92

It was a courtyard of sorts, if you could loosely define one as an unused square of grass surrounded by buildings. I liked to think of it that way, because then my school had a courtyard, and it was something out of a book I liked, and everything that happened, as nightmarish as it could be or as nightmarish as I made it with my anxious, awkward presence, was all part of something safe. I feel safe looking back at it. I can’t remember how I felt, except maybe cool when I was wearing a blazer, and mawkish.

I never asked her what uniform she wore, so I’ll picture her in mine. I’ll picture her in a skirt, even though knowing her she would only wear it once or twice, and have to feel really brave doing it, and I’ll picture myself telling her with the perfect amount of innocence and of malice that she looked good, and I’ll picture her younger, so that she’ll get a kick out of it that she maybe never got, because I wasn’t there, and I’ll imagine that standing in that courtyard she decided that maybe she liked herself, so that when she got to seeing me for real, let’s say it was years later after she left my school and we hadn’t spoken, she’d be different from what she was, still her, but less worried about it all.

And I’ll picture myself in that real present as less of a jerk. Maybe more boiled down because leading up to that point I had had a visit from me now, or some form of it that existed back then, that had seen the field before the haunted hospital, and felt truly in control, and talked to me then and said, you know what, you’re alright. And maybe that had given me enough confidence to spur me on, so I had an agenda of that first day of varsity, and I told her that she seemed different, and she said you seem different too, you seem angrier.

And all of it would have been perfect, because then I’d have explained that a fuse had been lit under my ass, and she’d have asked me if it meant I couldn’t smile the way I used to. And she’d have told me how much she liked that evil little smile I did, and I’d have told her, “Honestly, I’ll smile when it all makes sense.”. And then she’d tell me that she had found out that it never does, although she wouldn’t know, she’d just want to see if that boy was still there.

And we’d walk around the same spots that we always did, by the cafeteria, by the girls res, by the theatre, by the many corners and crevices of the art buildings, and we’d eventually, after she prodded me, reflect on the courtyard, and the one time she put on a skirt because she was curious, curious enough to ignore her fear, curious what I would think.

And now she wouldn’t be such a mystery to me and I would understand myself. Now it’s been about a week since she messaged me. We had an honest conversation the last time, and I realised there was another part of me that I couldn’t get back, and it hurt even worse because I felt like this cycle I had worked hard, knowing it would go but wanting to make the most of it.

I’d tell her now that maybe I never loved her, although I was only being that honest because there was another guy on the line, and he was actually great, maybe better than me, he was settled and he didn’t have to get a single thing, none of the things I had to push myself to understand, because that might never go away, I might be obsessed, but at least then I’d be good enough to know, actually believe, that without my control things would work out and years from now she’d invite me over to her place, to finally be back in her repaired life, but as is years from now she’s just going to think about it. She’s going to be exactly as contemplative, jutting her lip to the one side, glassy eyed, pushing it as far as possible, and I can’t think of a situation that ends up with me telling her that it’s not because of her I do the same.

She’ll scratch her thumb into her wooden chair and she’ll consider putting on a brighter light but know that she can’t, that it’s too bright and will make that feeling she can’t ever shake too real. She’ll wonder if maybe it is good to pick up a vice, she’ll remember when I gave her a cigarette when she needed to calm down, my red boxes of cigarettes. She’ll feel low, really low, really tired, and it will occur to her that she can’t change. The world will, and she’ll be like a marble put under all of its pressure, and what makes her even more exhausted is that she knows everyone around her, maybe even the kids she’ll have, will get frustrated with her. As they get older they’ll turn from helping her to not letting her break their stuff.

The both of us just can’t let go of the illusion of control. Maybe it makes us soulmates. It’s exactly why we should stop talking. There’s no good point in saying anything anymore.

We sat in the movies together and we had just had a fight. We had got the tickets before and if we hadn’t we probably would have just agreed to give it some time and go home, but we could both be pretty frugal, if there was frugality in not wanting to waste a shitload of money on something that might maybe fix things. It was the kind of fight where it was an irritation that had flared up and the way we had dealt with it was the bigger problem. It was that we were under stress and it wasn’t that we dealt with things really well, alone or together. We were both get on our bike and figure it out people, and the both of us had at some point tried to fix the relationship on our own. But we had come to some agreement of where the ground was between us, and it felt sad that we had acted like how we had before we knew. It had been panic. It had been wild and both of us knew that it didn’t have to be, we had been through terrible things countless times and gotten through it by the skin of our teeth and gotten through worse than this countless times and figured out some system of reason, and yet now, we had panicked, like we needed something to panic about.

