After All

I felt a fool waiting down here all alone. Before I left to meet you, I’d stalked the aisles of the liquor store. The fat man who opened the door to me grinned so widely, so shy-making, looking up at me from under long lashes. His eyes took in the hair-band, the pumps, the cream stockings, the edge of the garter belt peeking out from below the pencil skirt. “Well, aren’t you just a doll,” he’d cooed into my curls as I sidled by.

I’d splurged on cigarettes, and then, after smacking the pack thoughtlessly against my open palm, I’d given it to the next few fingers that reached forward with a paper cup. I regretted it once I reached the sand, of course- sat sucking in and blowing out the wind between pursed lips, and thinking, goddamn, what was that?

In the dawn of summer, everyone had taken turns sitting me down and trying to talk the Marine out of me. But all it really took was a few months of stress, built up through long workweeks where I spaced out in front of the foreclosure database, in my dark cubicle surrounded by manila folders, and whenever I came in and up for air, I thought desperately, is this all there is?

My mother says now, You didn’t really mean it. You weren’t ever going to join. You said, You don’t have it in you.

But you never knew me well enough.

When you left that morning, you said, I’ll be back next week. You’ll see me coming in over the ocean. I’d walked that beach where lizards ducked their divided tongues between stones. My lips were swollen with the wine which had turned sour with waiting. I hid bottles among the dunes and opened myself behind the tall grasses. You know how I’ve always hated the beach but there I was. In another world, it’d be a testament to you. But I sat there all day, hair in my eyes, sand in my teeth, until the sun sunk way down below the dark water.

You know I’m scared of the dark- and it wasn’t enough, knowing the moon would follow me home.

The week before, I’d layered up a mango and prosciutto salad, and picked up the phone to hear, “Where are you? I am in Milan and we are going to Venice in an hour.” It sounded like The Stranger, sounded like fried meat and potatoes on the beach.

Yes, I was that girl looking at guns in the library, committing them to tracing paper with pen and ink. And yes, I’m the one who cleaned my windowsills with turpentine because I liked the smell. And yes, I’ve been writing a letter a day since May, and yes, I’ll write you (anyone!) one if you’d like, and I’ll maybe fill the envelope with pressed flowers or sequins or hand-copied recipes, to show how much I could love you if you’d let me.

Nothing that is real is not eternal. I had that dream again, one of those dreams where you seam-ripped a precise cut down my back and pulled out a string of interwoven veins, all spider-like and glistening. When you put your hand in again, you felt up my spine carefully with a thumb and forefinger, and then plunged your fingers deep into the seductive mess of muscle. It is not courage if you are not terrified.

It wasn’t enough, knowing the moon would follow me home. The road was dark, the cab was darker. I’m afraid you were Icarus after all.

Response I.

Your room is not too big, but mine was small. My little shadow cave. Yellow light and peach and marmalade. Fat kettle ready to boil, collection of mismatched china cups. could give me a minute and if the sun had down for hours but you couldn’t sleep for wanting, i’d cook you up a warm bowl of rice and lentils, pasta and pesto. I’d yearn for avocados in my hands.

“I’m suddenly so tired.”
“Always.”
“It’s your fault.”
“No. This room.”

The last day, when my room was in shambles around us, all I had left was a can of baked beans and some bread. I stole a thin half-stick of butter and fried up the bread in a forgotten pan, nuked the beans in my only clean bowl. We slurped it up sitting cross-legged on the floor across from each other, with the food in between.
Full of surprise, Sunboy dug in and said,“You can make ANYTHING taste good.”

I’m tired and I miss this and that and sleepiness is no fun when I cannot loll around indefinitely in bed, curling absentmindedly around someone else. But I’m moving and I’m seeing and I’m getting things down.

