Strolls Down Memory Lane And Other Bed Time Stories

Funny how the mind works sometimes.  You can't remember something that happened two minutes ago but things that happened decades ago are still there, forever burnt into your memory.

Dumb stuff when you're desperately reaching for things you know have to be important.

So many things racing through it right this second I'm trying to categorize and put it all together in words.

The larger print you ask?  I love to read, I can't find my glasses and I'm assuming there are those who love to read who can't find their glasses and isn't it just easier when everybody can see it?

You already know I'm a renegade, don't want to do anything the way anyone else does and no one is the boss of me.

Tonight I had a moment of such grief and sorrow and wouldn't you know it, there was no need to even cry.

All the crying for that part of my life has been done, but damn!  I didn't sign up for this!

I signed up for life!

I've obviously signed up with the wrong person all three times.

Just like when I was on the Boulevard a few weeks ago seeing all the girls, skinny, wore out, shot out, walking, walking walking.

I used to feel great sorrow for them, but now I know they are just walking out their testimony just like I did.

I wish I could get out of the car and talk to them, tell them there is more, this is not the end, there is much more to be had, so much more to learn.

I see that question mark over your head.

Why can't you get out of the car and tell that Darlene?  We know you aren't afraid of anything.

You get in where you fit in right?

I don't fit in there anymore and that's not the place you want to get in and those girls ain't playin.  I could very well get jumped, or cut, it is the FIB.

There's a lot of things you can do in this world, but one thing you can never do is go back.

I'm a walking talking miracle, parading around in the body bag I wasn't supposed to be able to leave the boulevard without.  Bitch please.  I didn't just survive this nightmare for 4 years, in a tent, for one of you guys to take me out!  Get a grip!  I always thought the game was lame and thought y'all was lame for playing it.

You get more bees with honey.

People are more generous when you don't steal it from them.

People are more generous when you show them some kindness, when you treat them like they are a human being.

People that don't like you will give you something if you ask them for it, you don't have to steal it from them or trick them out of it.

You only get to screw someone over once, but if you're sweet to them, treat them nice, you get to screw them over and over again.  

None of it ever made sense to me, because I'm one of those people who has no ability to lie and bullshit you.  It takes too long and I've got places to be, dope to smoke, things to do besides babysit your green behind here in the trap.

He took me way back there.

He let me go back like her.

Sparky came sauntering into the room.

Rainbow Bright isn't strung out anymore.

He took all the ugly stuff and let me be her.

Sparky.

Sparky Madness.

That chick.

Loving Him and getting to see things through her eyes.  Wow, just wow!

Darlene is sweet and precious and tender hearted and loves everyone:  even when she wasn't chasing Jesus.

Right?

Oh my gosh I can't believe He's taken me back so far I have to tell these stories to get you back to the original idea I walked into the room with!  Man!  It's all such ancient history, but it's the story line.

Back in the day, when I was a young mother of three small boys, with a husband who didn't want me but didn't want anyone else to have me, I took a job in the parts store next to where my husband worked, because the pay was pretty good and we could ride back and forth with one another.  Never mind he's the worst driver in the whole freakin world and scares me to death and that he makes me late every single morning.

Anyway, I was the driver for this parts store, Troy was the owner, had a couple of small vintage Ford trucks, not Rangers, can't even remember what they were now, but I drove parts for him.

Tommy was this cowboy that worked there and I'm a talker.  I was so much more a talker then because I had a husband who never wanted to hear anything I ever had to say, could completely shut me out as if I didn't exist, or start a fight with me, so he could storm off to the car and leave to go get high with his friends. 

I had three young sons, who were wild and made me feel like they had teamed up against me at times.

One morning I'm following Tommy around blah blah blahing and talking his ears off when he suddenly turns around and says to me, "Your nickname is gonna be Sparky, because if you don't shut up you're gonna spark every plug in this store to death and we won't be able to sell them."

I was Sparky from that moment on.

When I started stripping in 1995 when my husband divorced me and ran off with our friend's girlfriend, I became Sparky, because someone had to protect Darlene.

I started dancing because I had the boys, my mama was dead, my grandmother and uncle didn't even like me and waiting tables wasn't cutting it.

The men in those clubs said things so vile and idiotic to me, Sparky had to step in and protect Darlene, because Darlene was hurt and wounded to begin with and wanted to slash their throats and cut their tongues out for the stupid stuff they said.  She just didn't know how to process that or come right out and say it, because Darlene did not like or need confrontations at the time.

Sparky comes along all arrogant and I'll beat your ass and other colorful little statements.

She gets crazy.

She does everything Darlene wouldn't do and she does most of it well.

She goes over tables after people, drags men out the club in nothing but her high heels, has a wit so quick and wicked even her best friend doesn't like her at the club.

