Profiles in Greatness: 'Jackie-O' Pascal

'JACKIE-O' PASCAL
in
THE HOUSE OF YES (1997)

"Marty and I had just turned fourteen. We went to an Ides of March party and I went as Jackie Onassis. In a pink Chanel suit and a pillbox hat. And blood on my dress. Well, ketchup actually... And other stuff, too. Like macaroni, kind of glued on, like... brains. It was more tasteful than it sounds. Everybody remembers that day. Exactly what they were doing."

LIKES...

• Her twin brother, Marty ("Pretend he's not my brother. I do.")
• Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
• Sticky Tape ("Goo is what tape is all about. Goo is what makes it tape instead of paper.")
• Her pink hairbrush

"It looked like a hairbrush. A brush you brush your hair with.... Yes, it was pink goddammit! It was pink! It was pink and now its gone!... I don't want a comb. I want a brush! Combs straighten your hair. I want it to gleam!"

• Guns ("Just being gun-like. Gun-esque. Gun-onic.")
• Watching soap operas
• Baking brownies ("Normalcy is coursing through my veins.")
• 5th Grade Field trips to Washington, D.C.

"Have you ever been to Washington before? ... Not even on a field trip? Not even on a 5th Grade field trip? ... In 5th Grade? Really?... So you just snubbed it. You just snubbed your nation's capital."

• Assassination Books ("A lot. Lincoln, McKinley, Kennedy, King... Kennedy.")
• Speaking French
• Playing "French Revolution"
• Playing Assassination

"I didn't mean to maim you. I only meant to kill you... I've noticed Anthony wears a lot of layers around me. Don't you, Anthony? Look at him. He's got a T-shirt, a dress shirt, a vest and a jacket."

• Piano
• Mime
• Her new meds

"They switched me! I used to be green, now I'm brown. I wanted pills to match my eyes. Color me beautiful."

• Hurricanes

"We went to Virginia Beach and our motel was right on the water. Mom and Dad were drinking rum and Pepsi out of Styrofoam cups and giggling..."

• Ice

"I'm talking about texture. I'm talking about texture. In the last hurricane we had ice! Mama and Daddy had a bucket of ice in a cooler down the hall! We'd just march down the hall whenever we had a yen for ice!"

DISLIKES...

• Being "bourgeois"
• "Love" ("Don't use that word. "Love" is for tiny people with tiny lives.")
• Sincerity ("It's declasse.")
• Honesty ("If people are going to start telling the truth around here, I'm going to bed.")
• Doctors
• Side-effects

"I spend most of my days with my head in the toilet bowl. Throwing up pills. I can't really think when I take the pills and a person needs to think. I mean if a person can't think, what are they?"

• Marty's lizard
• Marty's fiancee

"Don't leave this girl alone with any handsome deaf mutes, Marty. That's my advice to you."

• Pancakes ("Pancakes. Pancakes, Marty.")
• Pennsylvania

"I've never met anyone who's been to Pennsylvania. Much less been from Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania's just this state that gets in your way when you have to go some place else."

• Flat seltzer
  

"She started screaming about bubbles. How there were no bubbles. So she started boiling the seltzer water. When the water started bubbling, she poured the boiling water back into the seltzer bottle. Which was... plastic.... and it started to melt, and kinda melted into her hand where she was holding it. She had to go to the emergency room with third degree burns. And on the way home, whenever Mom and I asked her a question, she'd tell us to, "Stop giving me the third degree!" Then she'd laugh... Kind of hysterically..."