conversation with myself

tonight i finished reading a book. i finished reading a book on the blue feather couch in the living room. the couch reminds me of the renaissance. and on that couch, i cried. i cried after i closed the book. i was mourning the end of the story - because i'd been reading it for several weeks, and growing attached, and leaning on it for support, and going to it for connection, and then it was over. and the end was like a finely cut crystal with so many sides and reflective colors and i felt so alive and yet so claustrophobic and i wanted to scream and jump out of my skin, but i can't because i'm human. so i walked outside, down the dimly lit staircase and i stood outside for seconds, but i didn't even feel like i was walking, i was just there and it didn't feel the way i wanted it to feel. i didn't feel refreshed. so i walked back upstairs, and i continued to cry. and the tears kept coming, and i liked it. 

i can't really explain what happened. i was inspired, and yet shut down. i felt bound to something greater, and yet never more alone. the contradictions were too intense that i felt empty. and now i'm sitting in my bed with the television on mute because if there is ever any silence or a lack of faces i feel so utterly unpresent and uninvited and uncared for that i need to watch commercials without sound to feel like someone is watching me. to feel like someone is there. and i'm here typing these words, because something wants to come out, but i'm not sure what. 

and when i scroll through my address book on my iphone and look at the names of cherished friends, or people i've spoken to, no one really gets it and i'm not sure anyone ever will, and maybe people scroll past my name when they are feeling low and overwhelmed and they pass my number or maybe they hesitate over it and wonder if they should call, but they don't because i don't understand them. and maybe that's just the way the world works. 

i'm tired now. my eyes are heavy. my stomach's worn. the faces from the television screen beckon me, seduce me, tell me i'm not alone, but i am. those deceivers. those glowing thieves. stealing my time and my energy and my brain and my heart. but it's easier. it's easier with them. easier than crouching alone on the blue couch that reminds me of the renaissance after reading a bunch of moving words and having no one to experience it with but myself. and so in a sense, i am writing these words to myself. and in the end, this is just a conversation with myself. my self. me. mine. who? i don't know. some girl sitting here. hey. hi. hello. 

Things were never simple. But I long for the days when things were simpler than this.

one day you will read this

i didn't do it. i forgot again. i was insane. repeating repetition. over and over. i did it again. i let myself go. i let myself fall. and i forgot to look. and there was no net. just concrete. just pavement. i'm falling now. i see the ground. the cracks and indentations in the hard road. nothing to cushion the blow. no padding. i told myself "look before you leap" like a hallmark greeting card, but i was careless, and i forgot, and now i'm falling again and the winds slapping against my face and it's bruising me. and my stomachs jumping into my mouth and all i see is where i'm going and it's cold and bare and will hurt.

if i close my eyes, sometimes i think about you. i haven't met you. not yet. i hope you are there. you have to be there. you just have to. i close my eyes even when they are open. and i see you. and i feel you. your warm breath on my neck. your smile that spreads the sun. please find me. please be real. please exist. i've dreamt of you for so long. be my canopy. be a soft patch of freshly cut green grass. be a cloud. be sugary crystallized cotton candy that melts in my mouth. be velvet. be there to catch me.

be.

one day you will read this. our toes touching under cool sheets. our bodies melding into one. you will know me. you will know i need you to read this. and you will. and you will want to. and you will smile that smile. and you will have wisdom in your eyes. your pupils expanding as you read this text. and you will know me more. and you will like this and you will like me and you will like us and we will be.

we.

and we will live.

Neighborhood Watch: A story of two voyeurs

He had photos of Betty Page on his wall, he opened car doors for women, and he slicked back his hair. He did this with a wide-tooth comb and clear gel that he bought at the corner barber shop, that was almost out of business. He drove a standard, loved the smell of his authentic, vintage brown leather jacket, weathered from, well, weather, straight off of his grandfather's back, and he whistled while he worked. The funny thing was, as old-fashioned as he seemed, he loved technology.

