Sight

Faces and reflections

Looking in eyes that express something

Something I don't understand

Grappling for words

I find articulation lost in semantics

Words only art can challenge

Faces taught

Smooth or rugged.

I want to touch them all. I do!

My eyes speak to my passion

Expressed in a stare

Light begins and ends in the dissection

Of my vision wanting to see.

Expressions of Birth

Expressions of Birth

Voices ache with need

Essential touches are buried 

While veiled initially 

A feather becomes an eagle

Wings and claws sweep me into the sky

Once cradled within 

Nestling  me to a nest

Waiting to be brought warmth 

An incubation of self

Breathing is deep and long

I will no longer struggle with my shell

I crack to awaken who I really am.

Evenings Exhaustion poem

Evenings Exhaustion

I speak of an evening without words
Birds without wings
Trees without leaves
And grass burnt within its growth
Washed on a shore of half broken shells
Listening for sounds only I can hear
Watching my feet and toes
Covered by sand and washed
With wave after wave
Each flows across with gentle massage
The wind and sea caresses
I give rest to the wicked
I am at peace because I played
 With words prolonged and unbreakable.

February 2020

The Beast Inside

There’s a quiet beast living inside

Stroking it’s head, I hold my love

 Rising in harrowing thoughts of bliss

 Losing momentum with no return

I fall outside the lines and norms

My heart does the same as it beats

Forgetting to switch off my light

Breathing and counting my breath

Releasing the beast lingering inside

Giving it love because I can 

I am open to change.

                                                        May 2022

Curiosity a Poem

Curiosity

Interests follow like a young child

Freighted by thunder and dark places

Belonging has found itself lost.

Corners of spaces unremembered.

Capturing extras within what is.

Found beyond a grasp.

Dawn’s touches explored.

Knowing the beautiful truths of thirst.

Searching as fingers run across photos

Looking where skins paintbrush forms truth...

Silently you were forever frozen

Time has become another number on a list.

The list of painting fantasies

Still yet to be finished

Still not knowing

What is mine and what is not.

Max’s Kansas City

 I found a room in the village to rent, it was the back part of a women's brownstone. I got the room and there was a flat roof outside the window that would act as a balcony, if I climbed out and I did. I used her bathroom and she gave me kitchen privileges.  The woman who rented me a room in her flat would not allow me to have much contact with her. I really probably talked to her only a few times when I stayed there. I do remember her part of the flat was in the front of the Brownstone facing East 11th Street. I used her kitchen for small food storage and very little cooking. Everyone mostly ate out in New York. I wasn’t a big eater. Mrs. Brand and I sat in her living room once and she talked about her husband's published book. I saw it on the coffee table. She was always business-like with me. I occasionally found her walking out my room with a clever reason for why she was there. 

After work the shops on University Place welcomed me. The “Odes and Ends'' shop found itself as a regular stop. Each day as I came home I would stop to continue my chats with Michelle. I found a positivity I never had experienced. My mother in her fears was not really wanting to be the breadwinner, she never allowed herself whimsical smiles and fun, like Michelle did. I recognized women could have positive natures.  Still when I was a  child I had my Pollyanna living attitude. They called it the “Glad game,”  in the book. My life was a life without a father, I became the little girl looking for  compensative stories. 

Pollyanna received a crutch one year for Christmas by mistake instead of a doll and her response was; “ Well at least I don’t need it.” I would run from house to house talking to the neighbors. Seeing what traditional families were about. I continually played my positive games.  I wanted University Place in the City to be the same as my home in my neighborhood in Rochester's neighborhood. The Village gave me a home and a woman with care and fun. 

I learned it was alright to talk to everyone from Michelle, it depended on a person's loving motives. This neighborhood is more  exciting than I had known. Still I had a desire to be rich and  famous. I told Michelle once this is what I wanted, to be rich. She looked at me and said,  “Oh, you would be far too dangerous if you were rich.

