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AD: One alcoholic helping another, right?

JS: Absolutely. That shit is like some crazy healing magic… At some point when this guy was lamenting to me about how hard it all is, being in recovery and living with someone who’s suffering the torments of the damned from the very same stuff you’re recovering from and not being able to help them because they’re just not ready to throw in the towel or whatever, and how terribly frustrating that is, I was just tempted to tell him to read Narcisa… I dunno, I just got the feeling that it would help him and comfort him somehow, at least on the level of letting him know that he’s really not alone in this kind of shit. We all go there… it’s life, it’s the human condition. And while we were talking there, I just felt this incredible bond with this guy… and I guess that bond I felt was the thing you just called the universally relatable dynamic…

    This is basically about humanity and its struggles, about human relations and the power of love and our human interdependency and interaction to heal and reveal our own deepest secrets to us, all our fears, traumas, hopes and dreams and all sorts of essencially human things that these two characters are dealing with in this book, about the way we all ultimately act as therapists and healers for each other in the course of our relationships with one another, even our most fucked up relationships — especially our most fucked up relationships, cuz nothing happens without a reason…

      So in that sense it’s sort of about the laws of attraction and the transcendent nature of the human spirit in interaction with other spirits and how we all need each other in order to see ourselves… At least that was always my basic intent while writing it and contemplating what made these two characters tick….

       And it really is my sincere hope that Narcisa will speak to people and serve them on that kind of a deep gut level and let them see themselves, even through the crooked looking glass of a teenage crack whore and her codependent gypsy partner in crime… cuz it’s not so much about them, per se as it is about the essencially human dynamic that emerges through their twisted, fucked up relationship. 

     At the end of the day, Cigano and Narcisa are you and me and the guys down the street. On some levels, even if somebody never smoked crack or fell in love with psychotic crack whores in Rio de Janeiro or whatver, on that deeper human level, everybody’s been there… so I just hope that some of the universal truths expressed in the book’s handling of these characters and all their crazy ups and downs can ultimately transcend their particular stories and whatever particular characterization or label or make or model and be able to just sorta reach into people’s hearts on a deeper level and help them take that fearless, unflinching look into their own soul’s heart of darkness, just like they did for me while I was writing about all this shit. 

    That is the power of myth, I believe. All roads lead us inward and all roads eventually lead to our enlightenment. I really do believe that… And I hope to have been able to express the essence of that concept a little through my telling of this particular little fairy tale or horror story or whatever…

     I splurge for a cab ride home from work, stopping at the liquor store on the way home for a couple of jumbo bottles of cheap Chardonnay. I need something to steady my nerves. I have to pack. I hate packing. How are you supposed to know what you feel like wearing tomorrow, much less days from now. I try to think what I would want if I could only wear one thing for the rest of my life. I throw a few of my favorite vintage dresses and my favorite old holey jeans into a black plastic garbage bag. Over a few coffee cups of the cheap wine I try to explain the situation to Stephanie who is expecting to share a cab ride to the airport with me in a couple of days. She is hard to smooth over.

      “But you don’t even know this guy Amy..”

      “It’s fine…” I reassure her, topping off our cups. “He’s Jonathan Shaw.”

      “Are you sure its ok?” she asks.

      “Yes!” I huff. She exhausts me with her counterculture naivete. “Its fine… he’s like really famous… plus you should see his house… he owns a whole building in Chinatown…” I say, trying to reassure her knowing there’s nothing like the smell of money to calm a  girl’s nerves. “Now , can I borrow your red glamour girls slip dress or not?”

      “OK…” she relented, “But you better bring it back!”

      I hear a horn beeping outside. “Shit, he’s here… I gotta go…”

      “Amy… he’s not even coming in?” Stephanie asks, suddenly appalled. This, from a girl who last week when she’d brought home a one night stand told the guy to please not leave his number?

