02.27.01
12.27.03

Dear Margaret,
Yesterday during the afternoon seance my
dining room table burst abruptly into blue and
purple flames, and the walls were badly
scorched by the time a battalion of sparrows
had spit enough water down to put it out.
Yesterday I was fired from a terrible job.
Really, what do you see me doing anyways?
Summoning other people’s ghosts for the rest
of my life? Lighting cigarettes and waxing
floors? Do you believe people can be
satisfied with artificial fires? When will
tv screens learn to cook my dinner? My
boyfriend is waiting to find out if he
will be a teacher. I’m not too sure
at all exactly what I’m waiting for.

04.25.00
01.09.04

Dear Alice,
I was supposed to go to school today, but I
didn’t. I couldn’t get out of bed, and then I
couldn’t leave my room, and when I finally
could the back door was locked and I couldn’t go
outside. I lost the phone. I decided to stay
home since I couldn’t go anywhere and the cats
might want some company, but all they do is
sleep. Mrs. Graelyn won’t speak to me ‘cause she
knows I’m supposed to be in school and
Topher kept using the litter box while
I was trying to eat breakfast and the
stench was awful. So I yelled and threw things
at her and now she won’t speak to me either.
I sat in a big chair and ate candy and
wore my pyjamas all day. Andy sleeps in his
closet most all the time now. It’s not fair, it
was my idea first, only there’s no room in my
closet ‘cause of everything in it. I think
I’m going to run away and live in a cave
except I can’t leave the house. I wish we
had a basement ‘cause that would be a good
place to hide, plus also there might be a
cave leading off it. Wehave an attic but
it’s just a tiny place for birds and scary
monster things to hide in.
I called a psychiatrist and I’m going
to go see him on Thursday, but that
means missing class again and I have
finals in a week. I’m going to fail everything. It
will be a spectacular failure. When I teach
college I will give everyone naptime and
then we will play dress-up where everyone
has to trade at least 3 articles of clothing
and write about what it’s like to wear
someone else’s style. Then I will pass out
cookies with little chunks of anti-depressants
baked in instead of chocolate chips. Everyone
who wants to will go to calculus and
physics and everyone who doesn’t will play
on the playground, which will be full of big
swings and hammocks and see-saws and tire swings
and saucers. In English/Grammer
classes everyone has to invent a new language and
gets extra credit if they use it all day, and
in Chemistry we’ll practice turning twinkies
into gold and creating new designer drugs.
After lunch the teacher will read us undiscovered
fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and give
everyone a prize. Then we will all get on a
huge flying carpet which will take us home
again. I can’t wait to take over the
world.
Love,
Shayna Maydela

04.24.00
01.09.04

Dear God,
I know I’m depressed. I want to disapear
myself. I want to curl up in a warm blankety
cave and sleep for a hundred years. I can’t
afford meds and psychiatry, and the therapist
won’t see me, anyways. Could you please help?
I have dreams of cutting off pieces of me,
earlobes, labia, fleshy pre-cellulite chunks of
excess thigh. Of carving me down to my own pure
skeleton. Of burning my skin off with
cigarettes. I just don’t really want to be me
anymore. Could I please wake up as someone
else? If I wish very hard and say all
my prayers and eat my vegetables without
complaining and stand up straight and play with
others in age appropriate manners and
send my grandmas thank you notes for sweaters
and never write little poems about
the smell of rotting flowers with
black crayons on the naked white walls.
If I promise to be very, very good? Could
I just wake up with a happy nuclear
family? I’ll brush my teeth after every meal
and floss daily, I’ll get all my shots
without crying or making a fuss, and I’ll
never, ever tell anyone about the things that
rub/bump against in me in the dark. I’ll
stop eating candy and wear Mary Janes,
I won’t tell anyone I’m a Satanist. I’ll go to
Sunday school and do my homework, I’ll tithe my
allowance cheerfully every week and volunteer in
nursing homes on holidays. I’ll sweep and wash
dishes and keep my room tidy as a pin, if only.
If only I could just wake up in
Pleasantville. In a nice little house off
Main Street. In the American Dream. Maybe I
should just become alcoholic. Anyways, if you
could please try to find a way to help me
then I most surely would appreciate it.
Scuffedly Yours,
Shayna Maydela