 The time I spent talking with her expanded into longer visits. I became the daughter she never had. She took me out to dinner and on long bus rides uptown. We would talk to everyone. I had so much fun seeing the City on those bus rides. I’m laughing at myself now because I knew I could get a Rock to talk, it seemed. I learned this from Michelle. Women could have fun and be fun. My job promoted warm greetings to the clients as they came to the Salon. I sold them make up and I was dube a person who could sell the Brooklyn Bridge. 

This time together expanded. I was alone except at work and our relationship was so comforting. I found that I loved having as much time as possible with Michelle. One of my favorite spots was Max’s Kansas City Restaurant. It was where artists, musicians, poets and I would go.  My favorite new place to frequent became this hot spot. Max’s Kansas. A bar and Restaurant. Soon I went there by myself after work. I heard Andy Warhol used to hang out and had his studio upstairs as I remember. It did become his favorite place to hang out.  I must have seen him. The designs and fashions of these people were fabulous. I had to be fabulous too. Every kind of style I had only experienced before in magazines.

None of this had conscious planning; it just evolved in my City life. Life  unfolded there.  What held my life there was going with Michelle.

The Oscar Winner

 He was an Oscar winner. Robert Forester looked at me after going to see him locally to speak about his life. Bob (Robert)Forester signed autographs as I waited for him on the stage to finish. I sat posing on the stage behind him. I never have asked for autographs when I could have. Even when I was around famous people. Perhaps because I had been asked for my own autograph when I was young and had been on TV. Bob and I began talking about a friend of ours and someone I had a relationship with, an Artist Ramon Santiago. Robert Forester then looked  at me and said,  “You are a beautiful woman.” I didn’t feel he was flirting. It seemed to be a matter of fact for him. I am sure of that as I can be as my mind was  spinning after what he said. A truth from him as he left to go with his long time friend.

When I went to see him, I thought he might be full of himself with ego. He was anything but that. Solid and kind. How my perceptions can be warped in admiration. He talked about his daughters and what he told them as they grew. I wished he was my father. I want to go back to the College where he spoke and see if I could look at the recording. I remembered them filming. His words are in my spirit wishing I had such a solid father. All this told me more about myself. 

  He and I had once sat in a coffee shop near where I worked at the time in Rochester, NY. I probably asked him for coffee.  No, maybe he asked me. We were pretty people as I look back. I was on a mission and I filled myself with fun where I could. He was a rising star who traveled between Rochester and LA. I really wanted to know more about our mutual friend then. But having fun in the late 60’s and 70’s was what we did and  we could. Seems to be a part of me and how I lived. I brought a piece of artwork from Ramon he had given me. Proof I had a relationship with Bob’s friend. 

That night I went to see Bob Forester speak in Buffalo. I had been led to his talk by chance. I don’t usually read the newspaper and I picked one up to look for a movie.  There had been a large photo of him and I wanted to see what was up. There was an article of Robert Forester speaking the next day.  I called and said I was going to be at his talk and was an old friend of Ramón Santiago. Ramon had been an artist rising nationally. I heard Cher had bought one of his paintings. Cher and I had similar hair at the time wild tendrils. Ramón’s paintings of women who were the same. That was where the similarity ended.  Cher’s body was more voluptuous than mine. 

I was not going to miss the opportunity to meet again.  Little did I know that he would tell me “I was a beautiful woman.” I proceeded with this new found awareness and attention about myself in my need to feel beautiful.  I was then having my inner world validated. I hadn't recognized my beauty in my heart's truth. Aging gracefully was my desire. Robert Forester led me to believing in this need. 

 I’ve been told that I treat my life as if I am going to live forever, gifted with my natural ability to live in the moment. Now as I  have more years behind me I know this attitude is not going to work for me.

Lost Ardor

Dona Michelini <dona.michelini@gmail.com>

Sun, May 19, 2013, 12:19 PM

Lost Ardor

There will be no consolation for the years that come undone

I imagine the pain and suffering that has to be shut out.

