Masterpiece

I took my time.

He watched me set up. I don't think he believed me, that I would do it. But once the signs grew more apparent, he began to panic. A small waver in his smirk, at first. That tiny flash of knowing. And then that chuckle, nerves showing underneath his thin skin of superiority. He accused me of having no creative eye. He said I was selling out. He called me an idealist with one breath and a cynic with the next. He screamed at me, words and spit hurtling from his mouth and splattering across my face. But my grip on the paintbrush never slipped.

My hands stayed steady as I grew closer. My face remained impassive. My arms flowed. I took my time. Line by line, stroke by sweeping stroke, I painted over him until he was nothing but an angry pair of lips, spewing insults and black ink.

And then, suddenly, I paused. I paused for the first time in days, staring up at that Earth-shattering mouth. That mouth had known me. My world was once held in the shallow dip of that tongue. The willing brush strained against my hesitating hands.

The mouth noticed my indecision, and it smiled lazily. I watched, transfixed, as its lips parted, its tongue already sculpting its next enticing phrase. Did you...

It was not I who did it. It was the brush that shot up before the mouth could string together any more words for my noose, dragging my arm along with it. The brush knew better. In three swift strokes, there was no mouth, expunged from reality, leaving only canvas and thin air in its place. The thinnest.

Gently, carefully, I set the paintbrush down.

I stood up straight, staring at the screaming emptiness, and I realized that there was a certain ease in facing an oblivion of my own making.

Portfolio Piece #3 (Keep Moving)

I used to love driving at night. Even when I was younger and only grown-ups sat behind the wheel, I was infatuated. I liked it when my dad would pick me up from a friend’s house after dark and we would take the freeway home. I would look out the window and watch the big brick buildings fly by my window, the “adult alternative” station that my parents loved so much playing peacefully in the background. The needle on the speedometer flirted with 80, but everything was slow inside the car. When it was even later, I would start to drop off, lulled to sleep by the wheels’ soft static shh as we moved forward. But it was only when my friends got their licenses that my casual fling with night-driving became a love affair.

It was later at night. The music was better. We had nowhere to go: no dinner to get home to, no parents in the car to slow us down. Our only goal: pile as many people as possible into Rich’s SUV and get gone. Rich was eighteen and didn’t have a curfew. He drove like a crazy person but never actually hit anything, which was enough of a reason to assure our parents that he was the safest driver we had ever had the pleasure of sharing a car with. I always managed to secure a seatbelt at the least, but usually I got the front seat, despite being the shortest and the loudest in the car. I could see everything.

Early in the night, everyone was always amped, convinced that we’d find some secrets tucked away in our personal corner of suburbia. The air was an animated amalgam of words. We talked to every person at once in the same sentence. “And then I said—no, you can’t open the window—that I was going to—please take that away from her—kill him if he didn’t give me back the keys, even though they weren’t technically mine—we can’t go to that Dunkin Donuts—but he didn’t believe me—because the guy hates me there, that’s why—so I just snatched them and ran—because I dropped a jelly donut on the floor and stepped on it—and he didn’t chase me, so I guess they’re mine now.”

But as the night wore on and we wore out, our tangled ball of conversations diminished until it was one long thread, all of us grabbing onto it and adding things here and there. Sometimes I would talk, but other times I would just look. Other times I would take in the everything around me, because I could. Because, for once, no one was asking me to do anything else. I noticed Rich’s hands as we drove, his fingers spread lazily over the wheel, almost lovingly, looking so different from rush hour, when his white knuckles strangled the black leather, when I would wonder if he was going to swerve into traffic and slam his beloved car into the pink convertible that had just cut us off again. His whole face was relaxed, his mouth forming the words to the latest inane summer hit that we couldn’t help but love.

The city flowed around us like water, every landmark, every 7-11 and strip mall blurring and fading into nothingness. We were free, not inhabiting this earth, bound by only two rules: yield to pedestrians, and by all means, keep moving.

Something Different

This is in relation to something I posted on Soulpancake earlier today. The challenge was to make a collage and explain how it told your story. My massively inarticulate explanation is as follows:

"I have a collage on my wall. It's mostly made up of magazine clippings. Some people might say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but here, the words are what matter. Most of my pictures hold the deep sentiments of "I worship Neil Patrick Harris" or "Doc Martens are sweet". When I put words up on my wall, they speak legions to me. I'll put up some pics later."

Speak legions? Is that even a term? Well, regardless, later is now. And here are the pictures!

This is the longest shot I could take of the collage overall.

