| I've Been Out of My Body With You |
[16 Nov 2009|12:05pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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 confused |
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music |
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"Ghosts n' Stuff" by Deadmau5 |
] |
Left Samson's at three thirty that morning, had to be at work at seven. Adam text me on the way home, stoned, asking if I wanted to smoke with him after the store meeting later that day. We exchanged a few confused texts, both of us high, me a little drunk. I decided we'd both forget the plans by late morning, as we usually did.
Work. Shower. Four o' clock rolled around and I arrived a little early, chatted with Scott and Daniele at the end of the bar as he made me a triple tall creme brulee. "You look nice," Shannon said, sipping iced coffee, sizing me up and down. I detected a hint of suspicion in her as she eyed my zebra print skirt, my black studded belt, a red ribbon tied in a bow about my waist. I shook off the feeling, decided it was paranoia in me, nervousness.
I sat outside alone for a few minutes, sipping on my latte, smoking, listened on to the conversation of the table beside me. Something about a car seat, about a motorcycle, some college, some irresponsible young father. I walked into the meeting just as it began, stole an arm chair next to Sara. "Did you bring any to share?" Patrick asked me as I unwrapped a cherry blow pop, stuck it in my mouth. I smiled wickedly, pulled out a second.
Then turned my head. And. God. Adam.
Faded green, collared. Fitted jeans. Hair a clean mess of spiked blonde. I could hardly look him in the eyes, they were so fiercely blue. He muttered something about a barista giving him a black eye instead of a red eye, his feet jittering like a nervous tick lived inside them. He sat beside me, and I forced myself to ignore him, to not stare too much out of the corner of my eye. But. God. I wanted to.
Everything about him, every word, every cell of his even skin screamed youth and living. I could see us then, beside one another in the dark, raging to the music, some glowing lights, some overwhelming sounds. I could see us dancing together, smiling with eyes so knowing, pushing one another further into that world we both loved so well. He broke my thoughts. "Are those from last weekend?" The blow pop, out of the bag I had bought for Crystal Castles, the night of that epic roll. I cracked a smile, nodded, and he laughed so knowingly, all the empathy dripping out and over his grin.
I tried so hard then to keep composure, to concentrate on what was being said during the meeting, Patrick's hurried voice, something about free CDs, something about discounts, global fund, barista bears. We talked about the store party, made a French press of Christmas blend. I watched Sara's smile, Alexa's pointed nose, Clayton's mouth. Still, the meeting ended, and I found myself stalling, chatting with Sara inside, slipping out the door to smoke a square with everyone on the patio.
I balanced cigarette and blow pop in hand, coffee in the other as Patrick, Clayton, Sara, Adam, and I stood in a smoker's circle. "Everyone smokes now," Patrick said, looking around at all of us, Sara's only empty hand. Sara turned to me, told me she had just found out I smoked at all. I shrugged. "You don't like for people to know you smoke," Patrick said, always observant, always picking apart everyone's motivations. He eyed my red bow then. "Are you a present?" and I laughed, nodded. "Yes. I am a gift."
We joked for a while about a conversation Patrick and I had in front of a few customers, everyone laughing at the story, picking on me for the way I dress, the bows and the prints and the layers of lace and fishnets. It felt like family then, all of us teasing one another, cracking up over inside jokes, giving nick names to our regulars then tearing into them. Sara and I rambled on about going to high school together. "You bring out the crazy in me, 'Elle," she said. "I'm pretty sure you bring out the crazy in everyone," Clayton laughed, and everyone joined in. I felt so warm, so loved.
People dispersed, and Sara, Adam, and I were the only ones left outside talking. Adam played with his hands, kept looking over at me expectantly. "Well... I'm gonna go," he said, staring me down. "Your car?" I asked. He nodded, I nodded back and he walked away. Sara looked down at me, confused slightly. "You should join us," I said cooly, hiding the nerves in me, hoping she'd say yes, not leave me there alone with Adam and his eyes burning through me. "I'll go if Clayton does," she said, and scampered off to find him. I downed the rest of my coffee, walked to Adam's car, climbed inside. He stared down at my blow pop, then at his rearview window as Clayton and Sara opened the car door. I breathed a soft sigh of relief and Adam began to drive.
It all went so quickly, Adam handing me the dugout, inhaling, passing it back to Clayton. "It's called amnesia hash," Adam told me, watching as I pressed my lips again around the faux cigarette. It had been a wedding present, and this was the last of it, his best shit. A wave coiled through me as I recognized what that meant. I tried to hand the lighter to Adam, and he shook his head. "It's cool," he said, and I knew my face fell, the disappointment poison on my wiry mouth. I wondered then if it was okay that I invited Sara along, Clayton, could think of no other reason Adam refused to light up with me. A quick turn around in a neighborhood and we were back to the parking lot, Adam telling us all goodbye. I climbed out of the car, sat inside mine, breathed out.
Stillness.
Turned up the noise, Pendulum, Eiffel 65. That happiness fell over me again, the insatiable joy that ate and cloaked everything it touched. It was the same strain from Crystal Castles, that pure bliss, pure ecstacy when everything felt all right. I drove to a cemetery in Tomball, turned up the radio, got out, danced in the dark with the fireflies.
After the rush, I called Courtney, sitting among the graves, smoking a cigarette and rambling like a drunken fool. "He didn't even look like himself, Court. He was gorgeous. He was like... a little rave kid, so perfect for me." My eyes fell to the ground, and I sighed. "Him and I, we have everything in common. The music, the drugs, the constant movement of our lives and our souls. Court, he understands. He understands because we're the same." Sloppy sadness drooping from my eyes. "Court," I said, my voice harrowed and soft, "usually he's drained, anemic and ashen. That pale skin, and his voice... just, doughy and faded." Stillness on the other side of the line, a breeze pushed over me. "But today. Court, today he was color." I could hear her on the other line consoling me. "Tomorrow, you will see him at work, and he will be back to normal. In his khakis and brown shoes and that white shirt that makes him look washed out. He'll look old and married like he always does, and you'll forget all this. You'll forget that you think he's perfect for you."
I fell asleep in the grass, my head rested on my grey jacket, the stars so close now. Even in my dreams I felt the hash, felt my body alive. I dreamed three years into the future, some darkened corner of a back stage. Some rave, some soft reflections of strobes and the reverb of a bass, voices and screams from the other side of a curtain. He's there, sitting on a dusty couch. He's there, and I'm there, walking over to him. "That was a crazy set," he smiled, "You guys were sick." His blown pupils, his fingers, my hip bone. I closed my eyes and could see the dust of tabs colorful inside my blood, flowing through the blue of my veins. Sitting, he reached a hand delicately about my wrist, pulled me on top of him. Our lips, we kissed. And the rest was darkened shadows, his hands pressed against my back, a haze of darkened color and sight, just our bodies moving, just our souls a blur.
-----
I didn't look at him at first when he came into work, just pulled shots, steamed breve, handed him a quick hello. He clocked in, came and stood close beside me. "Have fun yesterday?" I finally looked up at him, smiled, and he laughed. He began to talk to a customer, some older woman. I watched his face, his mouth, saw his eyes, his pupils huge and dilated. I choked as I tried to hide my gasp. He looked down at me and laughed, asked if I was okay. I nodded. The customer walked away, told us goodbye. The whisper of his voice brushed against my cheek, my ear. "I love talking to old people when I'm rolling."
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| If It Makes You Happy / It Can't Be That Bad |
[12 Nov 2009|04:07pm] |
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mood |
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 happy |
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music |
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"If It Makes You Happy" by Sheryl Crow |
] |
"I'm going to start a thrash band," I told Matt and Andy. Matt looked taken aback, confused. Andy laughed, "Well... you always did want to be Britney Spears." Matt shook his head, almost angrily at Andy, "Britney Spears isn't exactly thrash, fucker. She's techno fucking light."
I was surprised at Matt's response. "So, what? No more rock? No more metal? No more of the shit you've given everything to for the past seven years or so?" I was annoyed, hadn't expected to be attacked, especially by the person who understood me most. "You're right. I gave fucking everything. And what did it give back?"
Later I sat with Andy on the back porch, sipping pink lemonade, dipping my blow pop in the glass. Andy asked about the music, why I had so suddenly changed my mind. "It wasn't suddenly. My band's been falling apart for over a year. And I found this place that makes me happy, makes me feel alive and whole. A place where I don't feel restricted artistically, where I don't have to write fucking ABABCB, or whatever." I turned to him, hoping he'd read the seriousness in my eyes. "Andy, I fell hard in love this weekend. You don't fall in love over night. It takes time, it takes getting to know something, but after you really know it, know about it, know its insides and outsides, it's such a fragile final jump into giving your heart away." He nodded, almost understanding.
"When I'm working on this stuff, listening to it, writing lyrics or sitting at my piano banging out sounds, banging out hooks, I don't need drugs. I don't need some stupid boy. Not that I don't still want those things, will take them if they come along. But I don't need them. I don't need anything to make me happy but this music, this feeling. I've fallen head over for electronica, for thrash and noise bands. Why is that such a big fucking deal?"
No answer. And I don't care.
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| It's Spitting / Angels Die With You |
[12 Nov 2009|03:58pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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 indescribable |
] |
| [ |
music |
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"Knights" by Crystal Castles |
] |
Sunday night. Rain pounding out the sound on the freeway, a thousand lights on ither side. Popped two tabs each, downed an orange juice, cracked open a Red Bull and was blown away by the fruity smell. Bled tires across the soggy road, prayed to a god I wasn't sure I believed in that we would somehow arrive alive. And we did.
Smoked a bowl in the car as we gathered our things, decided over whether to take our phones, the camera. "Okay, explain x to me," Court said, biting on the side of her lip. "You're nervous, yeah?" I asked, handing her the extra she bought. "I was nervous the first time I did coke, and molly. It's okay to feel that way." She nodded, asked, "Is it dangerous?" I smiled at her wickedly, "Court... they're drugs," I laughed, "There's always danger. But, mostly people die on this shit because they don't hydrate. Make sure to drink plenty of water, listen to your body, and don't be one of those idiots who fucking dies because they didn't drink enough fucking H2O." She laughed, promised. "Since you've only ever smoked pot, I'll explain it to you this way: Pot makes you feel like you're fucked up, all inside your head. E makes the rest of the world feel different, but in a really beautiful way... You probably won't understand that now, but you will. Trust me. You'll love it."
