Jasmine’s Story
By: Van Jazmin
Tags: Autobiography, RIP, Teenage Angst

I closed my eyes today and I thought back to my false reality.

I thought back to all those times we sat down behind the houses, just the 20 of us sitting there and getting fucked up while watching the sun come up. Sitting there bitching about the world we weren’t a part of — the real one — and talking about the fucked up shit no one sober could ever think of. And most of all, the incomplete answers we never asked for, but the ones we wished we knew. For a second I was happy.

I thought about tracking them down and doing it all over again. And I would. I really would. But then I opened my eyes and realized that those few blissful moments would lead to years of addiction: pain, drugs, and cluelessness straight down to the minutes of apathy. For a few seconds I was part of my fake world. I felt a shred of false happiness shine a smile on my face, and it ended with a breath of depression. I wanted it again…but hey, it’s only a thought.

I just got out of a psycho ward. I must’ve been 12 or 13 years old and I had got bored. It was a Friday night and I wasn’t going anywhere, I was locked up for two weeks, “Oh dear god, not two weeks!”. I know, but believe me, when you’re in a house that isn’t your own with people that aren’t your friends, and when you fall asleep to people screaming or wake up to your roommate slitting her wrists over the same reason everyone else is, life is hard. Life is like a dick when it gets hard, because it just wants to fuck you over more than before. Am I right? Life is hard, but the only thing that is certain is death will come. Anyway, it’s the longest two weeks you’ll ever spend. It has its kicks, though. I watched a girl stuff butter in her bra and eat it in the bathroom and there was this one other girl who was a slut…literally, she hit on every guy that walked through the same decrepit doors I have so many times before (I was always getting locked up).

So, this retarded kid “fell in love” with the skank. She wasn’t even a pretty skank, but she was one of the nasty fat, Downs Syndrome looking kind. They were the perfect match. And then she “broke his heart”, so he asked every girl out in the institution. To “win her back”, he wrote a rap for her (that’s not even about her). It went, “So I can eat spicy rice with ice and it will be nice with ice and rice, yo!”. Among other crazy shit, two guys were fucking in the bathroom and the staff opened the door on them and they both fell out ass-naked. And this other girl named Svetianna, she ran around naked freaking out, ’cause they can’t touch you when you’re naked. They put a blanket around her and shot her in the ass to calm her down and so I instigated by calling her “sweaty llama”. What a bitch.

Well, like I said, I had just got out. I snuck out of the house, well, didn’t really sneak out. My dad watched me leave. He was drunk at the time, but he swore he only had two beers. To save me a shitload of writing, on my walk away from home, I met a man named John whom I never would’ve thought would be my best friend. The first time I met him was on the railroad tracks next to Mc Donald’s when he was with Heather, Jess, Robb, and Hodge Podge (Danny Boy). After they scared the shit out of me, I found out they were really cool! I was sort of an outcast at the time, but so were they. Johnny Boy had a red mohawk, black and white checkered pants, big boots, and a green jacket with FUCK written really big on it (I didn’t see it until we were in the Mc Donald’s parking lot). They kind of scared me because they all had chains and spikes and trench coats and all that good shit. Johnny Boy was…different. He had patches, spikes, tight pants, piercings, duct tape on his boots, and tons of belts (some with chains), but he was different. Robb, Hodge Podge, Heather, and Jess dressed more like goths and Johnny Boy looked like a punk, and I was a Timmy — a name for someone who wasn’t like everyone else, but in the same way a little bit of everything.

