*Excerpt from Chapter Twenty: Hold Your Head Up

(A fourteen-year-old's perspective: finding Mum had become a mistress.)

“How long could a sexual act take?” I'd wondered aloud. It’d been hours. I’d hoped he hadn’t killed her. He was a pretty heavy guy. Rather fat, in fact.

I would often concern myself with the thought of how the buttons remained on Jim’s business shirts. I imagined his stomach to contain the kind of force shared only by a can of tightly packed Pillsbury biscuit dough, so was tempted to cover my face when in front of him for fear they’d pop off and “take an eye out”, as my grandmother would have said. I believe my interest in physics began when I pondered the mystery of how his tiny black belt was able to support his baggy dress pants whilst having two negative factors working against it--a wide, flat rear-end and gigantic protruding belly. Six inches up in back, six inches down in front. Inanimate objects have often brought on deep compassion from me, and his desperately thin belt was no exception (although I was assured the poor thing was well relieved when his mistress was around as it was finally able to take a holiday well deserved).

Excerpt from chapter twenty | hold your head up | EVERYTHING'S HUNKY DORY: A MEMOIR

*Excerpt from Chapter Two: Tiny Dancer

In true sixties fashion, she spent many of her evenings and weekends (while her parents were away) drinking their alcohol, having parties, dropping acid and teaching little sister Chris to do the same, and “Don’t you dare tell,” she’d demand (although she has claimed the acid dropping abruptly ceased once she noticed little sister Chris sprouting the most peculiar set of bunny ears).

Donna was rebelling against the too-tight reins of her manic mother. Lou’s reaction to said rebellion was to dump Donna’s prized Beatles and Monkeys albums in the trash and restrict her further, telling her she couldn’t go out, listen to music, or do anything outside of school until she was eighteen years old. So Donna, ever the innovator, decided to fix that little problem by moving out and marrying a sailor. Ed, her doting father who believed in her and her brilliant creativity, begged her to hang in and he’d pay for her to go to art school. “Just wait one more year,” he’d beg.

Lou’s extreme ups and downs, constant belittling, and control campaign took its toll. Instant gratification won and freedom proved more important to a young, insecure seventeen-year-old girl. Though Mum never admitted to it, my siblings and I would later be convinced she must have regretted that decision for the rest of her life. 

Excerpt from chapter two | tiny dancer | EVERYTHING'S HUNKY DORY: A MEMOIR