04.17.00
01.08.04

Dear God,
There are a lot of things I’d like to know.
Like, how come I don’t have a penise? Or at
least the ability to pee standing up? Why do I
still have such strong feelings for Alice, and why
am I having so many problems getting along
with her beau? Am I going to see or hear from
Chris Welsh again? Why do I fantasize about
women and sleep with men? Why is it so hard
for me to meet women at all? I would just
really like a couple of girlfriends to laugh and
hang out with....Sassi and Fiona and all are
nice, but I would really, really like some
girlfriends a little closer to my own age, and not
so straight. I don’t really have anyone to compare
experiences with as far as all that goes, and I
have the feeling I would be a lot less confused
if I did. And oh, why is my dad such an
asshole? Why don’t I have wings? Why is my
body such a mystery to me? Where did all the
scars come from? How do I know if I’m doing
with my life as I should be? Why haven’t
you struck Billy Graham with a lightening bolt yet?
Is Jesse Helms the Anti-Christ? And many, many
more. Thanks for listening.
Shayna Maydela

02.28.00
12.05.03

Dear God,
Thank you for giving me the chances and
abilities to learn things. And for conversations
with Sir and Alice and kitty-cats to
laugh at. And vibrators and a wild imagination.
And notebooks to write in.
Please help me be a better friend to
Andy, because I know he’s got a lot
going on but we don’t really talk very
much. I think he’s a lot more depressed
than he lets on, maybe more than he
knows.
Please help me be a less judgemental and more
patient person, both with myself and others.
Please help me to accept my parents as part of
my life, and to appreciate what they
are giving and doing for me without feeling like
I literally owe them my life. I know it’s
a lot to ask, but please help me to
stop wishing for them to die. I know it’s not
good, but sometimes it’s comforting.
Please help me make more friends at school-
thank you for getting to hang out with
Elizabeth. Thank you for all the things I’m
too used to to properly appreciate.
Sanguinely,
Shayna Maydela

Dear God,
Please watch over those that watch over me....please help me to be better at watching over myself. Please help me to be better at practicing my positions, at being less selfish and more caring about people, and better at showing them I care. Please help me not be afraid, or at least please help me be able to do things and let myself be a part of things despite being afraid.
Please watch over my friend and help her know her strength.
Please watch over Sassi through everything with her family and her relationships and herself, I’ve never believed anyone is keeping points in Heaven, but if they are she’s surely got to have quite a few racked up...thank you for me getting to be friends with her, learning from her.
Please watch over Sir and be with him in whatever form he believes in.
Please watch over Andy and take care of him, for surely he won’t let any person do that. Please give him good dreams and good times with friends, please be with him through everything with Aaron.
Please watch over Aaron and help keep him from hurting himself.
And Please God, please please please watch over my Alice. Please smile down at her and let her know until she believes it that no matter what she’s doing, no matter who she is or is not in bed with, she will always be loved.
Please watch over Jay, wherever he is, and let him know all the good he is, please help him to be accepting of himself.
Finally God, if you do anything with kitties, please watch over mine, I curse at them but they are good cats, and it does make me and Andy happy to play with them.
Thank You for everything I’ve learned today, for everyone I’m friends with, for getting this opportunity of going to school, for my cats to play with and my cloud bed to sleep in. “Tommorow I will run faster, stretch my arms farther, and one fine day...”
Serenely, Sincerely, Smilingly,
Shayna Maydela

