LOVE

It was such cruelty—to ask if he might kiss me & when I shut my eyes, to press the chloroform cloth against my nose & mouth!
For in the romance movies always the kiss is with shut eyes—the camera is close-up to the woman’s beautiful smooth face & long-lashed shut eyes.
And the romance music.
Except in actual life—there is no music. Only the sound of the man’s grunting & the girl trying to draw breath to scream, to scream, to scream—in silence.
& such cruelty, to slash the corners of my mouth smiling in terror & hope to “charm”—slashing my mouth to my ears so that my face that had been a beautiful face would become a hideous clown-face that can never cease grinning.
& my breasts that were milky-pale & beautiful—so stabbed & mutilated, the hardened coroner could barely examine.
& the autopsy revealed contents of my stomach too filthy & shameful to be stated—the man would subordinate the girl utterly in all ways, & why could not be imagined…
What I am hoping you will comprehend—if you would listen to my words & not stare in horror & disgust at the “remains” of me—(the morgue photos have been published & posted everywhere—there is no escape from shame & ignominy, in death—the two halves of me “separated” with a butcher knife the Bone Doctor wielded laying my lifeless body on two planks across a bathtub—in the house on Norfolk, that I had never seen before in all of my life—with this knife the cruel maniac tore & sawed at my midriff—my pearly-pale skin that was so beautiful & desirable—that my blood would fall & drain into the tub—& these halves of my body he would wrap in dirty plastic curtains to carry away to dispose of like trash in a public place to create a spectacle for all to stare at in revulsion & titillation enduring for years)—if you would listen to my words post mortem, I am trying to explain that though Norma Jeane has become famous throughout the world, as MARILYN MONROE, it was a chance thing at the time in January 1947, it was a wisp of a chance, fragile as those feathery spiraling seeds of trees in the spring blown in the wind & catching in your hair & eyelashes—it was not a decreed thing but mere chance that Norma Jeane would become MARILYN MONROE & Elizabeth Short would become THE BLACK DAHLIA pitied & scorned in death & not ever understood, & the cruelest lies spread about me. What I am saying is that if you’d known us, Betty Short & Norma Jeane Baker, in those days, when we were roommates & close as sisters you would not have guessed which one of us would ascend to stellar heights & which would be flung into the pits of Hell, I swear you would not.