brook honeyford stencil on the wall outside kc's old bedroom @the farm
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What follows is my contribution to a memorial book people are apparently assembling for my friend kc, who died 5 months ago. I was stuck at the time in the middle of nurse assistant training here on the west coast, so I missed out on the funeral and all the services that followed. In a way, writing this has also been my attempt to give myself as much personal closure that losing someone you really love will allow. Her birthday would have been today, but I think about her all the time.
KC AND THE STORY OF BROOKE HONEYFORD
(for her son Chase to read when he gets old enough to understand, or willing to try to?)
In 2006, I moved back from Baltimore to my native homeland of Philadelphia and it ended up being a total fucking disaster, although I have to admit, for better or worse, I was in some great company the whole time. I'd left town a little over a year beforehand in an attempt to escape suffocating my manic depressed self inside of a shelveless refrigerator one night while living alone in an efficiency apartment, so I was a bit wary about returning "home" for another round of possibly fighting whatever it was that drove me away again. For one reason or another and despite my best intentions to make things right, philly has never really worked out for me, but that's a separate essay, or perhaps a series of self pitying manuscripts to write someday.
Anyway.
Although i was born and raised on the other side of the Schuylkill , much like a whole secret tribe of people I've come to know, love and return to over the years, I came of age in West Philly; in the basements, in the warehouses, in the squats, in the punk houses, in the coffee houses, on porches with couches, inside ethiopian bars, at the foot of grafittied produce trucks, against the bulletproof glass of cheap chinese food places, quarantined inside of medical testing centers for cash and wandering a number of ever-vanishing but strangely romanticized sacred abandoned properties when i was feeling feral. Naturally, when I heard of an open room at a familiar house on Walton Avenue full of people I already knew, I made my move back.
"We're like a fucking 'best of west philly' compilation here." I remember telling someone when i unpacked and mentioned the household lineup. Although I only knew KC loosely from her dating a friend of mine and us both hanging around a crumbled warehouse underground music venue in the late 90s, she quickly became one of my favorite"album tracks", so to speak. With a room directly below my own, I pretty much had her stuck on repeat every time i walked by. I also promise that is my last abuse of this tacky metaphor for this paragraph.
It's hard to explain to an outsider, given how most "normal" people only experience group living through college dorms, shortlived periods of singlehood, or a craigslist necessity they're free of by their mid 20s, but it should be noted that, at best, there is an almost orphanage-like slumber party quality to a good punk house. "The Farm" definitely had elements of this--mixed with a lurking disfunctional streak characteristic of most of our shared upbringings--but still, above all things, it was a filthy, comfortable, needed home and in some sense we all recognized and honored this, despite ending up there for different reasons. In the case of me and KC, we bonded over a mutual history of depression and addiction, some peice of shit boyfriends, some dead friends we had in common, a love of metal, dark humor, and hatred of our miserable restaurant jobs.
At the time I was a freshly retired bike messenger turned hoagie deliveryman on two wretched wheels. I hated every humiliating minute of it, but it made playing music possible, my boss couldn't see me half the time, I had no better ideas and I could sleep until the afternoon everyday. Also the fact that I was drunk every working minute made the urge to bitterly spit into promising young Penn Students' food an almost controllable impulse. All my bases covered, I suppose. KC was a waitress with a set of jellyfish resembling transparent rubber inserts tucked into her bra like armor each shift ("you'd be surprised how much it helps tips some nights."). I'd occasionally put them on inside my own shirt when she came home, wait while she was obliviously distracted by her jewlery making or busy ranting about how hard it was to stay sober and clean in food service and hope she'd look up and laugh because I had no solutions to offer that I was trying myself.
Anyway, to cut to the chase, there was this one waitress who KC worked with that she held in high regard. very high regard. unreasonably high regard. KC fixated on her. KC idolized her. The waitress was called Brooke Honeyford, a woman with a name destined for a future in newscasting. or hollywood. or atleast porn. A name I should probably not use because she is, afterall, a real person, who I don't even know, despite what I, KC, and various members of the household eventually transformed her into.
I'm not entirely sure when it happened, but at some point KC began comming home from work talking about Brooke all the time.
Brooke Honeyford; alpha waitress.
Brooke Honeyford; blonde and sassy.
Brooke Honeyford; said the most brilliant thing today.
Brooke Honeyford; the best thing about the job.
Brooke Honeyford; too beautiful for the restaurant.
Brooke Honeyford; walks with all the best tables and cash.
Brooke Honeyford; going places.
Brooke Honeyford; trying out for a film now.
Brooke Honeyford; does corporate espionage in her free time. seriously, can you beleive that?!?