I see the story of lives and I know the story of my own

Lost truths given expression amongst shame.

Story after Story, some fun, some not; we walk together.

Do we practice a game without rules?

I had no idea when instinct met instinct

That we’d be hearing yelling

The screams shut and lost behind doors

He’s talking to no one only himself.

Are these the words and actions;

He never got to do or say?

Now I have to be detached to my love.

I only imagine what it would be like for you.

Expressing my honest truth

To imagine your honest truth

Instead I grow silent for the joy that isn’t mine

I will postpone

I can see you in my mind

 I feel you hold every careful touch

I am growing old in front of you

In front of my mirror

I want to bring you youth; most of all I want it for myself.

What life gives me I barely know?

Struggling with dedication, my tears must be pushed away.

I hear yelling existing in the neighbor

Seeing others taut in duties, drives of youthful lust

We are too intellectual.

I’m here as the night’s breeze sends currents through my open door.

Will we laugh again?

My Porno Star

So many thoughts as I move into thinking about all the things I couldn’t finish saying. All the questions I couldn't ask or didn’t know how. I wanted to feel excited and electrified when I told stories. The ability to really know all the implications of what I was saying in my story didn’t always take hold. I was a woman without reins steeped in excitement tempered by fear.  I said I slept with a Porn Star.  In the 70’s free love was everywhere. Is that an excuse? What did that mean? The unknown pron star introduced himself as Herb Striker. I know he and I drank and danced and as we went back to his friend's house I was cornered into sleeping with him, there was nowhere else except the floor. I found no way to say “NO”!  He told my girlfriend and her long time friend with benefits. “He likes his tomatoes ripe.” He took me off to his bedroom.

 The house rested on the side of a mountain and was an old converted apple factory into a home and movie stage.  After a quick bit of sexuality or whatever it might be called, he got out of bed and showed me a naked photo of himself in a magazine.  He was one of the first men to be in Playboy naked. Full frontal. This was unheard of at the time. It was alright to be naked in Playboy if you were a woman. He wanted me to be impressed when he confessed he was the Porno star Harry Reems and he made the movie Devil and Miss Jones and it was filmed there where we slept. I didn’t care, I just wanted to sleep and get the night over. His ego was bruised for sure.  I had never seen the movie. I would never watch hard porn before or after. Somewhere the good girl had its hold on me in my confusion.  He told his friend at Breakfast when asked if we had fun, he said;  “He didn’t cut the mustard.” An archaic phrase is what he said. He didn’t cut anything with or for me! No one could have at that point in my life. 

My trauma as a young woman was steeped and tattooed on my spirit. I left any thought of Harry Reems mostly behind. I say mostly in my moments of boredom I would bring him to mind. I then remembered my first real thrill instead and an impression fixed on lust I also didn’t understand or pursue. A boy from high school after I came home from England and I were in the back seat of his car kissing, necking in a wild embrace. As he held me my whole body shook inside and I pushed him on the floor of his old late model car. A vivid experience where I felt or thought God had struck me with a fire,I could not relax into. How could I move from the tales of the Good girl with a religious upbringing so laced in fear into free love and free feeling sex. Here I was with a porn star who was naked in Playboy magazine. All I could think about was Herb/Harry was a movie star and a high school friend long after school ended gave me an unforgettable thrill. That alone was enough to settle my thoughts. Thoughts about love existing. How could I have been so ignorant/stupid before. So numb. Lost in searching for the warmth of being held and kissed. Confusion won over making sense in what I was doing, what I had participated in.

From Kindergarten to Sex

 I grew up surrounded by homes with traditional families. Somehow even when I was in their care I would scoot off to my future elementary school on an adventure. I couldn’t wait for Kindergarten. I would climb up onto the window’s edge of a bay window and go from window to window waiting for the summer to end so I could attend. There was a glorious jungle gym inside. Sometimes I would sit behind bushes to hide watching other children as they went to school. I had wanted to go to the parochial school in the other direction but it became clear I couldn’t.  It sat next to the church and it had no convenient windows to climb on with no vision of what was inside. This was so attractive to me. I loved my adventures.

