Snapshots.

The User and the Used

"I’m glassy-eyed in the mirror; that same vacant, pretty, coping stare Legs used to have.

My mind stutters on these thoughts, catching rays of sunlight and dust particles glinting in the air. My fingers cramp and release, heavy like my eyelids as I type on the black and white, trying to get the words down, depressing ‘backspace’ more and more as I realize letters are missing…
Overhead, planes fly people to their heart’s location.

My heart thumps heavily in the cage of my chest, bone and skin. The air is thick and smells like funk. I puff, puff, drag, feet resting on my windowsill, blowing the smoke out the window with the aid of a fan. My lighter sparks and catches, sparks and catches, and I wonder if this was how Legs did it, if that’s how he found his escape, like I am doing now. I buy, and de-seed and stem, and pack, and roll, and light, and inhale, and let the smoke trickle from my open lips like smoke monsters in the dark air, and I miss him, terribly, heart-wrenchingly, despondently, all at once.

It’s late, and I know I should put the laptop down, stop allowing myself free access into the confused sore that is my heart and laying it, splat, across the page, but it’s a masochistic exercise in life-lessons: you fall in love and let that person walk out of your life, and this is what happens. So you cry about it. You rationalize it. You get angry about it. You work at it. You smoke to avoid it at first, and then you smoke to embrace it. You mold it into something you can work with. You apply it. You find something that you can live with. You get happy about this, at least, and then you smoke more to continue. It’s a circle of use, misuse, and being used.

...The words tumble from fingertips that are dry and unfeeling on the keyboard, and I don’t even try to stop them. I can’t even stop my mind. Blink, there’s another memory I haven’t remembered since it happened. Flash, and I’m sweaty and I have a dry mouth and can feel everything around me in minute detail. Click, and I’m all the way gone on the sweet side effects of a love that doesn’t know better and a habit that shouldn’t have been allowed to grow. Snap, I’m back to square one."

(In)Pulse
Roused from my sleep,
I clutch pen
& grit teeth.
I cannot help when the words come
Anymore than you can help your addictions,
Already deep-seeded,
Or the singer can control her song
Or the bird his flight.
It is an impulse,
My scratch of pen on paper,
The snort of powder up your nose,
Much
Harsher
&
Methodical
As you cut lines,


Prepare your straw, ---Close one nostril, ---And make that
---------strange ---------snuffling ---------noise


That makes me cringe,
Though my back is turned to you,
Like it always is when I see you start your ritual.
The rise and fall of notes, much sweeter than this candy.
The feeling of air under a bird’s wing, much more free.
You are not sweet,
& you are not free.
But neither am I, chasing this trail of papers,
Always hoping the next one will be better.
You and I,
We aren’t so much un-alike,
Both of us with our willingness to fall prey,
To the things that gnaw on the insides of us.
It is to say,
“Because I can,”
& to do so.
It is to say,
“Who I am,”
& not resist it.

I tell you to stop using.
You tell me to shut the light off,
& go to bed.

Cold

"I’m warmest in sunlight. Not at night when you’re lying next to me, radiating body heat and safety and comfort, but when I’m walking in the cold air and the sunlight touches my face with rays gentler than your gentlest brush of fingertips. I think I have a gold-and-cream complexion (my nice way of saying what some call “pale” in tones reminiscent of disease and social awkwardness,) because I’m a sun-baby—my hair reflects it and my skin soaks it in, becoming almost luminescent. (Again with the “pale.”) I was born in June for a reason.

Your heat doesn’t stay long, just like your body—come the next morning, we part to go our separate ways and I’m cold until the next time you nuzzle your body beside mine, nook into nook, limb over limb, some strange sort of human pick-up-stick pile of us. The sun only leaves me at night, leaving me in your care, your heat, your warmth, knowing that you can never really replace it, even though you will try, and you will like to think that you’re the true center of my personal universe. But I say everything still revolves around one sun, and you, with your thin wrists and your love for sarcasm, are far too human. You are human, and you are cold.

