Post by REGINA CATERINA CARROLL on Aug 18, 2013 18:57:34 GMT -8
| [atrb=style,width: 420px; background-color: efefef; background-image: url(http://24.media.tumblr.com/0478144b9f16c95a37367d1aca56b45c/tumblr_mkfax8tDxp1s97ldco1_500.png); padding: 5px, bTable] REGINA C. CARROLL 34 | LESBIAN | ARTIST & OWNER OF THE WHITE RABBIT GALLERY | TOWNSFOLK | ZOE SALDANA THE INTERVIEW HELLO. THANKS FOR COMING IN TODAY. SHALL WE START WITH YOUR NAME? Legally, my name is Regina Caterina Carroll, but not even my mother calls me Regina. My sister does sometimes, to be a bitch, but it's really only her. I go by Reggie, most of the time, and people who know me for my art call me Reggie C. Either way, don't call me Regina. THAT'S A NICE NAME. WHAT DO YOU DO FOR A LIVING? I'm an artist. People used to say, "Oh, Reggie, you're never going to pay the bills that way, you're going to end up broke and living with your parents." I always laughed. I knew I was going to be an artist when I was three. Nothing else was ever even an option. I'm good at it, and not only does it pay the bills, but it pays pretty fucking well. Anyone who tried to talk me out of art school can suck it. Aside from my art, though, I do own a small gallery. The White Rabbit Gallery. I sell my own art there, and work from other local artists is on sale as well. I own it, but I don't do any work in it other than putting my art in it. I've got a salesgirl, because retail is so not my thing. INTERESTING. WHAT DO YOU DO FOR FUN? What the hell kind of question is that? Whatevs. I don't really know what exactly I do for fun. I paint, but that's not only something I love doing, but it's my whole life. I rely on my artwork to pay for my food and home, so painting isn't just a hobby. When I'm not doing gallery showings, I like to hang out with friends. Yes, I do have friends, don't give me that look. I wouldn't say I have a lot of friends, but the ones I have are great. Quality over quantity, I guess. Other than being with friends and painting, I don't do much. I mean, I arrange gallery showings to sell more art, but that isn't exactly something I enjoy. TV is boring, movies are okay if I'm with a friend, and I've never been one to read a lot. Biographies on my favorite artists or books on new techniques? Sure. The new fantasy book my brother raves about each time I call him? A snowball would have a better chance surviving hell. WOULD YOU SAY THOSE ACTIVITIES REFLECT WHO YOU ARE? Sweetie, your questions are awful. Do you ask everyone you interview this bullshit? Ugh. Yes, of course those activities reflect who I am. I mean, if they didn't, I wouldn't be doing them, would I? I don't do things I don't want to. I want to drink? I drink. I want to smoke, I smoke. I want to get drunk, and paint in the nude until I pass out on my couch? Sounds like a Tuesday. My art is my life. Yeah, I used to have more going on. When I was in my twenties, I was a lot more social and less like a sad old cat lady. I'm in my mid-thirties now, though. I don't party like I used to. I don't have a cat, by the way. I've got a skunk, but we're keeping that on the DL, okay? It's not entirely legal, but I swear, I didn't just steal the little guy. I found him on the side of the road, injured. Took him to a vet I'm friends with, got him fixed up, but he's missing a leg. He couldn't just go back in the wild, right? So, I brought him home, and now he lives in my apartment with me. His name is Pepé, and he's a complete sweetheart. He's never sprayed me, or guests, which means we're all good. Unless the state finds out, in which case I'm probably going to face massive fines. We're just going to hope that doesn't happen, though. It's better to ask forgiveness than permission, right? I always get distracted when I start talking about him. Where was I? Oh yeah, who am I? I've mentioned this is bullshit, right? Good. Look, I honestly don't know who exactly I am. I'm still figuring that out every day. All I know is that I can't live for the future, because there's a good chance it isn't going to come. Every day is a new challenge, and every day is a new fight. You get up, you face it, you move on to the next one. It's all you can do, really. It's all I know how to do, at least. I live for today, because I don't have anything else. I don't know that I'm going to live to forty, or that I'm going to find true love or any of that bullshit. I don't even know if I think it exists. Maybe I did once, but that ship has sailed. Now, I'm just a bitter old bitch of an artist. That's who I am. A COOL CAT LIKE YOU MUST HAVE A TON OF SUITORS FLOCKING TO YOU, HUH? You know, at this point, I'm not sure if you're being serious and are just an idiot, or are attempting to make some kind of joke. Either way, no, I don't