The movie was about Christmas and it was goofy and in real life it was close to Christmas and all of the songs had been playing in the stores while we had walked around. Semi-aimlessly, and yet with the notion of an objective. I think we both just wanted to be out. It was the 21st. Home didn’t feel right sometimes. The real objective, that neither of us didn’t want to stress about, was to stay out for a decent amount of time, and she wanted to get something for her cousin, and we weren’t thinking about the millions of people rushing all around us or how bad the lines would be or how the backup of getting some kind of food would invoke a terrible wait time because in all honesty we were happy to be with eachother. The fight broke out because I met someone I used to see at my old job, who I didn’t talk to once, who I just verbally noted, and who I waved at but who didn’t see me. And she was mad that I didn’t turn around or make more of an effort. And it struck a nerve because I was thinking the same thing, and I hate being called out for my shit. With most people, I had resigned myself for a while to silences that I seemed so unable to fill, and had resigned to walk away from him.

It’s not that she thought I could do better. It’s that the entire system of feeling weird talking to people didn’t make sense to her. It’s not a skill, maybe it’s a skill to be charismatic, but it’s not a skill to just talk. And I couldn’t. Sometimes I couldn’t even say anything to her. There was a bigger pressure, the pressure of avoiding actually speaking my mind, that linked back to all of that. It was Christmas. It made me smile.

We hadn’t decided on anything and we both knew we leaving it to figure itself out. I’d pick up the car keys and she’d give me a look like yes or a look like no, and if it was no we’d just go sit in front of those perfect speakers and pick one song, and just listen silently, staring at the garage door. It was strange how we floated, I couldn’t do that with anyone else and I couldn’t do it alone, but she had a way of making it feel like either way what we got would be important. It felt more important than being decisive.

Our place was tidy, and our fights were passionate and brief, and always ended with us going into separate corners to recoup, staring at nothing and thinking about faraway ideas. She liked shoes. I thought that I got them before her but the way she explained them was like she made them, she would take a shoe off and sit on the couch and swivel it with her wrist, drawing lines with her other index finger, watching me get it, and that was a joy that neither of us had had before, that somebody actually got it, not in a way where we were pointing to something and they saw it, and a way where the links were clear, in a way where we saw each other and what we were building. Neither of us considered ourselves intellectuals, and it was nice that we could be smart without feeling like we had something to keep up. Cause sometimes we were stupid. And we understood that too.

She was judgemental, and it tired me. Sometimes I’d wait a moment before answering a question because I wasn’t sure of the root either. I was more abstract and she hated that. She hated that the me had a dump out point that I willingly held the door up for, even for the good stuff, she thought it was some kind of judgement against myself. I didn’t know how to explain that I felt like there wasn’t a self, and that between being Bob Dylan and being a hoarder there had to be some way to not sacrifice yourself to the great oblivion. She would have got that, but I still had that defence up against saying anyone feel that hurt of pointlessness that I felt.

Sometimes she caught me though, and she’d just sit down on the other side of the couch and wait me with my neck crooked staring out of the window, completely helpless, and she was helpless to know how to give me warmth, so she’d just wait on me to say something. We sat in the garage with Joni Mitchell playing, her hand draped itself over mine and I felt so uncomfortable. The grief was incomparable. It was excruciating.

“Imagine you design something that you know once it’s real, it’s shape becomes a lie, because the shape that you’re picturing is supposed to be flatter when you’re not looking at it. And imagine this is your only job. Imagine you know that no matter what else you design or how amazing it is, that will be the design that you can never really get to, in fact, you’re getting away from it by being good and getting better. Imagine you’re supposed to work with your instinct to make something that doesn’t fall apart, and you don’t have any materials, and you have forty seconds, every time you try and make it. You trust yourself more and you become more resourceful, and every attempt seems like something you want, until you realise that wanting that design makes it flawed, because how can what isn’t have desire? How can you have desire? You’re not, either. None of it is. The moment you begin to comprehend, you’re losing it. You’ve already lost it.”

She backed her hand off of mine. “I would wait until I wasn’t anymore, and see if it will make sense then.” That was how I fell in love with her

Sometimes you learn that it’s not worth it to prove yourself, even if it helps you believe. Rather be doubtful and stay true on a track you can’t see.