He blasted oldies in his state-of-the-art headphones, as he tinkered on his computer, which was of the highest quality. He used electronics as though they were second nature to him. Plugging in and plugging out, turning on and turning off, staring at the blaring neon screen, animating figurines, turning numbers and codes into visual structures. Larry was a conundrum, a juxtaposition; he was a perplexing puzzle to those who knew him.

He puffed on a cigar, as he twiddled on his i-pod, marked his schedule in his i-pad, and calibrated the colors on his mac monitor. He was stuck between generations - intrigued by the fast-pasted, numerical, coldness of the age of technology, and held together by the warmth and simplicity of the 60's.

I don't know much about Larry. I can safely say my assumptions about him are correct though. I tend to be good at reading people. But I know he is only my neighbor. Sometimes I peer through my blinds, and I see him pacing around his room, or lying face up on his bed. I assume he must be thinking or listening to the radio - sometimes I hear voices coming from his speakers. I press my ear up against the glass, but I can't discern what they are saying. Sometimes I see him laugh, and his entire body shakes and his smile takes up his whole face. Sometimes I see him cry. I don't think he'd like that.

Once I came home from work, grabbed a bag of potato chips out of the cupboard, and stared out my window. Larry was huddled in a corner of his room, hugging himself, and sobbing. He kept fogging up his glasses with tears, taking his glasses off, cleaning them, and putting them back on. After about 10 minutes, he stood up, with a quiet calm, and punched his closet door. I dropped my bag of potato chips.

Larry was aggressive. I hadn't known. He smashed a huge hole into the door, and he shook his hand, and pressed his knuckles into his lips, because the blow was harder than he'd expected. But his expression was soft. I wanted to run over and ask if he was okay and tell him to settle down and to take a sip of water or maybe a walk or a cold shower and to clear his head, but then I remembered that I'm his neighbor, a girl he's never met. I thought I should respect him, so I walked away from the window.

Larry's outburst got me worried, so I decided to take a walk myself. I grabbed my keys and my walkman - I still listen to cassettes, myself, and I left. As I was walking along the pavement, counting the cracks, reading the graffiti, and tree-engravings scattered along my street, I heard a noise.

I turned around, and, of course, it was Larry. He'd fallen on the ground. I was paralyzed - this was the moment I had been waiting for, and yet, I couldn't move. I slowly approached him (after much personal coaxing).

"Are you alright?" I asked meekly. He nodded, ashamed. "Just stubbed my fucking toe, and tripped like an idiot". His language was vulgar. I kind of liked it. I had expected him to be charming or dazzling, like a Fred Astaire or maybe a strong, silent, intense type like Marlon Brando. But he was neither of those. He was just a kid. A guy who'd had a rough night, went for a walk, and stubbed his toe. He was real.

I was going to ask if he needed help, but I knew that would insult him. I didn't want to laugh for fear of mocking him. So I just stood, towering above his broad, manly body, and smiled. "Okay," I said. I turned around and starting walking.

"Hey," he said. "I know this is a stupid way to meet someone. But I've seen you. You live across from me, right? In that building?" He pointed directly to my apartment. I nodded, and blushed, hoping he couldn't see my red cheeks in the dark. "I'm Larry. Nice to meet you, Sh-". He stopped himself. He had started to say my name. He knew my name. He knew my name.

He knew my name.

Yellow Chalk

Yellow Chalk

She dropped her chalk on the classroom floor. It ricocheted off the linoleum. The white flecks sprayed into the air in slow motion. Her heart pounded through her chest and splattered onto the board. Her heart smatterings displayed for all her classmates to see. 

She wanted to dance. She imagined the light fixture, that Bobby always said looked like a “titty” becoming a disco ball. She pictured all her classmates in 70’s outfits dancing a choreographed piece, her afro reflecting specks of lights.

But this was not the disco era. It was the 90’s. And her overalls were covered in urine. And her hands were covered in chalk, the remnants of her embarrassment. She didn’t remember the words, she didn’t remember where she was. And all she could see were the faces. All the faces. And the mouths. Endless, gaping holes – dark, black holes laughing maniacally. Opening and closing.