I shoved the excess inside a hollowed out tin pill: two tabs, a small pouch of coke, and enough dro to last us through the evening. Pushed the pill and O'Ryan between my cleavage. We walked. Court giggled beside me. "Oh my god, 'Elle..." she breathed. Her first time to roll, and it finally hit. "This is... this is amazing..." she coughed as we walked through the parking garage toward the event. "'Elle... if the night ended now, and all we got to do was walk through this garage, I would still be so happy." I smiled at her, laughed, realized I was getting off to her first time like some dirty old frat boy chasing after virgins. She was sweet then in that moment, even more so than usual, and I bit down on my lip as I watched her eyes light and flicker out forever.
We walked the rainy, muddy path to pick up our tickets, a wrist band. People walked too quickly behind us, I felt rushed, run over, had to stop and catch my breath slightly. "Are you okay?" she asked, slightly alarmed. "I'm fine," I breathed out, settling myself, talking me down in my head. Pushing forward we moved through the line, through security where they didn't check me at all. I sighed relief as I made it through the gate, my entire body sagging with a soft lift, the tension released.
Two feet of mud everywhere, guys in orange and blue ponchos, little Austin girls in boots and folk-styled dresses, the virtual uniform of college chicks that I just didn't submit to or fully understand. Taco stands and boothes with pipes, fedoras. We moved quickly and carefully through the slosh and slurm, ankle deep. Over and down a mound, Courtney tripped and fell on her ass into a puddle. She picked herself up, laughing, horribly embarrassed and hating herself, all of the sadness in her body language, her annoyed eyes, the way she looked as if she was trying not to cry, as if she was trying to hide it all away until later, when she would use it. Covered in thick mud, two drunk girls ran up to her, screaming, "Three others have done it too! It's okay!" They're free and loud and purring and screaming like two cats in some back alley, some strays. I smiled at them, loving them instantly, so glad they could return Court's smile, let her hide the shame just a little more.
We finally made it to the orange stage, bobbed our heads to the mediocre rock band. The sound guys were not stellar, and I scrunched my nose at the feedback, the muddy sound around 600k. I noticed the massive stage was in two parts, a right and left. The band was playing to the left, and since Crystal Castles was on next, I moved us to the right. "Don't you think we should have stayed?" Court asked nervously as we found a decent place to stand in the crowd on the right. "I'm thinking purely from a sound tech's pov," I said, "so this could be wrong. But I'm thinking they split the stage for easy setup, so they could already have the band ready on the other side." She nodded, unsure, "Okay... I mean, I guess we're probably stuck here anyway..."
I pulled the pipe from my shirt, a little green, asked if she wanted to smoke. She looked around, nervous still, shook her head. "I don't think we should." I rolled my eyes at the ground, pushed the lighter close to the herb so you couldn't see the flame at all as I lit, inhaled, pushed my face to the sky as I let out. Suddenly all around me people were pulling out blunts, joints, their own one hitters. Court watched, bit her lip some more, asked tentatively, "Could I?" I passed the pipe into her hands, watched as she hunched down a bit, lit the lighter bright and loud. She jumped a bit, and I looked at her curiously. "Holy fuck... I...," her face turned bright red, even under the dark sky, whispered, "I think I just singed off my eyebrow... I lit my hair on fire." I tried so hard not to laugh, kept composure as I told her I couldn't tell, it didn't look that way, though I was lying completely through my teeth. Still, it's not what I wanted her to focus on, figured it would be better if she just forget it until later. I finished off the bowl as I chatted with the guy beside me, cute and scruffy and offering me some of his beer, which I declined politely. I didn't want anything to ruin my roll, which I was now starting to feel slightly, knew it would peak just as the show began.
Then suddenly, a circuit, bent and falling from the dark stage on the right side. The bass, the tension that fell over us all as we waited, saw them emerge, and broke us all into the music, fluid, like ice that melts and melts. Court kept pulling us in to the center, and I wondered if she knew exactly what she was doing, but I shrugged, decided to let the night happen instead of trying to control it. We ended up in the pit, as I knew we would, moving without moving at all, just letting the wave and the crowd take us like a giant ocean of arms and hands and flickering, bursting light. Court screamed and grabbed onto me, a wreck of emotion and fear, unsure of herself. I laughed, dancing as much as I could against the bodies beside me, closing and opening my eyes, letting myself go, letting the x rupture and implode inside me, felt it gush forth, showering all my insides. "I don't want to lose you!" she screamed, her arm still clutching itself around me. I barely heard her, the soft voice just a reverb against my skull. She'll let go soon, I thought, and it'll be amazing. Still, I remembered the night we smoked before going on a carnival ride, Samson screaming at her through the rush of it all to just let her body go, like some ragdoll, and she refused, never let herself experience the ultimate high of not being in control.
I saw a girl two rows in front of us go down, never saw her resurface, and started pushing back. Court had alarm sweating from all parts of her face. "I'm pushing out," I yelled at her, smiling, trying to reassure her in anyway I could. I wanted desperately to stay where we were, but would never forgive myself if she fell, got trampled beneath the wave. It took several minutes as I gently moved our way out, broke free and nearly fell, catching myself and laughing. The rush was almost too much, filling me, wanting to tear, erupt, explode through my fingers, eyes, lips. Court looked thoroughly freaked out. "Are you okay?" she asked, and I smiled from ear to ear, nodded, decided not to embarrass her by asking the same thing. We danced out most of the set, and I watched Alice Glass intensely for a few moments, the stage flashing white, then dark, then red. Alice grabbed a strobe, danced and raved with it across the stage as the massive crowd screamed and moved to her splitting cries, her vocal fractures of bent, ethereal light. I felt Courtney's hand soft beside me, pulling me gently. I turned and saw her, saw only his hand around her, couldn't really see the boy, but smiled away from her, glad.
I felt selfish in that moment, knowing she was about to give her night away to some cheap feeling of lust. It was the reason I had to so sweetly sit Andy down and tell him I didn't want him to go with me. "I know we'd have fun..." I said, my eyelashes petting my cheeks as I looked down into my hands, "but... I want this to be about me. I want to really experience this, instead of being distracted by other things. I'm sorry." He had understood completely, and I loved him for it. Still, as Courtney moved against the boy I sprouted joy, loving that I wouldn't have to worry about her any longer, could move away, be alone completely with this moment. I moved stronger, bravery slipping into me, the sort that always finds me at these types of shows when I have only myself to impress, to entertain, to fuel. I could feel my mouth grow dry, knew I was in danger of being one of those idiots I told Courtney about, but couldn't imagine leaving this for a fucking bottle of water. I moved harder, faster, the music breaking me in ways I have never rendered, burned me away and then blew away my ashes to bore something new.
In a moment. I felt it. A pause. I reached up into the sky and felt the stars around me. This was it. I was new.
-----
"Can we stay?" she asked, completely involved with this boy. I didn't mind, knew the feeling, knew how little this happened for her. Still, I was saddened, knew she missed most of the show rubbing up against him. I nodded, told her I just had to find some water. The boy led the way, and they chatted awkwardly. She bought my water and the three of us moved to the left side of the orange stage, waiting for Of Montreal. "Wanna smoke?" he asked, and Court turned to me eagerly for approval. I shrugged, "Sure." We puffed out of his tiny one hitter for a few rounds as Of Montreal came on stage, the lights up, all of them in funky costumes, pink and winged, bright blue like a pilot or some sailor from Funky Town. A screen of lights and color and pretty techno images flashed behind them. There were streamers and dancers, men in red alien-type costumes blowing huge mounds of smoke from inside them, out. Gimmick after gimmick as the band would pick up, fall apart. The sound guys seemed confused, tried to recover for them. It would all run together as a disaster, then someone would find it, the rest would catch on, and it would be okay again for a while.
We smoked another bowl of mine, finished out the set. Court wanted to stay, but I couldn't any longer. "We still have to get to Jacqui's," I said, feeling like a bitch, but not really caring. I spoke low so he couldn't hear me, told her, "I'm the one who still has to drive back to Copperas Cove so we can change out of these muddy clothes, to Jacqui's in San Marcos, then back to Copperas Cove afterwards." She nodded, knowing we were both remembering that she refused to drive behind me with her car to Jacqui's so we could just crash there, how she was completely putting the work of the night on my shoulders by making me drive the entire time. "If he wants to follow us, that's cool," I said, "but we still have a lot more of this night to go." She nodded, and he followed us out, said goodbye to her at the street. I rolled my eyes at them both, like puppies. "Aren't you going to exchange numbers or something?" I sighed, obviously annoyed. And they did.
Back to my sister's to change, as we hadn't expected all the mud. I lost my extra tabs and coke somewhere between my sister's and the car, was pissed for about an hour until I let it go, wouldn't let it ruin my night. I called my sister, let her know, and was satisfied enough that she said she'd look for it. We arrived at Jacqui's in pj's, sucked down water and passed my pipe around, cracked off glow sticks in all different colors. I unwrapped a blow pop, stuck it in my mouth and bobbed my head, Crystal Castles still dancing around in there. The three of us decided on a play list, cut the lights, and let the fun begin as Jacqui danced across her living room like a professional raver, covered in different colored bracelets, dancing to Britney's 3, MSI, some techno mix of Lady Gaga that shot shivers down my spine. Courtney and I watched in awe, tripping out, clapping at the performance, even dancing ourselves toward the end.
Back toward Copperas Cove, Court fell asleep as I drove through the morning. I could feel the break in me still, the pieces of something rattling around inside my torso. I felt different, changed, though I was unsure how just yet. It would take me days to discover, decide. We didn't arrive home until the sun began to rise behind us. Crashing into bed, my body only let me sleep for a few hours, three. I laid beneath the sheets warm and lovely, still contemplating, still wondering what had happened to me, what this was exactly.
