Valley of the Dolls

I spend most of my time wanting to be someone else. A vague idea at the age of five when we are living in Phoenix, that I will one day be a famous actor, blossoms full-blown at the age of seven, in Texas, when I find an old, dog-eared copy of "Valley of the Dolls" and read it for the first of many times. Masochism, mass love, and misery leap off every page, feeding and paralleling my own sense of drama and martyrdom. These women eagerly accept punishment for wanting so very much from the world, but they also call the shots and Live Large. Their despair is glorious, inevitable, rapturous. Neely O'Hara, Jennifer North, and Anne Wells, my id, ego, and superego. I read it over and over again, some thirty-nine times in the coming five years. I count, marking each reading. I buy into every bit of it, the heartache, the sexual humiliation, the boom/bust cycles of wild success, incapacitating failure, and spectacular rebirth.

Somehow my fantasies about one day being allowed by my father to once again live with my mother get intertwined with my fantasies about living in the world of "Valley of the Dolls." Mom is breathtakingly glamorous to me. Being allowed to live with her is as achingly impossible as Neely, Jennifer, or Anne finding happiness. But I will be like them. I will give up everything to make my dreams come true. My mother and I will be together. We will have whatever we want. I will be loved by the masses and by her as well. I'm such a little freak.