I blame my mother.

Then again, I suppose everyone has to blame their mother for something at some point. I suppose it is our inalienable right as children to do so. In any case, blame may not - is not - the right word. But I definitely believe she had a fair hand in planting ridiculous ideas in my head. Whether she knew she was doing it is another story altogether. In reality, it could have been me all along.

To start, I was named after the dancer and actress Cyd Charisse; my sister after her graceful counterpart, Gene Kelly, both of whom starred in my favorite childhood film, "Singin' In The Rain."

From an early age, I was not a typical human being, by any standard or definition of the word. Raised on a steady diet of classic American cinema with a dash of showtunes and big band music, I knew then and there that something about it all touched me in a way I di not understand, yet I loved. I felt it, as though I had been transported via my imagination through space and time to what I envisioned as the glory days of modern civilization. It was in this rosy romantic picture I dwelled, lost inside my own head. I fantasized about a glamorous life of stardom in the roaring twenties, bedazzled by invented avatars of Humphrey Bogart when I was Ingrid Bergman; of Rudolph Valentino when I was any one of a hundred starry-eyed vixens, silently and poetically seuduced by dark eyes and an air of mystery that only once man could ever carry. Clark Gable rode atop a cobalt-black stallion, while I was Vivian Leigh, waiting for him on the hill.

These fantasies even carried over into more contemporary works of cinematic fiction. Where Indiana Jones walked in the shadow of Egyptian high noon, I followed as Marion Ravenwood. I could transform into anyone I so chose - innocent and doe-eyed, waiting for my prince to rescue me; or strung-out, disenchanted, jaded, spoiled and powerful, the protege of some greasy Mafioso, lying around amidst snowy mountains of cocaine, marinating in Vodka, a good-girl gone bad, doing the ever-taboo bad-girl thing.

Meanwhile, my true form suffered as I became invisible. That was how I perceived it, at least. I preferred books to my friends, few and far between though they were. The company of adults and the conversations I overheard were far more interesting to lme than the thoughtless and one-dimensional playtime of children my physical age.

I was born in what was affectionately called a "safe-pocket" in Orange County's own Garden Grove, a gangster's paradise and the promised land for immigrants the world over. From an early age, I learned what it was like to be the minority. My parents were sure I had quite a sheltered childhood. It was no place for a child to grow up; I remember several instances in which my parents lives were put on the line only to protect the sanctity of their posterity. For eight years we lived here, my father working his fingers to the bone, my mother pulling her fair weight in household duties, caring for me and my sister.

When I was eight, we moved, mere paupers in the land of yuppies and silver-spooners. This was "Peyton Place 2000", though I couldn't quite understand it as well as my parents, though I knew we were again the minority, this time in a different light. We lived in a house we could barely afford, surrounded by affluence we could only gaze upon in envy and never touch. Still, I struggled to make friends, caught up in my own little worlds. I preferred close circles, never more than four or five girls. I aged; in my adolescent years, I learned my own definition of awkward. I grew like a weed, something I had been doing since birth. I felt strange, for lack of a better word. I was alway a head taller than all the boys in my class, far taller than all the girls. I wore braces, something I took for granted at the time. My feet were disproportioned to my body. While others may have seen beauty, I saw something quite the opposite. I felt my own body and hormones had left me behind; I gazed with wicked jealousy at the other girls in my class as they prospered; full breasts, womanly bodies, white teeth, small bone structures, shirts and pants that actually fit them - the apple of every boy's eye. I was the ugly duckling, a goofy and awkward puppy in the pack. And so, with nowhere else to turn, no one to relate to, I recessed even further into my own creations. My grades suffered. My social life failed. I stayed home, the phone never rang.

We moved to Colorado after four years. Though ever reclusive, I felt more comfortable here. The pressures of the west coast slowly melted away. It was as though the people here didn't care as much; with how rural the area was in comparison to what I had come from, I slowly understood why. Here, I could go out in jeans and a sweatshirt; nobody cared. We lived on an acre of land, a kingdom from the fishbowl I had grown accustomed to. Our house was surrounded by foothills, creeks, and miles of open farmland. Though reclusive on a social level, I strove to be out of the house more. I became the feminine embodiment of Mowgli, of Robinson Caruso, of Tarzan. I made spears and bows and arrows, I hiked the undiscovered unexplored wilderness of thickets and horse pastures. I thrived, my imagination thrived. In a sense, I still stayed home, and the phone still rarely rang, but I was happy. I was occupied. I was invisible. I didn't care. I owned the land. I survived.

It would all change again.

The Turning Point

I had always fantasized about it: the day I would be noticed by someone big. That old fairytale of chance and discovery about the small-town waitress who has a lot of street smarts and she's really pretty and talented and all that crap, but she's stuck in a town where few people really notice and she doesn't have a lot of outlets. And she always talks about how someday she's going to get out, and really make something of herself, and all her friends always joke about it with her. "Yeah, and then when your rich and famous and you've forgotten about us, we can sit here and say that we knew you before you became huge!"

And then one day, she's minding her own business, and here comes Mr. Hollywood Hotshot, and he takes one look at her and says "What are you doing here? You could really be something, you know?" And he whisks her away to La La Land (that's Los Angeles, in case you didn't know), and hands her the world on a silver platter, and the little girl from Nowhere lives happily ever after with everything she ever wanted.

Blah, blah, blah. All that Casablanca bullshit. Anyway, that's how I always imagined it. Realistically, I knew I had a snowball's chance in hell of it ever really happening. The truth was, I had no definite plans of ever getting out of the podunk cowtown I had known for the better half of a lifetime, but it was fun to imagine it like that. Painful, in a way, but sickeningly satisfying.

The crazy thing was, I felt something, deep within me. I knew something was coming. Something big, something monumental, something that would shake the very foundation of what I knew to be my life. I had felt it for years. Or maybe I had just been focusing on it for so long - my wish, my dream - that finally, it happened. It came true.

Well, almost.

Disclaimer

The following is a work of fiction.

The names have been changed to protect the innocent… and the guilty.

It begins, once upon a time, in Hollywood, California…