He didn’t get a ticket out but slowly he started behaving as if he wasn’t there anymore and focusing on the pieces before him, and they turned into a feeling that behaved differently than he had known - it made him patient. At the beginning he still wanted to be impulsive, and he compensated in bad decisions but learnt to abandon them as quickly as they threatened to derail anything that his gut trusted as important. He guessed that his weaker moments were when he wanted to feel happier.

He met her when he couldn’t afford it, but she came with a similar sort of determination, and he trusted that she would know when to let go because she had a respect for what he was doing. He was wrong there.

3 months ago she moved in to the place opposite his. He invited her to his warming party, but she didn’t come. She bought cheap but pretty lamps for herself and never turned them off. If he woke up and felt for some air, he’d see her light on. He felt a little like she was recording too, but he’d never seen the inside of her place.

He missed her, so he liked to think that because they would basically have the same apartment spaces, if he sat on his dining room table at some point she would have been sitting opposite him, pointedly ignoring him.

Today instead of being patient I got the new canvas I had been laying fantasies over for weeks and spat on it. Lathered it, retched on it, made beautiful arcane shapes form on it and my body produce colour. I was so proud of what I had done.

My body shook and my gut felt hollow, I had to leave the room, I had to force myself to get sun. My dogs came to visit me in my backyard, sniffing my nails, wagging, happy to see their best friend. I wondered if I could be their friend anymore.

There was a little bird I’d been gifted at the start of the year, by someone who gave it to me and held my hand and told me that her husband wanted me to have it. She was very dear to me, and I only realised it 8 months after I had seen her, and I started to really slow down.

I saw that bird every morning and it made me think of big windowsills and a giant dead garden that was more like the spare parts of a farm that was at her house and how glad I was I had seen it with her. So I started to draw more.

I went on a volunteering trip in September. We quartered in an old campsite like how I had gone to in high school, and every evening and even some of the time when it was bright and I was with people I thought about how the grade above had found me, trying to write in the dark.

They thought I was trying to test me vision. I was trying to write a letter to a girl, and I needed to get it to her urgently, and she’s in America now, we had a call where her voice went soft, and I heard the mistrust grow as we talked. We haven’t spoken since. That was last month.

All these things happen to me, I’m shaking now. I was looking at my hands earlier and every time I see my hands I think about the entirety of existence, how it’s all there, slowing you down as you try to move forward. I think about the creases growing and growing until I’m sure somebody could pull them off like cobwebs and in a sense I could be born again, talking with an uncrushed voice, thinking only about the colour a rock leaves on my hand when I crush it

That little bird is somehow dead to me, more lifeless than if a real bird flew into my window. I picked it up and felt it’s little body throb with life, and it knew in some way that I was safer than the ground, even as it’s little eyes couldn’t open, somehow it’s legs were still intact, almost functional even, and I couldn’t help but stroke it and think of true beauty, just to protect, until I left it on the tree, feeling an obligation to fate.

Was that where we were destined? Some island, staring at the killer sun?

day 17

I’m thinking suddenly of my cousin

who might have been depressed

and who tricked me into getting high

and had in certain parts an asshole

and in others enough if a glaze to draw sympathy

and how good a defence pretending not to care was

as much as to try full time comedy

to which in its own draws terror from parents

and this whole hop-switch about the humour

of a tragedy - like a kid hanging to a balcony

even though it could be behaviour as silly kidding

or prat-falling or laughing insistently as

put-on as you know it is dizzyingly

being at such heights as was inconceivable

since as was proven by your father

who believed and drilled into you

everything that was hollow was hollow

so that now even genuine pursuit of anything

or genuine enjoyment turns into performance

so everything you want is also joyless.

I might be too shy to call him and ask

but I can inquire if the stranger next to

me is alright and hear him in his sorrow

and purport myself as much as possible to help him.

My girlfriend got the wrong tickets on wevents.com (though I blame myself, I really only told her book the seminar on the 13th) (though she is one of those folks who likes to be efficient before she has a feel of what’s going on, and she got the first one that she saw) and when we saw what was going on we decided not to do it, because the phrasing was weird. But then we were sitting on our couch deciding if a series for the night was a good option, and we spiralled in our restlessness to seeing what it was about.

“It’s not me. It’s not what I believe in. It’s what I’ve noticed, that humanity has always been aware of and never been able to pin down. That’s the wave. And you know how waves are.”

