the way her father never had

  she found a man who had her father’s right hand

  to hold

  her the way her father never could

  she found a man who had her father’s left hand

  to paint

  her the way her father never did

  she found a man who had her father’s feet

  she stood on top of this man’s feet

  as she had stood on her father’s feet

  when she was a little girl

  but not after that

  and she and the man danced this way

  the girl loved all the men equally

  and she was no longer lonely

  but her heart was still broken

  into four pieces

  so she wept and wept and the men

  bewildered by her tears

  drifted away

  but after some time her tears mixed with the earth

  and became clay

  and she formed the clay into a man

  who was not any part of her father

  when she
kissed his mouth he came to life

  and together they roamed the four corners

  of the earth

  both whole and alive

  and in the sky were birds

  and underfoot was grass

  and to the east rose the sun

  and to the west

  came the moon

  PART 2

  in the lair of the toxic blonde