Tag Archives: Tell My Bones: The Helen LaFrance Story

A Jolly Solstice to One & All!

June 21, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

I don’t know about you guys, but I feel worlds better today! Like a real weight has been lifted from me spiritually.

Part of it is because a truly amazing thing happened here first thing this morning: the SUN came up! For the first time in I don’t know how long, it isn’t RAINING!

I don’t mind rain, but it did go on for days. The Wakatomika Creek flooded – it doesn’t take much to flood that creek, but there is seriously a whole big bunch of water all over the place down there on the main road.

So it’s really nice to see the sun.

I had to re-think everything around here yesterday, gang. My brain just had some sort of weird meltdown. I got so stymied in Chapter One of Blessed By Light yesterday, that I knew something had to give around here.

I could tell the opening chapter was going to need re-vising now that the whole novel is finished. Meaning that, now that I know exactly how the novel ends, it re-informs how the novel starts.

However, I couldn’t get my mind wrapped around the changes I needed to make. It was like my mind suddenly decided to just stop working. And for some reason, I couldn’t force myself to get away from my desk and focus on something/anything more productive. (Meaning, meditation and yoga.)

And so… the more frustrated I got with the chapter, the more frustrated I got with the chapter. And I was magnetically adhered to it. No power on earth could separate me from the madness of that chapter yesterday…

So I decided that I need to go back to meditating first thing in the morning, when my resistance to everything is low. When my energy is still calm and (usually) joyful. (Which I started this morning.) And then I also need to really, really, REALLY force myself back into my daily yoga routine. FORCE myself to take breaks from my fucking desk.

Yesterday, while I was in the throes of that immovable weirdness, I was thinking: I need to pay someone in this village to come over here every day and force me away from my desk and tell me that it’s time to do yoga and to meditate….

I mean, it felt that crazy. Like, the only way I can manage it is to be accountable to someone that I’m paying, right? Make someone stand there until I physically get up from the desk, unroll the yoga mat and get started. (Once I get started, I’m fine. I love to do yoga. Why? Because it makes me feel so fantastic and calm and it frees my crazy mind.)

It’s just ridiculous how fixated I can get on something until it becomes, literally, impossible for me to stop. Or to even move. I mean, I could physically move. I did keep going down to the kitchen to get more coffee. As if amping up that nonsense was going to help me redirect my energy. It didn’t. It just made me more intensely worse.

And I still do that journaling thing in the mornings, too. Those conversations with my Inner Being, right after breakfast.

My Inner Being wasn’t super impressed with me yesterday, either.

However, as George Harrison pointed out many, many years ago: Here comes the sun, little darling!

So I just feel lots better today. So far, my resistance to everything imaginable on planet Earth is quite low. And I have another new coffee mug. This one is pink and it has a really loving quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald printed on it.

I love F. Scott Fitzgerald. He’s my favorite novelist. Even though I have a lot of favorite writers, for some reason, he is my absolute favorite. I guess because I fell in love with him as a man, not just as a writer, back when I was first exposed to his novels and short stories.

I mean, obviously, he had been dead forever by the time I was first exposed to his work in high school. But I still fell in love with him. Had to find out everything about him that I possibly could. A few of my current cats are named after him & his family – although “Zelli”, a kitten named after Zelda who turned out to be a boy cat, so I called him Zelli – he got adopted out to a good home.

Anyway, I have a really loving quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald on my new coffee cup, and it feels really good to have my coffee cup love me.

Sometimes I call upon F. Scott Fitzgerald to help me in my moments of insanity as a writer. “Help me here, please, Scott! What should I do about this chapter??!! I mean, besides drink heavily and smoke a lot?”

Image result for f. scott fitzgerald — F. Scott Fitzgerald smoking

It sucks to not drink heavily and smoke a lot, gang. Honestly, that was the best part of my writing in the old days – the flipside of a hard day’s work, you know? Drink and smoke and fucking unwind.

Related image — F. Scott Fitzgerald thinking about drinking.

Since becoming a complete vegetarian many years ago (I had been a pescatarian for quite a while before that), I can no longer really drink. Because I get drunk immediately. Alcohol goes directly into my bloodstream since the only stuff that’s ever in my stomach gets digested in about 14 seconds nowadays. And even though I was never a serious smoker – I only smoked when I drank. When they stopped making Chesterfield Kings available anywhere where I could actually get at them (apparently they are still sold in Europe but with different packaging that totally sucks), I simply gave up smoking. They were the only cigarettes I really liked.

I just can’t picture F. Scott writing his masterpieces while meditating and doing yoga, though, you know?

I often think to myself, after an endless day of being at my desk, whether the writing went well or didn’t go so hot; I often think, I should go outside on my porch, smoke a cigarette and at least drink a beer. I always have beer in the fridge for the lawn care guys. And I have Pall Malls and Marlboros around here for other people I know who smoke.

But I know I would just make myself sick. So I sit on my bed and stare out the open window and listen to music. And that’s actually really quite beautiful. And I know that next month, once rehearsals start, and my play starts becoming a reality, my whole life is gonna change. (At the very least, I hope I’ll learn how to drink again!!)

Okay, gang! The Rolling Stones have hit the road here in America! They are about 45 minutes away from me, in Chicago (I think). I can remember the days when that would have meant a lot to me – the Stones being on tour. I saw them several times when I was young and it would cost maybe $15 to see them. Now, it’s just sort of something I see constantly on Instagram.

It’s mostly Ronnie and Keith working that Instagram thing. They are really active on it. Mick is, too, but much more in his endlessly narcissistic way. You know, for him, it seems to be all about looking 35 still, even though he had emergency heart surgery a few weeks ago. I mean, he does look great. But his posts always seem to be about how great he looks.

But with Keith and Ronnie, it’s always about the music and their daughters and wives and art and about how great life is just hanging out in the backyard. That kind of thing.

Anyway. The Stones are rolling.

Lots of photos posted from Nick Cave’s Conversation in Manchester last night. As usual, one really good one that I wish I get get off of my phone and onto my wall. But I’ve got enough things to keep me completely insane, I don’t need to fixate on that, too. (Plus, there are plenty of amazing photos of Nick Cave out there that I can get onto my wall – if I had enough wall space, that is!)