Dear Carlos,
Whatever happened to you, anyways?
I wonder sometimes. I haven’t heard from you
these many months and friends have long
since ceased bringing up your name. Did
you move? Did you like your new job?
Are you still drinking yourself ever deeper into
oblivion and debt? Have you sobered up,
changed your clothes, sold out, started working
for the government? Are you still quitting
smoking, still picking up girls in clubs?
I know you were horrified by the mere
suggestion, but I still see you as a
fetishist at heart. Do you still go
clubbing? Raving? Are you still pining
for the girl you love, or were you able
to work things out with her? Do your
furnishings still solely consist of CD’s, a
mattress, and several hundred magazines
carpeting the floor? Do you still refuse
to cook in your apartment? Are you
going to turn fat, move back to your
mama, settle down and marry a nice girl?
Have you started dating boys, yet? Do you
ever wonder, as I do, what was going
to happen, that night we were all
together at Coven, spunbrained on brownies,
tequila and smoke? When we all suddenly
looked at each other and only the sudden
closing call kept us from massing upstairs?
Do you know, I’ve still never been up on
the balcony, there. What was all that
about anyways, what was so narrowly averted?
Except for that short span of letters,
you really were the perfect one-night-stand.

06.01.97
12.30.03

Dear X,
I saw you at the club we didn’t go to
tonight. Your hair thick and a darker brown than
your eyes. You wereat least as tall as me
and slim, you had a way of seeming at ease
with your body, a skill I know I lack.
Did you recognize my absence there? I
washed my hair for going but it dried badly;
I have a head full of Medusa curls
if Medusa was ever white trash. In
better lighting my roots would be showing.
My eyes are blue and sometimes
remarked upon; I have long lashes and
small hands. My nails are clipped and
undecorated. I never quite saw you dancing,
I stood at the edges and watched and my
eyes fell over you, I saw you
in all manners of action but never
quite dancing. Do you? Your hands, I
noticed, are nice. The nails are even and
unchewed. They look like they could hold
things responsibly. I could imagine your
palms cupping my shoulders without bruising
me. We will miss each other again.
Shayna Maydela

09.05.00
12.19.03

Dear Verdi,
Sunday morning I knelt outside my tent and watched
the pink of your hair moving away as you walked past
other tents and vans. I wished I could fold you up
small and skinny and slip you in beside me in the
car, but there was no space and anyways we were going
in different directions.
My friends fought and smoked pot through 15 hours
of teeth-clenching highway turnsd and the same damn
Grateful Dead tape flipping over and over in the stereo.
I closed my eyes and prayed to get home safely, knowing
Scooter would never forgive me for dying this way, wanting
to cuddle up next to you, or wishing I could be
riding with you and your friends in the cramped truckbed
becauseI love the sound of rain on steel.

Dear Alice,
We talked on the phone last night, and I
missed you so much. Not your physical presence
exactly, I missed your company, of course, but
also I missed you, or at least the person I
know you to be. You talk about work, stress, hanging
out with your boyfriend or smoking pot, and it’s like
whole chunks of you are just missing, spinning
around somewhere in Alice-space, disconnected.
What happened to the girl who convinced her boyfriend
to lick her vibrator, who took a frisbee from a
trashpile, who cajoled me into spending hours sewing
cottonballs into a cloud, who climbed pyramids in
Mexico and took me out shooting for my birthday?
What happened to the Alice that wasn’t afraid? Or is
this just me again, idealizing you? You just
always seemed so self-confident, and I know you
were insecure and uncertain because we all are,
but you went out and did stuff anyways. What
happened to that? You told me about a dream you
had about someone killing a tiger and how upsetting
it was, and all I can think is, that’s a part of
you that’s getting killed off. A really brave
beautiful part of you. And I know I’m not the
best or most supportive friend, and I know I
was a truely awful lover, and I apologize
for that a thousand times over and again.
I was too dense to see or appreciate
that part of you most of the time we were
together, and I’m glad that you found other people
who did. But please don’t let you lose that
part of yourself. It’s too strong, it’s too
brighr and special to let it get submerged or
thrown away. I love you, as of course I always
have, and I want you to be happy, but I also,
selfishly, hope that you’ll keep burning....that
Rudyard Kipling poem....that you’ll keep
writingf, even if I never get to read another thing
you’ve written, that you’ll keep painting, that
you’ll keep occasionaly doing all the crazy Alice
things that no one but you would ever think of.
I Love You Forever,
Shana Maydela