 Catholicism was practiced by my friends and their families. This was the school they would go to. As we grew older, being Catholic was a religious struggle for them. I saw my girlfriends being afraid of kissing until marriage. This was what my mother promoted in our home. I wished I could go to a religious school and have a religion to belong to.  Mom would rest on Sundays and off to church she would send me where my friends would go. “God was everywhere,”my mom said. She would have no dogma in her daughter.  Her father made her stay home and read the bible on Sunday nights.  She wanted to go and see the boys at the church.

 I often left mom for church with a hanky on my head. When the bells rang inside the Catholic Church, I would tap my chest.  I still am not sure what that means. What I know is that churches and God were my comfort. I wasn’t even supposed to kiss a boy and learned French kisses were a mortal sin. Girls became pregnant by touching a boy's hand. My confusion grew after being told you couldn’t get pregnant till marriage. Eventually I figured it out differently as I quizzed and pushed my mother relentlessly. After seeing a TV show with an unmarried woman getting pregnant, finally my mother decided to tell me her truth of the day. She was desperate again that her daughter would not get pregnant before marriage. Boys could touch you in your private parts before marriage, she told me.  I began to cry, too young for this knowledge.  I kept saying I’m never getting married. There was no tender talk or explanations for deep love. My father died and I never saw my father kiss my mother or hug her after that. These private parts of mine were not going to be private!  Later I knew I wanted closeness and hoped touching would be wonderfully filled with care. This talk from my mother did not give me comfort with any truths. I carried these ideas into young adult life and after.

  As a teen, I always felt separate. After my first date I was accused of doing what had been defined as my mother’s unspoken truth. She told me I had sex. I did not.  I was now going to stay home and pretend I had boyfriends. Imagination and sexuality were fostered through dancing during high school, often in front of the TV. 

 As I prepared to go to England. During my senior year, I met a nice Jewish boy, Alan Goldstein. I would sit on his lap and he would kiss me. How I loved kissing. I got on the ship with love bites around my neck, pulling up my collar to cover them. I ran into him later after I had become a free spirited 20 year old and I asked him why he never tried anything with me beyond kissing.  He said I seemed so afraid. I was!  He probably had some of his own fears.

Ice Water (take one)

  Tonight the order I requested can’t be filled. The shock took my body and the freezing water was to capture and cool me. Was this burning body temperature trying to take me.  Did she run for ice to get my temperature down? Mom said it was a temperature of 107. Were my mothers thoughts that she was going to lose me. 107, I can’t believe that, wouldn't it render me death. A year of sickness began. Frail and at some core level my mothers worst nightmare began. A heart murmur, a kidney infection, throat infection and my body and soul locked on the edge of passing.

 Doctors' care brought male love and attention that was lost 3 years before when my father died. Did I have Scarlet fever? I can’t possibly know, it was never defined. It left some labels of heart, throat and kidneys. The shock took it’s muscle memory to a forever longing into what could fix this ache.  Looking for a depth of where love was wrapped in the memory of icy water.

I had begun asking why? Why was I compulsive at waking and looking at my throat and it’s morning dryness? Why did I hate wooden popsicle sticks/tongue depressors? The touch of them and my mouth I would gag. Cringing my fingers couldn’t even feel the wood on my skin.  I’d cover them with the wrapper. Watching others lick sticks would send my inside spinning, only taking my teeth to the closest spot and that I could, the rest of the confection was thrown away. No matter how sweet and wonderful it was, gone. Again memories now wear their care only to never allow me my feelings. I was to swallow them into the recesses of memory again. 

