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Friday, December 18, 2015

Breathing Underwater.

In a middle of a room… 

there is a stage, and on the stage there is a girl, and on a girl the words “Lone Wolf”. Black ink calligraphy, one word sprawling across the back of each thigh. Tall socks and gold hoops. Black lace. When she smiles it’s all lips, and when she looks at you it’s no fucks, but when her back is turned there are acne scars and the slope of shoulders, and longdark hair. You watch her face in the mirror and maybe the facade falls away, or maybe this is just another type of mask. A harder one to remove: the eyes vacant, pointing always to the upper right corner of the ceiling. ...stands a suicide. Cross-legged in the booth at the back, we sip our drinks and take turns walking our dollar bills to the stage. Lay them at the dancers’ feet like an offering or apology.


Sniffing a paper rose. It’s been raining like fuckall and the weather has me surly. Seventeen days of breathing underwater. Sitting across from a human, the damp sinks into layers and layers. Wet wool and cotton. We wrap our tongues around cheap beers. Smiling to a Self. She says just once she wants to be the You; says she wants to kiss a hurricane, but I am a new type of storm these days. Something slow and pervasive. Sinking through layers and layers. I am not the disaster you’re looking for.   


“somewhere it is Spring and sometimes
people are in real:imagine
somewhere real flowers,but
I can’t imagine real flowers for if I
could,they would somehow
not Be real”


She says the whiskey stops her hands from shaking because she asked it to. Wraps her fingers around the shotglass, sipping and suddenly shy. A girl leaves a stage, takes a man by the hand. Settles herself in his lap. Through the gap of gauzy curtains her half-closed eyes as she gyrates. (so he smiles, smiling) I take a girl by the hand and we sit in the noisy silence and there is no shaking.


“but I will not
everywhere be real to
you in a moment”


I leave her on the corner. I do not look back. Describe to me the shape of a Self.


It’s 8am and I’m driving to work and the sun is shining through rain like a curtain as I pull onto the Ross Island Bridge. I’m sure this is a metaphor, somehow. And everything is easier than I had guessed everything would be.I say the words but they don’t feel like mine. I say the words but they taste like nostalgia. I say the words And everything is easier. The sun. The rain. Than I had guessed everything would be. The is blonde with small hands. The is wet wool and cotton. The is half-closed eyes and black lace. The is wrapping a tongue around whiskey and smiling back syllables, afraid of sounding foolish. The is falling asleep at the wheel.


Remembering the way who looked at whom first, anyhow dancing.

Tell me about your closest brushes with death. Tall buildings or pedestals: I have no use for that kind of height. How far can you jump before it’s considered falling? How long before you hit the ground?

Saturday, December 5, 2015

Find nothing but faith in nothing.

When I am lonely I go to that place, and today I realized it when I was halfway there the way I will realize it when I’m halfway there next time. When I left my house I thought it was because I needed food. When I left it was because I thought I needed a change of scenery. When I left it was because staying seemed too easy, seemed like it could be forever. So 2pm and I peel myself out of bed and put clothes on my body, tuck a book under my arm. I am halfway there before I realize I am lonely. Two blocks to go and I'm stuck in my head, floating through last night. Peanut butter porter and Why didn’t we talk sooner. Afterwards, karaoke and too-bright lights. A dimly remembered recurrence like deja vu. This weekly outing sinking slowly into the realm of habitual. Cyclical time. Luis and Paula playing their usual roles. Paula with her Patsy Cline. Same songs, same drinks. This family they have created. Luis sits at the bar, speaks to me in pretty accented English. Says I sing beautifully. Says I could be one of them. A glimpse into some future I can still turn away from. I turned away. Today last night is just a lingering headache. Tired eyes and sore limbs, a bellyful of bad decisions. Today I walk into the bar with the noise and the lights, wet and cold lingering on my skin. In my hair. Find a booth at the back, go to the bar. Food. Change of scenery. When I am lonely, I go to that place. And standing at the bar, standing between me and a cheeseburger, standing between me and some hours of undistributed reading. Mike. Fucking Mike, with his brunch-drunk midafternoon advances. Mike with his standing too close, with his questions. With his introductions and explanations I didn’t ask for. Mike with his I don’t want to take too much of your time, taking too much of my time. He asks for my name, wants to know what I do. He lives just down the street, what about me? I realize halfway through the truth that I don’t have to give it to him. I don’t owe him anything. But I feel guilty; I don’t want to be rude. So I keep spewing generalizations. Lame platitudes. Conversation enders. Mike sips his Bloody Mary, the straw resting against his cracked bloody lower lip. Looking down at me, asks for my number. I give him nine out of ten honest digits, my heart in my throat. I’m sure he can tell I’m lying, positive he’s going to call me out. But he saves the fake number. Smiles. Says Cool, says I’ll talk to you later and all the while I wonder why I couldn’t just say no. No you can’t have my number, or my time, or my attention. Instead I say Great. I order my food, and a drink, and slink to my booth. I try to read with half my attention tracking his movements. I'm dreading the moment he comes through the doorway, wishing I had closed my tab, wishing there was another bar or a backdoor.