Winter wind still blows even though the sun is in full shine mode. I tilt my face up at it through the smudged windows of the bus and close my eyes, seeing a disco ball pattern on the insides of my eyelids that dance like the free-love generation did on LSD. I’ve forgotten my coat at home, lulled by the sunshine into thinking that it’s warmer than it actually is, and you offer me yours.

The ancient Greeks’ sun-god was named Helios. The Romans called him Apollo. I call him warmth-bringer, light-maker, shadow-chaser. You call me sun-worshipper, heat-seeker, desert-baby. I call you mine, but I lie through my teeth when I say it. You are not mine, and I am not yours, not any more than I can claim to own the sun.

In the age of solar panels, people harness sunlight and bend it to suit their needs—heat, energy, power. I am just as much to blame, yoking you to my proverbial harness to suit my basic needs—companionship, entertainment, and because it’s convenient. You, I suspect, have done the same to me. We do it because it’s easy; because it’s what people expect of us. When you need, you need. It’s human to need, too human, and I have never been good at denying myself, the byproduct of a spoiled childhood. Although I have a hard time telling people out-loud what it is we’re playing at, I find it equally hard to be utterly blasé about it and say, “I keep him around for the sex.” What I don’t have a hard time telling them is what it isn’t. It isn’t forever. It isn’t immortal. It isn’t stationary, or reliable, or even planned. Just like the sun rises from the East every morning, it is predictable and we take it for granted. Once, you called me a frigid bitch. I didn’t deny it. I, just like you, am cold. That’s why I believe more in sunlight than I do in love."

Christmas, Tough-Love Style

"What do you think? Does it look good?"

"It could do without some of the more tacky ones."

"Like which?"

"Like that one, to the left of the middle. The lumpy red and green one that looks like a wreath."

"That is a wreath. I made it for you in Advent Workshop years ago."

"Oh. What about that white Styrofoam one?"

"That one, too. It's supposed to be a snowflake."

"The clothespin reindeer."

"Basically, anything you consider tacky, I made for you and Mom as a child."

Wounding people is so easy, we stride right on afterwards without even a second thought. We all do it.

There will always be that awkward tension between parent and child in the constant search for parental approval. Tides change-- though I will never feel quite up-to-snuff for my father, my mother now looks to me for my approval. I am off-guard and awkward, and don't know when and how to give it. This softens the dynamic of my father a bit, however.

But, then again, who am I to judge?

Choosing Sides

"Wall or nightstand side?" he always asks, even though the answer always remains the same. It's just the kind of guy he is.

He's already tucked in next to the nightstand. Half of me wonders what would happen if I asked for that side. Half of me chastises the other half for trying to make trouble when everything is exactly how I want it to be in the first place. Half of me sighs. All of me crawls up the bed instead.

"Wall," I answer. "Of course. That's where I always end up, anyway." Always between cool wall and warm body. I modulate temperature like a flesh thermostat. Always on his right-hand side. Just like how he always pushes me back down in his sleep to his arm and shoulder in the place of a pillow.

Whoever needed cotton and filling when you have a hot-blooded male, anyway?

After the third night, I wised up. If Manhammoud won't let you go to the pillow-mountain, you bring the pillow to you.

Drip-Drop

Part One:

Writers: Black depressions, over-active imaginations, mental illnesses, and substance abuse. We are an under-whelmingly cheery lot.

Bathtub and beer. Bathtub and half-bottle of wine. Bathtub and a vodka concoction. It's all the same to me.

I think writers have an affinity for bathtubs because there's always the possibility of drowning oneself if the mood so strikes you. I'm sure some author must have tried holding their breath a minute too long after an unfavorable review. (Note to Self: Research this.)

I lounge in the convex shallows of the tub, one knee propped up under the facet, regulating water temperature by feel, my right kneecap bright red because I like it scalding hot. (Might as well live if you're going to be alive.) I'm reading Abbey's "The Fool's Progress" and feeling quite foolish myself, feeding this writer's malaise of mine so indulgently. Later, I will try sticking my toes in the jets, reverse whack-a-mole.