exactly have a 'ton of suitors'. Guys flirt, sure, but I mostly ignore it. Sometimes, I'll throw a punch if they start getting pushy. I like girls, okay, and no, I won't make out while you watch. I can't even tell you how many times I've been asked that, and how many guys I've punched for saying that to me. I'm not much for dating, anyway. I haven't been for a while. About seven years, actually. That's when my ex left me. We were together for a long time. Ten years. I'd thought things were going great, I mean, we'd bought a house, we were talking about getting married and adopting a kid... Then, one day, out of the goddamned blue, she tells me she's been cheating on me for six months, and that she's moving out to be with her new girlfriend. I never saw it coming... Since then, I've not been interested in dating. You put that much of yourself into somebody, only to have them betray you? It broke me, I'll admit. The best I get now is the occasional hookup with one of my models. I've got about a dozen, and three of them that I'll call when I'm needing a bit more than just someone to pose for me. My mom nags me about getting into a relationship, but this is for the best. My art is better this way. COOL BEANS. THEY SAY YOUR FAMILY SHAPES WHO YOU ARE. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOURS? Did you seriously just say cool beans? Jesus Christ, I should just leave now. I've got nothing else to do for an hour, though, so I may as well finish this. My family... Ugh, what a bunch of freaks. And I mean that in the nicest way, but... You've got my parents. Paula and Matthew. They're not married, but they're not divorced either. They live together, raised me and my siblings together... But they've never even discussed marriage. Whatever, it's their life, I guess. Anyway, they both had kids from previous relationships. Maybe that's why they didn't want to get married. I get along with both of them pretty well. Dad better than Mom. She's kinda crazy. I don't mean literally insane, I just mean that she recently signed up for a pole dancing class because she thought it sounded fun. Not to mention all the nagging. God, I moved out of the country just so it'd stop, but it only got worse! She calls me at least three times a week to nag me about something. "Are you eating right? Did you remember to pay your rent? You should come home to visit, my friend Brenda has this nice daughter who's a lesbian too..." It's the worst. Dad's more forgetful than anything else. He works a lot, so he isn't around as much as he'd like to be. Being at work so much means he's got some major guilt over not being there for us kids, though. It meant a lot of presents when I was a kid, but now it just means being able to call Daddy whenever I'm in over my head. I'm pretty grateful for that. As I mentioned, I've got half-siblings. Mom had Louis, and of my half-siblings, he's the oldest. He's also the one I'm closest to. Louis is pretty great, actually. He's eleven years older than I am, and he's the perfect son, if you ask my parents. Polite, hard-working, lives close to home... Plus, he's married and has given them the most grandkids. He and his wife, Tara, have six kids. Give me a minute, and I can name all of them... Pauline, Emmaline, Jack, Parker, Matthew, and Oliver. Wow. Christ. They're pretty good kids. Pauline's the oldest, and she's fourteen now, I think. Jack's the baby, and he's two. Everyone was shocked when he and Tara announced they were having him. I mean, six kids. Plus, Tara's an actress, so we were surprised they were going to do it again, since it always makes work a little hard for her. If Louis could carry the kids, they'd be great. Hell, I think they'd have twelve kids if he could. He's the stay-at-home parent. He wanted to be a professor, and he has all the credentials. Instead, he decided to be a dad. Which is great for him, and it was great for me, for a while. He's helped me through some rough spots. I call them every week, and spend an hour on the phone with just the kids, ten minutes with each of them, and another hour with Louis and Tara. When I go home to visit, I try to stay with them. I feel more at home in their house than I do in the one I grew up in. My sister, Sara, is the second oldest in our family. She's ten years older than I am, and like Louis, is considered the perfect child. She and her husband live in Toronto, and she's an accountant. Her husband, James, used to be an underwear model. I had a huge crush on him back when I thought I liked guys. He was actually my first kiss, though he had no intention of being that. I kinda think Sara still holds a grudge for that? She and I have never gotten along, but things got worse after that. Anyway, she's got kids too. Christina, Molly, and