Johnny Boy was one of those anti-drug kids. I was cool with weed, but I hadn’t done much drugs then. I had only smoked weed once or twice and it wasn’t as good as I was told it was. Johnny always had a crush on me since the first time we met. I could tell ’cause he always wanted to see me. He kept saying, “I love you”, or little things like, “You’re getting more beautiful every time I see you, Kaboodles”. He called me and said he got some smokey for me tokin’. I was amazed and he said — and I remember this perfectly — “I’ve never done this and I don’t really trust anyone, and you’ve done it…so, in case something goes wrong, you can make sure I don’t die much…and I swear I’m not trying to get into your pants…, although your pants are pretty cool, but ughm, so you wanna?”. I was happy he trusted me. That was the best night ever. We drove to the cemetery (what a fun place, right?) and got stoned off our ass. We were talking about how if the snake and the octopus fell in love and had a baby billy goat, which of the sea otters would fuck the monkey or something like that and we decided the monkey would marry all of them (oh, the madness of it all). Then we decided to go play hide-and-seek with the tomb stones. Johnny fell on his face when he got out and stayed there for awhile, and I turned around, counted to three, walked around the car while making a gun shape with my hands, and said, “Got ya!”. He got up and we laughed our asses off. I mean, it’s not every day you see a kid with a big red mohawk land on his face with his ass in the air while his face is being smothered in dirt. We proceeded to play hide-and-seek with the tombstones, but they weren’t very good at hiding.

I remember I got home at around 3:30, four o’clock. I stumbled in and my dad asked me where I’d been. I said I was at the park. Good thing he was only up for 15 minutes. I went to school and slept all day. I slept a lot in school. I was in the special classes ’cause “I couldn’t handle large crowds” and “I have no respect for teachers”. “Cursing out the dyke principal and her lover, the gym teacher, isn’t acceptable”. Well, fuck you and your acceptance. I’m not gonna do shit unless I want to, let alone be screamed at because wearing my Twinkie pajama bottoms, combat boots, and cheshire cat shirt is my idea of changing for gym class. In 7th grade, the gym teacher came right out and said it. “Jamie, are you going to participate today?” “Fuck no!” Her reply: “All right then, report to the library — you’ll be copying sports terms and updates from the newspaper, dictionary, and everything else.” My backtalk: “Fuck that, the only thing I’ll be writing is 50 ways to kill you!” Boom, back to the ward I go. Fuck being kicked out for a month, I’m out for good. A damned damn two years in a row, let’s go for three!

After I got out of the ward and my dad stopped bitching, I deserved a night out. I called up Johnny Boy, but Robb picked it up. He asked who it was, I said “Hi, is Johnny there? This is Jamie.” He said, “Who’s Jamie?” and I tried to explain to him how he knew me, but then Johnny picked up and said, “Jamie, I thought you didn’t want to talk to me. You didn’t call me since our havoc on the cemetery…” Half-way into our conversation, he decided we should meet that night. He was going to bring Robb with him. I met them in a Mc Donald’s parking lot at around 1:00, or 2:00. I snuck out again, but my dad wasn’t drunk — he was sleeping. Johnny was so happy, he said, “Aww, my kitty is here!”. I started to tell him about my new friend until a really hot guy ran up and smiled, “Nice boobs, kiddo”. I didn’t even hear him until Johnny boy said, “Dick head!”. I was so transfixed on his appearance. I saw him before, but I didn’t remember him being so goddamned hot. Robb was so great. We went to the gas station to get something to eat and then we went to a different town (I can’t remember the name) where we found a junk yard. Well behind it was some kind of woodsy. We sat there looking at the stars and the moon.

Johnny boy kept trying to hold me — not in a sexual way, not in a romantic way, but just in an…I-like-you-please sort of way. But that position was taken by Robb. He held me and I kissed him. It made me so happy. When I looked up, Johnny Boy was staring at Robb like he was going to cut off his balls, stick ’em in a blender, and make him suck them through a bendy straw. I felt bad, so I hugged him and said in a high pitched, oh-my-god-did-she-just-get-her-cooter-bit-off-by-a-sasquatch sort of tone, “I looove you, Jonathan!”. He laughed and so did Robb. It was the first time I saw Johnny Boy smile all night. He looked up and quickly said, “Really?”. And I said, “Yessum!” in a friendly kind of way. I watched his smile fade again. Robb stared up to the sky and asked me which star was the brightest. I gave my opinion and Johnny had a debate on the stars with me. Yeah, that was a good night.