I didn’t know any personally, and I felt too outside of the reverence pinned to the guy on stage to get behind the strange phrasing of the sentence. My girlfriend and I looked at each other, then looked about again. It wasn’t exactly culty. Not exactly.

“A wave will go as it’s pulled. And a man can either live in denial and drown, or he can move out of the way.”

He backed up, we saw his face more clearly in the light. I remembered a funny at the time Keye and Peele sketch, where Peele was a Brazilian wrestler donning the will of God. Even that being my only point of reference struck me - you don’t get a lot of people with that kind of conviction, when it’s not about you against your doubt, but about your body being able to get the energy over the line. You were just a shell. I gripped her hand tighter.

And it occurred to me that I did have a closer reference, her dad. He was like that, enamoured, but his body couldn’t do it. I had seen him twice before he’d gone last year, left to lie under blankets, looking out the window. He said an awkward hello to me, like he didn’t really care who I was and didn’t really need to check out his daughters new man, and gradually, more and more, he just stared outside the window, like he was trying to crack the sun.

She had a really bad swim, so I took her home. She didn’t say anything when she got inside, just left me by an open door, went upstairs and took a shower, came back down and sat in the chair in the corner, blanket wrapped on her shoulder, head on her palm, looking out the sliding doors.

Everything about that place felt completely lost. It was a bunch of pictures no one looked at anymore. Decorated to be almost gaudy, with a yellow light that could never beat the grey streaming in. It was like a ship cabin a little bit, sagging and rising for forty years.

I couldn’t trace it back to her. Jen told me it used to be her grandma’s, but that felt more ridiculous than if she had made it that way, because she refused to let things lie. If I knew her at all she would have nailed thick blankets over the windows. If I knew her she wouldn’t stay there at all.

I found some teabags and etched a line over the ornate mirror. I watched myself. Still young. So many people had told me that I didn’t look a day over 20 that I had started to think I was inexperienced, but it was starting to feel like at any moment I’d crease up.

Eventually she came over, completely unwillingly, but I kept on freaking out about the cups and how cute they were until she was forced to look at them. Memory cups. Gemini and Taurus. Golf day cups. Silly cartoon cups. She took them in blankly, then abruptly grabbed my hand and started crying. The towel shook over her shoulders. As she did that and held me she took two mugs down and poured in the water. I think one of her tears fell in mine.

We drank and talked for a few hours, until she became really happy. We’d known each other since high-school, and one thing I could always make her do was laugh. But it was different now. I was making her hesitate, I was making her look up at me.

We went for a drive, just down to the garage not more than five minutes from us. I thought about how old people don’t seem to be better than young people, morally, and that made me give up the whole thing a little. We could see the beach from the well lit crevice. We got chocolate bars and looked out at the water.

I wanted it to work. Part of it was the pressure of it feeling like a failure if I didn’t kiss her, having got so far. Her eyes glowed. She wore this thick jacket, it had a fur collar, and since she was short it swallowed all of her, save her hands and fingernails, that she kept up, lest she get chocolate all over herself.

I plucked up enough courage and awkwardly licked her thumb. She laughed, nervously. I didn’t feel good about myself. I had wanted it to be better. I abruptly looked at the beach again, then got mad, and looked back at her. She was smiling at me, and wiped a bit of melted chocolate on her lip.

Nathan is outside piling the wood for the upcoming winter when he accidentally chops up his little brothers toy car.

At first he feels bad, because it’s his brother’s favourite toy, but his guilt is replaced by a sense of justice, when he considers how much stuff his brother has, and how spoiled he is compared to Nathan. He decides to bring it in with the rest of the pile

But the toy car had been painted with a carcinogenic polish, and his whole family gets cancer over the winter from burning it.

In the summer they begin their chemotherapy sessions, and sitting in a row, with the needles in their arms, Nathan confesses what he did.

His father reaches over and slaps him over the head. “That was supposed to be your brother’s cancer!”

Big empty room, save for the pillars. Four in a row in the back. Years old. The whole place was falling apart. Ceiling leaks making the chipping paint over their concrete shine. Splintering wood boards.

Faraway from them by the French doors. 40m of space between the entrance and the pillars. Washed paisley pattern on the walls in dark green. Dull haloed light, a low chanting noise. Somehow, it felt like the dark unseeable space behind them was closer to you than your own face.

