2. Examine your values.

2. Examine your values.
Maegen Ramirez

You won't hear this mentioned much, but it's important. Why are you writing? (If you answer "I don't have any choice, I've written since I was little. I'm just driven to write" then you should examine not only your values but your weakness for cliché.)
- Thomas Christensen, How to Get a Book Published In 10 not-so-easy steps

Thomas Christensen, I don’t know who the hell you are, or who the hell you think you are, but fair enough.

I write because I’m lodged between two cultural spheres.
Because I never figured out if I was supposed to take the wafer and wash it down with wine or swallow Shabbat soups.
Because neither the crucifix nor the Star of David ever reached out with a loving hand.
Because I’m driven into pen and paper’s arms when Spanish trips clumsily off my tongue.
Because I could’ve penned Angela Chase’s musings much better than “My So-Called Life”’s writers.
Because we’ve all had our very own Jordan Catalanos.
Because I don’t look like Claire Fucking Danes.
Because My Love Song is madder than Sylvia’s.
Because self-deprecation and insecurity only work when they’re fictional.
Because there’re fewer things more beautiful than Truth dressed in Fiction’s clothing when Fiction is posing as Truth.
Because I can’t admit to dropping my clothes and lying back set and ready with the taste of cheap booze on my lips.
Because the women I write can do all those things and still be taken seriously.
Because no one wants to hear about that time Mom got pregnant and Dad had to leave the seminary to marry her.
Because literary revenge tastes and feels like sweet mango juice dripping down my chin.
Because I still haven’t answered the riddle, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”
Because Lou Dobbs, Keith Olberman, Ann Coulter and Bill Maher are all full of shit.
Because I’ve yet to hear anyone of any color accurately describe what my experiences have been.
Because passing by the Klassic Koffee Kafe and Kountry Korner on Texas road trips is scarier than crossing the Arizona state line.
Because even if those places never existed, I probably would’ve had to invent them.
Because Ramirez determines what people think I should write.
Because I’ll drink 10 Dixie cups of The Kool-Aid before I’ll write what you tell me to.
Because I’m still arrogant and naïve enough to believe what I’ve just written.
Because death is only a disease and the cure is in my keyboard.
Because you’ll never know what the best machaca in the world tastes like unless I spell it out for you.
Because I’ll never be as good as Faulkner.
Because I’d rather write than “hone my craft”.
Because deep down, really, really, deep down I love honing my craft.
Because it’s going to take a lot more than a man to bring out the stand-back-white-bitch in me.
Because I want people to remember the west side before it became The West Side.
Because I know I can’t have been the only brown girl in Dr. Martens getting my groove on Brit Pop.
Because the nuns didn’t beat me.
Because I gave Lupe a chance and she let me down.
Because I’m through with being angry at Mommy ‘n Daddy.
Because all of the above is too much and yet not enough.
Because sometimes I have to have written in order to understand what I value, smartass.
Because if I didn’t shut the fuck up and return to the white, open spaces I might not have anything to say.

An Occurrence in Eastridge

Maegan Ramirez
An Occurrence in Eastridge
The bronzed man
stands on his lawn
in his immaculate cardigan
and frowns when I say,
“Good morning, Mr. Giner.”
“It’s G-EYE-ner.”

The leather-faced white lady
in fake pearls and pink velour
jogging suit pat-dries the sweat
from her Chanel-scented brow
before shouting across the street,
“Hey Mr. G-EYE-ner,
if you mow my lawn, I’ve got
a ten dollar bill
with your name on it.”

Burberry Blue

Burberry Blue

by Maegan Ramirez

Beads of sweat bubbled up along my hairline and upper lip the minute I stepped outside. Haylie and I had had enough of those stupid Forum Shops. Now what? Las Vegas wasn’t home and The Strip wasn’t ours to play with. While Grampy and Dad tried their luck at blackjack and Grammy and Mom warmed the stools in front of the nickel slots, we were told to stay together and not to talk to strangers.
“Especially if they don’t look clean girls. You shouldn’t talk to someone dirty-looking.” Grammy always kept things clean.

Haylie talked to The Burberry Man, though. She had to. He thought we wanted some of his store’s scarves in the dead of a desert summer. He thought we wanted to take something tan, black, red, white and bland without paying for it. We didn’t and we couldn’t because Mom stuffed our backpacks with sandwiches and granola bars and bottles of water that we could refill at any water fountain for free so that we wouldn’t waste money on overpriced, over-salted shopping mall pretzels. Nothing had a price tag on it. I looked and looked. The Burberry Man noticed me looking, even after Haylie told me to stop being so “gauche” and “uncouth.” He noticed and he followed, from section to section, from the handbags to the blouses and back. Tugging on my backpack she whispered, “We have to go.”