Johnny and I would sneak out a lot before, but then we got into some deep shit. Robb called me and told me Johnny Boy wanted to see me and he’d pick me up in an hour. So I called him when I was sure everyone was asleep. Just like Robb said, he picked me up but there was no Johnny Boy. Robb told me Johnny Boy couldn’t make it. He was too tired, “He had just gotten back from a concert…” I didn’t care ’cause I liked Robb. He pulled out a little bag and unrolled it. Weed. I thought it would be another fun-filled night playing tag with a tombstone or hide-and-go-seek or something. We toked up, but it was laced with cocaine so I was trippin’ balls. Everything was going so fast — and I loved it. I really did. And I loved Robb. I really did. For half a year, we had been “together”. But Johnny was there every time. This time he wasn’t.

There were a few times Robb and I had hung out without Johnny — these were good nights until tonight. He had kissed me before but he didn’t shove his tongue down my throat. Everything was just going so fast.

He pulled away and I started to tell him about my abuse and sexual harassment I endured, I told him about my mother, and all the different guys. Even when I first moved to this shit hole of a state, two of my brother’s friends had molested me: once while I was asleep and the other time while I was high. I would wake up to it and have flashbacks or be too scared to move. I’d just pretend to sleep through it. He kept kissing and groping, and for fuck’s sake, literally licking. He was strong as hell. I kind of liked it, but in the back of my head I knew I wouldn’t win so I just let him. I was so fucking high, though, and it wasn’t all that bad.

A friend and I were sitting at McDonald’s once and there were these two old people: an old man and an old lady. 10 minutes into watching them eat, we were cracking jokes about them. We were a little high, so they were really stupid like, “hey you old guy, did ya know you were old…’cause you’re pretty damn old”. Well anyway, the old guy flails his arms and says, “AAAR!,” and the old lady screams three minutes later. After another 10 minutes go by, he does it again and she screams again. And then five seconds later, she does it to him, so he screams. Us being high and all, we cracked up and I fell on the floor. We were making so much noise that they told us we had to leave. Yep…true story. I swear!

Well, back on topic. Yeah, so Robb and Johnny would hang out almost every other night then and I was still doing bad in school. I’ve been kicked out of 10 schools in two years. Either for fighting, cursing, racial slurs, threats of suicide and homicide, getting locked up often and missing school, getting caught with drugs that I swore a cop gave to me, or simply sleeping my life away. Matt (my beat-up doll) dumped me around then as well for being “too anti-social”. Once again, fuck you and your socializing!

Everything began to turn to shit soon enough and I started getting into a lot more fights — fights that didn’t even have anything to do with me. A lot of my friends died. It was all in October. Everything went wrong in October. Jim, my ex-boyfriend, moved to Florida and Matt dumped me, like I said, for being somewhat anti-social and not letting him touch me (it’s fine to hold me, really I don’t mind. But I’m not a fucking teddy bear whose string you can pull and I’ll make kissing sounds and say, “Hey baby, where’s the rubber?”).

My only friends are either ones who get high and do stupid shit like Robb (drug-lord of the universe!) who stapled his hand to the window sill ’cause I told him I’d give him $30. We were laughing ’cause he was screaming his ass off saying shit like, “Hurry up and pass the reefer, give me a line, toss me da shrooms!”. And just to piss him off, we did everything in front of him. Heather tried to pull his hand off the window, but he passed out. It got really quiet…and then finally Jess said, “Ughm, that isn’t a good sign”.

That’s the kind of shit I did at night, but I got into a lot of bad shit like gang fights: 20 of us against gangsters and condescending assholes. Just have a knock-out, drag-out fights over little shit like misunderstandings or jumping people we didn’t even know. I never thought I could win a fight, and in a lot of cases I don’t. I know you’re probably thinking, “Why is she trying to act like a hard ass?” I’m really not trying to be, but I hear that from a lot of people. I have that tough, mean, obtuse look. A lot of people are afraid of me, even the staff in my old placement said they were afraid to restrain me. I really don’t mean to look bad. Maybe I’m just giving myself too much credit, but if you knew some of my friends, I’m the one of the sweetest girls they know. And my enemies…well, right now I have none. At that time, the majority of my “friends” were some of my worst enemies. It’s all about watching your “enemies” closely and picking your friends wisely, which makes me wonder how a little girl once so kind that kept to herself could become that.