It was a sad when we met up again, just because of how much had changed, and the location we had picked. Macca and I had drifted apart in the worst way possible, a wedge that separated us when he told me that he was beginning to feel suicidal and I didn’t help him much. Nicky was there too, and I’d abjectly brushed him off from my life after a bad hookah session. Kirsty I hadn’t seen since school, and Selene had moved to the UK, almost like she was moving away from me and my awkward, angry advances. And on top of it we chose the same steakhouse that we’d always been to as 17 year old, pretending to have grown up dinners.

The air was thick with all of it, and it seemed bound to drown us all and I was thinking of an awkward excuse to make when Macca got a call from a Rebecca (we all saw his screen light up) and she talked loud enough that the phrase “Mommy’s waiting poopsie bear.” came to us like she was right there in her garters. He put his phone down and closed his eyes.

“You were always a bit like that.” - Selene, pursing her lips. Nicky and I tried not to make eye contact. The waiter came with our drinks. “You’re a girl, Selene.”. “You’re astute.”. “How do I let her down easy?”

“Now why would you want to stop being anyone’s daughter?”, at which the waiter’s eyes shifted just so subtly to Macca’s pronounced Adam’s apple and his eyebrows lifted in a kindly acceptance. “Ready to order? Sir? Sir? Madam, Madam Madam?”

Kirst couldn’t help but rub Selene’s shoulder appreciatively and smile a smarmy smile at Macca while Selene popped the cherry from her old fashioned into her mouth. I remembered in that moment that Kirsty and Macca had once sexted on my phone.

“I’m not her daughter. And I’m not even the most like that, Zak’s the one who -“

“Not the table bro.” Nicky said into his drink, and Macca looked up guiltily at me, but I felt my irritation flair.

“Oh, come on. We can barely even call that flirting from all those years ago.”

“It was trash.” Selene piped in again. She hadn’t even got the old fashioned in her yet.

“It was trash. And even if it wasn’t, it was 8 years ago. Selene, did you leave because of my bad flirting?”

“I was just so frightened all the real men had fled the country.”

“Well I apologise. As you can see, 3 real men and one of them in a relationship with his mother. It’s a great turn out.”

Selene smirked a little. I did still want to pop that cherry out of her mouth.

“Well it’s not the right table to bring up the past on, especially when Nicky still hasn’t apologised to me.” said Kirsty, and wiped her nose delicately with her napkin. We all stared at her, even Nicky.

“What did I do babe?”

“You don’t remember when I had to bring the pregnancy test to school?”

I frowned at that and looked over at Nicky for his reaction. Behind him it was starting to get dark. He pushed his hair back, confused and frustrated.

“And what about it? Why should I apologise for that?”

“I’d be sorry if you maybe got me pregnant Nicky, and I’m a man.”

“Shut up Macca. You’re a daughter. Nicky, that wasn’t even for you.”

“Oh!” I said, and I slammed the table. “That was for that girlie that said she threw in the positive stick just as the garbage men came by.”

“And I thanked you for helping me Kirsty.”

“Yes, but you never apologised when Hayden found it and thought it was mine -“

“Even though you’d kept him on the hook for 6 months.”

“Ugh. What did you see in that asshole Kirst.” Selene interjected, and we all went quiet. We’d always wondered.

She got a little flustered at that, and took a moment to awkwardly sip her drink.

“No don’t worry we’ll wait babe.” Nicky said a bit pissed off.

“She’s not your babe.”

“Go home to your mother.”

“I’m getting tired of being the butt of the joke.”

“Shut up Macca.” said Kirsty, quite done with her drink. “Hayden was handsome.”

“I’m handsome.” I chimed in. “And cocky.” Selene said a little cuttingly. “Hayden was cute because he was shy. But that’s not why you liked him Kirsty.”

“No. I was trying on different things back then.”

“Hayden would be the equivalent of a piss stained raccoon hide.”

“And you were with him for 3 years.”

“He had a bit of a hold on me. Did I ever tell y’all I saw him again after school?”

“No.” Selene said, and she was genuinely shocked.

“Right before Clarky. In fact, right before Clarky. I came back from the coast and I messaged him and we saw each other again and I gave him head under the McDonald’s by my house.”

“Like a secret McDonald’s lair?” asked Nicky, his interest piqued.

“No, like a parking lot. And I invited him over and we drank a whole bottle of Malibu and he started crying and he said he hated himself, and one night I wanted head at his varsity -“

“This story is getting confusing.”