Beau. Chrissy and Molly are in high school, though Molly only is because she skipped two grades, and Beau just turned eight. I don't know their kids as well, because I only really talk to them when I go home to visit. Mattie is my third half-sibling, and he's eight years older than I am. He and I get along okay, but we argue a lot. We're the disappointments. I'm the bigger disappointment, but he's still one too. He's not married, and never has been, but he's been with these two people, Isiah and Sandra, for about twenty-three years now. They may as well be married, I mean, they've got a kid. I'm pretty sure Mattie isn't the father, biologically, but he's raised him as much as they have. His name is Rafi, and he's twenty now. Of all my nieces and nephews, he's the one I'm closest to. We talk all the time, texting and calling. He's been wanting to move down here to live with me, but his parents aren't exactly thrilled with the idea. They seem to think I'll corrupt him, or something like that. He's kinda my favorite, though, and I'd love to keep an eye out for him. Bunch of nutters, right? That's my family. They're crazy, but I love them for some reason anyway. AND YOUR LIFE? TELL ME ABOUT YOUR PAST. I'M EAGER TO HEAR. Eager, huh? Fine. I was born in Montreal, to two loving parents, blah blah blah. Before you say anything, yes, I'm Canadian, but I swear to god, if you make any jokes about it, I will kick your ass. Clear enough? Anyway, my parents weren't married. Like I said, I don't think they've ever even discussed it. My childhood was a little unusual. Dad has a government job, so he spends a lot of time working. Most of my childhood, he was off on business. Mom was left with all of us kids, but she was always good at holding it together. Not that I made it easy. I was a bit of a troublemaker as a kid, always getting into things I shouldn't have. One of my first memories is Mom wailing and pulling me away from an electrical socket I was going to stick something into. I was the reason there were covers on all the unused outlets in our house. Finding adventures was easy for me when I was a kid. Getting myself into trouble with them was even easier. School didn't calm me down at all. If anything, I got worse. I hated being stuck in a classroom, having to study things I wasn't even interested in. Art was the only class I put any effort into. Well, that and history, if we were discussing artists or doing an artistic project. I've always loved art. My dad gets the blame for that. When he wasn't working, he'd spend time finger painting with me. It evolved into water colors, and then when I was older, oils. By the time I was twelve, I had a pretty good portfolio. My parents still have some of my early paintings hanging up around the house. I like experimenting with different materials. But that was my childhood. Painting, with drawing and sculpting as inspiration struck, was all I ever wanted to do. Most of the time, it was all I did. I didn't play with dolls, or read the books my siblings tried to get me interested in, or watch the tv shows all the other kids at school talked about. Art was my whole life. It got me into some trouble, though, because my grades weren't ever very good. I wasn't ever exactly the most popular kid, either. That didn't matter to me, as long as I could keep painting. I was twelve when my sister met her husband, and thirteen when they finally got married. I had a huge crush on her husband for a while. It's not really fair to blame me for that, I think. I was thirteen, he was an underwear model, and he was willing to let me paint him. It was everything I could have wanted. Of course, I didn't realize it was a totally one-sided crush, but I came to realize that. Not until after I'd kissed him, but that wasn't until I was sixteen. After that, he sat me down and had a nice conversation where he very kindly let me know that it was never going to happen, and he was very much in love with my sister. He told me to start looking at guys my own age, and so I tried that at first. That's when I realized that aesthetically, I found guys attractive. Sexually? Not so much. Girls were much more appealing to me. It took me a while to be comfortable with it, but by the time I was seventeen, I knew I was a lesbian. It was a little after that when I met Cassie. Cassie was... My first everything, other than my first kiss. We met at school, actually. It was my senior year, and I was going to flunk if my grades didn't get up. She was assigned to be my tutor. At first, we were just friends. I had a serious crush on her, though, and I was so happy I thought I was going to cry when I found out it was mutual. Our first kiss was amazing. Everything I'd been hoping it'd be. From there, we started dating. For