Now I’m almost 15 years old and I have many personalities to worry about. I have got into some trouble over the years. I did cat tranquilizers, shrooms, acid, and heroin (shot up, stupid fuck!) all in one night during a lock-in in Ohio. I freaked out, I puked, and fell down. I remember the blaring techno music, the lights, and I remember the sickness and the hurt. I couldn’t think. I saw a little purple light and I was feeling like I was looking at the world through the wrong end of the telescope. It was great until my muscles started spazzing out and I began heaving like I was having an orgasm (I was pretty freaked out, though). When I came back, my nose was bleeding and I was in somebody’s car. I looked up and saw Robb. I then realized I wasn’t in a car — I was in Robb’s house. I had passed out. What seemed like two hours later, I heard him say, “Jasmine…Jasmine, come back to me. Kitten, I love you.” I looked up but it was all blurry. I wondered if I’d ever see straight again. Robb finished by saying I’d be fine when the sun came up. I wondered if I’d ever live to see the sun again. I smiled — or at least I felt my lips smile — and I blurted out, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t ready,” and heard Robb reading “Hop on Pop” (my mom used to always read that to me when I was little) by Dr. Suess out loud. And then I saw him looking so happy, I thought he’d cry. That night made me see my life differently. I could die at any moment, so live fast, have fun, and hope you die laughing. That night showed me why my mom was so fucked up and now I hated myself for putting a burden like myself on her.

My mom was fucked up. Here’s a little history lesson. I grew up in what seemed to be a loving Christian family, until one day my mom said there was no point in going to church because there is no god. Just like that, everything went wrong. I had thought from that point on that God was nothing more than a lie that the deceivers called parents had told, like Santa Claus to make us behave, or the Easter Bunny — who decided that year not to come because like my mom had said, “He was being sacrificed to a god that wasn’t there”. And also that following year, the leprechauns that made our eggs green on St. Patrick’s Day died from cancer and the cupid on St. Valentine’s Day that brought mommy and daddy together to get married was shot by his own arrow and slowly bled to death in his lover’s arms. On my birthday, there was no party, not even a card, because “I didn’t need shit that won’t fit in a year or will break in a month”. The puppy that I wanted to get would be road kill I wanted to cry because my mom wouldn’t let me see my dad until he busted down the door and fought with the lovely person I refer to as my mother. He went through all that just to hug me, give me a present, and tell me “happy birthday”. But I didn’t get to open the present ’cause she threw it away.

I wasn’t always too close with her. I came home from school one day to show her another report card with straight A’s, waiting for her approval, but I found her in her bedroom crying. I cried too and gave her a hug, but I got a slap in the face for not coming home directly from school. My brother walked in through the door (I remember one time he made a smack sound and said I hit him, and I got punched in blame). He didn’t even see what was happening between Mom and I. When she was shooting up or getting trashed, I would hide from her in the closet. I didn’t want to come out. Once she locked Blair out of the house and me in because I was always out and he was always in. A lot of her drunk friends would come in the house. They were nice…but too nice.