“But he just wanted to watch Dolemite is my Name. And we were driving back to mine and I said I couldn’t take it anymore and he stopped on the side of the highway and I told him everything, I told him that he wasn’t who he pretended to be, and he told me that he wasn’t pretending to be anything, I wanted him to be someone he wasn’t. And he dropped me off. And I went back. And I didn’t talk to him again.”

She sat back, and she seemed really glad to have told us that.

“That’s good for you to have spoke to him.” I murmured, and Nicky murmured an agreement. She smiled

“What happened to him, do you know?” Macca. Kirsty took a small pause there and his eyes became a little reproachful. Each one of us, and the whole classroom really, knew Macca had struggled with his mental after school, going in and out clinics, being labelled the pill boy amongst us.

“I don’t Macca.”

“But fuck him anyway.” I said, a little loudly, and everybody looked our way. Macca’s head tilted in a way that I didn’t know. “He was an asshole to all of us, and I don’t wish him bad but assholes don’t matter. I think it’s nice that it’s us sitting here, cause we all mean something to everybody at this table.”

“We really saw each other find ourselves.” Selene murmured. Macca’s bottom lip pulled down, like a face shrug. “I can drink to that Zach.” He lifted his glass and we all clinked with him.

78b

I got to keep her gloves

she stood up to her parents young

the third party warned them:

every commitment gets watered down

religion, violence, it’s better to be direct with our love

the lessons, even a consistent truth

play God, send the boy off

let him think she cared

with a garment, because

then it won’t be like she’s alone

103

Carousels spinning and these sticky, muddy kids from down the waterway lifting up dredged leaves with sticks, and you, your usual goofy smile like your lips automatically opened at their ends, you walked on ahead of me just a little bit. I was tired that day I don’t know what I had in me, maybe light melancholy, maybe a nervousness or an anger I’d learnt to just accept, but you were about the same. 15 months. 15 months and you still made me feel like I was living the memories that I’d wanted to change.

Do you have your head a low hum? We walked past it, it sounded choral. In fact, I pictured this scene from Blackkklansmen (I didn’t think it was Tobe Hooper, don’t worry!) of this underground room with dense brown tiles and white walls and a good amount of windows and kids, 10 or twenty, practicing their scales, passively dedicated - where do children get the motivation to do adult things from? I suppose the better question is to wonder how they end up rebelling, but coming from my childhood, it makes no sense to follow an energy but your own. You asked about the sadness in my eye - that’s why it’s there. Our own lane isn’t a natural gift love.

But I picture being a kid with you, or the age sliding off of both of us as I pull you to go see what’s happening, and I was closer to my faith then, or a faith, so I picture God actually hearing those kids and catching us peeping. Isn’t that a strange image? The memory of us as 12 year olds in front of God, and how that tied us together in the park that day and how every time we meet again it feels like a pebble and it’s reflection bouncing off from that one slingshotted moment.

I just have no doubt you wouldn’t have ratted, is all. The aura of God is to me decided by the beard he’s got on, and that day he looks a lot like the Holy Grail version, and he clears his throat thunderously, and we both turn around from the window to look at him. And I back my shoulder into you just a little bit, nervously eying where you stand.

“Why don’t you sing for me?” I think he’d be a little amused, and the grass will snake at his feet.

“Because we don’t have to.” you’ll say, angrily, even though I think God is the sort to have a discussion, and by now he surely knows that I don’t believe in him.

I think he has yellow eyes, and he’ll burn me with their deep, reckoning stare. I think forward now to my dying grandad, and how he told me why he has angry with me, and how I said;

“We were born to wander. Faith and travel, that’s the duality of us.”

And God will harumph good naturally and go down to hear the boys, and I’ll turn to you and grab your hands, and we’ll be 27 and 23 again, and the sky will go back to normal - “Thats the duality of you and I amour.”

105

It’s only purpose seemed to be forward, that stupid horse of a machine. Circular gears, 7 rows with 4 apiece, a hare-brained medley of side rods, and from some angles lights shiny and in others grimy as muck. It pulled off this motion like waves.

The one evening I fell under it. I found this kid on the floor staring up its belly, the moon across him, his legs crossed in the air. I sidled up and lay down beside him. Kid saw my pain and there’s something about how kids understand pain - it made you abnormal, didn’t it?, that I appreciated. Like a misshapen pear.

“I’ve never actually been to the water.” he said, like I was going to take him or something.

“Sometimes it’s like you’re tearing you apart and you’re not even in it.”

