SAN FRANCISCO-

Hello, my name is Zoë Brock and I am a hopelessly hopeful romantic.

Love and I have a long and sordid relationship. We’re stuck to each other with that cheap, tacky glue that never dries properly and gets hairs and other bits of icky dirt and effluvia stuck in it and ends up looking like a coughed up owl pellet, minus the skeletal bits. It’s horrible, trust me.

Sometimes I feel as if I live my life adhered to the cheap pulpy paper bound between the flowery covers of a Harlequin romance novel.

Sometimes I wonder if some sticky-fingered house-wife isn’t pouring over the sordid details of my love-life, swooning, moaning and gasping at the more elaborately descriptive paragraphs as she takes a break between episodes of ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ and ‘Days of Our Lives’.

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MIAMI, FL-

“Tis not the amount of stress one copes with, but the grace with which one handles it, that is the measure of a persons strength.”

I said that!

“Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you even know you’re falling.”

I said that too!

I’m wicked fucking smart sometimes, but it’s a crying fucking shame that I’m terrible at following my own advice.

I need a t-shirt made up with “I’m a hypocrite” on the front and “No I’m not” on the back.

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LOS ANGELES, CA-

The greatest gift my mother ever gave me was the gift of knowing I was loved.
In a cruel and often scary world this one fact gives me peace.

Perhaps I am biased, but I think my mama is beautiful, even in a plastic garbage bag.

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LOS ANGELES, CA-

Like most people my trajectory through life has been filled with tests and lessons.

If school prepared me for anything it certainly wasn’t a career, but an ability to recognize when I was about to be graded.

Returning to LA was a test on both my relationship and my ability to be loved and reciprocate love.

I failed.

The first week was blissful and sweet. We met each others friends and took each other to our favorite places. We nuzzled and fondled and pulled the car over to the side of the road to have panic-stricken emergency sex on the side of Santa Monica Boulevard.

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LOS ANGELES, CA-

As I sit here, intent on typing the third installment (now long overdue and angrily demanded) of this sorry tale, a song begins to shuffle and shimmy out of my speakers…

The song is ‘Do Right Woman’ by Aretha.

Oh, the precious, delightful irony (and another bit of proof to back up my theory that iPods on ’shuffle’ are actually a direct line from God).

God has a sick sense of humor, but we knew that already.

Anyway, where were we?

That’s easy, we were here….

THE COLE FIASCO. PART 3-

The humidity was dense and suffocating. From the moment we debarked the plane the air began molesting us with sticky fingers.

It was hot.

It was wet.

It was like trying to walk through sex.

I loved it.

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LOS ANGELES, CA-

“I can’t remember what you look like,” I admitted to Cole one day. “I know I thought you were a bit on the yummy side, but let’s face it, I was drunk and slovenly and talking shit on a chaise to a total stranger.”

He paused.

“Check your email,” he said.

He’d sent me a photo of himself walking away from the camera. A tall body and the back of a messy head was all that was visible.

“You’re an asshole,” was all I could muster.

“Heh. Check it again.”

I checked.

“Yep, you’re funny.”

I examined the crime scene. Self portraits with spilled red paint can appear quite realistic and gory if you squint hard enough.

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LOS ANGELES, CA-

(… BUT ALSO AN ACCEPTANCE OF CHANGE AND A DESIRE TO SEE WHAT’S NEXT.)

His name was Cole and beside him I looked like a midget.

At six feet tall this is no mean feat.

We met at The Chateau Marmont late on a Spring evening. I wore red leather fuck-me boots and eyes of smoky green, he wore a vintage tuxedo with the word GUCCI embossed all over it.

I looked hot and he looked ridiculous, but in a most intentional way.

We started talking by accident, somehow drawn to each other from across the room, snug in the cushions of a beaten-up chaise. It wasn’t a long conversation, but it was an electric one. We recognized each other but knew we’d never met. He made me laugh, he drew me in, and five minutes later I left him to catch a flight to Australia with no idea when I’d return. I scribbled my email for him in his raggedy journal, downed the remnants of my vodka with regret and stood to go.

Cole stood too, bound by his southern gentlemanly impulses.

“Jesus!” I laughed as he unfurled. “Are you wearing heels?”

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LOS ANGELES, CA-

I’ve been hurt.

In the past my heart has been so broken that I, in fits of dedicated melodrama and self-pity, thought that I might actually die. The ache has been so deep, profound, prolonged and intense that just inhaling and exhaling cut my aortic tissue like the dull blade of a blunt bread-knife on crusty, stale rye.

Pain.

Grating.

Cutting.

Sawing.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

Slice. Slice. Slice.

The fact that human beings are capable of feeling emotional pain so intensely that it becomes physical is a strange phenomenon. So strange, in fact, that scientists do not know how, or why, when we feel heartbreak, our hearts actually ACHE.

It is rumored that we can even die from this pain.

In 2003 Johnny Cash died within 3 months of his wife June. For some it is clear th (more…)