This is my feeling where I flow into a healing of my care as I know it. I still won’t lick popsicle sticks but looking into my throat is not as big a necessity. How important is it anyway?  Maybe wasting time thinking about being sick could be a given that I don’t need to pursue. This thinking falls short wondering about my poor mother and her fear. She lost 5 siblings, two stillborn twin boys, a tubal or Ectopic pregnancy. Leaving her with a truma from her navel to about 1.5 feet long. Long. Then my father died. Either of these 2 would have made my poor mothers heart cry, however she had so much more. Now they make small incisions and my father had blood pressure problems that would be taken care of with a pill and her Ectopic pregnancy would have left a small scar . 

Tears and Fears with a history of grief between both my mother and I. She trudged on in fear of all that threatened her security and I with my phobias and fear of my own. I began asking why with guidance where I could and gradually heal what I once hated. I began to see and love my mother for what gifts she gave me and even my talents giving me a voice of free spirited behavior cloaked in a critical wonder. I was silly, loving and longing in poetic living when I could

Superstition or truth!

The Living Room stretched across the house in the fullness of the front room on the second floor. Only the bedroom was being rented. Any money was better than no money and the flat was empty except for his room. A university fellow somehow paid for a room and got a flat. My mother stood over my shoulder as I sat in one chair facing the male renter while he flashed playing cards at me and as he took one out that only he knew. I was to guess what was behind his back. One card then 2, then 3 and  4. I missed a few. It made a tally of 75 percent of my ability to guess correctly the cards he drew. He was doing a study on extra sensory perception. I was his subject. He told my mother I had ESP tendencies according to his test.  It seemed to be a power to me which I knew nothing about. I did all feel magical.

 My mother told me she knew what I thought. I dare not question her because she told me she was born with a caul over her head. I had question after question and what did it mean to a 12 year old? A caul? The thought frightened me and I now thought I could read a man's mind. My mother told me she could read my mind because of her birthright of being born with a caul.  Perhaps another way to control her prepubescent daughter. I’m sure of her mind reading. My magical thinking continued.

Was all this a parlor game wrapped in superstition? Had I picked up cues from the man's face or body language. Did my mothers breath cue me. We slept together as sisters.  All this fanciful thought because there was no knowledge of the amniotic fluid wrapping her head. (caul) was it an ignorance of what healthcare was at the time. My mothers was born in 1907 old enough to be my Grandmother. The back hills of West Virginia on the Ohio River was where she was raised. Stories ensued. Beliefs became a way of life and practice for my mothers colorful presence was how we continued to survive after my father died. I kept searching for my magic as I grew.

I got to experience more backwoods stories just 5 years ago. I was at a workshop and a Nurse Practitioner from Louisiana told a story of a faith healer at one of her clinics. He was called a Sin Sucker, freeing people of all sins to rise home to Heaven. When he was called to a home of a recently deceased person, flowers were placed on the body and then he laid on the body to extract the sins of the deceased.  This was what was thought. He would rise in a weakness as he had absorbed all their sins. 

When the sin sucker died his mother pleaded with her son to do the same for his father. He could not. Was he too educated and the son's world would not allow him to promote superstition? I will never know how to understand my upbringing in a Southern superstition and all my childhood awareness. How have I digested my childhood? I hope at this point I've let go and those beliefs are gone-reeducated away. I have always been open to the stories of the stories of others,  giving me a fanciful and free spirited way of knowing people.  My mother’s stories set the stage to create my own stories, some as the lost searching child looking for my truth.

Looking for Miss America

 I can remember getting in trouble in sixth grade. School was the place to express myself.  At home, my mother was either grieving for my father or too exhausted from working to support me and herself. I was to be tough in a little girl's body and had no explanations for what had happened to my father. I wondered about my own grief later and feelings of loss without the loving parent who could show me more than harsh structures.  I wanted to play and be loved.

