Swimming Naked with Jellyfish

Chapter 1

Iris. That’s me. Iris Andrea. I’m sitting here waiting for my next tragedy but who knows when it’ll come, so in the meantime I’ll write a book. Yeah, a book. I have so much to say, really I do. I can’t wait. But I have to warn you first that I’m a very intimate woman…physically and emotionally and in every single way. I’m going to tell you stuff you’re going to love and hate and be so embarrassed about. For one thing, I love sex. Love to do it, think about it, talk about it. Can’t get enough of it. It’s always on my mind. Thank God I have my father’s sexual appetite and not my mother’s, because if I had my mother’s, I’d be laid out dead like a prehistoric insect frozen in the middle of a block of ice. No shit.

I’m so excited trying to decide where to begin that I just lost control and bit off a nail to the raw red part and now it hurts and it’s bleeding and I won’t be able to take a shower for two days, all because my manic side is in control. Okay, I know how to settle down. I’ll light my cream-colored candle, slap my wind chimes a couple of times, hold in my lap my father’s glass paperweight with a rabbit etched in it, put on the Out of Africa CD because it makes me cry, and the last thing I always do just before I start to write is look at a picture of my father sitting right in front of me next to my computer monitor. I look at his face…God, the power that his face has for me. Okay, I’m ready to write my book.

I’ve got to explain, first, why I’m writing this book. My father just died and my mother died a year before him, an my sister just stopped talking to me because my father left me his money, which is really okay because she and I never got along anyway. I feel so alone that I have to write a book. I’ve never written a book before but I’ve got to do a big thing or I’ll die.

Let’s just get a few things straight. I hate phony things and phony people, so I’m not going to try to impress you by using big words that I don’t even know and that you may not know and get annoyed at me about. I also hate the phony scheme of deceiving you to get you interested enough to want to read my book by finding a hook that will make you turn the page.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand the idea of playing a game according to someone else’s rules, because I’m such a rebel. I find all these rules absolutely fucking boring as hell, and when I find something absolutely fucking boring as hell, I break out of it and find my own goddamn way of doing it. A way that pleases me and me alone.

I want to write a book that you’ll know is from me. Oh, by the way, you won’t find any semicolons here. They irritate me. Half of this, half of that, the semicolon can’t make up its mind who it wants to be.

So I want to tell you all about my life, which I think is plenty interesting just the way it is and doesn’t need anything phony or deceiving or any hooks to make you turn the page.

You see, I have to write this book and tell you my story because I can’t write my long letters to my daddy anymore. I feel so lonely without my daddy and I need someone else to open my heart to. Can I trust you with my heart? Will you touch it with kindness or will you squoosh it into the ground with the dirty sole of your shoe? Or are you going to dismiss me, as if I weren’t important in this world, like my sister always did? Oooh, I’m going to enjoy telling you all about her. All the stuff she wouldn’t let me say to her face. She’s a phony and you know how I feel about phonies. Can you imagine the fun I’m going to have telling you all about her phony face? Well, enough about her for now.

In a way, though, I’ll have more fun writing to you than when I wrote to my daddy because I can tell you stuff that I would be too embarrassed or too protective of his feelings to tell him.

So get comfortable. Get a cup of tea or coffee or a hot chocolate or a beer, whatever. I’ll wait…

Okay, here we go.

Chapter 2

My story must begin with my father, Manny Andrea. I was so close to him, I felt like I sprang from his body. His groin, where all the action is.

My father was feared by everyone. He had insane eyes when he got mad. They looked insane for two reasons. One was because he was passionate about his anger and his eyes vividly expressed this. The other was because he had an overactive thyroid condition, which bulged out his eyes. He also tended to stick out his neck and push his face into yours. Just his face alone made you feel extremely threatened and he didn’t even have a knife or a gun.

He walked with his head held high but I didn’t know if that came from his need to feel superior or because he wanted to appear taller than his 5’10 frame. Tall men, six feet and over, are more successful in life," he used to say.