Miranda remembered what her mother used to tell her. “If you fake it you can make it.” “Fake the confidence.” she thought. Pretend you meant to pee your pants. Pretend yellow-stained jean is chic. Walk to the nurse’s office like it’s a runway in New York. Act cool. Pretend you are fine, and you will be fine.

She got dizzy. And then she did something she didn’t expect. She started laughing. She started laughing so hard, that her mouth mimicked the rest of the classes. It was ridiculous. A 10-year-old girl, peeing in her pants, because she forgot how to spell omniscient. That was a hard word. She had to be kind to herself. And so she laughed.

She laughed at giving herself bruises after her father left. She laughed at being jealous of Sandra for her long, blonde hair and her beautiful smile that all the boys drooled over. And she laughed that she cared so much about winning the class spelling bee that she peed herself.

She looked at the floor beneath her sandaled feet. They stuck to the yellowed ground, wiped the tears from her eyes, looked at the still faces, took a deep breath and walked out the door. Then she started running. She ran so fast. Faster than she’d ever run before. Before she knew it she was in the playground, she sprinted past the swings where she almost had her first kiss with Jimmy, the class “geek” but she turned her head, past the foursquare where she skinned her knee and got her first scar, past the handball court where she learned what sex was, and past all the trees leading to the forest, where she realized she was different.

Miranda stopped at the bench. She heaved in and out. Her breath couldn’t catch up with her chest. She grabbed onto the splintered wood that made up the seat. She didn’t know why her feet brought her here. This was where it all happened. Where she ran after him on that steaming day in July. She saw his suitcases, leathered and worn, and his hand. It was deafening. Like a long tone. She couldn’t hear any other sounds, she couldn’t even hear the silence. She watched his hand and the bags disappear as the bus doors closed. And she never saw him again.

She blamed herself. And her mother did too, and her sister. She was the closest to him. Her father. And if he left, it had to be because of her. Because she wasn’t good enough. Because she didn’t beg enough. Because she did something wrong.

She sat on the bench, clenching her fists, closing her eyes. She wanted so badly to understand the world around her, why she was here, why people did what they did, what things happened. But she knew the answers would never come. She wanted rain to come and wash away her pain, and then the next day could be new and clean, and the air wouldn’t be covered in smog the way her head always was. Everything would be clear. Everything would make sense.

Miranda reached into her pocket, and pulled out the piece of chalk, and winced. 

The Plagued Seeker

Why am I always the seeker in Hide and Go Seek? I want to hide and I want someone to find me.

It must be because I am too impatient. I cannot wait, and the seeker always looks in the silliest places - places where no human could even fit. So as the anticipation builds, I, with much excitement, jump out of my hiding spot, which is dark and cold and lonely and frightening, and I say "here I am, here I am!" and then the seeker gets angry and says, "That's not how you play the game" and storms off.

I never was keen on rules.

cheeto puffs and cigarettes part II: they met indoors

Who she wanted to be

Who she was

She met him in a room. She didn’t remember which room, but she remembered the meeting took place indoors. He wore glasses that made his eyes look bigger than they were, which also made his capacity for listening, a sense of eagerness, appear magnified as well.  This was misleading, she later found out. He was not very much interested in her or what she had to say at all.

He did introduce her to a life of petty crime – stealing gummy worms out of the jar at Tug’s Candy Shop down on Main Street, pocketing small items as big as her palm at vendors on the Venice Boardwalk, and swiping bags of Cheeto Puffs off the counter at, well, any drug store, really. Cheeto puffs had become her vice now. They reminded her of something, but she wasn’t sure what. It was just a feeling - a mixture of excitement and comfort, the perfect combination. She smiled every time she saw that overzealous, egomaniacal cheetah staring back at her behind his big black shades. She smiled because she had given something ordinary, significance. And she felt quite profound whenever she did that.