My father was a cheerful man who was excited to see me when he came home.  His fullness before passing cemented my need to look continually for fun or make it.  He offered me a reason to cheer for myself. School was to become my playground. I continually looked for people to fill my need. I found my needs met in the doctors who were to visit our home as sickness was another venue for my mothers fear. Her words were you can’t be sick. So cheer and fancy were to be my comfort. I was sick a lot.

  Neither school nor my mother could control my creative energy. Artistic expression was not fostered then while excellence in reading and writing and math were what was expected. I refused to be tempered, talking  incessantly or staring out the window watching rain leave trails on the dirt left on the windows. This was all so much more interesting to me than listening to the teacher. Whatever I did wrong, the teacher would tell me to stand up and face the blackboard until I learned not to disturb the class. Each day I would walk into class and she would ask, “Well, will you not talk today?” I would say I didn’t know. How could I?

Each day my resilient spirit would be ignited. I would go home and scan a giant pictorial dictionary we had for answers. I found drawings of hands forming shapes with letters below them. Sign language would become my new form of communicating and engaging with my classmates.  I faced the blackboard with my hands making signs.  The teacher could not see what I was doing behind her back with my hands making the shapes of letters. I now only remember the letter Q. 

By 7th grade, I began to shut down and did not get into more trouble in school.  My mother also got a boyfriend who would show us a whole new side of living. He was a doctor's son and I remember that’s when we started dressing up and going out to dinner. He took me to the Eastman Theater to see the Nutcracker. Each week it was something new with a meal at a fancy restaurant.  In the summer we would go out to the park and watch Opera Under the Stars. I came home and started singing opera. I dreamed of being a singer. I sang at every opportunity listening to records that my God Mother had over and over again. “Oklahoma” and “South Pacific”. I even called my cat in an operatic tone.

The boyfriend Don Otis was a quiet man and each year he would go to the Miss America Pageant. He told me of the Etiquette the young girls must learn. I learned about their talent and their beautiful form and speech. All this found rewards in a box of salt water taffy from the boardwalk of Salt Lake City. By the age of 14 I wanted to be Miss America. My mother frowned on this thought and said: “ What can you do?”

I Concede

What is this walk with fancy and delight

Words folding and collapsing upon themselves

I breathe deeply with every breath

Until you appear

One smile and I'm alive

The ease of style 

Who are you in those moments I concede

Where do you go to protect the life you know

You stand separate

Waiting

Alone from beginning to end

Looking deeply within each moment

A look in every turn

The game of life 

Games defined in chance and skill

Found in my words

I will continue

You watch and wait

I will not

Steps

Within each step, each foot requires the earth’s support.

Clinging as I walk with steps slightly above my surface.

My steps float and upon landing I take pause.

Wrapping my silence expressed only in bursts of truth.

I hear the call of my heart; as I reach into you for ground.

Your body captures my flight while floating forward;

I’m no longer accelerated as my secrets come out.

You are the fisher of my truth as we walk together.

Your spirit alone has captured my line.

Each truth I would rather not hear or face.

My soul’s corners are unfolded when thought reaches you.

You were reading into me as I flew: I’m stopped.

Caught in the web we’ve created in our net of candor.

I want to be a star

Under my child-like skin spun a need. Then my best friend came from Rochester and I got JoAnn an interview. We slept in the same tiny bed I begrudged every night.  Her feet in my face and mine in hers. So sweet, for there was nothing but excitement for her interview the next day. I would have a long time friend in New York. Our comfort didn’t matter. We had lived with our backyard connected, sharing secrets on the shed attached to my Garage. Our knees bent and perched on the roof as she told me of her old neighborhood and a babysitter who took advantage of her early development. My skinny body was barely developed. The next day she got the job. Both of us were now free to work in stylish department stores. She was in Bloomingdales selling Mr. Kenneth makeup, the line that Jacklyn Kennedy wore. I was at Berdorfs. Actually her father took us on our first trip to New York. The trip was the 3 of us in a Corvette. She and I took turns sitting on the console in the middle of the car while he drove. I was 14 and JoAnn was 3 years younger.