And on that happy note…

I guess I really need to get back to work on Chapter One of Blessed By Light now. I hope I’m on much firmer footing here today, psychologically. I just love this novel, gang. I really do. Even if I say it myself. It just really celebrates what I love about men. It’s definitely not gonna go over too well with feminists, but then they have never really been my readers anyway. God knows.

Thanks for visiting. I hope you enjoy this wonderful Solstice! I love you guys! See ya!

Me in my hellhole apartment on E. 12th Street, 1985! Back when I could drink & smoke & do all kinds of crazy shit to my heart’s content!

Same Question, Answers Galore

June 9, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Life does indeed go on, as proved by the fact that I yet again woke up this morning and here I am, blogging.

I’m happy about that, and all. But one of those situations that began rearing its little head on Friday remains. But it does not flower and bloom into niceness. Rather, it looks increasingly like it goes down that dark alley that leads to a door with a lawyer’s name on it.

And I hate having to do that.

However, it did give me a great reason to call Gus Van Sant, Sr. on the telephone last evening, and since he is one of the nicest men on planet Earth, it changed the energy of my whole evening.

It was actually late at night (my time, anyway; he’s on the West Coast) and I was outside, under the stars, leaning against my car while I spoke to him on the phone.

I think that’s the best way to speak on the phone to men who are amazing and great. It brings together all sorts of elements that are hard to define but that are nonetheless breathtaking. Meaning: stars, the universe, nights in summer, a voice on the telephone.

It creates an indelible memory; captures a person in your mind for all time.

And when we were done talking business stuff, he told me about a friend of his who was killed the other day. And then he said, “I don’t know why I’m telling you about all this, Marilyn. But life flies by; it goes so fast.”

I loved, loved, loved working for that man. I worked for him for 5 years, until his wife died and he moved back to the West Coast to be near his daughter and his son (the filmmaker, Gus Van Sant, Jr). (He was his son’s business manager.) I learned a lot about the back end of making movies by working for him at the production company, which was a good thing to learn, but the thing I remember most is that we always listened to the old Big Band music while we worked. In particular, he loved Ella Fitzgerald.

I love that kind of music anyway, and I love Ella Fitzgerald too, but it broke my heart when he moved away and now one song that I had always loved before became completely saturated with his personality – “Skylark.” Because of the stories he used to tell me about his life, I hear this song and think that those memories of his are actually mine now, too. In a way.

Another thing that happened yesterday is that I was looking for an old CD – the 5th Dimensions Age of Aquarius. I really wanted to hear their version of the song, “Blowin’ Away.” A song written by that amazing & sort of underrated songwriter, Laura Nyro.

I never did find the CD, but while I was down on the floor, looking at the very bottom row of the CD rack, my attention was of course drawn to the bottom row of the bookshelf that was right next to it because I have some Nick Cave-related books down there (collected interviews with him & such) and so why wouldn’t my attention be magnetically drawn there?

But then my eye was drawn to a slim volume of poetry, The Beautifully Worthless, from 2005 by Ali Liebegott. She has since become a well-known writer. But the book won a Lambda Award for Best Lesbian Debut Fiction, back when my friends at Suspect Thoughts Press had published it. (Even though I think it’s still really more poetry than fiction.) (It has long-since been re-issued with City Lights Press, fyi.)

And I thought, man, that was such a good book. And I pulled it out and started flipping through it, and then became so immersed in its beautiful, plaintive voice again that I went back and I started from the beginning, while still sitting there on the floor.

And I read books like this, and I’ve been in the LGBTQA community my entire professional life, so I know the answers to my own question, and I understand the answers to my own question, but my own question still remains and that is: Why do we have to call it “Lesbian” poetry?

Why can’t it just be POETRY? (Yes, I know the “marketing” answer, and the political answer and it has become cultural.) But it still sort of bothers me – these constant, never-ending pigeonholes. This endless drive toward “diversity” that fractures the unity of Spirit.

I don’t read a book like The Beautifully Worthless and think to myself, Wow, these are such great lesbian poems. No, what I think is: Wow, this book is so good.

I understand that if you placed me against some sort of scale, I would perhaps be way closer to the “lesbian” side of things than maybe you are (I don’t actually know you, so I don’t know for sure); but still. You know? Can’t an amazing book about an experience of life just be an amazing book about an experience of life?

(When my agent was trying to shop my novel Twilight of the Immortal, publisher after publisher bridled at how many lesbians were in the novel – and these were actual historical figures, known to be lesbians, who surrounded the public & private life of the movie star, Rudolph Valentino. And the publishers said, “How are we gonna market a book that has all these lesbians in it?” It was dumbfounding. And it wound up on the smallest press imaginable because of that, and I eventually pulled it from that publisher and published it myself. It was crazy. Most readers who’ve read that book, loved it. The few who didn’t love it, took issue with my view on Valentino’s private sex life. But none of them ever said they had trouble reading it because lesbians were in the book.)

Well, whatever. I sure know that you can’t even attempt to fight City Hall unless you want to be gunned down on the steps of it. So on we go with our labels and our pigeonholes.

In fact, when I had to write a recent press release re: Tell My Bones, I was told to focus on the “diversity” aspect of all of it because of Sandra Caldwell’s transgender stuff, which just feels so foreign to me.

I’ve been friends with Sandra since 1992 and now I have to speak about her as a “transgender actor” instead of as, you know, my friend Sandra, who’s been in a ton of films & TV shows & plays.

Plus, I had to speak of myself as a “bisexual playwright.” To me, that is so weird. To label myself as specifically “bisexual” anything. If you’ve read anything I’ve ever written, you can come to that understanding pretty quickly. Or if you date me, or marry me, or whatever. I guess, if you just have a simple conversation with me, it might never come up. But the idea that it’s part of the approach to press materials now is so strange to me. If I’m bisexual, does it make you want to see a play I’ve written more, or less?

I would hope it doesn’t matter at all.

However, I do live in reality and I also live in the middle of fucking nowhere because people nowadays make me a little nuts…

Anyway, The Beautifully Worthless is a really beautiful book. (I’m not sure, but I think a lesbian wrote it.)

(Wild Animals I Have Known : Polk Street Diaries is also a really good book, that is also in my bookcase, on the same shelf – and has also recently been reissued. But it’s written by a gay guy – Kevin Bentley. And it’s all about life and sex and amazing men and the human heart. But you know…it’s written by a gay guy.)

Okay. I’m gonna scoot and get my Sunday morning started!