      “Guess not…” I say as I pour my wine into a red plastic to go cup and throw the second bottle in to my garbage bag. Remembering that he’d said I may want to grab a blanket, I go to my closet-sized room and grab my pillow and down comforter. My bare twin mattress looks so lonely now. The black floral print Betsey Johnson curtains are the only evidence of  life. I hear the horn again. I turn off the light and shut the door.

to be continued

 Pushing past me she tore through my kitchen like a prison riot, banging drawers, slamming cupboards, silverware clattering skittering across the floor, plates and glasses breaking, shattering, crashing as she ripped her way like a maddened baboon through the whole agonizing feeding process. Finally she emerged with a plate overflowing with cold pizza, chocolate cookies, cheese, olives and the usual sticky goo of sugary doce de leite topping off her Daily Mess. She plopped down on the sofa like a stuffed bag of garbage and began tearing through the food.
Crumbs were flying as she talked a nonstop stream of incoherent shit, olive pits scattering to the four winds of hell. Even the roaches on the wall seemed to back off to give her plenty of space.
   “You’re gonna fucking die if ya eat all that shit, baby,” I pleaded.
    “You gonna die you don’ shut the fock up Cigano! Go down the boteco an’ get to me the Coca Cola. Go!”
By now I knew better than to argue when she was recovering from a mission. I moved towards the door.
. “Get to me the packet cigarette too… The good one, you cheap gypsy e’sheet,” she shouted behind me, blowing huge scraps across the room like a witch’s curse, even as she shoveled more gobs of food into her demented little face. I had my hand on the doorknob.
   “An’ da morthes,” she said.
   “What?”
      Was it Portuguese or some weird new favela hooker slang I’d never heard before? You always had to wonder with Narcisa. I looked at her, a standing question mark. Swallowing a mouthful of food with petulant determination, she looked at me like I was an imbecile.
    “The matches, you e’stupid e’sheet, matches! You have go deaf, retard like e’stupid old man, Cigano…”
   As she rolled her eyes like lemons in a broken slot machine, I beat it out the door.
   When I got back she was passed out again. Face up on the sofa, snoring. Her mouth open like a gaping grave, big dirty feet pointing toward the ceiling like a pair of crooked tombstones. I stood over her, holding the sweaty coke bottle like a wilted bouquet, a jilted love-struck farm boy standing there. A survivor in a tornado’s wake, surveying all the damage… Pizza crust and candy wrappers, ashes, cigarette butts littering the floor, the sofa. At least the plate was still intact. A small miracle in itself, I thought gratefully… And she was still alive too.
   There was still hope. I cracked open that blue book called Alcoholics Anonymous and read for many hours, spellbound… The book seemed to be all about Narcisa. And me. Finally I fell asleep…

   Twenty-four hours later she came to. While I was still sleeping, of course. Groggy at first, soon the orders flew at me like squawking birds of prey across the room as I tried to sleep on, covering my head with the pillow. It was no use. Like a foot soldier booted out of his bunk with angry shouts and orders, I was up on my feet running before I was even awake… Back and forth to the refrigerator and kitchen cabinets like an overworked short-order cook in the Devil’s Diner… The feeding frenzy was on again. She finished the last of my food sitting on the toilet, crapping.
    “Today’s the day, Princesa!” I said beaming despite my exhaustion. I opened the shuttered windows to a beautiful sunrise, suddenly grinning at the idea of our long-awaited trip to the Country. The Beginning of
a New Life for us.
   “Shut the fock up, go, e’stupid e’sheet! Close it these focking door an’ get the fock out from here, Cigano, go!” She snapped. “I trying for def’cate. Go!”
    I slunk away like a wounded mutt, started clearing the table and sofa of her latest wreckage. I went into the ravaged kitchen and got busy with that battlefield. Death and devastation everywhere. Many casualties.
   Soon the infernal maddening idiot chatter of the TV filled my ears. I looked back into the darkened room. She’d pulled the shudders tight again and was sitting there like a dummy, hypnotized before the giant glowing eyeball. Zoned out, totally absorbed in a moronic hellscape vision of inane children’s programming. Animated
teddy bears with screeching rat-like voices squeaking lunatic phrases, people dressed as clowns, farmers, witches and goons, all running around squeaking like deranged rodents and butchered pigs. Sweet
bleeding Jesus!
  I watched on in horror as a giant cockroach pranced into the center stage. All the other repulsive creatures made a circle around the wretched thing and began singing, squealing in infuriating high-pitched shrieks. I felt a red cauldron of hate well up in my chest. She just sat there riveted before the screen, sitting in the darkness picking her nose, wiping a cocaine-encrusted booger on the arm of my sofa. Bitch.
    “Baby… We should probably be leaving soon,” I reminded her.
     She responded by throwing the nearest object at me.  An overflowing ashtray, scattering butts and ashes all across the floor I’d just finsihed sweeping clean.
    “Shut the fock up, Cigano, go! Moo-oove, e’stupid! I watching these–”
    That was it. She didn’t finish her sentence before I shot across the room like a disturbed alligator and grabbed her by the throat. I hauled her up off the sofa and pinned her to the wall. Shocked, hateful eyes of outrage popped out of her pimply face as I banged her head against the wall, screaming, spitting in her mug.
   “You have gone too far, bitch!”
   It was on. She fought back and we struggled, knocking plates and furniture asunder. I pinned her to the floor, putting both knees on her arms, gripping her throat firmly in my hands. Finally she relaxed, gave up. She knew she was no match for me. Not when I was pissed like that, anyway.
  But I got over it soon enough. Like I always got over it… Suddenly I felt bad sitting there on top of her. I told her I’d let her up if she promised to stop breaking shit and screaming her lungs out at me.
  She nodded. I let her up… For once, she even kept her word. Maybe she had a headache. But she still wasn’t done.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2009

