Author Archives: Larissa

And after that I would wake up alone at night, sit straight up in bed sweating, with his voice pounding all through me. All day I felt feverish and wounded.

It got kind of sick. I’ve never wanted anyone that much. But it won’t happen again, I tell myself. He’s as fucked up as I am. Can you imagine the two of us together? Fucking each other up.

But when I see him or hear his voice, even on the tape he gave me, I can’t think clearly. I try to understand how I could feel like this, even after a year. A psychic I went to said “soul mates.” Jacaranda once said “sex,” and then, when it didn’t stop–”voodoo.” But I think it’s what happens when he sings. He touches something–the dream place. The land before it was poisoned. There are untainted fish, unbroken birds, clouds without toxins. Dancing palm trees. Choruses of stargazers. His voice like a god with a lyre carrying us up from the dark tunnel to the edge of the meadow. To the edge of the water. To the edge of the moon.

I try to do that too, but I always feel strangled.

If I could be like Joni filling empty rooms with Wurlitzers and silver, baths of blue roses; scream like Patti with the horses rampaging through her veins; like Sinead with her orbit-blue eyes and perfect skull, bringing the elf-lover back from the dead and burying the demon-mother deeper down. I wish I could wear mercury like Polly Jean–landing on the stage from outer space, moving my hands, a cosmic marionette–and make you feel my voice reverberating deep in your pelvis, making you dance, circling your throat like a rosary of tear-shaped beads to press on the glands, to make you weep.

– From “Orpheus,” a short story by Francesca Lia Block

You can tell this woman is a witch, because her ankles are showing. (The brazen hussy! Only a witch would flaunt her ankles.) Even the cat is shocked… but the bat is like, “Hey now!” (Dracula, I presume?)

Ah, Victorians.

Even though I am the tiniest one I am pretty good. Dancing never seems hard to me. It is just what my body likes to do. Izzy says it’s because I am a very centered child. I think it is because Izzy and Anastasia always made me feel like I could be good at whatever I liked to do. Once we were on a bus, and there was a little girl my age with her pinch-mouthed grandmother. The little girl was happy and chattering about how when she grew up she wanted to be “an actress or a writer or a dancer or a violinist.” The grandmother said, “Oh no, you’re too old to be a dancer or a violinist. You would have had to have started years ago when you were little. You’ll never make it now. And you’re too short to be a dancer besides.” That got to me since I’m smaller than the girl was. “What about a writer or an actress?” she asked. You could tell she felt really bad. “It is almost impossible to be successful as a writer,” the grandmother said. “And you have to be very very pretty to make it as an actress these days.” I could see that the little girl had completely changed. She got quiet and smaller. You could just tell that her heart was broken. Izzy was fuming like a dragon. I knew she wanted to say something, but she didn’t want to create a scene. When they got off the bus Izzy smiled at the girl, her big, dazzling, toothy smile, and maybe it helped a little. I was lucky because whenever I mentioned anything I dreamed of doing I always got to see that smile.

- From “Dragons in Manhattan,” a short story by Francesca Lia Block

I bet somebody told the grandmother she would never achieve her dreams. Bitterness is born when individuals do not support the dreams of others.