And I leave you, oddly enough, with a song called “Thursday” by Morphine. It was my curious choice for breakfast-listening music today! But anyway. Isn’t everything just a little bit curious? Okay. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya.

“Thursday”

We used to meet every Thursday
Thursday
Thursday in the afternoon
For a couple a beers
And a game of pool

We used to go to a motel
A motel
A motel across the street
And the name of the motel
Was the “Wagon Wheel”

OH!

One day she said
C’mon C’mon
She said why don’t you come back to my house
She said my husbands out of town
You know he’s gone till the end of the month

Well I was just so nervous, so nervous
You know I couldn’t really quite relax
‘Cause I was really never quite sure
When her husband was coming back

It turned out it was one of the neighbours
One of the neighbours, one of the neighbours that saw my car
And they told her, yeah they told her
They think they know who you are

Well her husband is a violent man
A very violent and jealous man
Now I have to leave this town
I gotta leave while I still can

We should have kept it every Thursday
Thursday
Thursday in the afternoon
For a couple of beers
And a game of pool

She was pretty cool too!

c – 1993 Mark Sandman

A Quick Howdy!

June 6, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

I’ve spent the morning thus far bestowing my heady thoughts and lofty opinions onto someone other than you, and that cut way into my allotted blogging time for today, so I’m gonna be quick.

Mostly, I wanted to point out something about the whole blogging culture on WordPress. For a lot of people, WordPress is an offshoot of some form of social media. I’ve noticed that a lot of the bloggers I interact with at whatever level, are very interested in getting “likes” and “followers.” And, as loyal readers of my own lofty blog are well aware by now, I have never been about that. I’m about writing because I go crazy if I don’t.

I love it if you “like” me. And if you choose to follow me, that’s great, but I always prefer readers over followers, and I don’t really understand that whole culture of “liking” and “following.” I’ve had my “online journal/blog” for 22 years now. It was a whole different culture when I started out and I’ve sort of remained back in that Dark Age because I was always so happy there!

My long-winded point, though, is that most of my readers do not visit my blog through any type of social media. And I’ve noticed that WordPress has it set up so that you can’t actually contact me through my blog if you don’t have your own WordPress site, which, of course, seems to me to be a little invasive and unfair. So, last night, I added a “contact me” thingie up there at the top of my page – in the header area.

I toyed with the idea of adding the built-in WordPress “Contact” form but that looked way too off-putting and formal, so it’s just an email address link. But it’s there!

Okay!

The lights never did go out last night. The tornado siren went off, though. Briefly, thank god. If you don’t live in an area of the world where you have tornadoes, when a siren goes off, you’re supposed to go down into your basement.

Well, my basement is unfinished and is 118 years old. It’s not the creepiest basement ever, but it’s high on the list of creepy basements and I’m definitely not gonna go down there if the lights go out. So I just sat on the couch in my family room – cats scampering hither & yon because that siren is LOUD – and I just sort of hoped that the tornado would not materialize.

It didn’t. So I then spent the rest of the evening working on my Italian lessons. And then called it a (rainy) night!

Okay, thanks for visiting, gang. I really gotta scoot. It’s uncanny how, after the meeting I had on Tuesday, everything, energy-wise, is shifting into the realm of Tell My Bones. I really, really gotta start paying attention to that play really, really soon. So I’ve got to get Blessed By Light finished.

I hope you have a great day out there, wherever you are in the world!! I love you guys. See ya!

(PS: There was no breakfast-listening music this morning as I was instead reading an interview with KD Lang in a recent issue of Mojo. But I leave you with this bouncy little gem, one of my favorite songs of hers from Absolute Torch & Twang, “Luck In My Eyes”. Okay! See ya!)

“Luck In My Eyes”

I can feel a mountain rain
that’ll wash away
and shine again
empty my pockets
that were weighing me down
sift through my soul
to see what’s lost and found
gonna walk away from trouble
with my head held high
then look closely you’ll see
luck in my eyes

I can hear a howling wind
that sweeps away
the pain that’s been
take all my sorrow
and I’ll cast away
the worries tomorrow
that I had today
gonna walk away from trouble
with my head held high
then look closely you’ll see
luck in my eyes

all my troubles, all my troubles, gone
with luck in my eyes
all my worry’s all my worry’s, gone

c- 1989 K.D. LANG, BEN MINK

Yes, Well, Update

June 4, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Lunch was exceedingly interesting (see post from this morning).

Yes, rehearsals begin in late July. Yes, Florida is probably going to get bypassed entirely and Tell My Bones will go straight from staged readings in NYC & Rhinebeck, to either Off-Broadway or Midtown Manhattan.

Yes, I need to finish revisions on the entire play before late July. Yes, I’m stressed. Yes, I want to finish Blessed By Light before that. Yes, I’m not sure how I’m gonna do that. But yes, I am going to try.

And most importantly – YES!! I have a new coffee mug!!

What Is It About Brides?!

June 4, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

I look good in the dress, you know.

I wear the wedding gown really well. But the moment it goes into storage…

Wow. I just don’t know what it is.

I’m bringing this up because yesterday was the 18th anniversary of Tom Petty’s marriage to Dana York and she posted video footage of their wedding on Instagram and those two looked happier than you can possibly imagine. (Second marriages for both of them.)

I was happier on my first wedding day than I was on my second, but that’s still not saying a whole bunch. (I guess it says that I can be persuaded to do just about anything – twice.)

I awoke at 3:46am today – yes, awash in those wonderful waves of Eros, yet again. But then the first thing I thought of was that video of Tom & Dana’s wedding and of how happy they were. And I began wondering what (if anything) was the matter with me.

I have just never been the kind of gal who thought much about the idea of getting married. Partly because I was born in that part of the 20th Century where men still owned everything imaginable, and I thought of marriage as ownership. And I have never wanted to be owned. The thought of being an ornament on someone’s arm has always horrified me.

The other part was of course my sexuality. Even as a young teenager (when I started getting raped by guys from the outside world and then men from inside my loving home), I could already tell that my sexuality was more than most people could really deal with.

At least, in Ohio.

When I moved to NYC everything changed. It was so great, so liberating, in the truest sense of the word. Because NYC in the 1980s – well, my sexuality fit right in. Everyone was off the charts. I think Manhattan was not only the casual sex capital of the world at that point, but also the extreme casual sex capital of the world.