-----
We dressed. Courtney was hungry, amazingly. "I usually can't eat for at least twenty four hours after," I told her, shrugging, watching video from the night before on my laptop. "'Elle... that was the best night of my life," she said so seriously, solemn in every word. I stopped what I was doing, looked in her eyes. "Me too, Court. Me too." And it wasn't the drugs, wasn't the exstacy that made us, because Jacqui called later to make sure we got home safe, told me exactly the same thing. "Last night was the first time I've been so happy in such a long while." I told her I knew exactly how she felt, as if we had been renewed somehow in that night, that morning.
Driving home alone to Houston I kept running the night through my head, pushing my player from Crystal Castles to Deadmau5 and on. I smoked a small bowl, watched the night fall over my car, the road ahead. Something was different in this music, in these people. They made me feel alive. I kept remembering that moment when my arms and hands reaching for the sky, attaining it. And suddenly, I couldn't stop myself from crying. The tears flooded over me as I realized it was over, I was headed back into the real world now. Yet that seemed backwards, that my job and class and the monotony was real. No, this felt real, that night felt real, as if I breached some wall and fell completely into the actual reality, a place where you feel and come alive.
-----
"How was the show?"
"Life affirming."
I told Samson I had cried, that I felt a sort of mourning walking away from that place. "It was as if nothing could be home again." He smiled into his bottle of red wine, sighed, "You're a burner." He said it as fact, as if there were no other definition of what I could be. I remembered how he had spoken of Burning Man only a few short months after he had returned home from the desert. "I had understood what you mean. I understood, but I didn't really know what you meant until now. It's so strong... the pull. But as if you're not really being pulled to a place, more to... I don't know... a feeling. A state of being." He nodded, ranted more and more about that week the more inebriated he became. I decided then I needed more, and I would have it.
-----
I didn't expect to find anything, searched the listings carefully, and wasn't disappointed when I came up empty; it's exactly as I thought it would happen. Still, I warily typed in the search bar, just in case: techno. And then, there he was.
David, from my area almost exactly, looking for a writing partner, or even just a vocalist to record over some of his tracks. I sent him an e-mail, anxiously awaiting, skipped down to the living room, danced and spun some poi slow sticks to Reckless in the dark after smoking a joint. Checked my e-mail a few hours later, a response, and he says he's very interested, thinks perhaps I am the reason he posted in the first place. He sends me his myspace, some tracks, some I love, some I hate, offers next week for a time we can get together. I agree, we exchange some words about Deadmau5, Crystal Castles, Justice.
It was so, so easy. As if he were there, waiting for me.
-----
School. Could hardly concentrate. Sat on the couch in a back room staring out the window. Jacob was concerned, talked to me about grades, about the lab I never turned in. I nodded, absent. He tried to ask how I was. I can't remember if I responded. He disappeared into another room, emerged, threw some tiny fruit my way. I asked what it was, he told me, then disappeared. Tore away its skin, ate all that was inside.
-----
Class was at Riverpointe on Wednesday. I met Frank at his apartment before hand so we could smoke, carpool. "What the hell was wrong with you yesterday?" he laughed. I shrugged. "I'm not sure what people mean... all day everyone looked at me as if something was wrong. Joe, Adam, Jacob... they all asked me. Like they were concerned. I guess I had a lot of my mind, a lot from this weekend." Frank nodded, smiled, amused. "What were you on?" For the first time I was offended at the accusation, promised him I wasn't on anything. "You looked strung out," he laughed, then became serious, pondering. "Actually... 'Elle... to be honest. You looked as if you'd lost your soul."
"Maybe I did."
In some way.
-----
In all the days to follow I felt alive, as if the core of me was strong once again like I haven't felt in years. I felt confident, surges of happiness exploding through me. And yet it wasn't a sort of faux happiness, fake change, because there was a nervous, almost depressing side to it too, not exactly doubt, but maybe fear, maybe reluctance to change. You see, the feeling had both sides, good and bad. It was balanced, solid, and so I knew it was real.
I can't describe how these past few days have been... how I've woken up and jumped out of bed some days, and some days stayed curled up. I've danced and laughed and screamed at the top of my lungs for no reason except I felt good. Sat on a couch and wrote five new songs worth of lyrics, pulled out ideas for two more. Felt freed, as if I could be exactly who I wanted now in this music, this scene, this place. Rock and metal had taken from me, made me work to be someone I wasn't really sure I was, but wanted to be. But this, all this, feels as if it's exactly who I am already.
I'm alive. I'M FUCKING ALIVE.
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| Heaven Should Interfere |
[10 Nov 2009|06:59pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 anxious |
] |
| [ |
music |
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"Courtship Dating" by Crystal Castles |
] |
I can't even explain it right now, have too much of this adrenaline pumping through me.
But I keep checking my e-mail, hoping it might come. Maybe. And hoping I might find my fate sealed in some little electronic envelope. So fitting.
Right now, I will turn out all the lights, smoke a bowl, crack some rave sticks, and dance so hard all over the darkened house to Crystal Castles / You Love Her Coz She's Dead / Does It Offend You, Yeah? / Dead Mau5 / Justice / Ladytron / etc.
And will write about everything that happened later.
Because everything has changed in me.
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| Bore Me As A Miscarried Child |
[06 Nov 2009|04:16pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
confused |
] |
| [ |
music |
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"Stillborn" by Asylee |
] |
I thought I'd be getting drinks with Adam and his wife at Olde City Pub, waited a while for the text that never came. He did only say maybe, and so I drove to Samson's, parked on the side of the curb, two fat lines that tasted so much like battery acid I could hardly stand it. The taste didn't typically bother me, since the rush was almost immediate. I kept waiting for it to come, that little soft pick me up that flew so fast. Never came.
We smoked over coffee, bought Pop Rocks, Blow Pops that I unwrapped immediately and sucked down to the cardboard. "You really are a candy kid," he laughed. We laid in his bed, half watching The Big Lebowski. Slipped his hand up my skirt, around my waist. Breathed heavy in as his face burrowed into my neck, the valley of my chest, my torso naked and open. He removed my cardigan, my shirt. I pulled off his t-shirt. He removed my boots, his belt, my bra, his pants. Left in only black sequenced thigh highs and soft pleated skirt, he fingered the lace and chiffon. "Leave these on," he demanded, voice deep and hushed, like the dark room holding us. My hands traced the tattoos on ither sides of his arms, dropped to his thigh, traced that star over and over and over as he tore into my flesh, slipped his fingers through my hair, down the small of my back, across my ass, between my legs.
I lost myself in him, the sharp curve of his jaw, his strong broad shoulders, his hair pulled back into a knotted bun. He was some Viking, some warrior; mine. Tattooed with tribal power, moving his strong, sure fingers across my body as if signing all my hopes. And then he was inside me, warm and filling and holding my neck against the wall. Then on my knees, his hands played with my hair as my tongue circled all around him, my mouth warm and wet as he met my eyes, tried to breathe steady. Stopped, pulled me on top of him. Choked him out, watched his eyes roll back as he breathed out, harsh and weighted as I moved on top of him, all the pleasure of watching him burning behind my eyes. Pushed me off of him, held me down, came all over my chest, my abs, my collar bones. Licked it off with his firm, eager tongue.
Two hours. Came two, three, four times each.
We laid in the dark, breathing out I love you's. The theology of Hey Arnold! German. Coffee. Drugs. Miscarriages.
It's in the dark I remember. Third grade. In the shower. Wasn't really sure what it was, what it meant. Still don't.
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| Now I Want To Come Again And Stay |
[05 Nov 2009|03:01pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 busy |
] |
| [ |
music |
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"I'm Going Home" from The Rock Horror Picture Show |
] |
Friday night. Rocky Horror. We drive down 45, and I try not to cry. It sucks, I think, to be in such close proximity to someone who has broken your heart. And he didn't even know it. His words are still breaking against my insides, their pieces scarring out my soul. I miss your presence. Why couldn't he tell me he loved me? Perhaps I had dodged a bullet, perhaps this was all there was for us: plays and pros and all the pretty words. But nothing else at all.
We walk across campus. He lights my cigarette, has one of his own. "I like your jacket," he says. "You mean my hooker coat?" It's loud cranberry-magenta fur, huge and swallowing me. It's something I imagine a prostitute was blown away in, found it at a resale store for thirteen bucks, loved the idea of death inside it, now hung on my shoulders.
Buy tickets. The show is outstanding. Riff-Raff is the best there is, and I'm wetting my lips at his slick, broken movements, the timbre of his silky edged voice. Boys in corsetry and thigh highs, tits and ass in every scene. I wonder how much sex goes on backstage.
Intermission. I walk outside alone, stand on a bench below a lamp light, light up. A few minutes later he's beside me, on the ground. I light his cigarette, and he pulls me close, kisses me. I die a little inside. "You know I like going with you to things like this..." he says, uncomfortably. I shake my head. "You don't know that?... Well, I do." Tongue and lips and smoke, the taste of his stale gum, the soft light above us. I fall in and out of love so many times.
The show ends. We walk back to his car, humming I'm Going Home. He takes my hand in his. He's never done this. And I fall into him completely.
-----
After Rocky Horror. Courtney picks me up. It's after midnight. We pull around the bend, see Kyle swaying drunkenly in mustache and tool belt. I wear no shoes, just feathers and lace and faux fur. We drink loudly until I walk quietly to the bathroom and throw up; I haven't eaten all day. I feel empty. I feel good. Courtney is too loud and she's becoming that girl, that obnoxiously loud drunk who needs the attention in the corner of the room. And so I save her from herself, annoyed now that I have to drive her fucking car home. She rambles on drunkenly about Kyle and his wife. "Just fuck 'em both," I say, pulling over to the side of the road, throwing her the keys. "Don't kill yourself on the way home." Walk a few blocks over with a bag on my shoulder, smoking from my pipe, bare foot, all the cold, all the frost, all the pretty smoke furling from my lungs. I am stoned. Walk to Samson's door.
-----
Jacqui's late, and I'm glad, pushing myself from Samson's bed. The windows are open, and I'm still dressed stupid from the night before. He's being quiet, being weird. I'm sitting against the wall on his bed, texting Jacqui, about to leave. He crawls up to me, tucks his hand at my cheek, behind my hair. "Don't get mad at me," he says, my eyes burrowing forward. I'm not sure whether to be annoyed or alarmed. He kisses me soft, whispers it low. "But I think I'm falling in love with you."
"I know... But don't you dare take it back."
