Bring me your tired, your sick, your mentally ill.
I can feel my hair growing longer by the second, stretching and waiting with me for Kathi to come home, her with my mom’s locket in tow, snugly wound onto her key chain, my thumbnail still bruised from the effort, my heart still swollen from our moment up and down the halls of this home, our dance with mania and madness and Mom—with me then, and now with Kathi, my newly knighted Hollywood mother. The locket is well placed: Kathi could use a mom like mine, loving, present, protecting. Thanks, Mom, please keep her safe.
I can’t wait to see what new item Kathi buys me for my rapidly expanding wardrobe. I look forward to becoming this new person, forged not just by Kathi’s purchases and proclamations but by my own will and openness to this experience.
I’m keenly aware of a shift inside me, all around me, as I let go of a past life, past feelings, a voiding of the once always-present aftertaste of hating my existence so much that I considered ending it.
Drugs, lies, warnings, whatever. I can do this. I must.
I read somewhere that travel is a wonderful alternative to suicide. That travel can sometimes siphon you from your stressors, making the world feel bigger and your perceived problems smaller. I rub my palms together like I’m a contestant on Survivor trying to start a fire with a twig, like my time lost in a jungle of darkness and disillusionment is over, like a spark of life has set my old self gloriously ablaze, and I’m standing anew in the ashes with great things ahead for me, old troubles abated, my lucky break finally breaking. I’m thinking, tearfully and weightlessly relieved, Finally, finally.
Travel is a wonderful alternative to suicide.
Lucky me, because Kathi Kannon is a real trip.
Part Two
BRUSH FIRE IN THE SPIRIT WORLD
9
SPRING
Hey, Siri, Kathi Kannon and I are late and I’m in trouble. We’re standing in an office-building parking lot, looking at the three-story structure with wraparound balconies on each level, making it appear more like a motel than a professional complex. A meeting with her friend Rick was supposed to start ten minutes ago and she asks me which suite we’re supposed to visit.
“I don’t know. One second,” I say, checking my emails to find the answer, but she doesn’t want to wait, so from the parking lot, to my horror, she starts screaming, “RICK! RICK! RICK!”
Slowly, faces start to peek from behind curtains, behind vertical blinds, looking down at us in the parking lot.
“RICK!” she screams.
Doors open and secretaries poke their heads out to get a glimpse of what’s happening, to see who’s yelling, to see who’s screeching like a car alarm.
“RICK! RICK! RIIIIIIIIIIIICK!”
Finally, a body emerges from the door of Suite 307. Rick, of course, smiling, waving. “Up here,” he says.
“Hi!” she yells, and starts walking to the stairwell.
I follow behind and whisper, “Here it is,” holding up my phone with the email and the suite number. “You couldn’t wait five seconds?”
“Nope. Thanks anyway, Cockring,” she says, grabbing my arm and squeezing, a sort of innocent sign of aggressive affection, her fingers rubbing, rubbing, rubbing my forearm.
“Are your hands clean?” I ask.
With a devilish grin she shakes her head no.
SUMMER
Hey, Siri, we’re coming in for a landing, a little midweek jaunt home from seeing Kathi’s friend Dave Matthews at a charity concert in San Francisco. The seatbelt sign is fully illuminated, flight attendants are buckled in after just making the announcement to stay in our seats, and Kathi says to me, “I have to pee.”
Before I can protest, she unclips her seatbelt, stands, marches right past the shocked flight attendants, and goes into the lavatory. The entire plane is watching, people behind us craning their necks in the aisle, popping their heads over the seats in front of them. I’m blushing, unsure how I can help ease the confused fury on the flight attendants’ faces. One of them reaches for his seatbelt but stops as we hear a clang in the bathroom. Then a clank. The lock jiggles, going from LOCK to UNLOCK to LOCK to UNLOCK. The red X and the green LAVATORY AVAILABLE lights keep flicking on and off, on and off, further capturing the attention of the jetliner’s jetsetters.
The bathroom door opens a crack and then slams shut again. Opens and slams.
We all wait with crushing anticipation.
We hear a flush.
The lock flicks open again.
The door swings ajar.
Kathi Kannon slowly walks back to her seat, flicking her bangs back, oblivious to the theatrical production she just provided free of charge. She nestles in her seat as the plane touches down.
“What?” she says, staring at me staring at her.
“How are you able to break the rules like that with such abandon?”
She says with a shrug, “To the manor born.”
FALL
I’m sitting with film icon Kathi Kannon in an otherwise-empty movie theater, eating chocolate chip ice cream and watching some fantasy-type movie because Kathi is friends with Meg Ryan and her son has a small part in it and the two ladies are supposed to see each other soon.
Through the thunderous music, the busy action scenes, the fast and loud dialogue, I hear next to me: thwp!
I look over at Kathi, her spoon bobbing in and out of the ice cream container, her eyes glazed and droopy but fixed firmly on the film.
I look back to the screen and then again hear: thwp!
I turn back to her. “What are you doing?”
“What?” she asks, seeming annoyed that I’m interrupting the film.
“What’s that noise?”
“I know, right? This whole fucking film is noise,” she says, shaking her head, bobbing her spoon, slowly loading a blob of ice cream into her mouth, and then—thwp!—spitting out a chunk of chocolate.
I look around in a panic, confirming that we are the only ones there, that no one else is seeing what’s happening. “What are you doing?” I ask.
“When?”
“Right now? Are you spitting out the chocolate chips?”
“They’re too big,” she says, her words slightly slurred.
“Too big?!”
“I’m an expert,” she says, and turns back to the film.
The spoon.
The bobbing.
The mouth.
Thwp!
Thwp!
Kathi looks over at me looking at her.
“You can’t do that,” I say.
“What else am I going to do with them? Do you have a tissue?”
“No.”
She turns away from me. Thwp! “Anyway,” she says, “I’m bored.”
“Shall we jet?”
“Yup. All this screaming is giving me a headache.” She stands and looks down at the darkened floor, trying to navigate her way out. “Try not to step in all this fucking chocolate.”
WINTER
Hey, Siri, take note: We’re at LAX and paid six hundred dollars for VIP treatment so a handler will escort us to our gate in a golf cart on our way to Utah to a mental-health charity dinner where Kathi is a speaker.
Beep beep beep, make way!
Throngs of people, including the elderly and children carrying their heavy luggage, have to step aside.