      Back at my apartment I shower, fuel up with coffee, put on a fresh coat of warpaint and generally prepare myself for reentry. When I get to work, Tanya and Mai are there. As I enter the store, they both look up from what they are doing. They are staring at me with the sheepish pride of proud parents. Roxanne must’ve told them about our date already.

      “Something came for you Amy.” Tanya sing songs, smiling. “It’s in the back…”

      “OK,” I singsong back as I eye them suspiciously. They turn in unison, watching me like a hawk as I make my way to the crowded stockroom wondering why they are in such a state over the stretch gabardine dress I had transferred from the Madison Avenue store. Then I see them. There amidst piles of  blue and gold lurex cardigans and the mountain of miscellaneous mateless shoes waiting to be organized sits the evidence. Unlike my childhood reccuring dream of the black patent leather Mary Janes that were never in my closet the next morning, this morning something has succeeded in transporting itself from the other dimension.

      Oh no… He has sent me flowers.

      How oddly old fashioned and embarrassing. And how did they get here already. He must have gotten them right after he dropped me off. That seems right. He hadn’t yet had time to come to his senses.

            I look back at Mai who I can still feel staring. “And there’s something inside…” she says excitedly as she reaches over and shakes the tissue paper as if I’m a small child on xmas needing to be inticed to open my own gift. I hear something jingle. I fish around in the tissue paper until I feel it. It’s a necklace, A silver pendant with an old school looking number seven and lucky written across the top. I feel myself blush. Am I not going to be able to blow this one off? It seems he really wants something. Doesn’t he know I’m easy? He doesn’t have to do all this just to get laid. All he had to do was try. I’d sleep with anyone on my quest for an orgasm. Not even Hayden and all his hickies had made the wall crumble.

      Then I see a card.

            Amy, I feel lucky to have met you. See you at seven…

                                                            JS

      What was he talking about? Then my stomach does a flip as I remember.  Last night over wasabi dumplings and a large Asahi and after him not laughing at me when in my 5-inch platforms I bumped my head on one of the many Japanese paper lanterns that were strewn from the ceiling in Angel Share, the Blade-Runner-esque warm and foggy-windowed sushi bar on the second story above St Marks’ books, I’d told him how I was going to Texas for Christmas. And then I’d agreed that it was a good idea when he’d offered not only to go with me but to drive down in his van, stopping in New Orleans on the way. Always a sucker for an outrageous drunken plan, his enthusiasm penetrated me, squelching any inhibitions I had like baking soda on a grease fire. Somehow knowing I still needed a security blanket, he’d even said I could bring Roxanne and his friend Dominic whom we’d run into that night and conveniently Roxanne had a long standing crush on.     

      But it was morning now and the fire of fear was back. Shit, didn’t he know drunk talk when he heard it? How was I going to get out of this one? Did I want to get out of this one? It did sound fun but I already had a plane ticket, and how was I going to bring a forty-five year old man home with me? I mean my mom was pretty laid back and all but I was still her baby. Bringing someone home with me that was older than her own husband might trigger even her parental gag reflex.