His name was Pete, and he told her a story once – about how he had stolen a bag of Cheetos, the regular kind, when he was 10 years old. This immediately bonded them in a way she could not describe. Who knew that some chemically enhanced, metallic orange snack food could bind two vastly different people together?

Unfortunately, for both, the crunchy treat proved insufficient, and was not the glue that kept the two lovebirds together. She had wanted to play the role of Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon. Luring the suave detective to her. But that was all a pipe dream that never came to fruition. According to him, she only shared insanity and intensity with Astor’s character. She lacked the intrigue, the seduction, the power. All qualities she could easily acquire and maintain if she wasn’t so damn accessible and desiring of love and attachment and warm embraces underneath the pier and cotton candy kisses and tender touches and giddiness about silly things and...oh femme fatales are not romantic! She had to remind herself. The femmes are cold and cruel, that’s how they get their men. She had to accept that she was not like that. And maybe it’d be the true crime to change. She could not eat her mate after sex. No. She could only cuddle.

She sat out on her grand-mother’s balcony, inhaling the nicotine, feeling it pollute her lungs, the disintegration of her whiteness, the impurity escape and transcend through her. She was staying with her grand-mother now, in the apartment she had once called her home and now called her celestial palace, with much sarcasm. The apartment was blue and that’s all you really need to know about it. She looked up at the stars and back down at her shaking, trembling fingers attempting to grasp the cigarette in a “cool” way. But it wasn’t cool. It was desperate. 

Looking up at the sky, however, made her feel strangely calm. Listening to the silence that wasn’t silent, all the quiet sounds suddenly became illuminated. The snicker across the street in the neighbor’s yard, the sexual panting next door, the typing of a keyboard, a distant bicycle whizzing by into the late night. But it was the moon. It was the moon that really soothed her. No, she didn’t believe in God. But she believed in Him. The man in the moon.

He watched her, looking down from his pasted position in the blackened sky peppered with salted stars.  He smiled at her sadly when she was in despair, wishing she would just hush. He was always gentle, always there, always watching. Always sympathetic, it seemed.

The balcony felt cold and claustrophobic. It kept closing in and in until she filled the entire rectangular space, the entire block, the entire town, the entire world with her thoughts and her feelings that she couldn’t rid herself of even when she talked it through with her grand-mother, her therapist, her friends, her former lovers (why did she fucking tell them?). Why wasn’t talking it through enough? GET OUT OF MY SYSTEM, her mind cried. But her system remained full. At all times. Like a beat boy’s blaring boom box – straight out of the 90’s.

She stared at the white circular pattern outlining the balcony - the barriers, as she saw them. Preventing her from coming and going, from leaving at will, protecting her through entrapment. She remembered how her cat would carelessly slither his body in and out between the circles, as if the two-story fall was non-existent. She missed her cat, Bowtie. His purr used to lull her into a rhythmic sleep. She envisioned his small grey face nuzzling into her armpit, and his tail swaying happily as he strutted along, owning that balcony – his very own runway.

Trying to erase this memory and all the others that made her stomach sick, she chomped on her cheeto puffs, ironically, smoked her cigarette, and pretended. She was calm and not claustrophobic and not scared out of her mind and agitated and antsy and sad and yearning and disappointed and stuck in a daily purgatory.

She pretended lots of things. When she was little she played psychologist and would make up stories for invisible patients and write down prescriptions to their problems on a legal pad. Now she pretended to be happy and stable. I suppose they tie into each other quite nicely.

She was fine, just fine. At least that’s what she told the world. At least that’s what her painted veil of a face said to strangers when they first met.  That’s what she told Pete, when they met indoors, in the room. But when he told her to be honest, it was like a lie detector test, and she couldn’t lie and the words came out and her skin came off and he saw her skeleton and her bruised bones and her imperfections and he did not embrace them like they do in romance novels or the movies. He said goodbye. And she cried because she was worried they always would. All she wanted was to hear hello, instead of goodbye. But maybe that was too much to ask.