Blog | laralevitan

Horror Flix, Neighborhood Kids, & Kojak: A Tale of Love & Fear in the 80s

When I was a kid, a young, bald white man used to pace the alley behind my house while holding a butcher knife up against his chest. He...

I'm not wearing earrings today

My kiddo got her ears pierced this year, shortly before she turned eight. While that happened, this was and is happening: my face slowly...

Since Becoming a Mom I've Received a Number of Items–

– mugs, dishtowels, socks– featuring women in capes, in masks, flying through the air like wonder. Mom is super, they insist. Thanks but...

A Cherry Pie of One's Own

Photo courtesy of Bobbie Brown At ten years old, I was obsessed with hair metal and the men who made it. Posters of bands with naughty...

Ekphrasis #1: Chained Housewife, or Just Trying to Relax?

"Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding." ― Diane Arbus An image I often evoke when...

Mothers, Friends, and Outcasts: A Tale of Shoplifting in the '90s

In high school, you probably knew a girl like Julie K. The girl whose name, when uttered in company that didn't include her, sounded like...

Motherhood is Great and Everything is Great and I'm Great!

"Are we doing something wrong?" my husband asked me. We were hanging in our friends' backyard, where we came to celebrate the loss of...

A Sad Person Who's Always Writing a Novel

Hey, Lara-- What's up? Funny how life goes, huh? You think you get to a better place in your head, and then the shit comes flooding in...

My old boyfriends never would have loved my Keith Richards haircut

Patti by Robert I finished Patti Smith's Just Kids. Sigh. All she and Robert wanted was Art. They starved for it, took odd jobs for it,...

Pre-teen hair metal love

Once upon a time, I was in love with GN'R. Like, serious I-want-to-have-your-baby kind of love, except I was ten years old and not...

Dread Version July 26, 2019

Feeling it big time this morning, The Dread like an amorphous pile of bleck, seeping through my edges. Fridays are supposed to be my...

Writing N' Me

So what happened was, I wrote a book. And I self-published it, because I didn't want to go through potentially years of rejection. Hello,...

Dylan in the Sky

Luke Perry died last week and I'm so sad. His death makes me waaay more sad than the average celebrity death. And not just because he was...

Very important writings on Beverly Hills, 90210

When Brandon met Dylan, Season 1, Episode 2 Brandon met Dylan** in a school computer lab, obviously. So Brian Austin Greene's dorky...