Last night, I slipped into my pink gauze tutu, covered my chest in yellow tigers, and rocked the dance floor hard. Shaun matched in neon animal prints, his gold pants and my gold shoes. The other girl in the car says, I’m a junkie. A junkie. But it’s over. No more. My bra was full of money and his smile was full of teeth. Gorgeous gay boys with slick hair and jazzed fingers trailed their hands along my skirt and grabbed my arms with their eyes full of happiness. All those buzzed, pierced dykes holding onto their girlfriends and their eyes asking if we could touch. The bouncer slips his hand the back of my arm when I pass, and I turn- “What?” “Nothing,” he says, and grabs a fist of my tulle for a few seconds before letting go. He looks at me hard, and when I don’t give in, then the ground. I laugh and hurry down the steps.

Summer To-Do (Too Due?)
- La Comedie Humaine
- Sausages from scratch (chicken & lavender)
- Embellishing furniture
- Fitness training
- Banjo?

I’ve been having this fantasy of when I see you in the train station and we’re arrested because I hold your body to me so fast and so hard and we cover each other with our hands that travel up and all over and mouths are everywhere and obscene in their gaping and pressing teeth and tongue whereever skin is bare, in the small shifts as you raise your arms above your head and I can touch my lips to a stretch of stomach, a shy collarbone. Just thinking of the power in the momentum of our bodies and the widening eyes, the inevitable nervous tap on a shoulder or a small but definite touch of a back, the “ExCUSE me, Miss, Sir,”squeezes my chest. I feel tears rising, and I’m not too sad or too happy but just too much. Choke it up, and go downstairs.

You Say Goodbye, I Say Cello

The 40th anniversary of the summer of love. Mannequins are dripping with headbands and embroidery and we drink tea in the food court before wandering racks of pearls and grays and muted greens. When Violet leaves in a flurry of lost car keys and wide-open smiles, I gather up neons and animal prints and pink hair dye. Find pink suspenders and two poufy net skirts. I plan fishnet thigh highs and raving with my heart open- I can already see Sunboy on the stage, rolling out the beats. I thumb over the fabric in the changing room and make fists of the netting. I can see where I will flatten out, where, come fall, I’ll be all dangling legs and teal sunglasses, perched on the brick wall that runs along the dining hall, laughing and holding up a strawberry red sucker where the cigarette should be.

I was late to Violet’s, as usual. Malcolm stalled me in the kitchen, pushing me into his latest dance steps. “This is the Pick-Pocket,” and looping me back around so the room spins. “No…you know the Pretzel? It starts like that, but then your hand- take mine here, but no, not over your head--- yes, well! It’s like the Texas Twist, but…”
Violet and I. Tequila out of a slim bottle and cokes that grew warm in the lightning as I wove winding through one-way streets and pulled over and over to call home. “This”, Violet says, “is my sorority nightmare. Listen.” I knew us both in high school and can’t believe where we are now. Violet says,” I love our talk.” Labels are not our souls. Does it matter?

“I really want to believe,” she says, “I want to go to heaven.”

“What’s heaven, Violet?”

“I need to believe,” she says.

I called ahead and she said the pantry was only full of celery and peanut butter. I made us sandwiches from a fresh baguette. Thinly spread mayonnaise and pesto, with red onions, melted cheese, grilled chicken, crisp lettuce and plump tomatoes. I packaged them up and brought them in a little brown paper bag with a small tupperware of pineapple and strawberries. We eat on stools, drinking water, laughing too loudly. Violet called a few times before, but Malcolm found me and brought me to her clifftop- the one where we dangled our legs off in the early AM and smoked stolen cigarettes.

After shops, I’m sitting on the side of the road with my head in my hands in the heat. Two buddies and a slut to my left, on a bench, bitching out. the guy nearest has a spiderweb tattoo and a teardrop. Those waists inside were far too small; I could cup them with a single palm. The shops were stained with second-hand wigs and sweaty-haired boys hawking electronic cigarettes, but I was home eventually.