-----
Jeans and a soft cotton tank top, some head band I wore to a rave. I meet Jacqui at her house, and we drive away to the Renaissance Festival, smoking, getting so comfortably high as we go. The day is more about pina coladas and pot than anything, tearing through the harsh branches to squat and smoke as the clueless pass us by. We can't stop pushing our faces into our hands, trying to prevent our erupting laughter.
Around seven thirty we drop molly. I'm nervous, and so is she. "This shit better work," she laughs, and it does, it really does. We drive to the carnival, watch the lights dance to the beat of the music-- MSI, Britney Spears' 3. Courtney arrives with more dro and I load it all, passing it around, plug up my iPod. I show Jacqui Alice Practice and You Love Her Coz She's Dead; she's thrilled, like I knew she would be. Courtney hands me a little white pill, rectangle, some numbers, asks what it is. "Xanax," I tell her. The lights on the carnival keep blacking away, the rides stuck, people freaked out and chilly at the top of the ferris wheel. We watch in silence, Alice Glass pumping hard from the car speakers. A dark grey puff of smoke rises out behind the fun house, and the lights go up. We cheer incredibly.
This happens five times before we break from the car, survey the rides, decide what we all want to go on. We try to buy tickets, and the woman tells us she can't sell anymore, they're trying to shut down. Courtney goes home. Jacqui and I drive back to the Renaissance Festival camp ground, watch for the bon fire. She dances with one of the rave sticks I bought, and I watch thoughtfully, lost in all this music, all that light.
She rambles on about ALT.com, about her new guy, the way they met: she had written instructions, to walk into the room, get on all fours, and put her head to the ground. She couldn't even see his face before he fucked her senseless. "'Elle... you can say no. And, of course, we could talk about it first. There could be a lot of talking, about concerns and questions and everything. There could be rules... whatever you wanted. But... would you be our third?"
Popped Valium and codeine and Zofran, some downers from my uppers. Sleep disjointed, her soft bed, the way the sun didn't rise but just appeared without my noticing. Jacqui awakes beside me, smiles. We get coffee. We get dressed, in feathers and lace and faux fur. Back to Ren Fest and the day is about shopping and booze, because we've run completely out of drugs. I buy a leather whip and something for Samson, wear curled rave sticks around my wrists, eat mushrooms on a stick. We sit in the back row and watch a show, becom those loud cheering drunks. A British boy sitting next to me smiles, nods toward my cup, says something about poison, not unkindly.
The sun sets and I'm playing the wooden flute I bought as Jacqui chops away at pork on a stick that looks more like road kill, flattened by the heel of a boot. Some Renaissance band, violins and wooden drums and acoustic guitars, they begin to play a soft cover of Kashmir and I melt away, so happy, so drunk, so in love with the sky and the clouds and this weekend, pulling me into bliss.
-----
I wrap the button in stock paper, write the lyrics to Tiamat's Wings of Heaven, Mortiis lyrics, Emperor, Peccatum's Veils of Blue and Black Star. I write them scribbled and pretty all on top of one another, running from all corners, until you can read nothing except Danny Filth's words: racing Heaven out of reach, bold and clear and the only legible thing in all the lovely mess of words. They're from Cradle of Filth's Amor E Morte, the first song on the first CD Samson ever burned me. I was fifteen, sitting next to him in German class.
He unwrapped the button in the dark, read it by the light of my glow stick bracelet, and laughed incredibly. Thanked me. Kissed me. Fucked me wet 'til dry.
-----
Our heavy breath. Skin to skin. "Don't be mad," I tell him as he thrusts into me hard. "But... I love you... too." A reaction, physical, as he grabs me hard, all my hair, our lips, hands, his teeth. His arms, strong, holding me down. "Just don't take it back."
-----
Therapy. Coke. Class. Work.
Mechanical Boy. Running sound for the side stage alone as everyone else is huddled at the front of house board. Jacob tells me I did a good job. "Really?" He nods. "They didn't feedback once." Beaming with absolute pride.
Coke. Work. Class. Coke. Church. KC's words burned into me every time I bend over, plug one nostril, inhale. I'd say coke is your drug of choice. Didn't believe her, thought for sure X would be my surest downfall. After all, I was a candy kid, that chick you see on Saturday nights, lost in a fit of molly and colors and beads and lights, thinking everything is soft and wanting everybody's skin all over.
Viola. Joe. Waiting on seven tabs and a forty of dro. Probably by Friday. Jacqui. "Did you think about my question?" Yes. Yes, I did. Reading student sonnets with Samson in my pj's. He watches me reading. I love him. I love him, I love him. "I like you," I say. "I think we're a little past like," he says.
Leaving to go home. Work in the morning. "I love you," he says. And I can't say it back.
|
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| Racing Heaven Out of Focus |
[01 Nov 2009|08:02pm] |
| [ |
music |
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"Amor E Morte" by Cradle of Filth |
] |
He told me. He loves me.
♥
|
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| Horror At The Holes in Your Arms |
[28 Oct 2009|07:52pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 rejected |
] |
| [ |
music |
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"Grime Crime" by Samson |
] |
"I owe you a story," he said, and so I slipped quietly out the front door to the night. I smoked half a bowl on the way, opening the moon roof in my car and staring up at the haze and the stars and into the infinite. Two streets before his house I paused at a stop sign to finish off the green, let it shake my thoughts about as white flecks of a snow globe.
He met me in the drive, walked me to his bedroom where I crashed beneath the sheets. He talked in riddled conversation and I giggled at his open thoughts, accused him of being stoned. He laughed and held me close and kissed me as we laid there, watching the naked bulb and the fan blades sketch shadows across the walls.
"So... this story," he said, and I could feel the nerves pressing down on him, the way his eyes focused so internally. This wouldn't be some anecdote, just another narrative to pass the time between us as we took each other in. He was going to tell me what it all meant, what he really said beneath his words, those pretty words that reached me beside his hands and his eyes and his cheek: I miss this. The feeling slowly split, leaked hard and fast into my brain before I could realize what I had let infect me: hope.
I laid still, thirsty for his words, for some admission I never thought would come, until now. "I kissed this girl once," he said, staring off into the ceiling, some other world, that memory we shared. The knot in my gut tightened, and I dared not breathe lest this moment pass me by in my exhale. Hungry for it, I could not look at him, could only think of what this was going to mean to me, to him, to both of us...
Then, suddenly... was Eveline. Turned back. Felt my heart turn away from him in such terror because, my god, he's going to tell me he loves me...
I never should have hoped for him.
Stared blankly at the wall, frozen as his words flattened over me, shattering everything I had let myself to want, to wonder. Could barely hear him at all.
I kissed this girl...
Freudian slip... except... not
I don't believe in...
I realized: I miss her presence.
Laid still, some corpse, some cold parted lips. Could not feel, could hardly breathe.
Had let myself hope.
I was stone. Stoned. "Are you okay?"
"There's an elephant on the ceiling." His hat, his circus, his droopy trunk. "There's an elephant in the room? Tell me what it is..." Tried to shake my head, but couldn't muster, could hardly form the letters, their sound wrapped around my tongue. "No..." sounded more like breath, "on the ceiling..."
|
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| Veils of Blue |
[27 Oct 2009|09:44pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
confused |
] |
| [ |
music |
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"Veils of Blue" by Peccatum |
] |
I sat in the front corner desk, listening to Jacob lecture on proximity effect, pre and post production touring. Scribbled delicately in my notebook, smooth thin blue lines that meant nothing at all. I felt like that blue, deep and cool and breathing so faintly above all the noise, all the room's words and motion. I bit down, the saliva trapped beneath the skin of my lip, broke open and could taste him there. Guinness and Camels.
-----
I walked through the icy rain with my hood pulled over my newly dyed black hair, huddled into myself, hugging my sides. Could hear the racket inside Molly's Pub, faint laughter, some singing Purple Rain. Lit low, strings of orange twinkle lights. He sat in a nook, drinking Guinness, smoking. I said hello, sat across from him, a smile coiling at the side of my mouth. "You're a smoker now?" I asked, and he let his face wrinkle up in disdain. "I've always been a smoker," Samson spat, as if this explained things. I stared at the rain through the open pub door as he told me about his week, his classes. He saw a film with his creative writing class, The Night Fernando Pessoa Met Constantine Cavafy, and I listened half interested, inhaling, staring into my Shiner until I realized who he was talking about. "Wait... who? Pessoa? Fernando Pessoa?" He nodded curiously. "I've read The Book of--" "--Book of Disquiet!" he said, finishing my sentence. He smiled at me now eagerly, impressed, though he'd never mean to show it. "I asked you about him months ago," I said, flicking bits of ash into the tray, "and you looked at me as if I was daft, had no clue who I was talking about. He's brilliant. He's a writer for writers, really, though some of the entries I could have done without..." He nodded along, telling me that, "everything was writen from a dream state," using his hands to mold the words.
I watched those hands, the way he'd lead one to his lips, breathe in deep, exhale with such commitment. I wanted to be a breath on those lips, a word, a flick of his strong tongue. Yet there was a disinterest in me that I hadn't known from him in so long, an Atlantic brush of his shoulder, the knowledge that as I spoke, I was telling him nothing real, because I couldn't bear to give myself away to him. And so I spoke of school, and work, and Buzz Fest, the manipulation of the sound across the great pavilion. I made comment of the last night we had seen one another, Where The Wild Things Are, remembered silently his soft words a faint flutter of a sigh against my cheek. I miss this. He broke through my silent thoughts. "You were really high that night." I was instantly ashamed, "No... I mean, not really." He shook his head, "You were. You talked a mile a minute." I recalled the moment in the car as I rambled on manically about nothing, laughed and heard his curious voice, asking me. "Are you stoned?" I thought he had been making fun of me, never realized it was an admission of conviction. "I'm sorry," I told him, eyelashes folded down toward the bottom of my drink. "It's okay." But I knew it wasn't really.