      I look at the pile of tea rose bias skirts waiting to be hung. I am still a little buzzed from last night and my ears ring slightly. No. I want to ride this snowball of a distraction. But the thought of having enough to talk about to fill a two day road trip and a big empty van echoes in my brain. How could I spend that much time with someone deflecting and dodging the topics of my real life… Hayden… what the fuck I am gonna do with my life…No I don’t think Mr. Jonathan Shaw was the type to play the violin at my pity party, nor did I want him to. And I fear my wall of deflection is not that interesting. I have to call Roxanne. If I can get her and her gift of gab to go with me we can keep the momentum going.

      “Hello…Betsey Johnson…” It’s her. I beg her to get her shifts covered and go with us.  “Please…please…please…” I say.

      “I do love New Orleans…” she says.

      “And you do love Dominic!” I say.

      “Yes I do!” she agrees, and with a little finagling of her schedule she is in. All the Betsey girls help out. Another advantage of working at a company full of women. If there is  just a hint of romance involved they will do anything to help you conspire to get it. Good. At least no matter what happens with him, we will have fun. At least until it’s time to go to Texas. Then I’ll be on my own. 

To be continued….

AD: How is the dynamic between Cigano and Narcisa universally relatable?

JS: At the risk of being accused of false modesty here, one of the few human character defects I’ve actually rarely fallen pray to so far (Laughs)… I should mention that there really are no new stories under the sun, just endless variations on recurring ancient themes… It all boils down to the good old ‘boy meets girl’ kinda stuff… and then all shit breaks loose, bla bla bla… It’s not an original concept when it comes to our mythos as a race… Because the basic themes of Narcisa are universal issues — even if the surface story is all this sex, drugs, rock n roll, violence, betrayal, anguish, etc… cuz there’s all sorts of levels of subtext there and on a deeper level, who the fuck can’t relate to these characters’ insecurities and fears and hopes and dreams and nightmares… their feelings? They are human feelings, the kind of strengths and weaknesses and all the little comedies and tragedies we all experience in our feeling world every day, the kinda shit that propels the whole fucking human experience as we all live it in our daily lives, whether we’re living extreme realities like these two particular characters, or just coming and going from the fucking office every day or whatever…

It’s really weird, but just last night I got a phone call from another recovering alcoholic who was going through a really hard time in his relationship. He called me up in the middle of the night and said he really needed to talk to me, so I got on the bike and rode over to the beach and we met up. Without going into details here, basically he told me he was living through some really extreme, gut-wrenching stuff, the kind of stuff I’ve been through a lot of myself and come out the other end of… and when I started talking to him and sharing my own experiences with him, suddenly I felt like I was talking to myself a coupla years ago, like right before I wrote this book and discovered all these things about relationship and about myself and how I tick through that whole soul-searching process… it was weird, cuz it just dawned on me that this is exactly how it works.

AD: What were your reservations, if any, when writing Narcisa? Was there anything holding you back?

JS: No, nothing. Absolutely nothing… It’s almost the opposite in fact. It’s as if I was being compelled to write this thing so strongly that once it started rolliing, there was no holding it back, there was just never any question about any choice or premeditated thought process or plan or plot or whatever. It’s really almost as if this book just kinda wrote itself. On some level I never really saw myself being involved in it other than the instrument by which it chose to manifest itself into the world. I know that may sound sort of new-agey or whatever, but that’s exactly how it went down, right from the start. A very painful process for me, not just as a writer, but as a human being. Gut wrenchingly painful… but ultimately effortless too, completely without any personal forethought or afterthought or any of that kinda thing. It was just… compelling and obsessive and compulsive and spontaneous and essential from start to finish. Like channeling something  a lot bigger and more important than my own little ideas and experiences and all that kinda stuff. A very very powerful process… I highly recommend it! (Laughs)…

Woke up after ten hours on the twelve-hour red-eye flight from Buenos Aires… Sometime around dawn in the dark, dreamlike hum of the airplane cabin I woke with a sudden unearthly chill, my mind filled with strange grey silent movie dreams of Narcisa… Dreams I can’t remember, don’t care to remember, but can’t forget… 

​   Looking out the plane window at dawn, I saw the landscape below, and for a moment I thought of other planets, and now I sit here blurry-eyed and I wonder where on earth this could be… Cold, lunar, alien, miles and miles of eerie, unfamiliar, uninhabitable, inhospitable terrain. Endless craggy hills forever for as far as I can see, and that’s pretty fucking far from ten thousand meters up in the goddamned air… It’s the surface of Mars I see down there… Alpha Centauri, whatever… Not a sign of human life or any other kind of life anywhere below. 

