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[Nov. 18th, 2009|11:50 pm] |
| .info/facts. |
name: Rikki Marie Dando
nicknames: Berlin; Berly
POB: Seattle, Washington
DOB: April 20, 1976 [33]
sexuality: Heterosexual; bisexual tendencies [mostly to piss other people off or make them uncomfortable]
marital status: Varies nightly
children: None
body modifications:
- winged skull with pink bow on left upperarm, along with the words "FUCK OFF"
- half sleeve on upper right arm; snakes/dragon/smoke/clouds
- stars,heart, arrow, and banner on lower right hip/back, with the words in the banner blacked out
- "Everlasting" in script below the heart
- small hearts on either wrist with the word "Punk" over one and "Bitch" over the other
- peircing on both center & left side of lower lip [commonly only wears left side]
- hair dyed jet black
+ doesn't drive
+ favorite movies are Monty Pythons Meaning Of Life, the original Toy Story, and Drop Dead Fred.
+ favorite movie character is The Penguin (Danny DeVito style)
+ favorite book is Breakfast Of Champions
+ favorite musicians are Iggy Pop, David Bowie and Bob Dylan, though she's rarely [if ever] caught listening to them.
+ favorite drink is Caribou Lou, though she'll never turn down a beer... or anything else
+ never graduated school
+ is afraid of kids; thinks she'll mess them up
+ sounds like: Cat Power
+ refuses to speak about her past, is snide about the future
+ forces herself to be or seem content or happy whenever anyone is looking
+ secretly loved rehab the first time around
+ lives with three people, for the sake of lower payments
+ cannot wait to relapse again
+ dominant in the bedroom
+ emotionally closed off to her family
+ terrified of anyone she thinks she's capable of loving
+ responds to fear with anger and bitchiness
+ would love to steal your underwear in the morning
+ adores old school cartoons [daffy duck, bugs bunny, wiley coyote]
+ hates being alone |
| .history. |
She was blonde when she was born, and her family was full of gingers. There wasn't anything particularly wrong with the family, which consisted of a mother, a father, two boys and a baby girl. They were normal. Lower middle class types, with a lot of love, and a lot of comfort. They were simple folks. They were the type of people who aspired for the American dream, and that alone; family, babies, love and a working color TV. Food on the table, beer in the fridge and issues all neatly swept under the rug.
She was happy until she knew better. Grown up and shoved into one box after another. She went from classroom to classroom. School to school, cage to cage, until she couldn't take it anymore. Watching her brothers both grow old, themselves. Looking upon the as they met their wives, married and bred... as time ticked by, she began to loath them and everything they stood for. Her entire family, and everyone who was simple enough to wish for just what they had.
By the time she was a teenager she was dressing like a "freak" and looked upon by her peers as a clown. She gave her father a real run for his money, inviting boys home and right into her room. Kissing girls in public and flashing her tits to everyone who risked a glance in her direction. With a foul mouth and purely radical expectations of life, when she first got a job she was just sixteen years old. The first place she worked was Jerry's Records. It was the only place that would have her, and that was just because Jerry himself appreciated the occasional "radical", just for the fun of it.
Everyone learned soon and quick that she wanted one thing out of life: to move to Berlin, a place where she could have her cake and suck it too. -- She was working because she was saving, and she was saving so that she could eventually leave Seattle and never look back. -- The not looking back part only got hard a few months after she got the job, when a boy two years her senior got a job there too. His name was Robbie. He had shaggy hair... and there was only one thing he loved more than her: heroin.
That was how it all started. They got closer and closer, and while nothing was ever announced, eventually after a year or two it was just assumed that they were an item, destined to be together forever, judging by the punk rock roots of their love story. She dressed like a rebel, while he spoke like one. She started fights everywhere she went, and for her... he ended them. He was the positive to her negative, the milk to her cookie, and the apple of her eye. He just didn't want to go with her, was all.
After years of talking about it, and saving as much as she could, even in spite of her growing addictions to the brown horse... and anything else she could get her hands on... she had enough money to get herself to and across Europe, homeward bound towards Berlin (the very city she'd inherited her nickname from). He then finally revealed to her that, while he loved her, he wasn't willing to abandon everything he knew and loved for her. He wanted all those things that she made fun of; she'd always known it, deep down. He wanted the beer and the TV, the babies and the wife cooking supper.
So she left him. The only problem was, even once she left... she was never really gone. She'd write him, and call him. She'd cry over him every time she fucked another man, and then tell him about it in the morning, like it should make him miss her more. -- Finding a score or a fix got harder, the further she traveled. Things got more and more dangerous, and she kept keeping in touch, until finally one day he told her to just stop calling. He told her he didn't love her anymore, and there was someone else. So she stopped calling, until Christmas rolled around. Every year after that, just the one call would come, like clockwork. She'd leave the messages.
``Yeah... I'm just here... you know. I'm still out in Germany... Things are good here,`` She'd say. While he could always tell, when he listened, that she was high... and outside, and sick...
``You been good, Bee'? Jerry's still opened?`` Always asking questions, even though he never answered. By the time she hung up, he could hear her crying between words.