Part Two:

I turn the radio on, but leave the lights off. The moment I step into the shower and close the door behind me, my hair instantly and decidedly curls up in the trapped humidity. (Fact: I have naturally wavy hair. You will probably never see it.) The Presidents of the United States of America remind me in "Peaches" (Fact: Meant to give that CD back...) that the acoustics of the shower are the best I've ever found for singing (Fact,) but these glass walls won't hear my voice today. Soap in silence. Shampoo in solitude. Condition in consternation. (Fact: Alliteration is one of my many writer's vices. Along with verbosity and cliches.)

"Must stop playing hermit," I tell myself. "That's a direct order. Cheer the fuck up."

Circa Bankruptcy

Christmas night. The dog is napping in the backseat, taking up the entire bench, and it's nearly midnight; not Christmas any more. I'm driving and smoking at the same time, because that's one of the things I do know how to do in full multi-tasking glory. I've got the windows cracked because, silly to admit, I am scared of harming an innocent animal's lungs. Mine are already damned. So my nose is cold so his lungs can remain free from any more second-hand smoke. Silly. But the windows are still down.

It's nearly dead downtown. I'm tempted to make a silent joke about the graveyard shift, but it would be almost too easy. I don't know what called me here, but I needed to fill my eyes with it. The sight of a sheriff's cruiser lingering at a red light reminds me I still haven't replaced a front headlight that's out. I skulk past and hope Christmas spirit is enough to get me out of a ticket. I don't have the time, money, or desire to pay for either a new bulb or a ticket. I'd rather just take Plan A and flee the country. Har har.

The streetlights that rise up around me are festooned in white Christmas lights that wind around them and wreaths. The old, retro buildings, once freshly painted and proud, slouch into their foundations. Half of the storefronts are empty; "For Sale" and "For Rent" signs are the only things that occupy windows. The city of my childhood is gone. Instead, hardscrabble has taken hold.

At seven, I used to walk the four blocks down the hill from the public library to my dad's shop. At twenty, I lock my car doors as I come to a stop outside the building that used to be my father's. No lights. No gold glistening from overhead lighting in the display cases in the windows. Everything is quiet; not even the whisper of falling snow to make white-noise. I'm caught half-in and half-out of the past and the present, the crossroads of What Used To Be and The Cold, Hard Truth. Somewhere in the last twelve years, I missed this all changing. You come home, an almost-adult, and you suddenly see it all. It's alarming. It makes you wonder where it went wrong; if there was something you could do; what signs you missed and how. And if a city can change like this, unnoticed until it's over, what else can?

The dog lets out a snore. Suddenly tired, I take a last long draw and then stub my cigarette out on my side-view mirror, the plastic burned and crusted from doing it so many times in the same place before. I pull a U-ey and head for home as the clock ticks in a new day.

"And miles to go, before I sleep, and miles to go, before I sleep," I remember as I roll up the windows and rub the feeling back into my nose.

Implosion

"I'm done with being looked through. When you look at me, it's almost enough to make me believe I could catch fire. Spontaneously combust in being someone."

---

Excuse me for just thrusting you into that, but one of my professors, a very wise man who is pretty much the reason I came to Champlain, once said that there is a time and a place for disclaimers, and in front of your writing is neither the time, nor the place. So I guessed I was wise to heed him-- his advice hasn't done me wrong yet.

The one good thing about being home and broke is that it's giving me lots of time to write. And write. And write some more. The above are some pieces of writing I've been busy resurrecting and breathing new life and words into for awhile (the first piece was an excerpt from a longer work from Creative Non-Fiction; (In)Pulse and Cold are both pieces I read recently at a gathering that went over well, and since people asked for copies, decided to put them here so I don't have to individually email. Laziness is a vice I posses.), as well as some short snippets that have come to me recently, as always, in the most awkward of places. (Mostly, the shower. In the shower, hands sudsy, not a pen or piece of dry paper in sight, is where I get all my best ideas. I have learned to play them on repeat like a broken cassette tape between my brain and my lips to remember them until I get out and run, dripping, for a flat surface and something to write with.) Muses be damned. They always come at the worst times.