He talked about Goodbye Lennin, all the passion in his voice leaking out over the table, spilling all over me. I smiled back at him, noticing the soft change in him, how stable he seemed, how sure, when he was never really sure at all before. He was solid in his words, carrying the conversation since I could not, could not bear to lay so flat and grey in front of him now. "My mother turned to me the other day with a tear in her eye and told me she experienced two firsts this month. She bought her daughter her first wedding dress, and her son his first suit." I smiled at this, wanting myself to cry, thinking of that suit, how I had originally been so disgusted at the idea, that he had given so much thought, taken so much care of our opera plans, what he would wear. I realized then that my original repulsion at the gesture grew from this withered, starving place inside of me that wasn't yet used to be taken care of, thought of in any real way. After all, look at where I had come from, how I was used to being taken care of...
Three pints later he was making reference to my skin, my ass. "You have a great ass," he slurred, smiling down into the dark and the foam, told me the story of the first time he saw me walk down the fine arts hall from our German class, turned to his friend, told him, "She's fucking hot." How his friend said he should go after me, and Samson shook his head. So many years ago. And here we sat now, strangers almost, needing booze to break us of our silences. How strange it was, how close we could arrive to one another, just to fall back into the polite social graces of acquaintances only days later. We didn't belong to one another, and so we kept coming back here, resting at the site of some elegant, cordial guise. As if I had never had his cock shoved full and pulsing into the back of my throat.
We drove back to his house. I walked bare foot through the street after him, the cold and the rain sticking to my toes. Fell into his bed, curled up, closed my eyes and told him, "You realize I'm not going to make it through this movie? I'll be asleep in twenty minutes." He folded around me, the walls of our civil social mirage melting away. Our arms wrapped around each other, our legs intertwined, the side his face laid and pressed against mine. He kissed my neck, kissed my lips, and all pretense slipped away. I spoke words between each kiss, smiling widely. "You smell of Guinness and Camels," fell into some heavenly place as he smiled back at me, let myself be carried oh so far away.
My tongue sweeping across his lip, his teeth barred into the soft gauze of my neck, his hands on the small of my back, pressed to my skin, against my rib cage, my hip bone, the inner of my thigh. Felt my back arch as he laid his mouth against my collar bone, stripped me bare, pulled me around him, on top of him. My teeth across his neck, his strong shoulders, my lips soft in the place behind his ear as he wrapped his hands through my hair, around the back of my neck, kissing me so hard I couldn't breathe, never wanted to again.
And in the dark I was brave, kissed him as if all love could break free and he'd never know it at all. "What did you mean when you said 'I miss this,'" I whispered between deep, all encompassing kisses, his hands searching me, my mouth finding all of him. The air in the room grew heavy around us. "What do you think?" he muttered, as if I should know, as if the answer was so obvious I'd never need to hear it against my ears some night in the dark. I pressed my tongue to his lip, pulling my teeth softly across the crest of his mouth. "I don't know," I breathed, desperate. But he refused to tell me, "not now," he said. I recoiled. "I'm not used to not getting what I want," the venom in my voice, a threatening bite to the words.
-----
We laid bare in the dark, motionless except for the raging thoughts of two writers, his hand brushing over my side, my stomach. "Tell me a story," I sighed. And he did, some memory of his childhood, acting out the story of a firefighter he had seen on TV with action figures, becoming so obsessively involved that he hadn't realized his mom and dad were watching the entire time. I giggled in the dark, and he pulled me closer, kissing the top of my head. "Chris has a new girl friend," I told him, resting my cheek against his shoulder, folding into him, "and he said he hasn't kissed her yet... that he only once kissed her on the forehead. I told him the last time a guy did that to me I punched him in the arm I was so pissed." We both laughed, remembering the sun rising over the bend, the soft lapping of the creek, both of us so young, and his first kiss pressed to my forehead. "I was a nervous wreck," he said, sighing. "I know... I've forgiven you for not kissing me then."
My fingers swayed and danced across his chest. It was my turn for a story, and I searched my memory. I couldn't help but think of Matt, and began to tell the memoir of that night, that house, that dress. "I was dressed in white, I think," I struggled for the vision. "We were at a friend of a friend of a friend's. A theme party. Everyone was dressed like French painters, bohemian invalids. I threw up in the bush outside as Katie watched, horrified. She was always so horrified..." I paused, lost in the scene. "I kept telling her, 'Alcoholic has such a negative connotation to it. It's not fair.'" A small breath of laughter left him, and I could feel his entire body smile. "I was bare foot, remember the carpet beneath my feet like some heavenly host come to bore me, take me. I walked up and down those stairs five, six times." I could hear his smile in the dark, "OCD?" I laughed. "Yeah, I suppose it was... I tripped. Knocked a glass out of someone's hands, some porcelain thing. It broke, stained the floor. But Matt caught me. And I was so calm, faded past all of them." He rubbed his fingers through my hair, delicately across my scalp and I let out a soft moan. "I'm cold," I whispered, and pulled the blanket from our feet, wrapping it around me, him. We snuggled against one another, warm as the breeze beat against the open windows.
"Mmm... so you faded?" he whispered, and I nodded. "I walked into the kitchen. I remember the tiles on the walls... the color. I loved all the colors... there were... beer bottles in the sink...," I said, reaching for words, stumbling over some, suddenly aware that I was speaking in prose to a lit major, falling all over myself. "I cut my foot, on broken glass... my hair was in these loose braids, and I felt like dancing. So I did. I danced, all alone in the kitchen. And then Matt was there, beside me, always beside me, dancing too..." I fell silent. "And then I passed out." Samson cradled me. "Matt gets it." And I loved him, loved him completely for saying that, for understanding. "Yeah... he always did."
I apologized then, for telling a story about nothing, and he shook his head in protest. "You say more than you realize," he told me, then lifted his head, looking down at my fingers on his chest. "What are you playing?" I hadn't realized I was doing it, never did, was always fingering some tune across the surface of a desk, my jeans, the cool ivory of a piano. "Nothing," I said, flustered, embarrassed. It was what I always said, that I was playing nothing, that I was nothing. But then, I felt like something, and so I swallowed my breath, told him. "It um... it goes like... C#m, E, G#m, E," I said, my words gentle, my fingers playing his chest like a baby grand as I spoke, all of it a lullaby. "It does that, several times. Then C#m, G#m, A, E. Then the chorus. F#m, E. Three times. The verse again, then the bridge... F#m, C#m, G#m, F#m. Then B. To A... which was a big fucking deal," I smiled, laughed, and he laughed along with me. "It took me a really long time to figure out the B to A. Almost ruined it with A to E. But I saved it." We laid in silence, and I smiled in my secret, that I had just played Samson's Sunrise across his heart.
He reached his hand between my legs again, his warm breath mixing with the taste of my own, all of it a dance, a play of our emotions. "Isn't it funny," he spoke softly to my ear, "that with who we are, the times we've done this, we've been sober?" It was true. We were always ingesting, always snorting, smoking, giving into our loves and our vices. Yet we always gave into each other stone sober, empty. "Tell me what you meant," I pleaded, wanting so badly to know, his voice echoing against my chest, my heart, torturing. I miss this. And still he shook his head, so I laid my teeth against his neck, ravaging. The sharp inhale of breath, and he cringed beneath me. "Not on my neck," he said, and I laughed wickedly then. "What? Afraid your girl friend might see?"
Annoyed, I reached for my shirt, padded in the dark to his closet, reached for a pair of boxers, walked to the bathroom and locked the door. I dressed quickly, pulling the black strapless shirt over me, baggy across my torso. The boxers were huge, had to be rolled over and over just to fit at all. I looked at myself in the mirror, a mess of black hair framing ivory skin, the darkened blue plaid shorts with their thin line of cranberry bringing out the blue in my eyes, the cherry of my lips. I opened the door, reaching for a cigarette. "You..." he said, couldn't finish the sentence, but pulled me to the bed instead, holding me so close. The clock read four. He'd have to be up in three hours for class. "I should go," I murmured. "I don't want you to go."
And so I stayed all night, woke to the frost on the window pane. The entire world pale and painted in grey. "It's Autumn," he said as we searched the sky, all of it changing over night.
|
|
| Much Like Suffocating |
[25 Oct 2009|03:06pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
stressed |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
"Send The Pain Below" by Chevelle |
] |
Strained. Is all.
I've lost my camera.
And still, I have no idea where to start here, what has happened. Four days feels like a lifetime in my hands and to lay it flat and sort through its pieces is daunting.
The kid from the front desk, the one with the girl friend. He told me they broke up, as we sat in the Media Tech booth at Buzz Fest yesterday, sipping Red Stripe and vodka. I don't know... It was an awkward, lovely day/night.
I've been reading your entries between breaks at work. I'm sorry for the no comments. I'll be back soon... Life is just... coming at me so fast.
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|
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[21 Oct 2009|12:03am] |
|
I think perhaps I have had my stroke of inspiration, and have figured out my costume for Ren Fest. Ballet influenced. And black with a very small amount of red, like I typically avoid. But I think it might be okay this time... ♥
|
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| Trail of Blood and Amens |
[19 Oct 2009|12:25am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 jealous |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
"Wampum Prayer" by Tori Amos |
] |
My Morning Star,
You stepped from the wisps of these thin clouds I hadn't noticed above my head, spoke like Gabriel and told me, Do not fear. And so I let all fear melt away. I sang for you like the little lark you saw in me, built my songs around you and drank up all your praise, from your palm, a flesh nest I swore you would keep open forever. We had the same soul I thought, split in two and sewn into the cores of us, all our lives calling for its other side.
You believed in love like I could not, and so I thought perhaps you were love. Thought perhaps, yes, you are God, and you love us all the same, as God loves His creations, from the lamb to the lion to the little lark, that sings. I didn't know then that you were God. I thought it was only me that you loved.
You will not know these words are yours.
I will never want God because He is not something I can have all to my own, selfishly. I'm sorry. I want to be loved lonely.
'Elle
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| It Doesn't Matter How Hard You Hold |
[18 Oct 2009|10:20pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 guilty |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
"Everyone Leaves" by Mortiis |
] |
Friday afternoon he called. I sat staring at my phone, weighing. I didn't want to go, didn't want to pull myself from the couch and my blanket and Elizabeth Bishop's pretty words whispering into the ears of my heart. But I told him I would, made the date months ago as we passed the film poster along the walls of the theatre. "It's coming out in October," he told me as I drooled at the idea. "We have to go see it," I breathed, staring up at those golden gods, those furry monsters of my childhood. Yes, I had to see Where The Wild Things Are. I just had to. And so, I picked up the phone.