 

As the days passed, I still felt the violation that I had no name or feelings for. I just kept moving. Really there was no justice.  Work was getting on the bus traveling to Bergdorfs. I kept talking about finding a new place to live.  JoAnn provided a roommate and we moved into the Luxury Hotel women at the Barbizon.  I could walk to work now and so could she. We were in Midtown where the action was. I still wanted my own place and went to the home office visiting and making Alice my bridge into the world around me. Alice Diamond became a motherly figure counseling me. She was an executive at Glemby Company on E.18th street in the village. My confused energy was spilling all over her and she wanted to direct my small upstate spirit. I continually would consult with whoever I could to direct my journey. My mother had nothing to offer although she had lived in the City when she was young with my father. My direct boss had no time for me. Alice got to know me. I reminded her of Marilyn Monroe, she said in my vulnerable nature. Still I was beautiful by the world’s standards. Yet I couldn’t identify with what that meant. I was becoming part of the “Me to Generation”. Women at the time were to remain modest in Upstate. This was a huge change in a city of millions full of confidence and action.

 Alice had known Marilyn when Marilyn lived in New York. I have never felt beautiful, although I knew I liked men. However my first experience was building distrust. Questioning everything at that point, after my drama in Spanish Harlem and my first marriage. Confused, men were always looking at me. Any attention they gave me took me into my adult life with fear and longing.  The stage for how I would relate to men as a fatherless child was only a confused image at the time. How it would affect me based on the memory of being like Marilyn lived within me. I still wanted to be a star.

The Beginning

I can see myself walking into the 58th Street Entrance of Bergdorf’s. Behind me was the famous fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel. Central Park was just across the street. There I was walking into a pristine ordered store of glass shelves dressed with expensive jewelry besides the elevators and a man greeted me. Off I went to my salon. I was to be the receptionist on the floor just below the Penthouse. I would greet and talk to so many glorious people. The Goodman’s lived in the penthouse and Mrs. Andrew Goodman would come down in the morning in her dressing gown to get her hair done and nails touched up. Movie material danced and spun before me. She didn’t talk to me as I remember. A quick greeting and off she went looking busy. I wasn’t bothered because I too had so much excitement to tend to. Did I wear black as they did on the sales floors? I can remember black under my fingernails. At the time there were no pollution controls, soot stuck to your hair and hairspray. I’m sure that was the reason for my short hair. 

I wanted a homey feel to a place I could relax and sleep. My New York City Home. Talking incessantly about an apartment at every free moment became my mission. The stylists were all men and one of them took a particular interest in my story, telling me of an apartment in his building. Seemed alright for me to go off with him to the upper west side of Manhattan. Weren’t all hairdressers gay. He took me by subway to Spanish Harlem in the blocks of 100th street and higher.  The building had a courtyard with some charm as we went to look at the apartment. The stairs and doors became dingier and upswept floors defaced by dirt in each doorway. This was not where I wanted to live, instinctively my red flags began to rise. His name was Franco and his charm began to rise, he was not gay and I began to run an internal dialoge about how was I going to retreat. I knew the apartment wasn’t going to work and I told him. He took me to his apartment for wine. I thought I was buying time. What was I going to do? 

My mind spun thinking about wanting to be kissed and to take the step I hadn’t taken yet. My skin was crawling with desire. He was good looking and had the Bergdorf style. His charm was the same as David however David’s polar opposite in wanting me. I remembered my first trills and I wanted to experience all that I had never had. The movie image of just going for it. What was it? Sex, making love, fornication. It was not going to be making love, it was the beginning of an unknown walk into Ugly. I thought I should tell him, “I am a virgin”. After all I was. His words began to sting in my ears, my head began to spin when he said to me; “Oh baby you want me to treat you special.” He didn’t believe me. I paused and asked him if I could take a shower. His shower waited and what was I doing. I thought if I was to be alone in the shower for I wasn’t thinking at all. Any amount of sexuality or romance was gone. He didn’t believe me! 