XOXO

Runaway Girl Does Shop Talk.

I legitimately ran away from Burlington today. Granted, I have a reason to be gone, and it’s a good one, but don’t let it fool you—even if I hadn’t had one, I would have fled that town today like the fugitive from the Cold, Hard Truth that I am.

Or, at least, I tried to flee quickly and quietly. That’s hard when your car’s front right brake is making a sound as if someone is sanding it every time your tire rotates and it feels like a part of your front end is crumpling every time you actually dare to apply the brakes. Luckily, my mechanic guys are less than a quarter-mile from my apartment. I was able to baby the Civvy there and pass it off to them with sound affects and a worried look. As they diagnosed, I tested the multiple lines of my cell phone between my money dealing for repairs with my father, my freaking out about money dealings with my friends, and my texted second-opinion mechanic’s advice from John, who got to reassure me multiple times that while not replacing the “nearly shot” rotors wasn’t great, and the fierce vibration the new brake pads gave under foot when braking as my nasty rotors wore them down (damned if I didn’t get new pads, financially doomed if I got matching rotors—after all, the Civvy’s alternator was just fucking rebuilt last week and the car serviced to the tune of over $300,) I would be ok and not die.

Let it be stated that John has the patience of a saint, the good sense when it comes to women of a seasoned sterling boyfriend, and the capacity to make me a raging fan-girl because of both.

It’s never good news when the mechanic comes and sits next to you. He looked at me with a mixture of wariness and pity—this college girl obviously in over her head, clutching her cell phone like it was a life-line and she could possibly squeeze both another dime and some good luck out of it—and leaned in. “Do you have a dad or a friend or a boyfriend who works with cars?” he asked me.

Nothing like a complete stranger pressing a sore point. Do Not Go There. Abort Mission. No Talking About The Elephant In The Mechanic Shop. “No…” I started flatly, remembering how Perfect followed Cait all over Burlington playing Boy Mechanic, and then paused, remembering John, presumably on the other end of his phone line, pressing key pad buttons to tell me what to do, always the Knight in Shining Honda Armor. “Actually, I have a friend who works at a Honda dealership?” I finished, the end of my statement rising up like a question. Is John really a friend of mine? Would he really follow through on his word and be willing to help me out?

“Oh, he could probably get the parts much cheaper through his dealership discount,” the mechanic told me, getting more animated now that I had given him something he could work with me with. “He may even be able to replace them himself. It would be much less expensive.”

I loved Mechanic Man at this moment. Most would be telling you that they are the only person capable of caring for your car properly, and at an exorbitant price. This is what returning a mechanic’s wrench will do for you, it seems—you watch out for them, and they watch out for you.

My favorite caveat from my Mechanic Man friend was the words of wisdom he gave me as I climbed into my driver’s seat. “Pump the brakes a few times and test them out. Don’t tail-gate. If your rotors get really hot and you slam on the brakes hard, they could explode. And then the only way you’ll stop is when you hit something.”

I looked at him, wide-eyed. “Or when I pull the emergency brake?”

“Yeah, that, too.”

Excellent. I am driving the Amazing, Exploding, Vibrating Car. We are one sex-toy step up from the Ford Pinto.

On the way home, I got to ponder life a lot. Specifically, though while it may suck sometimes, today really is not when I would want it to end. I cannot die pissed off with Perfect. And the more I thought about Perfect and how mad I still am at him, and how lovely John is, even through my frantic texts to him, the more I wanted to just stop running, stop driving, stop the car, pull over, and collapse.

I’m not a crier. I just find it emotionally and physically exhausting. I can’t muster up the emotion enough to care to cry. Nine times out of ten, if I do cry, it’s out of frustration. Get me angry, get me frustrated, and there come the waterworks. Hurt me, cause me pain—no thanks. I’ll sleep it off. If I feel like I really need to cry, I get into the shower and let the water hit me in the face so I can pretend the droplets streaming down my face and off the tips of my eyelashes are my tears. Just feeling them makes me feel better. Crying, I find, is over-rated.