Then, of course, most of the people I knew got AIDS and died. I was certainly spared in that regard, but it was just really stupid of me to think that I could squeeze myself down into something that could fit into a marriage.

I always wanted to have kids. Even back as a very little girl, I just assumed I was going to have a lot of children. I really, really wanted children. But I never really wanted to get married.

Instead, I got married twice and had no children.

The only marriage that ever truly appealed to me was the marriage between E.B. White and his wife, Katharine Sergeant Angell White.

E.B. White is probably my favorite essayist of all time. He also wrote children’s classics like Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, but his essays are literary gems that struck chords really deep in me and have stayed with me forever. (“Once More to the Lake” is probably everybody’s heartbreaking favorite, but I also really love his essay “Goodbye to 48th Street,” among many others.)

His wife was a legendary fiction editor for The New Yorker when that magazine was in its literary golden age. They met, fell in love, she left her husband, they got married, moved to Maine and bought a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. And then seem to have done nothing but amazing things for each other’s literary lives.

He was, of course, neurotic, and she was often the rudder keeping him pointed in the right direction. But the part I always loved most about their marriage was that, in their house, they had offices across the hall from each other. They’d each go into their offices in the morning, write all day, and then both emerge at 5 o’clock, have one martini and a cigarette, talk about what they’d written (or angst-ed over) and then have dinner together and go to bed. (Sadly, I don’t know what they did in bed, besides sleep, otherwise I would of course regale you with all those details here.)

To me, that has stuck with me as the idea of the most perfect (as well as unattainable) marriage.

Another “relationship” that has always really appealed to me was Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett’s. But it seems to have involved tons more booze & cigarettes and a lot of shouting. I’m not big on the shouting stuff. And they did not get married, but stayed together for 30 years and wrote various masterpieces. And that appeals to me enormously.

I guess you can see that I am all about the writing.

It’s not that I am not all about love, or not into love, or a disbeliever in love. Love is everything to me. But love is woven in there inextricably with my writing. I don’t know why I can’t separate it. And I guess it does make me very self-involved, although I don’t feel like I am. I feel like my love is enormous and spills over into everything, benefiting everyone – and yet, more importantly, love helps me write better. And that means everything to me and so I guess it makes me self-involved.

But it’s still all about love.

Loyal readers of this lofty blog are no doubt painfully aware that I am totally, 100%, thoroughly in love with my muse. He has changed my life – and so quickly, so unexpectedly. Came into my life on all cylinders, blasted open my writing and turned it completely around.

It’s not that he is my reason for being – the kind of thing that maybe people feel when they are wearing those beautiful clothes and having weddings; but he gives me clarity on my reason for being, which has wound up being the most amazing gift I could have ever hoped to receive.

Clarity on my reason for being.

I don’t know that I would have ever realized just how much I needed that if it hadn’t happened of its own accord.

You know, I watched that short video footage of Tom & Dana’s wedding on Instagram yesterday, over & over & over. And I was simply astounded by how happy they were. (Yes, I pondered it!) And it wasn’t any kind of bullshit – those two were incredibly happy. You could just see it. And I felt a little bit like a failure because I can only seem to feel that happy when I’m alone, finding the most perfect word.

So I don’t understand myself and my “alone-ness” any better than I ever did, but I still feel happier than I’ve ever been and just so blessed to have the most amazing muse.

It’s probably best to just not think about it too much. Because I think it’s going to end up being something good for the whole world; I really do.

Okay. I’ve got lunch today with the director of Tell My Bones at 12:30. So I’m gonna scoot now and try to get some writing done before that. I think today is going to be just another stunning day out there. I’m so looking forward to it.

I hope your Tuesday is just as splendid, wherever you are in the world. I leave you with this, the song Tom Petty wrote for Dana, long before they were married, back when he was heading towards some real dark times, but (he has said repeatedly in interviews) he was already in love with her & waiting. Okay! Thanks for visiting! I love you guys, See ya.

I dreamed you
I saw your face
Cut my lifeline
Went floating through space
I saw an angel
I saw my fate
I can only thank God it was not too late

Over mountains
I floated away
‘Cross an ocean
I dreamed her name
I followed an angel
Down through the gates
I can only thank God it was not too late

Sing a little song of
Loneliness
Sing one to make me smile
Another round for everyone
I’m here for a little while

Now I’m walking
This street on my own
But she’s with me
Everywhere I go
Yeah, I found an angel
I found my place
I can only thank God it was not too late
I can only thank God it was not too late
I can only thank God it was not too late

c-1995 Tom Petty

Oh, People! This Astounding Voyage Continues!

June 2, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis 4 Comments

Around 2am, the wind kicked up something fierce, so not only had it begun to rain again, but the wind was blowing rain in on my bed. Short of sleeping in some sort of adventurous, seafaring schooner, having rain blown in on me while I sleep is not my idea of a nice night.

So I got up and closed most of the windows again, and missed the morning bird songs and overslept again. Awoke at 6:30am to a bright, shiny bedroom.

And to two very intense texts on my phone.

Both texts had apparently been hanging there unanswered by the soundly-sleeping me for hours.

One was from Peitor. We had been texting before I went to sleep last night at around midnight, and I thought we were done texting and so I set down my phone and turned out the light. But it seems I was wrong. Because he texted something intense, unhappy and emotional (he’s in Italy right now, checking in on his elderly mother), and I left him hanging for over 6 hours! I felt terrible.

You know – lurch yourself from sleep, start typing: Oh god, I’m so sorry. I fell asleep!

And the other text was from a girlfriend that I am very close to and we had gotten into an intense conversation late last night, because (like Peitor) she is also going through some intense family stuff. And she looked so tired and so angry and so fed up last night, and I just wanted to fix that.

I try so hard not to tell people how to live or what to think or what to do. And I went through all that training in Divinity School on counseling people, and all of that, and I’ve counseled a lot of people. And I can be a remarkably effective counselor if I don’t actually know you and don’t have to get emotionally involved. I’m perfectly at ease with allowing you to find your own way in life and the “f” word does not come flying out of my mouth…

However. When it’s someone I actually know and care about, suddenly I can find myself saying things like: “You need to do such & such!!”, trying to tell her how to live her own life, in an escalating tone… because I am emotionally involved and I want my friends to be happy and I think that “being happy” means thinking the way I do.

Even though we ended it in a good place, I still felt bad about not giving her enough of her own space last night. And then her text was there from during the night, continuing some of her thoughts from the conversation and I had to force myself (not even out of bed yet) to not let my mind go to that place where I am trying to fix her life for her – even though I know full well she is not asking me to do that.