“No, I don’t want to.”

She leaned in close enough for me to feel her lips brush against my ear. Her voice was smooth, but forced. “We can’t afford anything. He isn’t even going to ask us if we need help looking for stuff.”
The Burberry Man cleared his throat and sighed. It wasn’t one of those I’m having-a-really-bad-day-sighs; it was a hurry-the-hell-up sigh. I didn’t want to hurry. I wanted to spend the whole afternoon there. I wanted to stick around so long that his feet would begin to swell inside his narrow, shiny black shoes and hurt, hurt, hurt. I wanted to see if I could make him walk a million steps in a 20’ x 40’ space in less than five minutes. But his sigh and the clickety-clack of his pointy toe that followed made Haylie spin around so quickly that her hair looked like a black skirt in the middle of a dance.

“What?”

“Excuse me?” He raised his eyebrows, but he didn’t look up from the cuticles that he was pushing back with this thumbnail.

She started towards him pulling her backpack off her shoulders. When they were toe-to-toe she unzipped it and threw it on his feet.

“You see? I can’t bag anything and my pockets aren’t that deep. So you’re either going to ask us if you can assist us with anything, or you’re going to slither off.”

He was looking down his sharp nose, directly at her. He didn’t really say anything, but I think he tried. All I heard was a high, thin “Eh.” A lady dressed in a high-waisted black skirt and expensive-looking whit blouse clickety-clacked her way behind the Burberry Man. She smelled like a fistful of those perfume sample cards.

“Is there a problem?” Her voice was as crisp and tight as her blouse.

“No, no problem. My little sister just wanted to rummage through some of last season’s fashions. We noticed that that’s all you carry, so we thought we might pick up a few things. But since all we got was harassed, we won’t be giving you our business. That’s a shame, ‘cause you could really use it. I don’t see anyone else in here.”

She had already slipped back into her bag when The Burberry Woman said, “If you don’t leave right now I’m calling security.”

Haylie was already out the door and out of the Forum before I caught up with her.

“They’re stupid, Haylie! But you didn’t have to get so mad. I mean, I don’t—“

“Shut up.”

The outdoor misters started spraying the sidewalk. She pulled me to the other side so that the fanny-packed tourists could pass. Many sunscreened people came and went before she said anything else.

“I think I saw a Sally’s a few blocks away. Let’s buy hair dye and hang out in the room.”

“When did you see it?”

“Last night when we went to Vons. It’s on the way. It’s not far, we can walk.”

But it was that far, and although I knew Haylie wouldn’t let anything happen to us, I wasn’t sure that I trusted her way. I also wasn’t sure that Mom would be happy with us playing with hair dye in the hotel bathroom. I could already hear her telling us about how Circus Circus was going to charge us extra for the towels we ruined. IN between Haylie telling me to shut up and when I pointed out stores and restaurants that we didn’t have in El Paso, I took inventory of every ordinary thing about the city. Away from The Strip, Las Vegas isn’t anything special. Away from The Strip, I couldn’t been anywhere, been anyone. But I was Ainsleigh Gomez from El Paso, Texas and I’d just been thrown out of Fake Rome by my very first Burberry Couple.

We finally got to a Sally’s that looked just like every other Sally’s ever. It even smelled like the one five minutes from our house. The lady with white-blue hair smiled and nodded as we walked in and Haylie led me past the nail enamels, bright and loud as the lights on The Strip, then past the rows of Nice ‘n Easy and Afro Sheen. We stood in an aisle full of bottles that stunk and didn’t come packaged in boxes with pretty ladies throwing their heads back and laughing on them.

“I’m going to need bleach. My hair’s too dark, the pink won’t show. What color do you want?”

“You’re going to dye your hair pink?”

“Yeah. You?”

I picked up a bottle just like the one Haylie had in her hand. The air conditioner had already dried the seat to salt beds on my skin, but I still wanted to be somewhere deep and cool. I grabbled a bottle of blue.

“I want ocean waves on my head.”

We walked to the register and the woman who smiled and nodded squinted hard when I pushed my
purchases towards her. Her beady eyes sank into her doughy, powdered face.

“You sure you want these, honey?” she asked, holding up the bottles. “Hardly anything works for girls as dark as you.”

Haylie tossed her money towards her with one hand and squeezed my shoulder with the other. “Just ring us up, lady.”

She was about to scan the blue I blurted out, “Don’t. I don’t want it.”

“Ainsleigh, you can dye your hair any color you want.”

“I know, but I want you to bleach my hair and leave it that way. Leave me looking like something that hardly works.”