One Time All I Wanted

Nicolle Elizabeth

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Nicolle Elizabeth

Published by Dark Sky Books, Asheville, NC

http://www.darkskybooks.com

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author and/or publisher.

One time, I stopped what I was doing and read Nicolle Elizabeth s
One Time All I Wanted
as soon as I received it. I wish that I were you so I could do it again. -- Michael Kimball, author of
Us

*

There is something so perfect and aching in Nicolle Elizabeth s
One Time All I Wanted
. In a work that reads like a song, she offers a litany of truths that shatter and comfort by turns. Beautiful and arresting and completely original. -- Kathy Fish, author of
Together We Can Bury It

*

The narrator of Nicolle Elizabeth s
One Time All I Wanted
tosses confessions like colored rings that slip over our heads and down onto our shoulders as we stomp and applaud, our eyes marking the simple, curved paths from the snap of the wrist to the wash of blues & browns & reds that fill our nodding, eager vision fields. -- Mel Bosworth, author of
Freight

one time all i wanted

About the author

Also Available from DARK SKY BOOKS

i once moonlighted for two nights as a magician s assistant. it was nothing like
Desperately Seeking Susan
.

one time all i wanted was this dress. i saved forever to get this dress and when i finally got to the store to get the dress they had already sold it to somebody else.

while working the overnight shift as a bookbinder in South Boston, i would count the ceiling squares to see which number was greater: the squares or the thousands of dollars in debt i was accruing to fund my master s degree. debt won.

one time i thought i d impress a guy by doing a brake stand on my bike when riding up to the party house because he was out on the front porch but i ended up falling over and his girlfriend came running out to help me. she looked really beautiful in the streetlight. her hair smelled like coconuts.

one time i really wanted to go to college and a guy gave me a chance to make something of myself.

once i wrote about you in a book.

one time a friend and i were extras in a movie. we got to go to a costume fitting together. our roles were “hipsters at the fashion show.” so we get there, and based on my original measurements, the costume director has this really beautiful bolero laid out for me. he said, “it will be your first onscreen Vivienne Westwood moment.” i cried when the bolero turned out to be two sizes too tight.

one time on a bet i wore the same
Bill and Ted s Excellent Adventure
tshirt for 22 days consecutively.

i once ran off with my roommates bassist. we were about 200 miles north of Baltimore when we passed THE ERGS, who were on tour. we knew it was them because they had a license plate which actually said ERGS. i knew them because my ex, not the bassist driving, had put out one of their songs on a comp. there i was sitting backwards on an adventure at 90 mph yet waving out the window at a past life.

once i fell in love. realized i d rather be standing.

i spent an entire year skateboarding to work across the Williamsburg bridge while listening to Interpol’s “Turn On the Bright Lights” on my headphones because even though bro dude preppy sports types seem to love that album, it was a really good album.

i once went to Further Tour a lot. this was the 90 s and sometimes me and my friends would walk around the parking lot with our finger in the air yelling, “who’s got my miracle, i need a ticket in.”

one time i tried to count how many times i have screwed it up and lost count.

one time i roadtripped with a guy i met on a plane. somewhere around Jersey he put his hand on my thigh and i realized well, that was a bad idea, and we had like three more hours to drive.

one time i was put on display. it was like i was one of those turning ballerinas in somebody else s music box.

i once tried to slide down a laundry chute and had to be rescued by the fire department.

once, i got a high heel stuck in a cobblestone crack. lipsticks went flying.

one time Nikki Brewster won prom queen but when they called Nikki i also stood up.

i once fell off a chairlift.

one year between the ages of 16-17 i would say that i was sleeping at a friend s house, book it through a heavily wooded area in the dark, take a train into Boston and go to poetry readings in the basement of the Cantab Lounge. over a decade later Big Mike the door guy still calls me tough kid Nicky every time I go back.

one time a friend and i were paid to dress up and hand out fliers for a grocery store. she was dressed as a giant bear, i was dressed as a giant Cheez-It. then a gang of hooligans knocked me over and i could not get up.

one time i was living on my friend’s hammock in her back yard in Los Angeles and she gave me a copy of
Miss Piggy s Guide to Throwing a Dinner Party
.

one time i asked Philip Levine about the bar fight he got in with some famous actor in LA as to me, “What Work Is” is one of the most important poems of all time, and I saw the fight as a metaphor for life in the states during that time period. so i asked him is it really true you got into this fight and he, confirming my suspicions said, “well, he hit me first.”

one time i had a date with a famous DJ and we were standing outside by this gate and i went to lean on the gate to look cool and right where i put my hand, someone had recently hocked a giant loogie and there i was, standing, covered in someone s hacked up mucus, trying not to cry.

i once was chased through a townsquare by a mob of angry people carrying fiery torches.