a while, we kept it a secret. Not because of my family, because Mattie had been with his whatever they are for a few years already. Her family was pretty religious, though, so we didn't want to tell them until after we'd finished high school. When we did, we moved to Toronto together. I was going to art school there, and she was going to York. We had an apartment, and things were great. I mean, really great. We didn't have to be secretive anymore. Both of us being in college meant that we didn't get as much time together as either of us would have liked, but when we did have time, we were always together. Whenever we had free afternoons, we'd spend it in each other's arms, until I'd get restless and make her pose. I had about two dozen paintings, just of her, by the time I graduated. I think my professors were getting tired of it, actually. After I graduated, she was still working on her doctorate, so we decided to stay in Toronto. Selling some paintings ended up getting enough that we could get a down payment on a house, and we bought it together. I was about twenty-three then. We lived in that house for five years, and I loved it. I loved her. We eventually started talking about getting married, and maybe adopting a kid or two. Then, one day... I was painting. I always am, but I remember that one particularly. There was this model... Raye. She was posing nude when Cassie got home, but I didn't see it being a problem. It never had been one before. I'd never cheated on her, and she knew that I wouldn't. That afternoon, though... Cassie started accusing me of sleeping with Raye, and various other models. I'd be lying if I said that I hadn't found Raye, or any of my other models, attractive, but I wasn't willing to hurt Cassie like that. I loved her. I denied it, she got angry, and we had a huge argument that ended in her destroying my canvas. It was the worst fight we'd ever had. I knew something was wrong, so I demanded answers. Turns out, she'd been cheating on me. For six months, and I had no idea. She tells me that we're done, and she's moving out. If I was ever asked to pin point a moment in my life where everything started going wrong, it'd be that day. Losing Cassie was hard for me. We'd been together for ten years. I didn't want to paint anymore. It only reminded me of all the afternoons spent in her arms, memories that had once been beautiful, but had turned ugly and painful. I was stuck. The answer came in the form of travel. Backpacking through Europe, seeing all the old historical sites of my favorite artists, was something I'd wanted to do for a while. Cassie had always been too busy for a trip like that, though. Being single meant I could take as long doing it as I wanted. I ended up spending about eight months in Europe. I went everywhere. It was all beautiful. Maybe I'll go again someday... I ended my trip in Italy. There was some trouble I ran into there... That left me in an even worse place. When I went home, I was in a serious depression. At one point, I tried killing myself. I moved in with Louis and his family, and they helped me recover. After two years, I was ready to move on. I found Brunswick, and thought it'd be a nice change. I bought a building, made the first floor a gallery, second floor an apartment, named it The White Rabbit Gallery, and never looked back. I've been here ever since. What about a secret? Everyone has a secret. I don't even know why I'm going to tell you this... I guess I'm just feeling like spreading the misery. I had a twin brother, Ryan... He was older than me by just five minutes. We were always really close. We told each other everything, and when things fell apart with Cassie, he's the first one I called. He was at my house within an hour, and he held me all night while I cried. When I decided to go to Europe, he offered to come along with me. He was the other half of my soul, and in Italy... I pissed off some mob guys. They killed Ryan. He died in my arms. It's my fault my twin brother died, and that's why I tried to kill myself when I came home. I can't go back to my parent's house anymore. Every time I do, I think of him, and... It feels like half of me was ripped away the day he died. And I can't ever forgive myself for getting him killed. It should have been me. ALRIGHT. TIME'S ALMOST UP. TELL ME ABOUT YOUR DREAMS. QUICK! I've already done most of what I want to do in my life. I'd like to not die alone, but that's not so much a dream as just not wanting to be a crazy cat lady. I've given up on dreams. I'm almost forty, why shouldn't I? AND THAT'S A WRAP. IT WAS NICE GETTING TO KNOW YOU. Whatever. Don't bug me again, okay? BEHIND THE MASK EMILY | 18 | PACIFIC | ALREADY HERE | CASH, CHELSEA, NELL, AND EEVEE  Reggie curses a lot. XD |