     I search for the map in the magazine on the back of the seat, trying to calculate where in hell this plane could be flying right now. I narrow it down to the interior regions somewhere off the Pacific coast of Mexico. Somewhere over the state of Guerrero maybe. And just that word,Guerrero... It means Warrior, it brings back all the years of memories, stories, songs, sights and smells, tastes and sounds and flavors and sensations of places, people, events. Spirit Music… Things vaguely remembered and carved deep into the fabric of my soul, indelible as hieroglyphic markings on shiny stone pyramid walls of lost Mayan tombs in dark jungles… 

    I look down out of this plane window now but I see no place that in any way resembles that Mexico I once knew so well, the riotous tropical roads traveled by a ragged teenage gypsy hitchhiker running from the Curse, and years later by a road-worn alcoholic biker wearing out the road to hell again and again and again. 

​   Desolation is the only word to describe what I see down there from this surreal vortex, the groggy hangover haze of jet travel limbo… Desolation. A perfect place for a human being to simply disappear and die without a trace and quickly, quietly be absorbed right into the core of this great and terrible Earth… Bones flesh teeth face thoughts eyes heart memory swallowed up like so many base minerals to feed and seed the merciless soil of Nowhere… 

    Lands of boundless dirt and sand and ashes and dust and craters and spirits… Spirits of Indians and Entities and light and shadow falling falling falling down down down with the smell and taste of Nothing… Nowhere. Nothing. The perfect place for Nobody…

    And again I think of my poor Narcisa so far away, so hurt, so damaged and pissed off…Nobody. With the smell and taste of Nothing now. 

copyright Jonathan Shaw 2009

AD: How did you wind up meeting this girl in Tijuana?

JS: Ahh, you hadda ask that, hein? Yeh, well that’s some more of that crazy synchronicity shit I was just talking about, all these mystical events, seemingly unrelated coincidences that eventually weave together into some kinda higher destiny.

    So how did I wind up meeting the original Narcisa in Tijuana?  At the time I met her I’d been staying up in L.A. writing this screenplay for Johnny Depp, which never got off the ground. That’s another story. One that may never get told, but anyway, Johnny was off living in Europe or somewhere far away, making movies and being a big shot movie star and I was holed up all alone at his big empty Hollywood mansion, a really spooky place, totally haunted and creepy, and there I was staying there all alone and going totally stir-crazy writing this really depressing screenplay and slowly going insane, like blow-your-brains-out-in-Hollywood-crazy, ya know… 

    So one night I just couldn’t fucking take it there anymore and I just got on my motorcycle and hauled ass the fuck outa there as fast as I could like the devil was chasing me, and a few hours later I was there in Mexico, back on familiar turf, walking around the dirty old red-light slums of Tijuana and feeling alot more at home, I must say…  And that’s where I ran into this little lost junkie surfer girl. She was out there turning tricks, and she just stood out like a beautiful white fairy or something standing out there in the middle of all these short, stubby little Mexican street whores, ya know? Well we went off and had a short-time shag in some roach motel there and we kinda hit it off and became fast friends so I just kinda hung out there in TJ with her and, you know, just kinda got lost in her world. I was a coupla years sober at the time.

     She was about the most tore-up dope fiend I’d ever met. This chick had like tracks on her tracks, real Frankenstein scars all running up her neck and down to her feet and she was staying in some dump with all these strung out fucked up killers and ex-cons and dope fiends and it was just this really surreal, nasty scene there. But she was really smart and sweet and charismatic and I just kinda saw something in her that was so…. alive. Like somebody who just really needed to be saved from herself…

     I started telling her about my recovery from heroin addiction and she really related to me and I guess she saw me as some sort of a friend and I guess my own victory over addiction gave her some sort of hope to cling to…. and after a few weeks hanging out together, one night I cracked out a book about recovery and started reading it to her and she just broke down and started crying and asked me to help her get clean. Long story short, I threw her on the back of my bike and rode across the border with her and locked her up in a room and fed her methadone I got from a guy I knew who had all that kinda stuff and as soon as she was well enough to stand up, I started taking her to meetings and just threw her into the mix and she ended up getting clean and staying clean and she’s still clean today. One of my fondest accomplishments. She still sends me emails from time to time. She’s married and working in a career and living a kick ass life as far as I can tell. She’s still kinda freaked out about the name of the book, but she’ll get over it.(Laughs)... Anyway, that’s one part of where the name Narcisa comes from, aside from it just being such a perfect name to personify the overall character of a drug addict…

AD: What was your inspiration behind the Narcisa part of the title then?