Over the holidays she missed him the most. It was because they had always gone out to the Diner for pie and coffee instead of staying with their families, like normal folks. -- Out in Germany, the Diners weren't the same. The holidays were different. The men were strange. They all loved her, and fucked her. And with some of them, she loved them back... but she never forgot him. Her heart wasn't completely broken, because she always thought it wasn't really over.
Then one Christmas he finally answered the phone. They talked for nearly half a dozen hours, without caring about the bills. Then he told her the big news. He was a dad, now. Or he would be soon, at least. His wife was four months pregnant. Oh, and he was married. There was no hope left, for them.
After that call, she'd forced herself to forget him entirely, until the next Christmas. That year she just said a few words, on the machine. Setting a new trend, for the years to come.
``Hi, it's me... Happy Holidays, Bee'...`` Because she couldn't let him go.
Not even when she fell in love again. This time with a guy from her new home. For real, and not like the others; she moved in with him. She wore a ring, from him. They didn't need Diners, because they made up their own holidays, every weekend. They partied and they smiled and they laughed, and made no room for tears, or fights, or emotions. They were a perfect, addicted couple. He was rich, and she worked in a boutique, and nothing ever mattered, and he didn't even notice when she made a call at midnight, annually. He always passed out drunk first. He wore her pants, most days, and they stayed together for five years; until she was nearly thirty.
Then he died.
It was an overdose. It put her into the hospital, too. A bad sack, laced with embalming fluid, they said. She was lucky to be alive at all, considering how much they had smoked. She was lucky they hadn't found any needles, the doctor said. She was lucky. -- They had to deport her. They sent her back to America. She ended up in Los Angeles. In rehab, right off the plane. Six months later, she called Robbie from the community phone in the In-Patient Center she was living in, on her parents tab.
His wife, who'd been secretly deleting Christmas messages for years, answered accidentally, because it was a reasonable hour, and would of course not be Berlin. Put on the spot, and infuriated by the woman who'd been calling her man for so many years, his wife spoke lies with quick wit. She told Berlin he was dead. He'd been hit by a car while on his motorcycle. His children were six and two. She'd missed the service by six months. There was no one for her to call, anymore.
That night, she dropped the phone. Her crying could be heard echoing down the corridors all throughout the clinic. The woman on the other end of the phone hung up, without batting a lash, and a few minutes later, back in Seattle, Robbie got home. He was there to get the rest of his things, while the kids were sleeping. He was moving out, because they were divorcing. It had long been a loveless marriage. It was over, because he'd never really loved her at all. Two accidental bits of offspring later, and he was filing for joint custody.
Berlin was too busy relapsing to call her family, who she still hadn't talked to in years, directly. She was too busy huffing crystal meth to ask anyone if it was true. Too busy living with middle aged men, or on the street. She stayed in her rut for two and a half years, before finally getting picked up by the cops for begging in a park. -- Shipped right off back to rehab.
Clean, and thirty three, she finally knew what she had to do. She got back to Seattle a few days before Thanksgiving. Got a job at the same record store she'd grown up in, with too few familiar faces, and too many good memories. -- She didn't talk about the time she'd been away. She just smiled, to overcompensate for everything good in her that'd rotted away since they'd last seen her, in her youth. Something like a decade down the drain, she thought she was alone. She pretended like she was happy -- and on most days, she actually managed to be, at least for a minute.
Not knowing he was still alive; still in the same old town.
Nowadays all she wants is a stale beer and some food... a working color TV, and a side order of amnesia. Maybe some pie on Christmas.
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| .OOC. |
Storyline:
Robbie: The ex love of her life; for the PB I was thinking Charlie Hannum, maybe...
Family Members: Two Brothers, Mother, Father, Distant family members also welcome
Friends from High School/the Diner/Jerry's, etc.
House mates!
A current boyfriend would be nice and interesting, maybe?
Suggestions are uber welcome, here!
SAMPLE POST:
(keep in mind this is a semi-short post, as it's just a sample)
Another head ache and another hang over. Beer bottles next to shot glasses, on the coffee table. She lay on the sofa, quiet, save for a long-winded groan of anxiety. Eyes swollen and sunken into their sockets, clenched tight once she realized the blinds were opened. The sun pouring in like venom, and stinging her into consiousness. She could hardly so much as remember the night before, let alone who or what she should expect to still be there with her, in the apartment. She remembered holding a snake, but was assuming it had come and gone with some of her roomies visitors. She remembered kissing a girl with pink lips... Caroline... Carol... Christine... or something.
It was all a blur, though. She didn't know, now, how she'd ended up in panties that she hadn't been wearing the day before. How she'd managed to get macaroni and cheese all over her chest and the floor beside the sofa. Why wasn't she wearing a bra? Why had all these empty cans of Mountain Dew come from? She didn't even drink that shit.
Struggling to sit up, she tugged a torn up old shirt off the back of the couch and pulled it on, while keeping her eyes as closed as possible for as long as she could. Stumbling to her feet and shuffling in the direction of the bathroom. The two or three people asleep on blankets, on the floor, were narrowly avoided by her awkwardly stepping feet. -- She had work at 12. It was only 5:30; but of course, she'd get no more sleep. Already rushing, under the impression she was late. |
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