And even though I didn’t go as far as the “f” word last night, I still felt like I had. Because I truly prefer to allow people to be themselves, and to have their own thoughts and approaches to the world; and yet sometimes I don’t choose to actually do that. I jump in there and try to “re-script” them in a rather emphatic tone. And then I don’t feel very good about myself. I don’t want to simply paste my own perceptions of the world onto people, it dismisses the importance of how they feel about living their own lives.

And that was all, you know, before I even got out of bed this morning. I was still just lying there, under the cuddly blanket and my 1700-thread-count Italian cotton sheets, my head surrounded by all my soft expensive pillows – and I was staring at the phone, feeling like a terrible friend.

So I guess maybe it’s going to be an interesting day.

The Conversations with Nick Cave are on hiatus for a couple of weeks. Well, at least the Conversations that have an uppercase “C”. The conversations with a lowercase “c” that he will undoubtedly be having over the next couple of weeks are apparently private and his website is not revealing where he is planning to spend those evenings. This likely also means that no one will be posting photos of their lowercase “c” conversations with him to Instagram, so I will not be able to tell you what he is wearing. Or if any of those people he converses with in private call him God.

Yes, this means I will have to fixate on other things.

Like, for instance, my own life.

On Tuesday, I’m having lunch with the director of my play (Tell My Bones) so that I can discuss with him what Sandra said on the phone the other night. And move forward. Most likely at a pace I was not anticipating even a few weeks ago. We’ll see.

I still have some writing to do on that play. Revisions, I mean. But I’m waiting for rehearsals to start before I actually do that. And the pressure on me feels intense because the cart is officially before the horse now – meaning that a bunch of publicity about this play got “out there” in the world and on the Internet without me knowing it was going out there.

And now people all over the place are using my “award-winning script” as a way to try to drive up the value of Helen’s paintings.

When I first wrote the story about Helen, it was a TV movie script (and it is an award-wining script now and it did well in a lot of the top contests and at the Austin Film Festival). I was working for Gus Van Sant’s production company back then, working for his amazing dad, who was his business manager and who also managed Helen LaFrance’s career and that’s how I got exposed to her truly amazing paintings.

And I wanted to write about her specifically to expose more people to her incredible paintings. To her life. In my opinion, her paintings need to be hanging in everyone’s homes.

And so now, to find myself in this position where, you know, the play hasn’t even been mounted yet; you can’t actually go see it anywhere yet. And total strangers all over the world are taking it as a given that the play will be great and that it justifies their wanting to make more money off of Helen’s paintings right now…

It’s not a bad position to be in, but I am under a lot of pressure here.

Which is also why I want the novel finished and off my desk, because I need to focus on Tell My Bones, even though I love this novel and I’ve loved every moment I’ve spent writing it. I don’t really want to rush through it. But I also don’t want it being shoved to the back burner again. I had wanted it completed by Christmas and it is practically summer already.

So that’s that. My brain on a lovely Sunday morning. Still in my PJs and already way too stressed…

I hope that you’re having a super-duper Sunday, though, wherever you are in the world.

I leave you with this. I was actually listening to this song again yesterday, because I came across something I’d written several years ago – about how it had felt to be 12 and to love this song and to listen to it late in the night on a tinny transistor radio, after sneaking out of my house and just walking the dark suburban streets by myself, listening to the local AM hit radio station, thinking it really was going to be incredible – being a powerful woman in the world, living my dreams, making them happen… (I leave it to you to decide to what degree that has worked out for me.)

Anyway. Thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya!

“I Am Woman”

I am woman, hear me roar
In numbers too big to ignore
And I know too much to go back and pretend
‘Cause I’ve heard it all before
And I’ve been down there on the floor
No one’s ever going to keep me down again

Whoa, yes, I am wise
But it’s wisdom born of pain
Yes, I’ve paid the price
But look how much I gained

If I have to I can do anything
I am strong (strong)
I am invincible (invincible)
I am woman

You can bend but never break me
‘Cause it only serves to make me
More determined to achieve my final goal
And I’ll come back even stronger
Not a novice any longer
‘Cause you’ve deepened the conviction in my soul

Whoa, yes, I am wise
But it’s wisdom born of pain
Yes, I’ve paid the price
But look how much I gained

If I have to I can do anything
I am strong (strong)
I am invincible (invincible)
I am woman

I am woman, watch me grow
See me standing toe-to-toe
As I spread my loving arms across the land
But I’m still an embryo
With a long, long way to go
Until I make my brother understand

Whoa, yes, I am wise
But it’s wisdom born of pain
Yes, I’ve paid the price
But look how much I gained

If I have to I can face anything
I am strong (strong)
I am invincible (invincible)
I am woman

Oh, I am woman
I am invincible
I am strong
I am woman
I am invincible
I am strong
I am woman

c-1972 RAY BURTON, HELEN REDDY

Ciao, Bella!

May 31, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Well, the good news (sort of) is that my little cat, Daddycakes, hasn’t been gone for 2 months already; it’s only been six weeks. So that sort of made me feel better. Perhaps time isn’t flying quite as quickly as it had seemed yesterday.

The other good news is that the headache is completely gone, finally, and it’s not supposed to rain at all today. My brain feels totally back to normal.

I awoke, though, to the eerie sight of a dense fog covering everything outside my window – for as far as the eye could see. It was too cool. It was almost 4am. Huckleberry was sitting in the window across from my bed – she also seemed quite taken with the fog. One lone bird was already singing in our maple tree – and Huckleberry, being a cat and not an actual berry, was quite taken with that, too.

AND I had once again awakened horny as heck for some mysterious reason and so that, of course, excited me, too! Where is that coming from? I just don’t know!

AND there was already a text on my phone from Peitor! It was a photo of Mont Blanc. No, not the pen! The mountain! He’s in Switzerland and heading to Mont Blanc today.

I was, like – WTF? Two days ago, I had awoken to this photo on my phone (a lovely boat outside his window in that Airbnb on the English Channel):

Yesterday, he was finally leaving the UK and I had texted him some work-related stuff, and asked him if he was stopping in Manhattan on his way back to LA.

And instead he texts me from Switzerland today at 4am (my time).

ME (texting at 4am, my time): Wow! I didn’t know you were going to Switzerland!!