My first drug experience followed that. She said it would “take the pain away”, then shot me up. And you know kids — they hate shots and scream at the sight of blood while they bawl. I watched her mouth move to words while nothing came out, and in ten minutes the room was moving very fast. Her voice came back in the distance, saying, “This won’t hurt much now that you’re fucked up”. I thought it was fun, but I was scared as well. I felt someone touch my leg and I didn’t like it. Whoever it was, they obliviously didn’t care. I remember smelling beer strongly and then I was suddenly lying on my own floor naked. I reached for my clothes, but I was still moving slow, moving very slow to music. Then I felt the floor hold me down. It was pulling me down and I couldn’t get up. It was like carpet enclosed and grabbing my arms and legs, recklessly. Then came the pain. Nothing had every hurt like this. It was like being scalped with Chinese torture devices but in a very unusual place. I heard a man’s voice. I knew it must’ve been the guy doing this. My last thought was about the cop that made me take off my clothes in the bathroom to look for scars and bruises. I remembered him asking, “Have you ever been touched in any way that you didn’t like?”. And then I opened my eyes and wondered if I was living. The pain was never-ending. The floor gripped harder, and I felt my teeth dig into my bleeding lip. My tongue had been shoved into something rough and wet. My mom said, “Are you done? I need my money”. It was done.

I was still in pain as the floor let go. I never thought that a shot could have that effect on me. I was still naked on my floor, but now the floor wasn’t pulling me in. And little did I know, it would happen again. But the floor would become a friend, a love, an enemy, even a best friend, or some guy I met at a concert. It would all happen again. Every story is a little different, but the cases are always the same. And even before that, I didn’t realize that my beloved mommy who I trusted, who I believed in, one of the most important people in my life, would let it happen again and again. Not only let it happen again, but get paid for it. I was her personal BP (baby prostitute), a six soon to be seven year old whore, and even before that I had no idea I was being hurt, abused, taken advantage of, lied to, screamed at, and beat up by the person said they were doing it “for my own good”. “I needed to be punished. I wasn’t a good girl like everyone thought” I was the deceiver, I was the trouble brought onto her. She left me in the hospital. She didn’t want me, so my dad brought me home. She left me in the car for two days once. And what I just found out today was that when my mother played “Here Comes the Sun”, she would shoot my brother up with heroin and beat him. Robb’s mom overdosed on drugs, and the last words she said to him were, “It’ll all be better someday. It’ll all be fine when the sun comes up.” Little did he know that she meant she was going to die before the sun came up.

Then when I was seven or eight years old, I was raped sober. And if I told anyone, he’d kill me. Later that week, I found my cat on the doormat in front of the house…eviscerated. I thought if I told, it’d be me next time. Later I would look up and realize I loved him. And that since rape was the only sex I’d ever had, that rape must be the way people “make love”. He must’ve loved me so much he couldn’t wait ‘till I was ready. He wanted it so bad because he felt such adoration for me. And I had already lost the fight. I knew I wouldn’t be strong enough to fight in the war, let alone win it.

When she would get upset, my mother would chant. She would say things like, “When they come, lovely daughter, they will come, they will come, and they will give me the child they have stolen. They replaced my baby with you.” She would chant and if I was somewhere, she would describe numerical codes, mixed up numbers, over the phone. She was an insomniac mainly because of the crystal meth. She always talked about “them”, about the god that died because of “them”. She once burned me close to my wrist, and now I have a little scar still there today. She threw me under a fence, piercing my calves. I still have those marks, as well. I was told that my grandmother hit her and ended up in jail. She ended up running away after that, and becoming a whore and a drug dealer at fourteen for the Hell’s Angels. She was a musician, so she always pushed us to be musicians. Now I play the drums and my brother is a guitarist and a singer! I guess she did something right. My brother and I went to see her in a hotel once when she was getting trashed, and overnight she tried to cut off my brother’s arm.

Well, we all have bad memories that leave us to be the way we are, good or bad. Sometimes I wonder if other peoples’ memories make them taste blood. If they make them kill their pets, literally disembowel them and stab them over and over again. Or try to kill their family members. Hear distorted music riddled with messages, or look into mirrors and watch their face turn into a woman’s with eyes that look like something Marilyn Manson might pull off. Make their nose bleed until it’s pouring into their teeth. Their dad walks in and asks what happened. They drink nail polish remover, not because of the music or the backward words spilling out of the cuts on their wrists telling them to, but because hurting yourself and others is the only way it goes away — for a limited period of time. The hurt can come back any time. If they’re real bad memories, it can make them black out and question how they went from sitting in their room to standing in the middle of railroad tracks with a knife. Shining black droplets of worn red signs of life that was once there. Not being able to sleep because you have to wait for the Camera Man, the director, the witch, the thing that watches but never cuts the film. When it’s finally done, does that mean they’re free to live or die? Knowing that every time they sleep, something changes. A dresser is moved, a drawer is ajar, a bloody napkin is left on their night stand. They sleep, but only because they’re can’t fight time — let alone the pills — or the knowledge that people, being humans, need rest. They talk to themselves in hope that one voice of reason that isn’t there will come back. Or last, but not least, hoping one moment of happiness will come. Just like when Robb died.