What people feared most, though, was his tongue. He had a very sharp tongue. It was like a machine gun filled with all his ammunition…sarcasm, mockery, taunting, belittling, berating. I can see in my memory my father tearing my mother, Evelyn, to shreds in front of company, and her shrinking and trying desperately to blend into the nearest wall. He was smart to pick her for his wife. She was the perfect victim for his bullying…submissive, defenseless, low self-esteem, naive, faithful and shy.

My father could smell your weakness like an animal and go for you and have no mercy. I swear it, I’ve seen it myself. No mercy at all. He was such a tyrant and so egocentric and so believed that he was perfect and everyone else had despicable, unforgivable faults, that he himself got sucked into the powerful force of his attack on you, so if he felt a shred of pity and wanted to stop, he couldn’t.

He took pleasure in watching your utter and complete devastation. I know he took pleasure in this because I can still see the smile of superiority on his face as he watched you slowly diminish. This confused me as a little girl because I wanted my daddy always to win, but not to win this way. I admired and emulated his confidence but my heart detested how he treated people. I hated him when he acted this way.

I feared for him too. Inside, I said to myself: Stop it! Stop it, daddy! Enough already. Why can’t you stop? But he wasn’t able to. He really couldn’t stop. He thought he was in control of himself but he never really was. He was controlled by chemical and psychological imbalances that he never wanted to face.

It’s no wonder that, one by one, he lost all his friends and all his family in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, our home, and died in Los Angeles all alone, the place he ran to for its life-giving sun. He worshipped the sun, you know, but he followed the moon. The moon killed him. His icy heart was surrounded by black blood and it killed him, lonely and dead.

And as if it weren’t enough to be lashed by his tongue, he also used his hands, brush and belt. One time when I was four, I heard scuffling going on in the kitchen so I went to investigate. I stood there in the foyer in horror and watched with big eyes as my father cornered my mother against the window by the sink in the kitchen. She was trying to hide her face from his hand but she couldn’t. He slapped her over and over, saying, "You worthless slob, you! You can’t do anything right, can you! Frigid bitch! I’m sorry I ever married you!"

Even while she was being attacked, she couldn’t fight back. She didn’t scream or cry. I just heard her suffering silence.

I hated my father for doing that to my mother, but I just stood there and didn’t say a word. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I fled into the bathroom and locked the door. You know, I still can’t stand the sound of someone hitting someone else in the face on TV or in the movies. I have to plug my ears or look away.

At breakfast one Sunday morning, my father tried to get me to eat a soft-boiled egg. That’s the way he liked to eat eggs so he thought I should like it too. I gagged when I saw the spoon with the mucousy slime getting closer to my mouth. I turned my head away.

Iris, just try it!

No! I sat up stiff and tall.

Don’t say no, I said yes!

Silence

"Iris, open your mouth right now!"

Silence

If you don’t open your mouth, he said in a controlled, even tone, I’m going to take you inside.

Although I knew what that meant, I couldn’t let that raw egg go into my mouth and I was willing to suffer the consequences. He dropped the spoon on the table and while my silent mother and sister watched, he dragged me by the arm, kicking and screaming, into the bedroom and slammed the door. He pulled me over to his vanity dresser and reached for his hardwood hair brush. Then he dragged me to a hardwood chair.

I don’t know why you make me do this to you, he said, almost apologizing. "All you have to do is try the egg one time, one time, that’s all. But, no, you have to be stubborn. Well, I have to teach you not to be so stubborn."

He sat down and brought my body face down over his lap. I tried to get up but he held my back down with one hand while hitting my rear with the wood of the brush with the other. As he hit me over and over, he said:

I don’t like doing this to you.

Wham

This is hurting me more than it’s hurting you.

Wham

I have to teach you a lesson. It’s for your own good.

Wham

When he was done, he peeled away his hot hand, stuck to my sweat-soaked blouse. Sitting there exhausted, he just let me go. I ran into the bathroom and locked the door. I stayed there in the dark, curled up in the corner on the cold tile floor until someone knocked. I hated everything and everyone in that miserable moment.