The minute I touched those doors I became her, had to, it was the only way.

I fractured my own mind living that way.

I've heard the stories they tell about me.  When asked why anyone liked me they would reply, "You never were mean to me."

I remember the little girl in Walmart in the middle of the night who recognized my voice but usually not me, because I had on one wig or another and was usually drunk when she saw me at all hours of the morning.

Man oh man!

I survived all that before the streets!  It must have been my practice, because I was totally tearing every place I worked at down to the best of my ability.

I was so sad when Jesus came along and saved me from myself.  I thought no one would ever call me Sparky again and I did so grow to love her, to be her, to accept her for who she was.

There are those I love who still call me that name and that means so much more to me than I will ever tell anyone.  Two of the grand babies call me Nanny Sparky, which was the grandmother name I tried out on the Midgets the entire time we were awaiting my first grandson, Devon, who turned 12 today, May 24th.

Nanny Sparky, cool ass grandmother name, I don't care what you say.

I'm being so real with you right this second, being the real me, a mixture of that girl then, that other girl and myself.

There are so many stories that can stem from this and God is showing them to me but I'm trying to stay on track about the thing that brought me to this conversation and blogging therapy I so desperately need sometimes.

I hate fronts, anything fake, having to dress up truth so as not to offend others, or doing anything I feel is phony or has motives.

I am who I am, I'm never trying to be anyone else and when you read the things I'm talking to you about I'm only leaving out the parts that could possibly send someone into an offended frenzy of what a terrible person I am and how could you say that word and not be embarrassed about it and all the bullshit that comes along with realness and not stepping on other people's toes.

I don't want to be that perfect little church girl all dressed up in her Sunday best tonight.  I want to be me, real, raw, transparent, open to misunderstanding and being able to not give a crap what anyone thinks, just for this once.  

Give me a break!  Can I just be myself?  Just this once?

I loved Sparky!

That bitch made me famous!

She was hated, loved and feared and just like me she was liable to say anything!

I had these great thigh high boots with platforms.  I put butterfly stickers all over them and the rest of my shoes and would sit at the bar with my feet propped on it and loudly proclaim, "You bitches are just jealous you don't have butterflies on your shoes!"  All day long y'all.

No fear right?

I had my girls, still see their faces, have them in my heart every single day, even the one's whose names I can't remember, but they are there, every single one of them, beautiful, young, making the same trip as me and my friends.

I could write books about it if I could remember it all.

Anyway, good ole Sparky has always been my best friend, my protector, my confidant and someone no one but me liked.  (Atleast not anyone who knows Darlene liked her)  So strange the things we do to protect ourselves.

Today we are not two different people, we are united, one being, one spirit, one life lived.

It's different today and in all reality why shouldn't it be?  Hell it's only been 23 years since that story began.  They finally put me out because it's okay to be a meth head in the clubs but being a crack head anywhere is totally unacceptable.

I loved dancing.

It taught me to love myself.

It taught me no matter how much I compared myself to anyone else that was not the way I was made and that was not the way I was ever going to be.

I was 27 when I started dancing, grown, no mama, no husband, no place to live, no life skills whatsoever, good sense, even though I never used it and three little boys, ages 10, 7 and 6.  The average stripper is 19 to 26 for no more than a year to three.

Anyway, as I was saying I was totally out of control, very unhappy about a lot of things, no life skills to pull myself out of the streets, my good christian grandmother keeping the boys so they could go to a good school, because she didn't want a stripper living in her house, coming in at all hours of the day and night, handing over hundreds of dollars to her babies in the mornings when they were on their way out the door to school, because she was completely exhausted and stressed out.

Freakin christians, are they not the worst??????

"What would everyone at church say when they found out her grand daughter was a stripper and living in HER house?"

What would they say if they knew you and Druscilla talk smack about every single one of them night after night?  That's what I freakin want to know!  I'm doing this over here, not bothering anybody and you want to tell me I'm a jezebel and a heathen?  I've been a jezebel since I was 5 according to you and heathens seem to be everyone you come into contact with that aren't on our favorite peoples list.

I call bullshit!

I can't say my life hasn't been interesting, that's for sure.

Today I am whole, physically, mentally and spiritually.

Today I am many facets and layers of a woman, okay to be all of them, to wear many hats, have many platforms and just run around in the joy of Jesus.

Sparky.

I've got friends who probably don't even know my real name and who cares.  Miles tells everyone I'm Mary Magdalene.  This weekend I'm going to ask the people in the streets if they know my name and if they don't know, just for kicks I'm gonna tell them to call me Sparky.

There's so much I remember about her and life and today, from where I'm standing, none of it is ugly anymore.

Sparky totally agrees.

Be who you are, you're amazing.

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