 JS: What was my inspiration behind it? Well obviously that’s the name of the book’s main protagonist, of course. And there’s all these different levels of sub-text behind a name like Narcisa, isn’t there? Because it’s just such a perfect name when you’re talking about the psychic curses of addiction, right? In the first edition of the book, I actually pulled the dictionary definition for the word ”narcissism” and put it right on the first page… Where it says “Egoism: a doctrine that individual self-interest is the valid end of all actions.” That pretty much sums it all up in a nutshell, the ego factors in alcoholism and drug addiction. Root causes… 

     On the most basic level though, it’s just so appropriate to the basic personality of the book’s main character, Narcisa. This character isn’t based so much on any real people as much as being like a sort of composite character, a living, breathing, walking, talking metaphor for the damaged, overinflated human ego that leads us all into the jaws of addiction and ultimate self-destruction. Narcisa just personafies the root causes of things like addiction… Narcisa personifies the dark side of the human condition. Narcisa personifies egoism, also known as narcissism: “Excessive concern for oneself, with or without exaggerated feelings of self-importance….” 

     On another less metaphoric level though, I actually used to really know a real girl named Narcissa, but with two s’s… The book really has nothing to do with her, per se… but still that name was always in the back of my mind to describe a certain character that I guess was always lingering around back there nagging me to bring her to life someday… It seemed like an important omen or something when the name sort of dawned on me for this character that was emerging, because the real Narcissa, even though she was definitely not any sort of practical inspiration for the character in the book, was still a sort of very important person in my life on another level. Especially because she was a drug addict. Somebody who really had a profound effect on my own early recovery…

    This Narcissa was a really beautiful little blond-haired, white-skinned sorta blue-eyed teenage surfer girl who’d caught the wrong wave and somehow ended up living on the streets of Tijuana, Mexico. When I met her she was just crawling the gutters of this third-world hell hole all strung out on heroin and turning cheap tricks for dope down on Calle Coajilla in TJ — one of the meanest low-down and dirty ho-strolls in the western hemisphere. A real colorful place, lemme tell ya. 

AD: Just to give the title switch a little background for anybody who might eventually be reading this, I should say for the record that the original title of the book was Savage Grace. Unfortunately when a movie was released with the same name, you backed down and changed it. As poetically appropriate as that title once was, I can’t imagine it being named anything other than Narcisa: Our Lady of Ashes now either…. Where did this title come from? Our Lady of the Ashes… I was driving down the 101 freeway the other day and passed an “Our Lady” church and it made me wonder if that sparked the thought.

JS: It was really more about the name “Narcisa.” The “Our Lady” thing was just something I tacked on later for no particular reason other than that I kinda always envisioned this Narcisa character as like something very iconic, mythical, mystical and… transcendent. Like a real religious sort of icon, a kinda biblical figure almost, in her absolute tragedy and power and violent, crazy uncompromising quest for… redemption… 

     And since this character was a crack addict, the way they smoke crack in Brazil and other places too, I guess, is with a coke can they punch holes into and then pack cigarette ashes around the little holes to use as like a sort of filter or screen to carborate the crack rock when they light it up to smoke… 

    So this Narcisa character would always have like three cigarettes burning at the same time for the ashes she was saving to use as a crack smoking screen, and she’d always have all these little piles of ashes all over the place that she would use to smoke crack with… And it just seemed to be a logical sort of title for this strange, tragic, self-crucifying Christ-like being, representing the sins of humanity and its fumbling stumbling search for Salvation, the search for God. Pretty deep stuff, hein? (Laughs)... So I guess I just wanted to give her a sort of religious-sounding title and it just sort of fit… Our Lady of the Ashes... then there’s the whole image of the Phoenix rising from its own ashes, the whole concept of rebirth and redemption, I dunno…