Welts and Stars

02.12.00
12.15.03

Dear God, Dear Aphrodite, Dear All,
I’m remembering what Sassi said about sub-drop,
and I geusse I’m feeling a little off myself - I’m
so spoiled from spending the night at Sir’s house and
I was way too hopeful about the red collar....-
but whatever else - however I end up feeling
tommorow or in the coming days I want to
remember-
Howelated/delighted/overjoyed I was tonight.
How I looked up at the stars and airplanes
and red clouds outside and thanked all
and everything for getting to experience moments
out of timelessness tonight. Thank you. Thank you
I am....I am full of good feelings.
I am without words. Goodnight.
Shana Maydela

The Hubris of Faith

02.11.00
12.15.03

Dear God, Dear Aphrodite, Dear Whoever,
I know I’m being greedy in
praying for things for myself but I’ll do it
anyways and you don’t have to grant
anything if it’s not meant to be....could
I please have some good dreams tonight?
I’ve had so many bad ones lately-I
wake up not even wanting to write them
down anymore. I listened to my father's tape, so
now I don’t have that haunting me so
much anymore....but I just keep resentting
him....just keep thinking ‘asshole-asshole-
asshole.’ I know that’s not a good way
to think of your parent, but I tried to
be good for so many years, and it never
seemed to help anything. Actually, I think I
always seemed to do better when I was
being bad or rebellious or whatever. So
now I’m trying, trying to be a good
submissive, only I don’t want to start
depending on Sir for validation like they
were talking about at the support group
last night. But what if I start doing that
without realizing it? I don’t want to put
that on anyone-I hate it when people
do that to me....I’m so used to all
these extremes. Like with the wax - being
afraid or fighting being afraid....maybe this
all goes back to the trust thing too,
somehow. I don’t quite see it, but I’m
sure there’s probably a connection in
there somewhere. Fuck - am I even capable of
trust? How does it work? It’s one thing to
trust someone with my body - that’s not such a
big deal - it’s not like it’s irreplaceable.
And the journal - that’s a big step. But
somehow it still doesn’t quite feel like
trust - I’m not even sure what trust does
feel like, though. Could y’all please
help me to recognize it if it happens?
And please, please help me to find a
red collar tommorow, ‘cause it seems like I’ve
looked everywhere and I really, really don’t
want to fuck up on this one - that would
be a really bad omen.
Thanks for my day - me being able to
get such an assortment of purple stuff -
even if it didn’t turn out quite like I
was hoping, and stuff with Billy going as
unackwardly as it did. Please continue to
smile down on me, I keep looking up.
Hopefully,
Shana Maydela

Rape Pillage and Burn

Dear Jay,

I want to get you pissed, punchdrunk and raging high and hard. I want you to grab me with white-knuckle-fists and a furious hard-on. I want to push every single one of your buttons and spit on your mamma's shoes. I want to get you kicked out of your favorite bar and tease you blue-balled on the long drive back. I want to raise your temper to a fevered jaw-clenching pitch. I want you seeing red, ready to fight or fuck. Screw your self-restraint, your delicate ambivalencies and gen-X affection, screw your elevated sense of self-control. I dare you to lay a hand on me. Screw seduction; I want you shaking when we finally touch.