I snap out of impatience and sweat, change into the blue 40s-esque with pale pumps, do up my eyebrows and mouth like a rosebud. The dinner party is underway- full of fireflies and mosquitoes, couscous and fresh fruit and sorbet. I have a tall glass of white wine and my mother watches me carefully under heavy lidded eyes. Peter plucks out blues on the double bass, the boys on piano and saxophone, and Malcolm with my high-hat and snare. He says they aren’t mine, they belong to everyone, but I washed a car to buy those jazz sticks. I record them for 26 seconds and send it to Sunboy. I clean every dish.

Kirsten came back this week, 10 years out of this country. I am disconcerted by age. Mum says, You can’t blame people for their lives. It’s true. Tried to make it work, find some of my old idol in the woman before me, but I was yet a babbie when she left. And in spite of the rich leather and silver and gold-rimmed china and the staff who are condescending to my Irish mother, we are unimpressed. The tables around were full of Ladies Who Lunch and their red-faced husbands, who ordered more unsugared ice teas with a self-assured flick of their wrist. I arrived with a look of leprosy but by the time we returned for more buffet shrimp, barely grilled and marinated weakly in butter and soy, I caught those familiar eyeings of middle-aged businessmen and their anorexic wives trying anxiously to turn back their heads. All the same, consumed too much peanut noodles- blame G for eating peanut butter crackers and then forcing my lips to meet hers.

Two days ago, I twisted spaghetti around a fork and shared bottled rose with Nicole and Coletta. Baby cups, and I chose the yellow one. Snuggled up on couches, small naps until daybreak. Hungrily devoured hours and hours of vampires fucking and biting and killing and copious amount of blood. Slept a few meager hours, and then back to lunch with my mother’s best friends from years ago. So trim and eager still. I had ten minutes, but pulled my hair back tightly, polished those sandals, breathed out the shallow creases in the dress that is the same color as my sheets, the ones we’ve fucked on, the ones on which I have loved you for the world’s worth! I made tea with milk and sugar and we all sat on the porch. I thought about making a summer pudding, with fresh berries. I guesstimated sugar and the double-boiling of blueberries, but there wasn’t time.

Hours into the languishing sun, I sat in the garden and called you. Sunboy. I am listening to the CD you made me in the car. Sometimes I go into the garage and sit in the car and listen to some of the songs. Maman says, That is dangerous. So I drive around and run the gas down and two days ago, I felt my heart wrench when I took a left hand turn, and my eyes considered crying. You very truly have ruined me. We’re all pictures for sad children. All of us.

When I was still hammering out the pornography, Owen brought me hot McDonald’s fries that reminded me of the night before- the night Malcolm drove me home, documentary-style, cursing out cops and talking out shovels and smuggling. Owen reminded me of being in the car moving quickly through the dark, then left the room and fell down the stairs.

The first friend I saw was Tricia. There were three dinners First Year-style, cheese and spring onion quesadillas fried quickly in butter, with apple schnapps that Mother had bought as a soft drink and had been feeding to the children. Malcolm lurching and laughing and making sloppy salad dressing sandwiches. We boiled a pound of edamame with butter and salt, and watched High Fidelity until the next day. In the morning we fried eggs and drank cups of tea. Tricia says, This reminds me.

Today, wiping up blood from my ankles and porcelain cream pumps. What is that? says mother suspiciously. I dance too hard. I have mosquito bites and blisters on the soles of my feet. I like plans about the future, I like laying down tiles with my bare hands, grout under my fingernails. Or I don’t have fingernails, because I’ve watched lots of films by then, recently, and I never notice the slimness of fingers in my mouth in those rooms of space and absence of lights.

I can’t sleep because I’ve read a book about amnesia and I’m worried. The gym in less than four hours. The sun will barely be up when I slip on my shoes and pound out rhythms.

A little girl, all baby face and toddler-thumbed fell face down on the escalator. Her feet struggled above her head and her hair snaked into the moving steps. Violet and I stared, and Mall Rats became heroes.







something which is worth the whole,
an inch of nothing for your soul.