Because I’m home, I substitute the Jacuzzi bathtub for the shower, though I also love the shower, particularly for singing in, as when you get pitch-perfect, the glass walls emit a lovely reverberation. I was, admittedly, a mistake of my parents. They weren’t expecting a child in their house on the reclusive mountain, and so were in the process of fully-loading it when my mother discovered she was in the family way. Large entertaining deck? Check. Jacuzzi? Check. Library? Nope—make that a child’s bedroom. My father, the sort of guy who doesn’t deal well with his plans being changed, didn’t speak to her for a week. (That, I just find unfair. It takes two to tango, after all, let alone to do the horizontal no-pants dance.) The Jacuzzi is my thing—it’s where I learned how to doggie-paddle, where I used to wash my below-waist long hair through elementary school, and when stress found my life around the same time as high school and the start of manual labor jobs and then demanding retail jobs, it became my oasis from the world.

It’s still one of the first places I go to when I get home. I light all the candles I’ve hoarded into the bathroom from all over the rest of the house with my cigarette lighter, my worst of the Bad Habits. I’m partial to my light because it’s so multi-use friendly—I’ve used it to light up; most of my closest friends have used it; boyfriends have used it; it’s been all over with me through the good, the bad, and the indifferent; it’s lit the road at night, warmed fingers in the winter, and lit candles in again, the good, the bad, and the indifferent. (I’m actually quite a sentimental person about little objects like this. If you look around my room, you’d notice all sorts of little trinkets—stones, shells, bottle caps, ticket stubs, hair ties, pieces of paper, and the big one, fortune cookie fortunes—all with memories behind them. Little touchstones, some with lessons, some sweet, some bitter, some bittersweet.) I let the water run until it’s steamy like a sauna in the bathroom, and then me, book, bathtub and moonlight-filled skylights get re-acquainted.

This may be one of the few times in life I really just breathe. There is something about candle light, water, and music that just strips me down and makes me let go of the things that I normally keep balled up into a tight little bundle of nerves that keeps me vibrating with thoughts and worries day and night. I don’t—ha, as if this should come of any surprise—let go of things easily. Usually, the Jacuzzi, like the barn, is one of those places I let go, if nothing more than out of habit, knowing that I should.

Tonight was different. Tonight was hard. Tonight, I couldn’t keep my attention on the book’s pages, or in what I was doing, or even in the zip code I was in. It seems running from Burlington to home wasn’t far enough to go to lose the things howling and nipping at my heels. It seems as though I’ll have to go even farther. Yes. I am the kind of girl who runs away from things. Last time, it was to get away from Perfect the night we slept together and he spent the night. In the morning, I had to leave by 9 AM to meet my trainer to go to Jersey. This time, although technically it’s to go help my trainer again, it’s really to get away from Perfect again, and all the things left unsaid. (Both times I’ve run away from Perfect, I’ve been wearing the same underwear. This makes me wonder about how much of it is what’s in the panties. Am I really a big pussy when it comes to him and relationships?) So far, I’ve put over 2 hours and 60 miles between us, and it’s still not enough. I’ll let you know when I can figure out when to stop running.

So I finally fell backward and lay at the bottom of the tub, wondering if I could just live there, head underwater, buffering the sound of the world. Me, the Jacuzzi and I…that’s all. Maybe I could hide at the bottom of the porcelain pool forever. Maybe no one would come looking for me. Maybe I could get my mom to deliver meals in twice a day for me. She always says how she misses me; why not move home to avoid life? I had everything else I needed—hell, I’m already in a bathroom, lying in a tub. I have all the water I could ever want or need. There are windows directly above me, a radio, and reading material. With my head underwater, ears flooded, the sound of the radios bass and my heartbeat are the only thing I can hear. No thoughts. No worries. Nothing to run away from anymore. Silence, I don’t get so much of anymore.

XOXO