My father was outraged when I dared to defy him. He thought nothing about pulling, slowly, the leather belt from the waistband of his towering pants, and doubling the strap for greater control, and trying to hit the part of my body that was cowering the most.

I want to tell you something. Something very important that I’m just remembering! You know, I’ve forgotten how my body hurt when he hit me, but I can’t stop hurting from something else he did to me. It’s a far deeper hurt that will never go away.

When he went through the ritual of taking off his belt, he had on his face a pitiless smirk. He stood there, as tall as he could make himself over my little body, staring down my baby eyes. He stood there like my enemy, like a male lion about to kill a cub. Very slowly, he pulled off his belt, and when he did it that slow, and stood there that tall, and stared at me that way, I felt it was all done for a purpose. I knew at that moment his intention was not just to punish me for not listening to him. No. His more threatening intention was to break me. He wanted to break me in the same way he broke any stranger who crossed him. And I saw that he was enjoying it. He was enjoying demolishing me. Me, the love of his life. The one he was beaming at ten minutes before. We were reduced to him or me.

In that ancient moment of survival, I saw that my human life was anarchy and I knew there were no rules to this game I was born into. I toughened. I knew it was only me that I could count on for protection from this life.

So forewarned, I was the only person on this Earth who did not live in absolute terror of my father, now that I understood him completely. Yes, I feared his hand and his tongue but my love was far greater than my fear. I was his daughter and I was in love with him.

Chapter 3

My earliest childhood memory is of my father holding me under my arms and pushing me high in the big blue sky as if to show the world the beautiful baby he made. I was only about a year old then, yet I can still feel how strong his arms were, how secure his hands. I can still see my father smiling his joy at the sight of me. My face was his sun. His face was my world.

I wouldn’t let anything or anyone come between my father and me. I adored him. My mother, however, felt differently. She froze at the mere sight of him.

He’s too spicy, your father, she confided to me one day when I was a teenager. Don’t ask me how this conversation came up because she never could say the word sex and couldn’t even stand watching two people kiss on TV.

In my mother’s mind, she thought that because I was a female and her daughter, I was her natural ally, so she confided in me her sexual repulsion of my father. But in all honesty, I was always aligned with my father. I felt contempt for her when she told me my father was too spicy for her. I felt that my mother didn’t deserve to have such a man if she didn’t know what to do with him. But I always knew what to do with my father. Even though I was a little girl and he was a man, our energy and joie de vivre were the same.

One day he said to me, Iris, I want everyone to see what a beautiful daughter I have. Let’s take a stroll on the boardwalk. Hand in hand we walked down the boardwalk of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, which ran along the beautiful beach and serene ocean. I was proud of my mighty god, as I looked up, enchanted, and admired his handsome male face.

He looked suave, like his favorite actor, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., with slicked-back, dark brown hair, same skinny moustache. My father dressed meticulously in his smart, light-colored suits. He never wore a dark suit. I don’t think he ever owned one. He had a terrible fear of the dark. My father’s clothes were the colors of camel, the beiges, light coffee, taupe, the creams, and mocha. He blended the hues like sand on the beach. His shoes were elegant doeskin slip-ons with two fringed tassels on each shoe that frolicked to the movement of his feet. They followed him around like four puppies. Even they were obedient.

On Saturday afternoons, he liked to take me with him to the Boardwalk Men’s Club on the boardwalk at Brighton 6th Street where he played pinochle and poker. The big room with a dark wood floor was heavy with smoke from all the cigarettes, cigars and pipes. It’s a good thing the club was on the boardwalk so the sliding glass doors could stay open and let the fresh ocean breeze push out the stale fumes.

My father perched me on his lap. Iris, bring me luck. Work your magic, my darling little girl.

Win, daddy, win! I’ll make a big wish.