12.15.2004
01.05.1997

Dear X,
I shaved my legs for you today. I hadn't
shaved in months, but I did in the shower
this afternoon and they're fabulously smooth now,
especially the thighs. I keep running my
hands beneath my jeans when no one's looking
to feel the skin. I imagine your hands
slipping beneath the rough denim in stolen
moments. I shaved my underarms and my pubes.
I hadn't shaved around my cunt in about a
year and I couldn't really remember what it
felt like. It's very smooth and the skin feels
terribly sensitive. I'm just wearing cotton panties
but I wish for silk....or a tongue.
I hope you have slender fingers because I
want to be fucked. I imagine waking next to
you, moaning under the sweaty weight of nightmare
and your hand on my back, soothing me
"Ssshh baby....shhh....shhh....go back to
sleep." And what are your nightmares about?

Dear Alice,
I dreampt I was running
through a grey dustscape of moaning shadows
and merging duststorms. The air was
metallic, and thick, and evil, the ground
felt like shale under the soles of my
bare feet. I ran franticly in all
directions, screaming, and each time I
screamed more and more of the whirling
evil poured down my open throat
but I kept running because I
seemed to be getting closer to a
clearer space and then in a shock
I realized I just had been
running in circles and the
land was terrifyingly calm
and vacuum silent because I had
swallowed all the evil, and in my final
scream no sound emerged.

10.01.2001

Dear Alice,
I'm writing you this from my high-school style
desk (yellow plastic chair attached) in ENG 217.
We're discussing one of those good, but not
that good stories. The kind your teacher always
has some kind of personal/professional relation to
so you spend the whole class talking about it
until everyone agrees with the teacher's defensive
analyses. I'm still petty enough to be annoyed
that I got a 'B' on my last essay
instead of an 'A', so maybe that's influencing
this a bit.
It's strange how I never see you on campus,
as if we still went to different schools. But
most of my classes are in the morning and I
guess yours are afternoons.
I haven't ever met anyone in Sean's family. Is
that weird? He doesn't like to talk to his
father, I think he calls him once a month or so
when he absolutely has to and then he's always really
careful to block the number first so his dad
can't call us back. Sean says his dad's
schizophrenic and tells me strange, fucked-up
stories of things he's done. That scares me--
the part of him being schizophrenic. I worry
about the psychic's predicting my own tribe
of children. Think about my own unhappy genes
and try to calculate the chances of any one
particular child becoming schitzo if both his parents
carry similar genes. Is that dumb? It's not
just that, of course, you know I don't
really want to have kids that much, although
I think I might, someday. Because I'm
also trying to figure our own probable
proportions of sanity.

Dear Alice,
I'm writing you this while taking a break from studying for
Terrorism--an obscenely boring class taught by a blisters-and-
mothballs-flavored feminist. It's the kind of class where I keep
thinking it's about to get interesting and instead it veers into the
depths of the monotonous and mundane....
I can hear strange noises from the hallway which I think are
my father's snores. It's weird , living back at my parents' house.
Keep telling myself it's temporary, but temporary until when?
Like, is there a magical age at which I will wake up one
morning and not even notice or care when my momm calls me
fat or my dad tells his entire office entourage all the
intimate details of my latest mental malady? Clearly it hasn't
happened yet and I'm afraid that if I go on living here that
day will never come. I've always been really young for my
age [what am I now--25 going on 16?] but it seems like this
last year I've actually been going backwards.Do you ever
feel like that? Does it start going forwards again, eventually?

02.02.97
11.25.03

Dear X,
I want to learn your body with my teeth. I want each curving hardness of your bone beneath thin skin memorized between the ridges of my teeth and tongue. I want to lap at the pale veins showing in the crook of your arm and chew the tendons behind your knees. I want to taste the no-man’s-land at the nape of your neck between scalp and skin and worry tears out of the corners of your eyes. I want to catch your groans in my mouth and swallow them into me. I want to lounge with my head on your stomach and teethe at the crevices between thigh and belly. I want to run my tongue behind your lips and over the smooth hardness of teeth and gums. I am waiting to meet you.