HIM (texting right back): I didn’t either but I am having the best time!

And then nothing more… Silence. No further pings arising from the phone.

So I guess we’ll find out eventually how he suddenly wound up in Switzerland, heading for Mont Blanc, when he should have been heading for LA.

(Methinks he was in a train station and, loathe to return to Los Angeles – a city he has lived & worked in for 25 years and which he pretty much despises – saw a train heading somewhere completely other than the airport and decided he liked that idea a lot better and so, answered that clarion call of “All Aboard!!!”… But we shall see.)

Even though I love their apartment in West Hollywood and would hate like hell to have to pay for an actual hotel in LA, I’ve been selfless enough to mention to him, you know, that if he hates LA so much now, he should move.

And he always replies with something along the lines of: “I know you’re really happy out in that old house in the middle of nowhere, Marilyn, where it’s so quiet and nobody bothers you and there are only about 3 cars during “rush hour” and your muses are flying all over your room all the time and you’re doing your best writing ever. I’m sure that’s all really nice and that Tell My Bones will win some sort of Pulitzer Prize. However. Some of us need to be near an airport.”

And of course he’s right about that. I’m near absolutely nothing. But I don’t mind getting into my little Honda Fit and just driving! (And driving and driving and driving… I’ve never done so much driving in my fucking life.)

And it never fails, when I go to the market and I stand there and I study my cart intently and I say to myself: Think, Marilyn, think! Have you got absolutely everything that you need for the week because God knows you can’t possibly leave your desk again for the next 8 days…

And I study and I study, and I look and I look, and I peruse very carefully the items in my cart and with brave assuredness, I think: Yes! I am ready to checkout!

And then I am on the highway, racing 95 mph toward home, when I almost always realize that I’ve forgotten something. And so, you know, I have to go without it for a week because I am not going back. I am not that kind of gal; I do not “go back.” Plus, it’s really far.

And in Manhattan, of course, there was never such a thing as “forgetting” something at the store because you walked right past the corner bodega 1700 times a day. If you “forget” something, you just go get it 13 seconds later.

Anyway. Okay.

People in Sweden are already posting to Instagram. Showing where they are dining before going off merrily to have a Conversation with Nick Cave! So that seems like a good sign! (Of what, I’m not sure really. It just seems sort of good, you know?)

And I am going to get started here because the very real reality of my life is that I need to finish writing this novel. I need to seriously do this and stop staring all the time. So I’m gonna get started on that business of stopping all the staring.

I let the cats choose the breakfast-listening music today and they unanimously chose “More News from Nowhere” from Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! I thought that was pretty cool. So I leave you with that today.

(Even though the lyrics are amazing and I know every wonderful word by heart, I’m not going to post the lyrics here because they go on and on and on and on and on, and would probably end up spilling over into someone else’s blog and I wouldn’t want to get everybody all upset. So.)

Have a great Friday, wherever you are in the world, gang. Thanks for visiting. I love you, guys. See ya!

Me, again! Getting My Sh*t Together!!

May 29, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

I forgot to mention in my post last night that if you’re on your phone and you want to view the photo gallery of Villa Monte Malbe, where the writer’s retreat will be held, you have to turn your phone sideways. The photos are down below the song lyrics.

My life got a lot better as the evening wore on, btw. Or at least more interesting.

Sandra eventually called and we spoke for about an hour. I can’t really post to my blog the details of what she said, but I’m still not sure if rehearsals for the play are being moved up to July or not. It sounds like there is a very good chance that they are, though. I still have to hear from the director.

But this of course means that I have to finish Blessed By Light really soon. Like, posthaste. This also means that frustrating days like yesterday simply have to stop.

I wrote 2 fucking words yesterday.

But part of that is because I’m starting to stress a little about the play (as well as the other play I’m writing with Sandra), and up until yesterday, I was getting good at keeping each project sort of “compartmentalized” in my brain and not letting them bleed into each other.

However, now I feel like all my projects are starting to look like this in my brain (I’m the strong, capable gal in the middle, soon to be eaten alive by all her thoughts):

This sort of reminds me that, lately, I’ve been missing my furry little boy like crazy. He died 2 months ago, already. The time just flies. I can’t believe it.

This morning, when I awoke, I truly thought I felt him jump up onto the bed to visit me. I turned and said, “Hi!” but there wasn’t any cat there. It was so strange. I mean, it really felt like he was physically there.

It makes me want to cry, but, you know, that doesn’t solve anything. So on we go.

After the phone call from Sandra, I worked on the new music material for teaching that guy piano, and the material is starting to go into some very interesting places. They throw out anything you ever knew about Theory & Composition (yay!), and simply distill music down to 7 notes. (I’m paraphrasing, but not by much.)

I can readily see, from what I’m learning, that if this guy who wants to learn piano, really has music in his head, then he’s going to be playing piano really quickly. He’s not going to have to get bogged down in all the stuff that I got bogged down in straight out of the gate.

I’m not going to waste time regretting anything I learned, especially since I’m still alive and can still learn this new stuff and have a new approach to music myself, even after all these decades. But it sure does feel like I wasted a lot of time on that piano, when it could have been so much more productive for me. Because ALL I had was music and rhythm in my head. And ALL of it wanted to get out. I did not understand what any of what I felt inside had to do with Bach or any of those others.

By the time I was 14, I had maybe written 3 songs on the piano, but I had written about a hundred already on my guitar. Complete songs, too: Verse/chorus, verse/chorus, bridge/chorus/out. I had a 3-ring notebook full of completed songs. Because on guitar, I was not bogged down by Theory & Composition in any way. For me, guitar was all about the rhythm and that facilitated the melodies and then the lyrics sort of cascaded down and attached themselves to the notes, you know?

I once turned in a song as an English assignment in 7th grade, and my teacher really liked it. And he said, “Do you write a lot of songs?” And when I told him about my 3-ring notebook, he asked if he could see it and then was sort astounded by it. The size & scope of it. I could not stop writing songs if I tried.

He was a published poet, with a PhD., and after seeing that notebook, he would spend time after class with me, helping me learn how to write poems, which in turn helped me gain clarity in lyric writing overnight. I had access to truly wonderful teachers, so it wasn’t that people didn’t care about my talent.