I marveled at how expertly he held a handful of perfectly spaced cards while dangling a cigarette from his mouth and talking without it falling out, and balancing me on his knee, and passing the chips back and forth, all the while teaching me the rules of the game without divulging what was in his hand. He was like the guy on The Ed Sullivan Show who spun the plates on sticks in between drinking a glass of water.

While my father was playing cards, his overall mood was always cheerful and confident, as if he expected the world to be served to him on a gold platter. He smiled a lot and poked fun at the men. His eyes twinkled and he winked at me. My heart melted when my daddy winked at me. I was so proud to be his daughter during his wink. He shone against the drabness of the dark-suited men who slouched in their wooden folding chairs and harrumphed a lot. He must have won often because many times I heard the men grunt and complain and slam their cards on the table. What my father probably didn’t share with them was that he had to win to pay the rent.

I was greedy about getting my father’s attention. My one-year-older sister, Wendy, vied for his affections too, but her battles were always in vain. She was too slow, too dispassionate, too dim-witted to be a match for me. I was too cunning and I cared too much about my father. I wouldn’t let her have him, especially not someone who has hated me since Day One.

Wendy and I fought every day for as long as I can remember. My sister was mean and spiteful to me. She shut me out of her life. Her actions said: You’re not important. I don’t care if you’re alive or dead. You mean nothing to me. Her face was a dead-end except during birthdays and holidays when we exchanged presents. Then she put on her phony smile like she was applying her phony makeup, which she used a lot of. She needed to. Makeup gave her the illusion that life was bright and cheerful and without pain. She and my mother never could stand hearing the truth about anything. So Wendy camouflaged the world with her thick makeup. Fake painted on top of fake.

One time my father was coming home on a train after being away for a while. He was terrified of flying and always took a train. I missed him terribly. My home was February without his love.

My mother, sister and I went to the train station to meet him. Wendy and I were waiting for him just outside the gate, while my mother waited further away, sitting on a wooden bench, agitated that her abuse would once again begin.

I was all excited in anticipation of being in my daddy’s arms again. I could not stand still or stop talking and my excitement even sucked in my repressed sister. We were like revved-up engines, holding back, waiting for the Grand Prix to begin.

Then, in an instant, I caught sight of him in the distance. Something animal in me picked him out of the crowd. I peeked over towards my sister to see if she saw him too, so I’d know how fast to spring from where we stood, but her face did not change expression. Fearless, I took off into the mob of big people, pushing away thighs and hips, until I saw his cream slacks walking towards me. I never needed permission to go get my father. He was always proud of my tenacity. I looked up and saw his smiling face looking down at me. Crouching, he stretched out his arms and called my name.

Iris! he exclaimed, as I ran into the shelter of my daddy’s protecting arms. I missed my darling girl. Let me see your beautiful face. Give your daddy a big kiss. We kissed lovingly on the lips. I never felt strange about kissing my father on the lips. I saw him kiss my mother and other women that way and I wanted him to do the same with me. God, I loved his lips on me.

Oh, daddy, I missed you so much. I hugged him tightly, smelling his smell, my little heart beating hard. If I knew then what I know now, I would have also told him that he meant everything to me.

I felt my father’s power when I was with him. I was stirred by him. I flirted with him. Deep down inside in a place with no laws, I wanted him, my father. I could never deny this feeling. And I felt that he wanted me too, a woman in a child’s body. At night when he was asleep, I’d slip into his room, slip into his shoes, and slip into his world. I knew that was the path to a life of power, joy, sensuality, honesty and truth.

Chapter 4

When I think of the pleasures I shared with my father, they were usually on the beach at Brighton. We went there a lot in the few years I had him.

I used to stand on the shore and watch him run from the sand into the ocean and hurdle the small cresting waves. With a matching force, he dove and pricked an ocean wall and disappeared into the water. I got up on my tiptoes to stare at where I expected him to surface and held my breath. When my father broke the water, I breathed again. Then he swam towards the horizon until I could barely see him, turned to the right and freestyled towards Coney Island. I stood on the shore and watched him fade from my view.

While I waited for his return, I faced the ocean and reclined on the sand just at the spot where