Darling Unknown

11.22.03
07.30.00

Darling,
I change my room, my bedding, burn feng shui candles and dye my hair, all in an effort to change my kharma, in hopes that it will bring me closer to you. I want….I want to meet you sometime soon, sometime here in this life, when we both are ready, fates willing. I want, ah when that happens I so want my life to be something that you will want to be a part of. I dress for you in short skirts and high heels, perfume and black lingerie. I miss you so much right now, squinting through sedatives and candle light to write you this letter, which you will probably never even see. I miss you, whoever/wherever/whatever you are. Please find me soon.
Yours Always,
Shayna Maydela

Dear X,
Let's meet for lunch someday, in the shadow-cool
interior of a smoking section restaurant sometime
in June. Tête-à-têtes were clearly meant for
June. I'll be the one in the simple black
dress, one of hundred's I'm sure. But I'll
wear the garnet necklace you gave me and
a tiny silver drop on each ear. You, I know,
will be the one handling the cigarette
wand the way a sophisticated four-year-old wields a pacifier. Let's sit in a booth by a
window, somewhere private, and sip white wine.
Something steely and a little bit furtive.
Something that reminds you of the amount of
time you're using just being here. You will
brush my palm with your napkin as
you unfold it, perhaps the toe of your
shoe will just brush against my sedate
leather heel as we settle into our places.
Perhaps the rest of the restaurant will suddenly
fall into the ocean and you will feed me
bits of sorbet from a small steel
teaspoon. I will let the lacquer handle
of my fan click against the heel of
your hand as I set it down.
Your's Always,
Shana Maydela

01.29.2005
07.26.2001

Dear Delayne,

Today I stole 18 shades of lipstick, all crimson variations from the Estelle lauder counter at Dillard's. I walked in a stunning black silk dress with white polka-dots, mostly tasteful, smashed my hands through the glass and reached in. I expected an alarm to ring, but none did. Five heavily-made-up women in black swirly tunics watched me in silence as I left. It was, all in all, most unsatisfying. No one appreciates the difficulty in being a kleptomaniac; after all, what am I going to do with 18 tubes of lipstick? Sell it on the black market? Export it to pale-lipped Russian women? It's all very useless, sometimes. My therapist says it's a cry for help, like walking an imaginary poodle about with me. But Waddles doesn't shit all over the carpet like my parents' dog does, or even if so, it's invisible shit--much easier to clean up. It's not a cry for help; it's a whimper of boredom. And one can only smoke pot for so long, and coke is expensive....and speed is just for trash.
This morning my lover got up early, finished the last bottle of non-diet root-beer, and drowned himself in the neighbor's Hot-Wheels kiddy pool. His pockets were all weighed down with sleeping pills and silverware. The neighbor's brats swam around his body; their mom found him when she went out to do a diaper-check, though personally I think it was terribly irresponsible of her not to be watching them earlier. I wonder if he died with piss in his mouth.
My sleeping pills have lost whatever slight edge they
ever had over my insomnia, and I've taken to supplementing
them with bottles of Corona at bedtime. The house is littered with
them, which is rather embarrassing for someone who
always prided herself on her taste in vodka and branded
white tequila. Then again, I have also been known to
happily down Jaeger on the slightest provocation. And the
last of my blue crayons snapped in half today, just as I
was trying to colour in all the sky pictures in my
flower book, and that should be enough to drive
anyone to drink.
Tomorrow I plan on walking waddles around the used
car dealerships that line Main street in Mesa. He likes
to pee on hookers and chrome, and God knows that's a
city with plenty of both.
It's too late for any of this to be amusing. I've never
had a birthday tiara in my life, and my fingers will
never know how diamonds feel. Next time you must
direct me to write a more cheerful letter, as I've
depressed myself past the usual remedies, and I'd at
least like to be contrary.

Wanderingly,
Scarlett DeVille