Oh yeah, Robb died October 15, 2004. Yep, two months ago. Johnny ran away and his mom was too high to care. Jess was sent away for almost killing her parents. Heather hitch-hiked to Florida to attend Robb’s funeral, but when she arrived at the exact hour at the place where the funeral was supposed to be, no one was there. And guess where I’m going tomorrow. Florida. Sarasota, to be exact. Well anyway, the last words he said before he died were, “It’ll be okay some day. It’ll all be fine by the time the sun comes up.” A few days ago, I went to see the sun come up. I hadn’t looked at the sky lately ’cause I thought I’d be afraid that it wouldn’t be the same. The stars aren’t as bright, the sky isn’t so blue, the clouds don’t look like marshmallows anymore. I went to see the sun come up just like he said. I waited two hours, but it never came. And then I realized the sky will never look the same again. I remember listening to the song “The Story So Far” and my CD player skipping on the part where he says that. At the time, I had pink spiked pink hair (I always have different colored hair) and I wore a long coat over a zip-up shirt. I threw my CD player down. I was still having arguments with my split personalities. There was a fence along side the bridge I was sitting on and I started to climb it. Then a car drove by and honked the horn, causing me to fall onto the concrete. And just as I looked up, this kid in the back seat lipped out, “DON’T JUMP!”. My CD player still skipped while I walked home crying.

I miss those nights where we’d get high and watch the sun come up. Everything was fine. My “issues” never bothered me during those few rare moments of happiness. The twenty of us geeking out over all kinds of shit that didn’t matter. Just like Johnny always said, “We could’ve stopped then. We could’ve all been fine”. And look where we are. Jess locked up and all lawsuit-ed out, Robb dead, Heather searching for the answers we didn’t care about for the questions we didn’t ask, and…oh yeah, Johnny Boy just came home. I knew he’d be with Baz. If any of us had a problem, we’d go to New York with Baz. He’d take care of us. When Johnny came back, I asked him why he didn’t stay. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but I was forever running away. I still am. He said, “Well, Kitten, on my way home I asked myself why, too. But I thought back to when we first met, and how I always wanted to stop and start all over and be okay again. I thought about what Robb always talked about. Kitten, someday will never come and the sun will never come up until you look for it. James, I looked, but in all the wrong places. Today is is that someday. Look outside, Kitten. The sun is shining. Remember when you were in a placement and you told me about how you would sit in the back room and watch the cars drive past? Do you remember how you always wanted to be in that car, or when we looked at the airplane flying past and you said you wanted to be in it going to a better place? Well, on my way home, I realized today is my someday. The sun is up, and I was in that car, and I am in a better place.”

Now it’s Christmas and I’m wearing Jess’s bracelets that I found in our mailbox. I’ve been through all this shit, and this still isn’t even a little bit of my “story”. The stars aren’t as bright, but I can still wish on them. Since you’ve been gone, I’ve been afraid to look at the sky. I went to go see the sun come up, just like you said to. I waited, hoping that for a minute perhaps…just maybe, you wouldn’t be so far away from me. And maybe for a second I would feel like myself again. Happy, not so dead inside. Maybe just for a second it would be the same. Just for a little while. It never came, and then I knew the sky will never really look the same again. Even after every one was gone, after my friends went their own ways, there was still someone who knew all of this and who still cared. If this ever is read by someone else or is made into something artistic, that’s great.