My songs were my whole life, though, whereas the piano had become the sort of underlying nightmare of my life. I knew how to play what they wanted me to play. And I knew how to deliver to them what they wanted to hear- tone, nuance, syncopation, feeling; but it in no way spoke to the music that was going on inside me. And I couldn’t understand why it didn’t connect, because I loved the piano, but it became a very stressful, frightening thing to me. It truly did.

And I see now that this current approach to music that I’m learning in order to try to help this other guy learn — it would have saved me 45 years ago. My stress-load would have disappeared. (Well, with that, and if those boys at the high school would have stopped raping me for 5 minutes…)

However! If wishes were horses…. (Yes! Then this would’ve been me! Prairie Rose! Lady Champion Rider!!) All right!

Meanwhile, on Earth…

I better get started on the novel here, gang. It’s gonna be July in a heart beat! I’m hopeful that I’ll get more than 2 words written today.

Tonight Nick Cave is having another Conversation somewhere in Europe, but in a truly odd turn of events, I can’t recall where!! I guess I finally have too much on my fucking mind… I’m sure it’s gonna be great, though. (And I’ll be darned if yet another person from the Netherlands didn’t post another photo on Instagram yesterday, calling him God….) (Wouldn’t it be funny, though, if, you know, it turned out I was wrong?? And he was God?? I guess I’d have to eat my hat. ) (I’d have to find it first…)

Okay! More coffee is on my immediate horizon! I’m gonna go grab it and get to work here.

I hope you have a really good day out there, gang. Wherever you are in the world and with whatever it is that is currently occupying you!

I leave you with this! It was my pre-breakfast-listening music today. I listened to it while feeding the cats. But then realized that the musicians who live next door to me were either awake very early or hadn’t been to sleep yet (Methinks the latter!), and they were out on their porch, smoking at 5am. And I didn’t want to annoy them so early in the morning with my music wafting through the open windows… (Although they play death metal and practice out in their garage and are pretty much the champions at annoying people with their music.) (Although they don’t annoy me. I honestly love living next door to them and listening to them practice because they remind me of my fair & bonny girlhood as a musician in NYC and all those wonderful cigarette-smoking musician guys – and I mean that truly, in the nicest way.)

But I leave you with this. A different song about boys, and summer, and everything that they can’t deal with anymore! Thanks for visiting! I love you guys. See ya.

She grew up in an Indiana town
Had a good-lookin’ mama who never was around
But she grew up tall and she grew up right
With them Indiana boys on them Indiana nights

Well, she moved down here at the age of eighteen
She blew the boys away, was more than they’d seen
I was introduced and we both started groovin’
She said, “I dig you baby, but I got to keep movin’ on
Keep movin’ on”

Last dance with Mary Jane, one more time to kill the pain
I feel summer creepin’ in and I’m tired of this town again

Well, I don’t know, but I’ve been told
You never slow down, you never grow old
I’m tired of screwin’ up, tired of going down
Tired of myself, tired of this town

Oh, my my, oh, hell yes
Honey, put on that party dress
Buy me a drink, sing me a song
Take me as I come ’cause I can’t stay long

Last dance with Mary Jane, one more time to kill the pain
I feel summer creepin’ in and I’m tired of this town again

There’s pigeons down on Market Square
She’s standin’ in her underwear
Lookin’ down from a hotel room
Nightfall will be comin’ soon

Oh, my my, oh, hell yes.
You got to put on that party dress
It was too cold to cry when I woke up alone
I hit my last number and walked to the road

Last dance with Mary Jane, one more time to kill the pain
I feel summer creepin’ in and I’m tired of this town again

c- 1993 Tom Petty

Just One Frustrating Day

May 28, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

I have always found Bad Day at Black Rock to be a frustrating, annoying movie, even though that didn’t keep me from sitting through it a number of times.

And whenever I have a frustrating, annoying day around here, I simply call it a bad day at Black Rock and try to leave it at that.

First, though: I finally remembered to put up that photo gallery of Villa Monte Malbe in Perugia, Italy, where the writer’s retreat will be held (hopefully every year). It’s down there on the right hand side. Click on any photo and it becomes a gallery.

Even though it sleeps 60, and has 30 guestrooms with 30 private baths, I am only going to accept a maximum of 20 writers, and probably closer to 15. Since the retreat will also yield a publication of work that’s written during the retreat, I have to actually meet one-on-one with all the writers several times throughout the week, and then edit everyone after they go home.

And I was thinking I’d like to have a life in addition to doing all that… so, 20 is the max.

I’ve been waiting here at my desk for 2 hours for a phone call from Sandra. She texted: I’ll be home soon, can you chat?

That was the above-mentioned 2 hours ago. However, I know it will be a very interesting chat, so I’m waiting…

I’m also waiting to hear from the director of the play, but he’s incommunicado right now over something that is of great interest to me, so I am trying to be patient there, too.

However, I didn’t get much done on the novel today, so of course, I’m frustrated and annoyed with myself. And when I can’t get other people to distract me (i.e., on the phone), it’s even more frustrating!

And then after mentioning in my earlier post today, that I listened to Tom Petty’s song “Dreamville” about 30 times in a row last night, and loving every spellbinding, beautiful moment of it, as well as the night itself; I played the song again once today while fixing my dinner and broke into tears again.

What the heck is up with that?

I don’t know. Sometimes, I just give up trying to figure out anything.

Anyway, peruse the photos. The retreat is going to focus on sensual/sexual/erotic writing; poetry, prose, memoir, fiction, nonfiction, etc. (Is there an “etc.” or did I just cover all the bases?)

If you are familiar with my book Stirring Up A Storm: Tales of the Sensual, the Sexual, and the Erotic, it’s going to be along those lines, except for men & women, both. Not just women writers.

Plus, it’s still a year away.

Okay, people. I am going to try to see if I can salvage the night here somehow. I refuse to go to bed frustrated. Well, that sounded a little weird, but I trust that you know what I meant.

Buonanotte!!

Baci. See ya!

It’s Just that Kind of Morning Around Here!!

May 27, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

I’m brimming with way too many feelings today, gang!

The good news, though, is that we have a wonderful little reprieve here in the weather! It’s not going to rain again until later this evening. So I awoke to a glorious spring day!

However, I overslept, and woke to that glorious spring day a couple of hours later than I would have preferred, so I feel like half my day’s gone.