We drove to the Movie Tavern, waited in line next to corny Halloween decorations, cotton spider webs and plastic singing Frankensteins. Samson had ordered the tickets ahead of time. It didn't hit me until we were almost to the front of the line. "Wait-- you already paid for the tickets?" He nodded, and I frowned, feeling all the lines of my face solidify, make me ugly. I hated this, the implication of a date, any pretense of a relationship with him. I had been here, done this. I didn't want to do it again.
We sat in the back of the theatre drinking Shiner on tap. He poured my glass, and I sipped as I watched Max in long whiskers paw across the sand and the dirt and the snow. He laid in bed, let a tiny toy sailboat float over a sea of blue cotton sheets, ran from home, disappeared to a world beyond. I expected a dream sequence, some bridge from real life to this imaginary one, yet it never came. I smiled, loving that the audience got to feel that this was real too, didn't have to watch some little boy pretend, but that we were pulled along into his skewed reality. The movie was enchanting, lovely in all the best ways that made you feel and long and hate the world just as much as you could love it from one moment to the next. I could feel parts of me long cold break open again, like the faint crack of a glow stick alit in so many darkened, beating places. Oh, how I glowed.
Samson paid the tab at the end before I could slip my card to the waiter. I crossed my arms, pouting. "What's wrong with me paying?" he asked then, and I wanted to tell him, wanted to explain. Yet I could hear the words coming out of my mouth, sad and awkward, telling him, "You've paid for more of my drinks and meals and movies and ventures in the past few months than Mike did in probably one of the years we were dating." But admitting that would have made me feel pathetic in the worst of ways, and so I shut my mouth, sighed relief when he told me his mother insisted on paying for the night, wanted us to have a good time on her.
He drove me back to my car afterwards, and I climbed in, told him goodnight. "Get out," he said, kindly, almost pleading. I stared up at him, curious brow. "Just get out." And so I did, felt his hand slip to the small of my back, the other hand so tenderly placed on my cheek, cradling me so soft before he kissed me. It was all the words he could never say, the things he should never tell me because I'd run so far and fast away from this. It was hard to breathe, the smell of beer and October and the icy wind, his lips pressed lovingly to my own, over and over again. And those words I never thought I'd hear, caught and shoved my breath to the back of me, his soft voice breaking my skin, my bones, my heart. "I miss this." I had no return of affection, no words that would match his own, and so I kissed him back, kissed him and pulled away after a few moments. Told him goodnight, drove away.
I could feel the beer clouding my senses, wanted to text him, wanted to scream at him, say, "Fuck you. You weren't supposed to fall in love with me. That was the deal. That's why we work. That's the only fucking way we work." It was true, that all the emotions between the two of us were too much to contain, too rapid and irresponsible, like the most unpredictable wrecking ball. We would destroy entire cities, us together again. I felt very little except irritation, a pit of affliction.
I called Courtney as I sped toward her house, that little yellow doll house in the woods somewhere. "Wanna smoke?" We walked around the darkened neighborhood, passing O'Ryan between us, the soft air chilling our pale skin, the moon nowhere in sight. We stepped through the woods, climbed through branches and leaves, long piles of twigs and fallen trunks, giggling, unable to see even feet in front of ourselves as we lit up, inhaled, passed. A branch smacked me in the face, I tripped over a vine. "Courtney," I laughed, "I love adventures... I love going on adventures. I love you." I felt like me again, all the familiar tastes of Autumn flooding over me, leading me back to years of nights just like this, wandering through the woods, high and terrified of loving someone, and not loving someone.
"Samson's in love with me," I told her. She wrinkled her nose at me. "Duh. We knew that." I shook my head in protest, loading another bowl as we cleared the woods, walked now in the darkened street again. "No, he's like... different. Different in love with me..." She didn't understand, and I couldn't explain it, tell her what it was to have someone take you away and give you your most favorite parts of the world. He whisked me away to the Menil Collection, sat and watched my face as I cocked my head to the side, taking in a Marlene Dumas painting, Snow White naked and pale on a table in front of seven little men. Something he knew I'd love. Just as I loved Night of the Giant, just as I loved Mortiis, and SDC, and Eveline, and Let The Right One In. All the things he gave me.
We sipped wine across from one another in softly lit Italian restaurants, discussing Virginia Woolf as he smiled, caught me giving into one of my OCD episodes. "I still have them," I explained, blushing, "I just... handle it better. Give myself away to them silently." No one else ever noticed. He bought me copies of both A Room of One's Own and A Portrait of the Artist in Barnes and Noble as I sat reading Grimm's Snow White. He didn't laugh when I told him I had wanted to be an actress as a child, but was too shy, and so I read monologues instead, even to this day. No, he asked me why I couldn't still, why I wouldn't, told me I should try. He taught me patience and Joyce and what it was to be me again, to allow myself to be me again. He taught me the importance of thanking someone for their art, their work, the way it would reach me, touch me, finger the most delicate pieces of me, mold me. He fed me, left me so full I overflowed. Why could I not love him?
"I miss this." His words didn't hit me until later, hard and solid in the pit of my stomach. I haven't heard from him in two days, finally sent him a text this evening. "Want to graveyard with Court and me later tonight?" No response.
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| But Don't Follow Him / Don't Be Led Away |
[16 Oct 2009|06:49pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 nauseated |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
"Last Call" by Patti Smith |
] |
It must be said, first, that I have the most fascinating, beautiful LJ friends. I have learned and seen and experienced so much through the all of you in just this short amount of time. You have all taken me to new places, and back to places I once knew, had forgotten. Every one of you is lovely and unique and I feel so fortunate that I am able to even glimpse inside your lives. Thank you, so much, for allowing me.
xoxo,
'Elle
-----
"I don't think I'm spoiled; I'm well taken care of." It makes me laugh as I'm sitting in front of the TV, sketching out ideas for this year's Ren Fest. This season's America's Next Top Model, I know none of the contestants. I think back to last season, Allison Harvard freaking everyone out with her blood fascination. I remember laughing, thinking, She's trolling all of them... And then slightly in awe, realizing, I've shared coffee and cigarettes with this girl. It's amazing, when the people you've known rule the world.
Still, I sit there scribbling in my notebook, wondering if I'm ever going to figure out a costume, something that will dazzle me. All my ideas are uninspiring, and I find myself sketching away rave attire rather than pretty Renaissance pixie couture. People don't realize there can be such a fine line between the two, and since I've spent all summer raving, I suppose I'm out of touch with my typical 17th century influence. I intended on keeping this year's costume smooth and classy, clean but a sparkling dark edge. Yet it's turning out to be more frills and curls than last year's getup: a quick mix and match of several of my designs from over the years that I threw together in a sort of interesting way the morning of Faire. The only design ideas I have for this year top last year's in comparison to complication matter, to the amount of layers and elements. I didn't want elements! I wanted simplicity, damn it!
In all my search though, I found the most sensational pair of black wings I have ever laid eyes on. I own something like thirty two pairs of wings, which earned me my nick name in high school, a name that still follows me: Wings. I used to wear them to band practices and to climb trees in the park, to church on Wednesdays because I knew it made the elders of the tiny church uncomfortable. My favorite is a pair of white feathered wings with a bit of shimmer to the sides, a little extra fluff at the edges. They've been so worn over the years that they're tarnished and torn, taken some of the color from life and made it their own, the sand and the dirt and the pale sun. They hang sadly about my shoulders, yet there's a pride to them, that they have been to many places.
They're not quite Ren Fest wings for this year though. This year I'm channeling all black, perhaps with purple lining, as I own a pair of gorgeous, handmade purple frosted horns that clip steady right into my hair. So I draw out these little elements, cut out all the articles, and arrange them like paper doll pieces until I find something that fits. Unfortunately, I haven't yet found anything.
I'm still searching my brain for ideas when Samson calls. I roll my eyes and answer, know that I'm supposed to go see a movie with him, know that I really don't want to. He's babbling on about shopping for something to wear to the opera, like a child who just came from their first day of school, excited and hung over from the apple juice and noise, all that stimulation. He used the word "happy" to describe how he felt, and I literally felt the vomit trickle up through my throat a bit, had to swallow hard to keep it under. He went to get fitted for pants, for an entire suit, and I'm blown away by how much all this means to him, slightly freaked out that our tiny plans have been breathed into so incredibly.
I hated these sorts of emotional investments, these tells to his heart. I didn't want this to mean anything to him, because there now lays all this pressure for it to mean something to me. Not to mention, I have to find a stunning dress that leaves me looking equally stunning. Ever self-loathing, I see this turning disastrous, pinning me down in such a self-esteem withering mess.
Tonight we'll sit side by side, sipping beer in the dark while watching Where The Wild Things Are. His mom, whom I love, was supposed to go with us, but has Samson's sister's wedding plans to attend to. The up side to this all is that I can get high off my mind, numb myself to him and his constant picking and pawing at me. I'll watch those cuddly monsters in the dark and feel at home, in bed like I am four again and my mother is reading to me in that soft voice, showing me those dark pictures that make me want to fall so fast asleep.
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| I'm Shedding My Skin |
[16 Oct 2009|01:36pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 accomplished |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
"I'm Sorry" by Flyleaf |
] |
Screen caps of my old and new layout. Still haven't decided if I'm completely happy with the new one... but I suppose it's a start.
( Old Apple Layout )
( New Anais Nin Layout, Inspired by Joe ♥ )
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| Somehow I Know That You Will Never Leave Me |
[15 Oct 2009|05:19pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 crushed |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
"Forgive Me" by Evanescence |
] |
I ran out the door at four twenty, thinking I'd be late for work. My schedule was on the front seat, and I saw that I didn't actually have to be there until five thirty. Another night of closing with Nadim. I can't really say I'm thrilled. I went to pick up my tips the other day, and we didn't say a word to one another. He just handed me my tips, I signed for them, then walked out the door. I have the feeling tonight will be hell.
I sent a text to Mike yesterday, saying simply, "Please let me know if you intend on finishing the guitar tracks on the songs we've started. A yes or no would suffice. Thanks." Not a word from him, and I spent the night and this morning mourning my band, my original dream, and planning a new one: to carry on alone. Jim sent me a message this afternoon, saying Mike's phone was off, and would I mind calling their house to get ahold of him. Razor edged butterflies tore through me. I thought it was over, and now had to face the chance that I would actually have to see him again, speak to him, let him into any portion of my life.