“I get scared of seeing nothing past the horizon. Like no cities or hills? What the fuck is there.”

Little bastard had a mouth.

“Nothings out there man. You need some end to yourself, and nobody is watching you from another continent thinking ah there’s little Mark.”

“You had a pool when you were little?”

“No. I used to go to my friends house. The one time I didn’t want to go in.”

He nodded his head. “Drowning.”

“No, the cold. When you plunge in the water hits your sides under your arm and you panic. My friend left me, I was taking so long to get in. He found me there a half hour later, not more than 2 centimetres deeper.”

“I wanna feel a wave hit me in the chest.”

“No better feeling.”

115

Pterodactyl. Above my goddamn bed. At night I dreamt of 80s movie posters (it might be Freddy Kreuger) with his pterodactilian arms reaching out and my fingers stressing into the hem of the blanket. I’m not scared though. If anything, he seems to be my irreverent buddy - both of us are odd mirrors, weird, but also nonplussed. Why’d the cat lock itself out of the house and why is it my problem? Why’d the rain pour so specifically into a drain right behind my basin, making me think there’s phantom water in my house? Why’d the girl in the other flat leave the wonderful warm inside just to shiver and look out at the pool?

I didn’t want to approach her, I considered taking the pterodactyl (Gary) with me just to undercut the moment. Not that she wasn’t cute or mysterious, or my type, but at the time I had aversions to speaking to people. Most of them looked at me with an aggressive blankness, like an anomaly they wanted to fuck off, and my arms had gotten sore from miming things. I trudged heavy handed through the city and had started pointing with my nose, but anyway she was there, shivering, and I’d finished an assignment, it gave me so much relief. I’d started to wonder if she was real. Typing, looking up, seeing her the first time.

Seeing her again, remembering that there was the Black Sea at the base of the country, tip tap, thinking about that name, the Black Sea. She drummed an odd pattern into the length of the rail convenient to her, like a coda. I copy and pasted more shit. Mystery with an undercurrent of liquorice. Gary did you like liquorice when - no, there was no time of when for Gary. He was a depiction of an animal gone long before liquorice. He wouldn’t have known.

Everyone here had a sweet tooth. I sat back and stretched out. Lots of nights on cobbled stone with old ladies jabbing guards of wine at me, inviting me in, I always take in ceilings when I go to places, they study my face. I purport a granny when I’m with grannies, I’d probably speak on her and how ridiculous it was she was out in the cold like this, but that would cross the line into me being a man again, and the old lady’s mouth with furrow and she’d pour me another glass. That’s funny. Are we what they say of us, but only when it’s good to be that thing?

The moment it all changed was when she looked at me. I glanced up and strands of hair were floating over her nose and cheeks and she was studying me. You were not out in the cold for me you ridiculous human being, even my ego would have thought she was crazy. But I understood it, she needed someone and something. But I’m busy typing. Look up again. She’s smiling. I laugh. This ridiculous game. I’d said it a while back, the only reason we accept this plane was because it allowed us to see other people. But it was a ridiculous plane. Convoluted and silly and messy. 100 thousand humans working on one doc.

I thought of Ritchie Valens. Pterodactyl, you would have loved him. He was my only cd at the time. I shut my laptop off and loaded him in, opened my door and hung in the frame. She didn’t adjust herself. Head on the bannister, she looked at me with a vampire smile, some people had that y’know, long teeth. Oh Donna. She rolled her eyes and walked over.

170525

I ran into the rain and truth

“There’s no one coming after you”

The ground said while the air cooled

The wind pulled, I waded in the shallow end

My friend found the penny

He beat me, a little envy was all it took

This empty space

After a lifetime

I’m seeing is filled with

A staircase I always never climbed

And if you see my

Little heartbeat

On the monitor

Tell it he made it out alive

I came to I was a monster

Chewing on a past that had come past me

But the future is so bright

I saw her standing in the corner

Terrified, terrified

Darling will you sleep with me tonight?

Play with my hair

Swear it will be alright

Sing on the melody

I’ll take the higher line

I’ve been a little reckless.

I consider myself a bit of a prankster, and I always push it as far as I can. Normally it’s about control - I like to make fun of those who think they have it, and it’s fun because it gives me autonomy, at least in a dynamic, though I know, ultimately, none of this is up to me.

And yet so much of it is determined by the direction I choose, even that truck that will take me out one day. And that’s where I’m starting to feel like I’ve gone wrong. I shouldn’t have directed myself towards that Franklin house, as inviting as it seemed.