I was lazy again yesterday and didn’t do yoga, even though my body was starting to scream for it. Instead, I opted for the shortcut and decided to take Ibuprofen, and I forgot that those pills make me super sleepy. So I overslept today because I was lazy yesterday and so I awoke not super happy with myself for some of those choices I made yesterday, however…

We’re not gonna look back, are we? No! We’re moving ahead!

We have many little flowers to plant today in the pretty sunshine!!!

But this means that I have to go into my barn to get my flower boxes out, and I now have Virginia creeper growing all over that fucking barn door. So I have to deal with that today, too, without winding up in the Emergency Room because of exposure to Virginia creeper, which I am deathly allergic too. We’ll see how that goes.

This whole “Virginia creeper on the fucking barn door” thing makes me so angry. I’m just so fed up with that gigantic fallen oak tree out there by my barn that still hasn’t been hauled away.

I cannot tell you how many people have promised to come out here with a chainsaw and a truck and haul that enormous dead tree away. The tree fell over a few years before I even bought this house. The fallen tree is the reason why I need a new roof on my barn. And everyone I’ve talked to since even before buying the house who has promised to come take care of hauling that dead tree away has not done it.

It makes it really difficult to get in and out of the barn, or to deal with trying to replace the roof. And worse yet, that old dead oak tree positively loves Virginia creeper. It’s a veritable Virginia creeper magnet.

The tree is actually in segments, but each segment is about as big as a house. So it’s in a massive pile. It’s hard enough to maneuver around it when it’s not covered in Virginia creeper. However, it is indeed covered in Virginia creeper. Already. And it’s still only May.

So I look out my kitchen window, at the glorious spring morning, several hours later than I had hoped to be looking out at it because I was lazy yesterday, and I know I want to get my flower boxes out of that barn that I can readily see from my kitchen window and then I see all that fucking Virginia creeper all over my barn door, and I just get so fucking frustrated with all of humanity for LYING to me all the time!!

Come get this fucking tree already, you know??

And then yesterday evening, two separate things happened, both indirectly relating to my play Tell My Bones that could cause me to be in rehearsals for it as early as July.

Which, on the one hand, seems like a good thing! But I’m trying to finish writing this novel! I seriously want it done and off to the publisher before I have to focus on Tell My Bones.

And if we’re going to be getting this far ahead of schedule on the rehearsals, does this mean that in September, when I’ll be merrily following Nick Cave hither and yon all over Manhattan, that I will actually already be up to my eyeballs in the staged readings that will need 200 million % of my concentration??!! Please don’t tell me this!

And then Peitor texts me, bright & early. He’s now sequestered in that amazing little Airbnb on the English Channel! He has texted charming photos!! With stunning vistas! When can we get some work done on the scripts??!!

It all makes me just want to lean over and smack my forehead repeatedly on my desk and I’ve only been awake for an hour and a half!

And there you have it. My morning thus far.

So.

People in Amsterdam prefer not to post to Instagram in English. So I can’t guarantee you that everyone loved the Conversation with Nick Cave that happened there last night, but the photos have all the earmarks of people loving it.

He might have actually sang T.Rex’s Cosmic Dancer last night! But don’t quote me on that. The bunch of words that came before “T.Rex’s Cosmic Dancer” and the bunch of words that came after it in the Instagram post, were in a language I don’t understand. So they might have actually said, “I was so angry when he didn’t sing T.Rex’s Cosmic Dancer, that I left in a huff and will never go see him again.”

However, I’m guessing probably not.

The only thing that I saw posted in English was somebody saying that “God was in the house”.

[UPDATE: In a weird twist, I see that Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files newsletter today deals with God’s voice! I haven’t read it yet, though…]

This is of course a play on words, because Nick Cave wrote a truly amazing song called, “God is in the House.” And a lot of people also literally call Nick Cave, “God.”

I am indeed one of those people who thinks that the song “God is in the House,” is a real jaw-dropping song, no matter how many times I hear it. However, I am not one of those people who thinks Nick Cave is God.

I don’t even know what that word “God” means anymore, you know? I truly don’t. I did when I was a little girl. God was everything to me and I clung to Him and He somehow managed to help me survive years of terrifying abuse. And certainly during the first suicide attempt when I was 14, when people were fighting to save my life, He told me – maybe not in words but in a language I definitely understood was coming from God – to go back down there and stick it out, because it was eventually gonna end well. That it was gonna be worth it and I was gonna want to be there for that.

I don’t really know that God anymore. That voice is sort of distant to me, now. I hear God now as a sort of continually creating energy, that is always delivering more, more, more, and then still more, and more and more. As in: Here, this is Life, and I have a limitless supply of it. Make of it what you will.

I am willing to grant Nick Cave a lowercase “g,” you know? “Little god” among half-formed men. But, frankly, the words I would rather use to describe him are so much more magnificent than that because he is human. And seeing him in all of his humanness only heightens how extraordinary he actually is. To call him God, misses all of that, but to call him a “man” brings everything remarkable about him into tight focus.

For me, anyway.

Okay. I really, really gotta get going here, gang. The many tiny flowers await me!! And many dead leaves are begging to be raked and put into those handy dead-leaf bags! And patio furniture wants to be hosed down. And citronella candles want to be placed merrily about! So I’m gonna get started on that.

I leave you with breakfast-listening music from this morning. I went back to Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ Nobody’s Children. All the sort of naughty little songs that make me feel frisky!! Thanks for visiting. I love you guys! See ya!

WAYS TO BE WICKED

Honey tell me why you smile
When you see me hurt so bad
Tell me what I did to you babe
That could make you act like that
Yes I’ve been your fool before babe
And I probably will again
She ain’t afraid to let me have it
You ain’t afraid to stick it in
Yeah you know so many ways to be wicked
But you don’t know one little thing about love

Yeah I can take a little pain
I could hold it pretty well
I can watch your little eyes light up
When you’re walkin’ me through hell
Yes I’ve been your fool before, babe
And I probably will again
She ain’t afraid to let me have it
You ain’t afraid to stick it in

Yeah you know so many ways to be wicked

But you don’t know one little thing about love

Yeah those cobra eyes
Light with a smile
You take pride
In that devil down inside

I can take a little pain
I can hold it pretty well
I can watch your little eyes light up
When you’re walkin’ me through hell
Yeah I’ve been your fool before babe
And I probably will again
No you ain’t afraid to let me have it
Honey you ain’t afraid to stick it in

You know so many ways to be wicked
But you don’t know one little thing about love

c- 1985 Tom Petty & Mike Campbell