Secretly, I was smug inside the knowledge that he still didn't have enough money to pay his phone bill, that it seemed he was the same person, inside out. It was evidence that he hadn't changed, that he was just dragging along and torturing some other girl, dimwitted to all that he really was. Boy, could he pretend... And make us all fall in love with that image, that beautiful character he played. The trouble came when that person dropped out from under him, and we saw the real person he was.
I haven't found a way to tell Jim that it really wouldn't be a good idea to call Mike's house, that his father would hang up on me for a number of psychotic reasons. (His dad is, after all, fucking nuts.) Still, if there's any possibly way to get Mike to finish recording his parts before he throws us all away, as he most certainly will, than I might bite my lip and allow it. It would save me the trouble of finding a new guitarist, taking time for him to learn parts, create new ones that haven't already been laid. But if Mike does track these, it will be his last with me. It's his, Kenny, and Aaron's own decision to move on together, if they wish, but I can't be apart of Mike's life any longer. I won't be subjected to that sort of narcissism and selfishness. I won't let him be anything to me.
I always believed the worst sort of vengeance on a person was to forget them completely, never admit that they had some sort of raging effect on you. I'd omit the person from my memoirs, act as if they never existed, as if they never had any tiny effect on my life at all. As if I never cried or held some shard of glass to pasty skin, wanting for them. No, they were such a blip I didn't even feel the need to remember them, write their name as I was looking back. Like Mike. And Savannah. I'd throw away Robert too, except he is this sort of interesting character, and maybe someone reading him, reading our story, would relate, would feel less alone in this world knowing someone survived him, those like him. And more than survived him, understood him, sympathized so sickeningly with their captor.
All of this sort of makes me think perhaps I should write in Savannah too, our strange story. Because it is not one often told, or taken seriously, because there isn't a solid word for what stood between us, so strong, then broken.
Last night I had a dream about her, the first one in months and months. She sat golden, healthy, beautiful. The sun radiated off her skin even in that darkened room. The years since I'd seen her had been more than kind, left her bright-eyed, naive. As if she had been given back her innocence. She sat studying, hardly noticing my presence, though polite in my direction. I sat in a corner against a wall, smoking, watching people pile in and out of the room. I said something and she laughed, that awkward, childlike cackle that always made her seem more nerd than the beauty queen she aspired to be. I couldn't tell what was between us, sat watching her for hours just wondering if we were friends, if she hated me, if she remembered anything at all that happened all those years ago. I wondered if she had blocked me out, forgotten me completely. And oh god, she was restored.
|
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| 'Cause Everything Is Never As It Seems |
[15 Oct 2009|02:47pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
stressed |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
"Fireflies" by Owl City |
] |
I read Mina Loy as he read Eliot. Occasionally he'd look up at what was playing on the history channel, rattle off some opinion, something he knew I knew nothing about, his constant fucking need for me to know how smart he is. A commercial came on TV for "Kennedy: 24 Hours Later," a show about what followed the assassination. We spoke lightly about Johnson. "Doc dated his daughter in college," Samson told me, referring to his step-dad. "Yeah, he spent many nights at the Johnson ranch, pushing back drinks with the president." I didn't want to be impressed, but I was, though I'd never show it.
I told him the story of my freak out at work earlier that night, that a kid had walked through the door, his face so disfigured that I quite literally thought for a moment that I had done too many drugs, and that the X had finally screwed up my brain permanently. It reminded me of the time I rolled with Jacqui, had seen her face morph and transform like liquid a thousand times in front of my eyes, how badly I had freaked out. "It was as if someone had left his face out in the sun for too long, let it melt." Samson laughed. "That's the cruelest, most amazing description I have ever heard." He looked up at me in awe, and I smiled down at him, despite my pressing need to get away from him. He's been smothering me lately with text messages and phone calls. I recently lied and told him I had the flu just so he'd let me be for a few days. I need for him to back off a bit, before I strangle him.
We ordered our opera tickets, for Wagner's Lohengrin. Our seats are on the ground level. I thought for sure we'd have to subject ourselves to the grand tier, seats I loathe and promised myself years ago I'd never sit in again. But with Samson's mom's generous offer to buy our tickets, we're seated here instead:
( Row ZA, Seats 10 & 11 )
I spent entire summers visiting the opera three, four times a week, mostly in San Francisco when I was apart of the OATP. But I've never seen anything by Wagner, and I'm wetting my lips at the prospect. I imagine power houses, movements that will make my skin crawl and scream and fall so hard into love. We'll sip wine during intermission, and at dinner before, and probably at some bar afterwards. We'll speak in scenes, and probably love most the same part, just as we did in Night of the Giant.
-----
I spent days at home, doing nothing but writing until my hand fell pale and bruised against torn sheets of paper. I'd like a type writer for Christmas, I think. Something sleek and black that would move all my words in haunting, literary directions. I wonder what he would say at my words, at my declaration, "Daddy, I'm going to quit. I'm going to quit school and my job and life and just stay home and write." For the first time in my life I'm playing with the thought of being a published writer. It never seemed important before, and now the idea itches at me, like a mosquito bite that won't quit.
I spent a good few hours at the piano yesterday perfecting the song I had written while waiting for Courtney the other day. I took it to school, played it on the grand Yamaha in the studio. It flourished there, sounded prettier than I had realized, and I was proud at the chord structure. I even reworked the bridge and saved it from being just a spin off of the verses, let it become something a little more. The phrasing still needs some work, and the melody in the verses needs to be solidified, but it's well on its way, I think.
The lyrics went through several forms before they became lyrics. First it was a journal entry I had scrawled across my blue notebook, after the night of the beach rave. I had gone with Samson, Stephen, and Courtney, and spent the next three days writing long entires about that night, all the ways it rocked me, led me to new places. Later I turned all the entires into loosely structured poems. "These would make interesting songs," Jake had told me, thumbing through them, reading off lines. And so I took one, called Anymore, and fashioned it into lyrics, pulling only something like half of it out, leaving the rest, and will probably still cut some later. But, here is what Anymore has turned into, lyrically:
( Samson's Sunrise )
-----
Mom has the flu, and my sister Liz has a very mild case of swine flu. My mom just lays in bed all day, doped up on promethazine, so warm that when I put the back of my hand to her head it nearly burns. Tuesday night I had to wake up every hour, let her sip down an ounce of Sprite, give her a pill every four hours. It was exhausting. The good news is that I could get way more than baked in my own house, stumble around and she wouldn't even notice. Later in the night I even finished a few lines off the back of the counter, unafraid.
I never thought cocaine would turn into my most intimate of drugs. Don't get me wrong. I have a love affair with the way ecstasy makes me feel, and there's a sure reason I would never touch heroin again in my life. But there's something alluring and private about the way coke makes me feel, how I can pass around pills and a pipe with anyone, but that sweet white powder is reserved for me alone, or occasionally with someone I feel so open and personal with, someone I could give my secrets away to. I remember the night when I sat on a friend's back porch, and she told me, in a blanket of green and snow passed between us, that she used to masturbate as a child by rubbing the spine of her favorite books up against her. Or the night Matt and I passed a cut straw between us, and I doubled over and told him, head between my legs, that I carved C17H21NO4 into the top of my thigh, tiny and straight. Hidden, like the worst secret.
I couldn't be beautiful anymore, after such admission. Then someone comes along and believes in me so passionately, someone so beautiful themselves. And when someone so incredibly and undoubtedly beautiful thinks you so, there's nothing more in the world to doubt.
|
|
| The Real Battle Yet Begun |
[12 Oct 2009|09:39pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 annoyed |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
"Sunday Bloody Sunday" by U2 |
] |
I finally found hydro. I broke down and sent a mass text to most anyone in my phone that I know still smokes, and got back a reply from Frank, a kid in my Audio 401 class. Courtney and I drove all the way down to 290 and West Road to pick it up, met him in the parking lot of Sam's. I climbed into his shiny black four door, smelled of money and faintly of shoe polish. He handed me some devious smile as I sat beside him, always giving me the once-over, teasing me with those lips and those teeth and his voice like honey, so sticky and smooth. We sat chatting for a few minutes as I looked over what he gave me, pretty and potent and packed tightly, wrapped neatly in clear, clean plastic. Strawberry shaped, I held it to my nose and inhaled, smiled like a child.
He had been drinking a bit, a few Jack and Cokes at his Uncle's house before he drove to meet me. It explained why his smile was laced so fully in all that liquidy ice, like melted glass across all of me. He reminded me of Robert in that moment, his mannerisms, his screwed logic. I wanted to stay a while, smoke him out inside his car before driving home. But I was eager to get home, light up with Courtney and chow down on spinach and kidney beans and shredded cheese drenched in Italian dressing with a touch of lemon... I began to drool inside my mouth, said goodbye, thanked him.
On the way home I called work, asked Scott if he could check my schedule for me. I was pretty sure I opened the next morning, but wanted to make sure. "You close. You don't have to be here until four thirty." Loud cheering erupted from my car. Courtney and I never had the same days off, usually had to party quick and hard, could never drag it out over time. Scott laughed, told me to have a good night with whatever trouble I was getting into.
"Frank said this stuff usually lasts him three weeks," I told Courtney as we sat on my back porch packing a small bowl in O'Ryan, rolling my eyes at the thought. "I told him I'd probably be calling him in a week for more," I laughed, lit up. We smoked only one bowl between us, and realized half way through-- we were totally fucked. The rest of the night was a strange blur of Italian food and bread, Hocus Pocus and... I can't quite remember what else. Only that we spent so much time laughing and coming up for air. "I see what he means by this shit lasting for a while," she said, and I agreed, dumb founded. By the end of the night she was passed out on my couch, and I crawled into my parents' bed, crashed completely.
The next morning we wanted coffee and donuts, so around ten I dropped off a dozen assorted donuts at work, grabbed peppermint hot chocolate for Courtney and a tall quad espresso truffle for me. I chatted up Sara for a while, and she whispered to me, asked, "Are you just coming home from last night?" I giggled endlessly, realized how bad this all looked, how bad it always looked when I staggered into work on my days off at six, seven, nine in the morning, just coming home from a party or a rave or some silly night of grave hopping, sleeping in some field somewhere.