I want to start with this one, because until today I had no idea that it was here. After staring at it for a little bit, I started to remember vague (yet weirdly specific) details: the pen I used, the state of blind anger in which it was written. I don't remember exactly when I wrote it or what he or she thought. But I remember that scary feeling. It's a feeling I get a lot.

Self-explanatory.

"Who will be your accomplice tonight?"above a picture of Emma and I circa 1998, looking appropriately gangsta.

Urban Legend: unfinished piece that I decided to stick up there for the hell of it. Also, Florence from Florence+The Machine. She is kind of the coolest.

Death By Audio: Because, as an avid appreciator of music, that seems kind of like the way to go.
Minute: Because I love that one of the standard measurements of time is also the word for "incredibly tiny".
"People are always giving me weed.": True statement. No, not really. It was from a story about Devandra Banhart.
Purple: Because that's the best color ever. I never said I was deep.

Battle Brooklyn Hipsters: In the event of a move that may or may not happen, I wish to make this my mantra.
You are never so sexy as when you make me think: So mething true.
I am something that you'll never understand: Something I wish was true.

I'm Yours: Something that is no longer true.
There's Nothing To Frak Out About: Because I'm a dork.
Let's go crazy!: Because that way, I can at least make it seem like a choice.
Follow No One: Something I'm no good at remembering.

(...and, yes, that is a tiny picture of Tim Gunn. I love him.)

Life is...
An Action Film
a Deep cut
Never Avoiding Cake!
a party for the odd & invincible
awaiting sweet relief
Russian Vodka
dressing up for nobody
missed connections
made of words
summer
LOVEDAMAGEFURY

omgwut. Because I'm a goof sometimes.

You Make Me Feel. Shouted out of a cabbage megaphone.
(People Get Lost In There), because they do.

Destroy Something Beautiful: Because people do it anyway.
The thing below it is a piece I did with a photo of Axl Rose. I don't know what it means, but I like how it looks. Especially his stretched-out hand.

All I Got.

And we end this foray into my brain and onto my walls with a testament to my dorkness.

Conversations With the Ghost (I)

"You're good," he said, setting the pages down on the wire table. I put my plate (empty aside from the blueberries I had picked out of my scone) on top of them, afraid and praying that the light breeze might blow them away. "I mean, right there," he pointed, jarring a blueberry, "right there, I think you meant 'pray' instead of 'prey'. But other than that...it was really good."

"No, listen," I told him desperately. "Stop. It's not."

He did not react. He folded his hands and looked at me from over his glasses. "I see. And why do you feel that way?"

"Nice try," I told him. "But my therapist's a woman."

She brushed her long, blonde curls out of her face and adjusted her blouse. "I see. And why do you feel that way?"

I sighed. "Because...shit, I don't know."

She stared.

"Because...because of time, I guess, and the way it passes. Because no matter how good I think it is now, at some point I'm going to be older and know better. I'm going to look back at this-" tap tap tap on the table "-and I'm going to feel sorry for myself. For thinking that this kind of bullshit could get me anywhere in life."

"But," she said, "It is good. You think it's good."

"Yes," I conceded, "but it's not good because of me. It's good because of you."

"Me?" she asked, surprised.

"No."

"Me?" he inquired, cleaning his glasses.

"Close."

He took off his glasses altogether and shook his hair out of his eyes. "Oh, duh. It's me, isn't it?"

I rolled my eyes. "Well, yeah. It is you."

"What about me?" He looked at me like I was crazy. It was deserved, but it took me by surprise. My mouth disappeared and my eyes lowered. "Oh, stop that," he said. "You brought me here. You have something to tell me, don't you?"

"I told you. My therapist's a woman," I mumbled, and he laughed. I made him laugh!

"Come on," he said. "What is it?"

I bit my bottom lip, then the top, stretching them out, stretching for time. "You're...like, the reason, or something."

He raised his eyebrows. "The reason?"

"Yeah. You're my reason. You're...my why, I guess." I squished a blueberry beneath my thumb, relishing the way it resisted for just a moment, unconvincing, before spraying juice and blueberry guts all over my palm. "Why the fuck are there still blueberries in the scones here, anyways?"

"I'm your why?"

"Please stop repeating everything I say as a question in a cheap attempt to get in some dialogue. You would never do that. You would stare at me with a quizzical mixture of disdain and curiosity until I felt obliged to explain myself."

He stared at me with a quizzical mixture of disdain and curiosity until I felt obliged to explain myself.