..and I listened to these stories, possibly more than anyone else in the house, partially because my late hours meant i'd be the only one awake when she came through the door with tips and a new Honeyford fun fact, but also because i knew that deep down, at the end of the day, KC needed something positive to report back about when she was going through a recognizable rough patch herself. In a way, having a Brooke Honeyford of my own became something i secretly longed for. i looked around me but just couldn't find one and i guess i became a little jealous. or something.
One night, KC materialized, giddy, with an autographed black and white glossy photo headshot of Brooke. As I stared back at the bob cutted bombshell frozen in a vidan sassoon ad pose and put a face on the revered name for the first time, I decided that she'd finally gone too far. There is a special sadness you get when you notice qualities in your friends that are so outstanding but at the same time so completely beyond the radar of their self esteem. KC could weld. KC could paint. KC's cleopatra costume at the godzilla wedding in the mummer museum was worthy of heiroglyphic preservation. KC was at her core, one of the toughest people I've ever met emotionally. In short, KC was too amazing to pin this mere mortal's image to her wall. Knocking down her Brooke Honeyford altar was the only way to save her.
I'm not one for planning much in life, so while KC was filling me in on the night's Brooke Honeyford celebrity guest appearance, I went with my gut impulse and made my move. Interrupting in the name of KC and all things worth saving in my world, i channeled the most psychotic, catty, venomous, evil, rumor spreading, bitchy junior highschool girl i could muster. and she came roaring out of me, complete with lisa frank stationary, hoop earrings and neon pink nailpolished talons.
"oh. my. god, KC."
"what?"
"stop. just stop talking about brooke."
"why? i thought--"
"KC, i can't believe you even talk to her. didn't you hear?"
"what?"
"KC, BROOKE HONEYFORD IS A WHORE."
"what?! you don't--"
"BROOKE HONEYFORD IS ADOPTED."
"ok, now you're getting--"
"BROOKE HONEYFORD IS RADIOACTIVE"
"ha ha. i have to go to bed. enough."
"SHE DOESN'T EVEN KNOW"
Not easily discouraged, or maybe a bit too into beating jokes to death, i continued this the next day. and the next. and soon the rest of the house chimed in, singing a chorus of mindless slander:
"BROOKE HONEYFORD HAS A PARASITIC TWIN"
"BROOKE HONEYFORD IS A DICK SHARK"
"BROOKE HONEYFORD'S PUSSY SMELLS LIKE DRIED CUTTLEFISH"
"I SAW BROOKE HONEYFORD LAST NIGHT ON LANCASTER AVENUE AND SHE HAD A BEARTRAP CLAMPED ONTO HER LEG AND SHE DIDN'T EVEN KNOW. SHE WAS NUDE. I SAID NICE SHOES."
Eventually, even KC joined in.
and then , just when i thought we'd worn her down and exhorcized the demon disguised as a waitress from our beloved friend, KC made a startling confession to Michelle one night on the porch:
"i autographed brooke honeyford's headshot and made it out to myself. She never signed it."
Our blood went cold. we were horrified. desperate times call for desperate measures, so Michelle valiantly snuck into KC's room, stole the headshot and made for the nearest xerox machine. a couple hours of light table and razorblade carving paper sorcery later, she produced a guilded spray paint-ready image stencil of Brooke's face. It looked utterly fantastic. our weaponry had arrived. The plan was to use guerilla tactics starting at KC's room, spraypainting Brooke Honeyford's head onto everything we could think of in a trail from our house to the restaurant to Brooke Honeyford's apartment lair, with an assortment of nonsensical slogans beneath in a home depot font proclaiming "ADOPTED" "BEAR TRAP" "PARASITIC TWIN" "CUTTLEFISH" "NICE SHOES" "DOESN'T EVEN KNOW" and last but certainly not least, "DICK SHARK".
we were going to save our friend from a fate worse than a lifetime imprisoned in Brooke Honeyford's convent. unfortunetly, before we could finish, KC came home, caught us in the act, freaked out and dailed Brooke up herself claiming her "roomates have formed some insane cult around her headshot, complete with merchandise. don't worry. they'll make you a tshirt." ..As if. This slight betrayal, along with the disappointing discovery that Brooke Honeyford was surprisingly thrilled with the attention, caused us to abandon the entire scheme. We did, however, manage to stencil Brooke's face onto both KC's wall and directly onto the glass of a certain mirror. Legend has it, if you stand just right, you can see Brooke Honeyford's face imposed directly over your own reflection. That's just cause there is a little bit of Brooke in all of us. I recognize that now, KC.
i love you. I miss you. This is one of the weirdest things I've ever fucking written. I hope it doesn't offend someone you love too bad.
I don't know. I guess you had to be there. If nothing else, I'm really glad I was.
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