And I thought I would be alone in the bathroom and he came in. He grabbed me and pushed me up against the sink. My Virginity showed itself as I pushed him away. Now he believed me and I was terrorized, lost and loves dreams found another halt to my wanting happiness. I wanted to be held. I wanted a man to love me and I knew this was not going to be the night. I was safe in the knowledge that we worked together and I was not going to stay. What happened next was a numbness that took me back to my Woman’s Hotel knowing I was smarter for the experience, yet feeling stupid for having to learn an ugly bit of how a man could just not care for my needs. What were my needs?

The Lift

The Surgeon’s Hand

The Surgeon’s hand waits 

I surrender to the unknown.

Selections to allow hands touch 

Feathering skins aged architecture. 

This twist in how I view my nature 

We create, becoming partners.

Skin sculpting folds become clay

Softened taste of youth is all I request

Watching my mirrors truth

We will find a new definition.

Youths face lost except in spirits expression

A moment of artistry articulated

Be gentle with your hand and scalpel

 I request so little, no tight draw

One last extra mile is all I want.

Your temperate touch invited

My eyes have an artist’s view

With our eyes meeting as one

A celestial paintbrush is ignited

The Surgeon’s hand becomes mine.

Dona Michelini 2014

Bergdorf’s Begins

I can see myself walking into the 58th Street Entrance of Bergdorf’s. Behind me was the famous pool and fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel. There I was walking into a pristine order of glass shelves dressed with expensive jewelry and the elevators before me. I got on the elevators and a man greeted me and off I went to my salon, I was to be the receptionist on the floor just below the Penthouse. I would greet and talk to so many glorious people. The Goodman’s lived in the penthouse and Mrs. Andrew Goodman would come down in the morning in her dressing gown to get her hair done and nails touched up. Movie material danced and spun. She didn’t talk to me much, a quick greeting and off she went. She looked busy and I wasn’t bothered because I too had so much excitement to experience.

Shaping Life

Writing requires a great deal of focus; I would rather be talking and telling you this. I knew I had to capture you with choices of language that will make you want to read more.  I opt for talking usually; I can see the person’s response and change my words or stop. This is my expressive drama creating itself in a self centered conversation. The visions I create in my psyche continue, my senses detonate. This is what I once found at my father’s rifle range, I’m sure of this.  I now am much more secure and entertaining as I go chatting and laughing when possible.

In my family of origin sharing tales also seemed to have a boring effect; almost frightening without immediate feedback.  Personal lives were to be private. I really learned a lot about the need for secrets from my mother and her southern roots. If the truth was boring a lie or embellishments were better. My secrets have taken a different form.  I thought in the web of my life I wanted to tell one of my more shocking narratives.  Beginning with the ones that gave me a sense of being a star running around again; I had looked at this but I now feel I can own who I was, without shame. I can acknowledge it in entirety; at least I think I can, in this continual self dialogue. 

A few friends who are still in my life for some 45 years reminded me of my being quite the gal. I used to actually get asked for autographs. Why autographs? Well I had been on television, modeled, had a full page newspaper article written about my creative wedding and modeling. I had coverage of my work in other newspapers and a National magazine. Being in backstages with rock stars and doing lip sinks on television, which were popular at the time.  I sat with the press at concerts and over drinks with rock stars and coffee with a movie star. I received a back rub from a soft and gentle folk singer, who had become quite famous. There are also the movie stars I could be flattered by and those stories I want to hide. Never wondering why I had a certain heir of a wild child for it was the 70’s, however untamed I became; nothing stopped me, until this part of my life. I have a very primal nature with a resilient spirit that just keeps going forward even in the eye of confusion and lack of direction. Money and Men taught me that nickels and dimes can shape a child's life.