I see everything about her as if I were in a daze. The nights long and sunshine hardly starting, before it turns into a dream. The colors of the walls are white, and her room is decorated with blankets hung from the ceiling instead of placed on the bed. In her kitchen there’s an old ivy plant, I forgot its name but I know there is one. The furnishings are light wood, like blonde, or kissed into unfeeling by too much sandpaper.
I can’t remember what she looks like.
That’s why I’m crawling now, inch by unsteady inch across these broken glass fragments. Old bottles, mostly liquor and beer, litter the path of my memory. Cover it until what’s left is hard to piece together. Like take all those shards and make new containers with nothing but duct tape on a freezing day.
I do see parts of her body still. I know the color of her skin. Take an almond in your mind and think of the light skin which covers the flesh, and give it more of a glow and make it taste like honey without roasting it. I taste her slightly salty, and smell her delicate womanness – not overpowering like some women I have known. It is subtle and makes for heaven.
All throughout my life I have worried and thought little these worries. Just let them occupy certain spaces in my being. Places that could have been reserved for trust and receptors of grace or love. But they aren’t there, only these broken things and delusions which still rob me of sleep. Which still laugh at me in the mirror and try my dreaming moments with fury and confusion.
I live in a small house. It’s a converted garage, two car. There’s an old canopy over my front door with blue and white stripes. It is the first cloth I have ever seen with real rust spots. Not like the sails I see in my childs eye, but real worn and the color of the dirt that pineapples poke from. My door is blue. I don’t trust the gas heater because I can’t see a flame, and my oven is on Broil set to HI every day. Some weeks or so ago I came home too tight and peed on the open door to my oven. The smell was strange.
When you walk in my house through the screen door and the blue door you are first arriving in my kitchen. It has the normal appliances. Next is the great room, or simply, the room. Entertainment, a small table with ceramic birds overhead and poinsettias on the ink stained top. I taped a pack of tarot cards onto my wall with the help of my sister. They are bright and engaging and remind me that life is full of things that I don’t understand, full of unimportant things that some would place too much emphasis on.
The great room is bedroom and living area rolled into one. Large enough for the table, a drafting desk, amoure, bedstand, bed, and large coffee table. I have a cover hung on the wall opposite my bed…it’s a bright print full of foliage in oranges and pinks and reds. It is as vibrant as my large blue cockatoo, staring at me with green mohawk and peach bill…as colorful as the two smaller birds hanging beneath him in yellows greens and bright purples and pinks. As bright as the old drawings on the tarot cards, a heart stabbed through with swords, a skeleton on horseback, a blindfolded woman and glorious suns.
Next is my bathroom. It’s not large but it has plenty of room. The tub has a small window of fogged glass, and most every time I bath I imagine someone taking pictures of my silhouette through it, my distorted and blurred image. The shower curtain is a brilliant blue with coral reef and tropical fishes, the window creates a brilliance from the light shining through, and the curtain glows every day that isn’t rainy…and some days that are.
When she first saw this shower curtain I heard her intake sharply and sigh. It was a noise of the surprise of beauty. The noise I made when last I saw her sleeping.
I don’t like carpeted floors so I have fake Persian rugs covering the small expanse of my dwelling, my large and spacious room, fit for an SUV. I can hear garage doors opening in the mornings, and recently there has been a hound from hell braying, making noises halfway in between barking and strangled. Death cries of all those who’ve lost their way to the great and horrible unknown place where surely they are supposed to burn.
Last Saturday this is what I did:
Served the mayor and other public officials who I’d only read about in local news martinis. This was three hours at the new SPCA building in Dallas – for which I received 94 dollars, a new bottle of Kettle One Citreon, and a slight buzz. I also accepted an award on behalf of my boss from a news anchorwoman whose name escapes me.
Had two beers and a giant shot at The Bar of Soap – our local bar/Laundromat/punk venue.
Tried to flirt with a girl I desperately want to flirt with at the bar she was working at. A guy came in, bought us two shots, told me he was a town car chauffer (his first night on the job…good going) – I spilt a shot on him and didn’t want another but she poured one anyway, so I took it. Total at this bar was 3 shots and two pints.
I should have gone home at this point, but instead I went to the “VIP” lounge at House of Blues for an AFI Dallas wrap-up party that a friend was spinning at. It was a list event…I vaguely remember taking off my hoodie for the doorman before getting in the elevator and then putting it back on once upstairs, this of course could have been imagination or part of a vivid dream.
Actually the whole night could have been a vivid dream…and I suppose that now it is, accept for the consequences – which were back pain and offending friends.
When drunk in a room full of assholes, I invariably turn into one.
What is this logic?
I danced with a man in a wheelchairs date.
I’m 26 years old. I am an artist.
And I laugh and laugh and laugh.
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