Did you ever see The Haunting? The original one. 1960. It had all of those camera effects, and that long, droning narration. The Hill House mansion. And that statue. That’s how I feel.

Constantly observed. I shouldn’t have gone over. I knew that she was controlling, I knew I’d give up my dignity for a bit of pleasure. Now I can’t get her off me.

Amelia. Nicole. Whatever. I don’t know where she exists in reality, because a large part of my decisions surrounding her come from the chapter in my life after I thought she had left. I suppose that’s what I’m trying to say. Nothing gets killed unless you leave it behind.

She was so tender. She recognised something I did, a little shaking in my hands, my car always stalling, and she took over. And in the moments afterwards, like when I found out about her Russian grandfather or when I learnt that she loved her family, I could see it all - Amelia, my flower.

But she’s Nicole, and she was confused why I saw her differently - maybe she was too young to define herself. I swept past it, I fell past it, because I needed someone. Fatal flaws. A jaguar xjr crashing down a hill that I wrote about when I was a teenager, before I had my license. I wasn’t happy.

Her lips? She didn’t blend into the background. She seemed uncomfortable waiting. She seemed smarter than the goody girls who flopped their hair with their hips, but she was like anyone else - she wanted something too. Cold ceramic that goes warm as I cradle it, like a chew toy, I deserved that because I always grew violent, and by means of a reticent affection I got it.

She called it off, I went to my next journey. The Franklin house became my haunt, I’d look up at the balconies and dream of us booking a room. I sat at the pool and read.

I ended up there one evening with someone else. I don’t know how deliberate it was - though I do - and I sat at her side until she grew frustrated with me and left.

I found a can of spray-paint in my car. I drew arrows leading away from its mahogany door, and I fell asleep till someone found me where I had pointed. I had written “shame” above me.

“You should write a comedy. It should be about your different relationships with girls.”

“There’s nothing funny about the relationships I have with girls.”

Frankie, who was sitting mournfully at the window, away from us, passive aggressively threw her bouncy ball at the wall. Thud-thud.

“Girls seem to find you humorous.”

“They find me charming. Remember Kirst?”

“We didn’t like Kirst.”

“Irregardless; do you remember my level of composure?”

“She slapped you in the club on the dance floor because you refused to tell her that she was the prettiest girl you had been with.”

“Larney, that’s my point.”

“And my point too. We didn’t like her.”

“But you would have loved her if I’d told her at the clubs on the dance floor that she was the prettiest girl I’d been with. You would have said ‘Oh Steve and Kirsty are just great.’ But I didn’t. Because I don’t create interesting stories with girls.” The ball flew straight into my head and bounced onto the wooden floors, until it rattled down into the corner of our giant sunny flat.

“Good shot Frankie.”

“Steve go fuck yourself.”

“Well.” I sucked on my lower lip. “Why?”

She watched me for a little while, waiting for me to get it, then got up, and came closer to where we were surrounded by a whole bunch of loose papers.

“You remember Sandy?”

“Yes.”

“Great girl Steve.”

“She was Larney. And do you remember what you did Steve?”

They both stared at me.

“The problem, Steve. You make it so all of these girls are the joke. That’s why you think it’s so fucking boring.”

There was a seething and swarming in the ground, the soil kiltered and the fresh wet depth churned while the grassroots broke -

We sat nose to nose and giggled, but we both couldn’t find the moment. Empty mansions up along the road and we hid between the trees -

DARLING I can feel you in the country again. Everyone from my past seems to be circling so tightly around me - is this some pressure? Am I finally about to burst? Or am I too hopeful?

There’s no way to tell if you’ve done enough until you fail. And doing too much threatens erasure - though I have to question what erasure I’m so afraid of that I’ve barely tried my entire life.

This morning I thought that I always burnt myself out, and this afternoon I thought that being completely dedicated was the only way through.

Bumpy gravel walls my love, this place has enough space so that you don’t feel pressure on your ears but I’ve been in a room without a suspended ceiling - the structural climbs meshed without noise, grandlessly slatted, pins in their rightful place, no one is hurt.

No-one. Is she going to call? I‘ve melted a little, with you I could stand for honour, but since had to leave and I was too scared to join you - why did I make it okay? Why didn’t I set a standard for my life where you stood highest - because I knew you were. Then I let everything else affect me.

Why’s that my curse? To want and to strive and to not just look around a little?