We crashed when we got back to my house, watching South Park and curling up under warm blankets. I started to clean the house, hiding all the evidence from the past week without my parents. I cleaned the house top to bottom, Courtney watching my every step. She wiped off a few counters, which was kind, but I found myself annoyed, wanting her to leave so I could clean in peace, get ready for work, regroup. I hated the feeling when someone wasn't aware that they needed to leave, that it was just that natural time. Eventually I kicked her out, telling her I needed to shower, get ready.
Work was almost instantly awful. Nadim and Scott were there, typing away silly on their cell phones when I clocked in. The register crashed as soon as I pressed a button (a norm, it happens at least once a day), and so I moved to the second one, clocked in, then told Nadim what had happened. "Then just turn it off and restart it!" he bitched too loudly in my direction, a string of meanness pouring out of him all over me. I was pissed. "I would, actually. If I knew how the hell to do that." We glared at one another, Scott between us. "You're in an asshole mood today, aren't you?" I asked, not caring that he was technically my manager. "Looks like someone didn't get any sleep last night," he countered, lamely. The heat burned the sides of the room, cloaked us all in that awkward intensity. Scott laughed, still standing between the two of us. "Woh! I'm so glad I'm out of here in thirty minutes!" he said, smiling widely.
Nadim and I hardly spoke a word to each other for the rest of the night. I stayed in the back doing dishes most of the time, closed down the pastry case early, shut down one of the bars way before we usually do, returning to the floor only to make drinks when he was swamped with too many customers. Several times people would order, he would repeat their drinks back to them, confirming that he had all the details right, and they would nod along, pay. Five minutes later they'd return, claiming that it wasn't what they ordered.
It happened three times before he lost it, turned to me as the people walked out. "You're seeing this too, right? I'm not just fucking up?" I nodded yes. He ranted a bit as I emptied a coffee urn, not looking up for a moment from what I was doing. Picking up the urn, I glanced up at him, cooly, all the ice in my voice, jagged and cold. "Hm. Karma can be a bitch," I said, displaced, turning on my heel away from him, placing the urn on the brewer as if I had already forgotten him. "Karma?!" he spat, "I wasn't the one in a bad mood today." I shook my head at him, "I was in a brilliant mood." Then walked toward the back, humming Joni Mitchell. He mumbled something about his cheating ex-girl friend under his breath. "That. Is not my fucking fault," I bitched, turning to glare at him, then disappeared to finish dishes.
I was sick of hearing about his two-month two-timing ex-girl friend. I understood the turmoil, being trapped in something so dark and spinning that you could not always find your way out. I remembered Mike, and how I had coped after breaking away from him, how obscured I had seen him and the entire world around me. I was depressed for weeks, hardly able to make it through work without crying. But I never once took it out on anyone, never blamed those who were in no way involved. I vented to those who listened, bitched and sulked. But always in a way that was about him, about what had happened to me, how he had treated me in the end.
Samson showed up halfway through my shift to say hi. "I'm stepping out," I told Nadim, not even asking. I sucked on a cigarette as if it was the last I'd ever have, stressed out and bitchy, letting all of the past few hours' events fall on Samson. He consoled me, and then brought me some peace, some gift. "My mom said she wants to pay for our opera tickets." I fell silent, stupefied. "She's paying for all this stuff for my sister's wedding, and said she wanted to do something for me. She's always tried to keep things even between my sister and me, has always been really great about that." A smile broke across my face from ear to ear. I was ecstatic, floored by the gesture. "Which means we can get better seats," he offered, eyebrows cocked, crooked smile leaning across his face. It was enough to calm me, left me floating above Nadim and all his worthlessness.
By the end of the night Nadim and I were back to being at least civil to one another. He came to the back and asked if I wanted to burn, and I told him to go ahead, I wanted to finish what I was doing first. He had asked me in this beautiful bedroom voice, something silky that made me think of the way he probably romanticed these psychopaths he dated. One would probably kill him in his sleep some night.
----
I opened this morning, after closing last night. Kris Fields, the district manager, came in again. I think that's the hundredth time this month. I was in a foul mood most of the morning, irritated that I, again, had to remove my eyebrow piercing, pocket it, then stab it back in as it began to close up just as she walked out the door.
She ordered an iced venti Americano, three shots regular, two decaf, two Splenda, shots poured over the ice, with a little bit of soy on top. I'm determined to have that drink ready and handed to her next time she walks through the door.
I think I got bonus points when she was chatting up one of our regulars though. I handed the customer her drink after making it and she took a sip, told Kris, "My drink is always perfect here. These guys are great."
----
( When We Light O'Ryan )
|
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| Don't Forget / I Remember |
[10 Oct 2009|07:37pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
pissed off |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
"Autumn Goodbye" by Britney Spears |
] |
Ever so slightly pissed that I reworked my plans tonight so I could sit around the house, alone, to realize that I have been blown off. Matthew (he's a long story, a date I went on years ago, and nothing really happened despite the fact that we liked each other, because he was so shy... our friend Mindy has been trying to fix us up for years) burned his way through the woodwork and sent me a message inviting me to Mindy's twenty first birthday tonight. I considered going, because I wanted to see her and Josh again, and of course because Matthew was going to be there.
Then Courtney called, said she'd be in town, and since my parents decided to stay away another night I claimed this night as ours instead. "Come over," I told her, "we'll party the night away, somehow. Get totally fucked up and find some fun." She said she was going to run home, charge her phone, call me, and be over. That was all around three. It's after seven thirty. Her phone is off, and I have not heard a damn word.
Fucking. Bitch.
I meant to write about Samson, our day and night together.
I'm far too distracted by my irritation. (Though I did write an entire new song, start to finish, in the time I've been waiting for her.) I've sent her texts, and dropped a note on Facebook, and threw an IM to her on AOL. Stupid cunt better be laying in a ditch somewhere, or we're going to have serious issues, her and I.
[Update: She was at work!!!! And is "really, sincerely sorry" that she failed to mention that when she said, quote, "My plan is to go home, charge my phone, call you, and come over. Sound good?", it really meant that she didn't get off until seven fucking thirty, and she'd be over after that. !!!!!!!!!!!!@]
[Second Update: She called again, to really apologize. And not in that bullshit way I've seen her apologize to her mother. But really apologizing...
...
I don't know.
I don't remember the last time anyone really did that. It doesn't really make up for the pissing me off. But... It was nice. To hear someone care that they hurt me. New.]
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| To Realize What I Had / Unfading Beauty |
[09 Oct 2009|11:21am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
disappointed |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
"94 Hours" by As I Lay Dying |
] |
I need to get out of my house today. Do something. I have done nothing all week really, sat inside this house most nights writing, working out chord progressions, watching re-runs of NCIS with Andy. The problem with doing things is that they cost money, and I'm in no position to spend so much. The opera, Ren Fest (multiple times), Crystal Castles concert, one-man Hamlet, hopefully another viewing of Night of the Giant. Etc., etc. Samson sent me a message last night, said he was craving Italian food and wine, asked if I would indulge with him. I was forced to make reference to my pocket book, embarrassed, but told him I'd consider after I saw my paycheck. I so loathe being poor.
My parents come home tomorrow from their week of being out of town, and I feel that I have somehow failed myself, this time. Why did I not live more this week, stumble in crazy and drunk from grave hopping and climbing trees to an empty house, dark and blanketing? Why did I not fully let myself go, like I always have in this month when they run off on some annual whim? I feel I have wasted time, and that I cannot get it back. This was perhaps my last year in this house, for so many reasons, and I may have let it go to waste. I sat writing alone most nights, sipping iced tea, cartoons dancing around from the TV screen.
In years before I made it mandatory to let myself go, let myself fall into the stead stream of all of me. I gave in to every notion, every deadly thought. For a week, I went mad without hesitation because there was no one here to tell me not to, no one to frighten but myself, and I how loved to be frightened. I burned my flesh and ran cold glass along my hips and thighs, sighed so low, curling inward at the sensation. I laid in the dark on the floor next to boys, all three, no, four of them, all of us drunk and horny and glazed over from a night of riding through the abandoned places of this town, searching out their cores, bringing them some life again, some beating heart of happening. I kissed in the rain, fell asleep on Robert's couch and awoke to his pathetic attempt to make me eat something. I snapped, snapped completely... How did I forget this? How did I disallow myself this freedom?
And my parents come home tomorrow. I am so lonely here, but still, territorial now of this place. I have kept it and clothed it and made memories here of my own, am wary of someone imposing. This has become my sad, broken home. In the loneliness there were small breaks of opposition, of forced rebellion. Chris blew up my grill, and broke my E string. We drank beer from plastic green cups and passed around my tiny pipe on the porch outside. Samson read me Russell Banks. Andy made love to me here.
What a funny term... to make love. As if it's something you can create by acts of moaning and wetness, the motions of your hips thrust forward into theirs, filling, being filled, then empty, and filled again. Lips and hands and the feeling of skin lightly pressed against your own. Lust, so much lust and want, I feel myself grabbing for him, wanting only this moment, only the one that comes after when I have no bones, and the feeling is better than any drug I've ever know.
Afterwards, I am removed. I slip on underwear or cotton shorts, a bra or a tank top, roll over and want to be alone. All intimacy has drained itself away, and I am disgusted by the act, the fluids, the skin, the smells. All of it, moments ago feeding my orgasm, I now want to sprint so far away from. How strange, that I would have hang ups about sex. Ha.
Perhaps it's not just a hang up over sex, but about intimacy in itself. With Courtney and Samson, the two people I spend my most open, intimate time with, I find myself hating them fully when they are away. My mind picks over their most severe faults, all the disgusting habits of their nature, the very cores of their beings, what makes them. When having to spend time with them, I dread the thought, think of ways to meander out of it, away from it. And then they are here, and I want them, fully, all to myself. I am passionately in love with them, wanting their words and their attention to fall over me, bathe me, take me. I am so unsure of what this says...
And maybe the two have nothing to with one another. Perhaps that is not intimacy veiled, but the borderline in me, screaming so shrill. I hate you, don't leave me.
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