"You're why I write. Well, not really. But you're why I write well. I copy you. I imitate. I know it's good, but it's not good because of me. It's good because of you. And my writing is...like, it's me. So does that mean you're me? Does that mean that I don't exist without you? And we're not close. You hold the cards. You hold the power."

"You're babbling."

"I know." Stop. Take a deep breath. "I know. But there's no good way to get this out. No easy way. No eloquent way."

"So, why are you trying?"

My laughter ruffled the pages in front of me. So many pages. But what had I said? "Shit. Because. Because I don't know how to stop."

We sat without speaking. The breeze whistled through the wire table.

Sickness

This is probably cheesy. Or rambling. Or something.

---------
This, this
this being
is so challenging
all by itself.

They told me it'd be
like a Sickness
eventually,
shaking and struggling
for every breath,
bleeding and screaming and sweating
for one more time
one more time
one more time.

Serious,
they put on the big voices
scared me into never
Daring
never living dangerous
or bad
so I would never have to catch
the Sickness.

And then, honey,
something happened.
Something funny.
I met you
and for a while, I
experienced
the greatest high.
I had rhyme, reason,
every time you held me
anytime, any season
And when you wrapped me in
your tragedy
the world would become
with us.
It was making sense.
It was bliss.
It was a new world-
reality-plus.

Then suddenly you cut off
the source.
You, my supplier,
were no longer dealing
in what I was craving.
And then the Sickness started.

Hands no longer
steady
oxygen no longer
ready
at my command
and while I lie
alone
shivering and
withdrawn,
I wonder why the stone-faces never warned us
about this kind of drug.

Portfolio Piece #2 (Ashtray)

Ashtray
on the airplane, once a silver goblet
molded to hold our glamorous addiction:
now the gaping mouth of a generation
sits at our fingertips, welded shut.

Portfolio Piece #1 (Maybe)

“I’ll drive you home,” he says, and now I have to make a choice. Because maybe he does only want to walk me home. Maybe he’s only being a nice guy, helping out a hung over girl sitting on the front steps of foreign party house. Maybe, except he isn’t, because no one ever has only one motive; maybe in some bygone era of gentlemanly goodness that never happened, but not now, never now.

I consider my options. It’s five minutes back to my house. Around seven minutes if you obey every speed limit and actually stop at the Unnecessary Traffic Light of Death. Three if you don’t. He will be playing some sort of classic rock in his car, or maybe early Radiohead. I look down at his feet, which are clad in Birkenstocks so beat up that there’s no way they were bought this century. So, yeah, really early Radiohead. He’ll play Pablo Honey and skip “Creep” because he shares Thom Yorke’s negative feelings toward the song. Anyone with sandals that trashed will probably agree with Thom Yorke.

Five minutes. Time for two tracks off that CD or one listen to “Stop Whispering”. Not long enough that I’d have to know him well to hitch a ride (which I don’t), but long enough that he’ll try to talk to me. Maybe I’ll respond politely a couple of times. Maybe he will be probing and insightful without being intrusive. Maybe he will break through a bit of my headachey, party-worn wall and expose some sort of still-raw wound by calculating chance. And that would kind of suck.

But I am very tempted to say yes to this white knight in plaid, and I will tell you why. It’s because when we pull up to my dark-windowed, empty house in his car (which will invariably be a VW Bus or an old sedan that cost him $300 on a deal), the motor and mouths will fall still, and we will be wrapped up in the silent significance of Getting There. Usually this would be a case of my being a lost hot mess and his taking a good guy stance, but it couldn’t be. Because a couple of decades ago, movies happened. They told us that it was all supposed to be meaningful, that two people can’t meet through friends or at work or something; no, that would be too normal, too boring, too easy. They told us that we must meet someone through chance circumstances, through fate, and then we must battle our ways through the rest of the relationship, hating each other and kissing in airports. They told us with pretty lips and loud voices so they couldn’t be wrong, ascribing significance to millions of moments they never knew would happen. Moments like the imaginary one that could be five minutes away in his car.

We have both seen these movies, and they have taken over our brains, even though neither of us would ever admit it. As a consequence, we will feel like something monumental should be happening while simultaneously knowing that nothing really could. And that failed poignancy, that feeling that the arbitrary nature of human interaction is somehow a sign that we will be alone for the rest of our lives is absolutely incredible. It makes me smile a little. Not at him, but at the horizon, at the glow of city lights and millions of people and ozone that brushes across the trees even when it’s supposed to be pitch-black.

“Goodnight,” I say, quietly. Definitively.

He shrugs. His Birkenstocks make waffle-iron prints in the mud as he walks away.