When he finally leaves I breathe easily for the first time since first contact. Watch him stumble down the street through my periphery, unwilling to accidentally make eye contact through the window. Once he’s out of sight I gather my things, close my tab, hoping he doesn’t come back. I leave the bar, turn right instead of left. He went left. He lives just down the street.

Mike, I'm sure you are a nice guy. I'm sure your intentions were pure. I'm sure you saw me walking into that bar and just wanted to reach out. Make a human connection. Dip your toes into the water to see if I was drowning. Or maybe you just liked my jacket. Maybe you were drunk and chatty. Regardless, your inability or refusal to read my body language made me feel vulnerable. You were exercising an ignorance afforded you by privilege I'll never know. Now I’m sitting in my bed thinking about the truth. Thinking about the moment I realized I could be anybody or anything. The stories we tell ourselves. The stories we tell other people. The spaces we occupy. The ways we are allowed to occupy them.

When I am lonely, I go to this place.

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Open Letter Series: #5

**Mom you don't want to read this one!

Hello darlings. I know it's been a very long time since [that one time] I had a guest post. But a friend and I were discussing the current state of lesbian affairs, and she wrote this thing, and I felt it needed a home. So without further ado, Open Letter Series #5: Guest Edition.


To Every Lesbian I've Known, and Every One I've Yet to Meet: 
I love you, but you will never love me back. Until, of course, I stop loving you. Then you will love me fully and with unbridled passion. One night, after too many well whiskey drinks, our hips will collide against a pool table and we will stumble into a sticky, sloppy embrace. We'll find our way back to my house or yours, somehow, and engage in something resembling amateur high school wrestling. With my face nestled between your legs, I will immediately regret the late night totchos we got on the way home. I will try my hardest not to vomit while I ride along with the thrusts and moans of your body. With a final crescendo-ed moan, your body will give in and I will pull myself back up to you. 

As we catch our breath, you'll look at me hoping that I don't expect the favor returned. I don't. 

It's late; I'm tired, drunk, and too emotionally damaged from past relationships to reach orgasm anyway. It would be a futile effort. You will try to snuggle into my embrace, but I'll have the spins and prefer facing the other side of the bed. When I roll over, you'll ask if anything’s the matter, and I'll mumble something incoherent. We'll both drift off into an uncomfortable sleep because it will be too hot and we are still drunk and didn't drink enough water. A few hours later I'll wake up to pee. 

Soon I'll wake up again, much earlier than you and I'll lay there uncomfortably wondering what to do with myself. I'll read Facebook until the battery on my phone dies, then roll over and try to gently wake you up with a morning snuggle and possibly morning sex. This is how I'll learn that you hate morning sex. 

Eventually you'll wake up. We'll laugh about the night before, and one of us will go home. 

We'll never talk about how either of us really feels, so we'll go on text flirting for a few months, and getting really drunk and having sex a couple nights a week. We won't talk about anything meaningful, except for when we're drunk. Then we'll talk about all the things that caused us pain in our childhoods. We will sing Brandi Carlile on karaoke just before the bar closes and walk home together, each quietly thinking to ourselves about the girls we'd rather be going home with. After two months of this, over a plate of hummus and limp carrot sticks, we'll decide, mutually, that this isn't working. We'll both cry. 

We'll still text each other for 6 more months, but all social interaction will feel strained and sad. I'll see your profile come up on my Tinder account and I'll swipe right, just to see if you swiped right. You didn't. 

A few more months will go by and I'll leave town. I'll get the job of my dreams and a dog and you'll look at all my Facebook photos, wondering how you ever let me get away. I so look forward to our time together, sweet Lesbian. With love and eager co-dependency, Other Lesbian