A Letter to Debbie Brown
By Julia Croon

And what role does academia play in the discourse of oppressed groups of people? 't this almost seem like an oxymoron? only the privileged have the luxury of examining those less fortunate and creating the discourse for their experience? But then again who else is gonna do it? is not a letter about the formal aesthetics of xenophobia or even, like, who is actually able to make a career commitment to art or even the study of it. these are offshoots of my main point, which is to write you a tiny letter about identity and communication because I'd like to understand both a lot better, since in the present context I don't understand them at all. and Isadora and Veronika and Petra are all helping me with this stuff but I get so overwhelmed with it I can't breathe all the way. feel like a ball of something that is not ease and I want it gone. Okay, I'm gonna tell you something else now.

Deb, my first kiss was with a girl named Jessica. were in 4th grade and I loved her very much when I would lay on top of her after school at her cousin Melissa's house. was the first girl to start developing. had braids in her hair and I would wear my hair in this horrible ponytail on the top of my head. would listen to MC Lyte, Salt N' Pepa, Bobby Brown and Tiffany. All 3 of us girls would have to scream in Mamanay's un-deaf ear to make us our favorite after school snack- Chef Boyardi Ravioli!!!!!! when we would go to the Boys & Girls Club we would sneak across the street to KFC and get chicken little going to the North Pole. feels like how maybe Marilyn and the girls did in Some Like It Hot. The sound is astonishing as she lays back and relaxes. saw snow tonight for the first time in ten years. won't matter where I wake up tomorrow. I am Debbie Brown and that is my secret. am safe here. No one expects anything and that's fine.

Upon evening, everything comes up roses. boils the artichokes and has learned not to overcook the steak. Debbie loves people, and this is something we musn't forget. likes to see people raw and fresh and cut up, served on a platter. is this life, she thinks, if you don't walk the edge of that razor blade twenty-seven hours a day and find the strength to get to the end of it whole? likes people's insides, especially when they're frozen. takes out her space heater and defrosts them; this is her favorite part. There is a lot that our Debbie doesn't understand. why she places so much importance on people's insides. moments it all seems so trivial and doomed anyhow. thinks no one would be sad if life was just one giant musical. If, at that very moment when we think this life is surely going to do us in, we freeze the scene of the crime and gather up single file to serenade one another.

This girl Debbie stands tall and swollen and bent and unsure. looks down and can't see her feet: her breasts are in the way and she wants to rip them off and sew something else on in their place. she can't because now she is back home and she can't move. "Just one foot in front of the other then there you'll be, Debbie:" Everywhere you go there you'll be, girl Debbie finds it hard to complete a sentence or thought because she doesn't want anything to end. thinks as soon as a thought is spoken and finished out loud it vanishes forever. is no calling it back or leaving a message on its machine to call you back when it gets a chance. Because there is no chance like the moment. comes and goes and that's that. she speaks in breaks and pauses and nervous jerks. Debbie contemplates the function of remembering, she ponders last week at the lake. archaeology of the moment bears an uncanny resemblance to her nervous system because something is buried there and she's not quite sure what it is. She remembers looking up at the stars and thinking, "I could go right here, right now and regret nothing. is the feeling I've been waiting for. am here, I am really here." Then you're in the palisades or at the truck stops again, looking for something better that doesn't exist. girl Debbie stands before the coffee machine and thinks how determined she is to stop using commas and semicolons. is going to let things go on forever, uninterrupted.

This world is lucky to have people like Debbie around. stir things up, knock you a bit out of whack and get quiet when you least expect them to. like Debbie remind you of hidden towns, pink nightgowns, chain smoking and gut wrenching silence and that's her magic: She Makes You Feel Everything.
Thursday April 15, 11:00 p.m.

Debbie likes to take all her clothes off and crawl inside you and make you feel all warm and distant. waits until the very last minute just when you think you can't possibly take another moment with her then she pulls out your nervous system. never flinches no matter how soft you give it to her. walks into the room with
her red hair and pink skirt and last week she got her tooth knocked out. has no plans to refurbish. is only 19 years old but could pass for 30, easy. yells for you across the room and it echoes because the hallway is long and narrow and empty and the walls are made of frozen petroleum. put your sunglasses on.
slams on the braaaaakes.