5 AM

When I cry, I can feel it in my calves, my veins shudder.

We’re too quick to love, to quick to live.
But I have a red cherry juicebox, and I have a red duvet to drown in, and
things
get
better.

You Know What's Cool? GOING CRAZY.

What My Paper Looks Like, Seven and a Half Hours Before It is Due, After Putting In Thirteen Hours of Work:

THESIS

I agree with --Mark Danner makes some excellent points about ---- COMMUNICATION is extremely important.

POLITICAL JARGON/DEFINITIONS/The problem with words

- Defining terms/words differently/ in vague, open-ended ways
- Refusing to acknowledge TORTURE means TORTURE

DID THE TORTURE WORK & DOES IT MAKE A DIFFERENCE IF IT DID

-we don’t know
- WE DEMAND ANSWERS!!!

** I would like to note that although this post claims to have been posted around 1am, it is actually 4:30.

edit:
5:35 am. The birds chirping outside my window have never seemed so disheartening.

Asked for Answers and Got a Head Full of Heroin

Urgent heavy knocking on the door at 1am. The toilet is flooding- fully, spectacularly. The drain on the floor can’t swallow fast enough, and water rushes out into the hallway in rolls and waves. I dig my wellies out from under the laundry and books of poems, and dial for help. The dorm is suddenly full of big guys in security jackets, loud voices, keys jangling on belts, bottom lips pushed out with chewing tobacco. I missed the dinner at Manor, and Moo Cow for sleep. Woke and pit-pattered around the landfill. Ate some mozzarella with tomato relish, falafel, raisnets. Still hungry hours later, I boiled water, and ate ramen out of a cup with chopsticks. I’m shivering with fever, sitting on my bed with my heart pounding in my ears, drowning in piles of unfinished work. Watching Fawlty Towers instead of sleeping.

- Want to hear a secret? I’m stronger than you.
- That’s no secret.

The Book of Salt:

“Thin Bin, how would you define ‘love’?”
Ah, I think, a classic move from the material to the spiritual. GertrudeStein, like the collectors who have preceded her, wants to see the stretch marks on my tongue. I point to a table on which several quinces sit yellowing in a blue and white china bowl. I shake my head in their direction, and I leave the room, speechless.
…

Your hair looks clean and freshly washed, I thought. An important indicator of anyone’s overall cleanliness. You wear it parted on the left-hand side. A personal preference of mine as well. Your tie is tucked into the V of your sweater. I too prefer a sweater’s soft drape into the buttons and bulk of a vest. Your coat looks warm. I would look good in it. Your hands…your hands? But where are your gloves? Ah, hands like yours will not stay cold for very long. Your eyes, coffee and cinnamon. An infusion to wake me from sleep.

“Well, are you coming in with me, or shall we conduct our interview here in the doorway?”
Your French was flawless but with a slowness to its delivery, unctuous and ripe. I wanted to open my mouth and taste each word. “Interview,” though, slapped me in the face. The word was a sharp reminder that I was a servant who thought himself a man, that I was a fool who thought himself a king of hearts. I got up and walked with you into a stairwell paneled with sheets of sunlight, slipped one by one through the dusty window panes. I followed you up four flights of stairs, and with each step, I was a man descending into a place where I could taste my solitude, familiar and tannic.

Quinces are ripe, GertrudeStein, when they are the yellow of canary wings in midflight. They are ripe when their scent teases you with the snap of green apples and the perfumed embrace of coral roses. But even then quinces remain a fruit, hard and obstinate- useless, GertrudeStein, until they are simmered, coddled from hours above a low, steady flame. Add honey and water and watch their dry, bone-colored flesh soak up the heat, coating itself in an opulent orange, not of the sunrises that you never see but of the insides of tree-ripened papayas, a color you can taste. To answer your question, GertrudeStein, love is not a bowl of quinces yellowing in a blue and white china bowl, seen but untouched.