Niña Tarantino - 8/24/16 "Don't Let That Shit Get Cold"
Is Denny's usually this packed in the middle of the night? I didn't think this through.
Oh, right. Why am I here? I'm here because I wanted to eat. And think. And do both, in peace. I'm usually the person in the group who's always cheerful and cracking a joke and playing around but when I'm alone, I'm quiet and moody. So what happens the minute I start showing that side of me to the people I'm always around? "What's wrong? Are you okay? You mad at me?" God I can't fucking breathe without someone bothering me now. I swear if one more moron asks me if I've talked to Dietz....
You know Dietz right? Let me walk you through this. I'm taking you way way way back. Back when Dahlhouse was still a dream. At the time it was just me, Coke, Lotus, and Yasmine. Anniken was all of our managers and she had just landed a big job at Studio60 so of course she was scouting for more artists to take under her wing. Drew came along and helped out with writing, producing, jumped on some hooks and became a prominent name by accident. And then Allison popped up. She was the first of who I like to call the crazies and she came with a package deal. Her psychiatrist/boyfriend Dietz Von Schmidt. He's fine. Got a sexy German accent and everything, but when he starts talking about.. ionn know, mental health and shit, he gets real serious and scary but compassionate at the same time. It's weird, I've never talked to him for too long about anything other than music before because he just gives off that eerie feeling.. like he's prying into your deepest thoughts or something. Anyways, Allison was the first crazy to join us and she wasn't the last.. especially since we have all had to do some.. real weird shit..so now it's like all of us are crazy... Fast forward to Dahlhouse now being an actual thing and not only is Dietz managing all the indie girls, he's EVERYBODY'S psychiatrist.. in fact, we're only allowed to talk to him. It's mandatory.. once every month. Whatever, the details aren't important, I try not to think on this bullshit for too long but, well, you know me.
"Don't let that shit get cold," Mamá said that to me every night when she came home from work, practically throwing a takeout box at my face.
Every night. She was your typical waitress, working crazy shifts despite hating the shit out of her job. My dad was a taxi driver when he was in town and a truck driver when he wasn't, and my brothers sold whatever the cornerfolk paid for. That always left me home this time of night. I never could get sleep and I knew while all the men of the house found something to support themselves, I had to wait for
mi querida maaadre to bring home some stale leftovers that she stole from the kitchen. It was always fucking cold. Not room temperature, cold. Always. I rolled my eyes at her every time she said it, thinking maybe she meant to say something else but it don't translate right to English cus she's stupid. To think this whole time she was just telling me to not think on things that are already shitty. Everything feels worst when you let it stir in your soul.
Too bad that's all I do. I let it sit, I sleep on it and then I wake up in the morning and wash my face with it.
I'm no angel. I think I think I am just because I've separated myself from my past. I think I think I am because every time I bring it up in a song, I scrap it and pretend like I never wrote it in the first place. But I gotta face it. I was 13 when I started having to work for myself. Growing up with my brothers, I always felt like I had to compete with them because the way my dad looked at them never failed to remind me I'd never compare. So yeah, I did exactly what they did and I had a deep passion to do it better. At the end of the day, we had each others backs, but at the crack of dawn, we were all at war. I even got Badilón locked up. 16. Selling whatever, fucking whoever, ratting out her own blood brothers. By the time I was 17, I was in way too deep. 18 and I pissed some dudes off, fucked around and got myself shot and they even burned our house down. Anniken let us all move in but it was only 2 months before some of them caught up with Aire one day, thinking I was her and... We all just ran to the states. All of us.
I don't know, we started doing the music thing for fun, then it became serious. The whole thing is a blur, considering it's supposed to be a huge turning point in my life. But even though it's been almost 4 years since I've gone from.. that to.. this, I don't feel like nothing's changed. Because it hasn't. I'm not fucking stupid, I know what The Room is, I know what it means and I did it anyways.
It's like a test. Once Anniken knows you well enough, she figures out the one thing you'd never forgive yourself for and she lets you choose.
You still have a career if you choose x, you still have a career if you choose y. It's just that one of the choices leaves you with better funding, promotion, and a better relationship with her.
I know how it works but I just don't know why it's needed in the first place.
Misu and Dae Ho Park. They're twins, they've stuck up for each other through everything because they're all they've got. What was their Room? They had to fuck. Not just once, there had to be like an ongoing sexual relationship. The worst thing about this is not them being related, but just knowing them and how they are.. it's not right. I don't care, I might have fucked around with Dae before but it was in all fun. Together, as a pair of twins, they're still KIDS, especially Misu. It just doesn't.. it's not right.
Aikya. Her Room was the first and it was televised. She was thrown onto Big Brother for all of her anxieties to be displayed on international television. The whole world laughed as she had a mental breakdown on the first. fucking. night. People still make frying pan jokes, even she does too sometimes.
Allison's is similar, or at least it will be once Consequences finally wraps up filming. She's perfect for the leading part because she's been living the part her whole life. Who sanely agrees to reenacting their whole sexually abusive childhood?? The character even has D.I.D., and we all know Allison has about 5 people living in her head. When you think of it like that, the whole show is so dark, and yet we all have to have a part in it.
Yasmine. Her father died when she was 12. The police report will tell you it was another random fight in an NYC alley but Yasmine and her momma have to live with the fact that they killed the only man in their lives and moved the body, even if in self defense. He was so distracted beating the shit out of her mom that he didn't see Yasmine sneak up behind him, ready to strangle him with one of her hijabs. Her Room was a whole reenactment. The only thing real about it was the poor guy who had to play her dad, rest his soul.
Look at me talking like I'm ashamed. I think it's twisted but, ultimately I respect it. Do what you gotta do, and so forth. I'm not even sitting in the middle of Denny's at 2 in the morning, talking to myself through a sheet of paper about stuff I already know to even complain about this shit. I'm here to complain about this weird feeling.
Last month or so, I woke up in the middle of the night and I got a file. It was Coke's album. Anniken had a meeting with me later that day and told me to leak it if I wanted, and only if I wanted. I wasn't gonna leak it, I didn't have a reason to. It wouldn't even hurt her, leaks happen all the time these days. We have our moments but she's my bitch, she's my business partner, she's an asset, why would I screw that up? I honestly don't know why. I let that file sit on my computer for a whole week and then I just did. I betrayed her. The girl who took me in when I was on the brink of death. One of only 2 people to ever walk this planet Earth and come close to knowing the real me, the only other being Aikya. The same person who got ran through by a whole fucking gang just because she happened to look like me on the wrong day. It was like I thought about all the shit I let people do to me during my 4 years of exile and just launched a warning missile with that button. I would say my Room was easy, but I'm almost certain that wasn't the room. Me and Coke are the OGs. We know about all the rooms, we know what's going on with everyone, and we helped build this whole empire off of blood money. But in this school a fucked up shit, Anniken's the headmaster and we're just the student body presidents. We're still under the same law.. just with higher expectations. This feels like only the beginning.
What if I don't need Anniken for the rest? What if she knows that?