HEY DEB! !!! , OVER HERE!X!X!X! I have fallen in love.
I finally met someone who really sees me! It feels incredible, but it's the uncertainty that is surely killing me. I finally see it is ok to be autobiographical. feel safe. just wish he wasn't so far. So, like, Debbie I can't eat. can't sleep and I am loosing tons of weight. am kind of happy about that though. don't want to be so juicy you know? just don't. like my breasts I really like those but my arms and tummy I can do without them looking like snickers bars. Debbie I am in love with this man and I don't know if he even thinks about me. am in love with him because he looks me in the eye and wrote to me when I wasn't even expecting it and he understands EVERYTHING most people are scared of.

Debbie says fuck this I don't want to live in a world where people don't touch. Bring me back to the hotel rooms. need that kind of silence. the silence of birds or crickets, but the silence of 100 strangers sleeping in the same stale cold beds inside the same lonely walls as you. has something she is dying to tell you and has been avoiding it all evening. is searching for the perfect words to describe the mornings and afternoons, the moments just before the sun goes down and she is either sipping tea or whiskey. feels like a helium balloon on lithium. wants to scream or laugh or cry but something is forcing her to swallow it all in. has no pictures of herself. to show for this thing called life but her hands. They are small and pink with cracks in them 2 inches deep. Plenty of age and character. . she is nineteen, remember. just wants you to curl up with her and stay stay stay but something inside her won't stop screaming. circumference and width of safety comes narrowly.
Every time Debbie walks across the street she gets hit by a car, a wave of smoke, a taxi driver driving too fast. every time she dies, she is reminded just how very alive she in fact is. says, "I die every day when I cross the street. am reminded that life comes in series of flashes and death is sometimes included. see yourself up there on that platform or stage, and then you hear a car honk its horn or an old lady yelling and you realize all you're doing is walking down the street and there is no platform or stage and no one's gonna jump out from around the corner and serenade you and sing your theme song."

Today Debbie's father touched her hair for the first time since she was 5. said, "Let's see how you look with your hair pulled out of your face." froze with half joy and half, "Huh? You wanna whahhh?" kind of feeling. somehow managed not to notice her missing tooth. She was very happy about that.
Debbie says the really good writers do it so well that you don't know it's them in those monsters and witches. got home two hours and thirteen seconds ago. had been sitting next to Werner Herzog for a whole two hours in the cinema. needed two hours and thirteen seconds to recover. The movie reminded her of something tonight. saw herself up on that screen tonight; she saw it all our little Debbie did. family of four who were as blind to their own reflections as they were to one another.

Two nights before she gave a guy a blowjob in the back of her car. was the fastest one she'd ever given, he came in like 60 seconds. It was also the first time she let a guy come in her mouth. , it wasn't like she could exactly stop he came so fucking fast. soon as she felt that pulsing she knew what was coming and she couldn't finish it with her hand because if she did that it would have gotten all over his pants and well that just would have been rude she thought. , she was kind of curious. were parked on the wide open street. She had nothing to loose. he laid his delicate body on top of hers fully clothed, she said to herself, "Here it comes. I'm not gonna cave in."

It's funny as soon as Debbie realizes just how much her ego is out on the line she chokes. says hah! What do you know of the evenings?! says I want to be able to show you warm things like arms and words and hugs and kisses but holy cow is she scared. knows that the orgasms will only come and then the screams in 5 month intervals and then nothing. 'll be calling the doctor's office for an incubator. just wants a house, a home and TV and pie and kisses on the weekends. father who was not an alcoholic.

She sits behind a big silver counter. And she thinks just how difficult it is to listen to herself and not get distracted by life. To not get distracted by the echoes that try to erase you. is a bit drab and lonely here, she thinks. no one to tell me what to do or how to be. after watching a interview with one of her favorite directors, Ingmar Bergman, listening to Joanne Newsom, reading about Francis Bacon, reading Samuel Beckett, staring at Devendra Banhart, emailing her friend Betsy in Canada, speaking with Mia, going to the cinema, watching Brent sing, learning that we all have our safe shells that we secretly hide inside, remembering Pinero talk about how he always forgets where to place those moments that shine, meeting Werner Herzog and the email from Lena, and just then Debbie is reminded just how important it is that she strive to become no one but herself.