On Tuesday evenings, Ryan and I go downtown to a bar to play poker for points. I figure this is a good way for me to gain valuable poker experience and avoid the need to take out a second mortgage. I understand the rules of the game. I know what hand beats what. I can even figure out how many outs I might have, although I don't bother figuring out the odds. Math was never really my thing. (I always say that, and while it is true that language has always come more easily to me than the sciences, I was never terrible at math. A bit of trouble learning to tell time, and word problems continue to boggle my brain, but I always got As. Today, I can count out change and figure out how much to tip at a restaurant. This is pretty much all the math I currently need.)
Anyway, I can outlast some of the more erratic players just by playing conservatively, but what I suck at is reading people. I have no idea if you raised with a suited 6-7 or pocket aces. I can't tell if you've hit your flush. Ryan is a lawyer. He is good at reading people. Last week he won a tournament of 40+ people. I didn't even place (although I wasn't out first.)
I did, however, knock an entire pint-sized glass of iced tea into my lap. I took a sip, placed the glass in the black plastic cutout designed for that purpose, but missed the edge and ended up wearing it. It was distracting, because I yelped and stood up, and because I was wearing a white t-shirt that also got wet. Luckily, I was also wearing a sweater. I zipped that sucker up posthaste after one of the fellows hollered, "Wet t-shirt contest!". Being one of the few attractive girls in this particular league garners me some attention but so far it hasn't seemed to help my game. Ah well. The regulars get irritated at such mishaps because time is ticking and those blinds will go up at any minute. No money is at stake, but it is serious business nonetheless.
A few hands later, the frightfully irritating older gentleman to my left dropped the entire deck onto the floor. Regular eyeballs rolled. We picked them up, counted them, and came up one card short. We scoured the floor anew, and I discovered a card stuck to the bottom of my boot, suctioned there by spilled iced tea. It turned out to be an ace. Regular heads shook in disgust. Yes, this is my diabolical scheme: to soak my jeans in sticky liquid and afix aces to the bottom of my shoe in order to cheat. I am a villain.
A few hands after that, during my deal and after the first round of betting, the deck slipped from my fingers and spilled onto the table. Re-deal. Time wasted. More rolling eyeballs. It was not my night. Short-stacked, I went all-in with suited ace-queen and lost when my opponent hit his jack.
Having joined my fellow losers as spectators at Ryan's table, I shared my woes. "Tonight was not my night," I tell Ryan, and the heavy-set woman sitting to his right responds, "Hey, if the worst that happens to you is you spill your drink, you're doing alright." This blonde woman in her pink tracksuit shows me a cell phone photo of her daughter. "This is my daughter," she tells me proudly. The photo is of a grown woman, blonde, not particularly pretty. I don't know what to say so I say, "She looks like you." "You think so?", clearly pleased. When pink tracksuit shows the snapshot to Ryan, he concurs.
Later, sitting across from pink tracksuit, eating my plate of half-priced nachos while Ryan continues his comeback, she tells me that she was diagnosed with breast cancer in January. Both breasts. I can't imagine telling such a thing to a stranger. We hadn't even established the rapport that comes from playing against someone, as we had been seated at different tables. "I almost told the doctor just chop 'em both off," she tells me, but since the cancer had also spread to the surrounding tissue, this treatment would likely have been ineffective, so she was going the chemo/radiation route.
I became aware of the power of the boob in grade eleven, when mine suddenly appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, as my mother has never needed to wear a bra. Whether my own C cups were urged forth by the synthetic estrogen/progesterone pills or my paternal genes finally kicking in, I'll never know, but I have grown to count on them. It took a few years before I became entirely comfortable with them, though. Breasts, any breasts, wield an odd power. Endlessly fascinating, endlessly sought after. Male friends have explained how important the female breast is, how 95% of their day is spent hoping to catch a glimpse of even one naked boob. Tits for tits' sake.
Sometimes at night I will cup one breast in my hand in order to fall asleep. This soft pillow that is only mine, comforting in its familiarity, a built-in security blanket. My boobs are an integral part of my physical identity, like my size 8 feet and the dimple in my chin. I don't know what I would do without them.
I don't know if, faced with the horror of disease, I would confide in strangers. But maybe there is relief in the telling. Maybe admitting it out loud, to strangers, makes it real, and therefore beatable. Maybe she has already accepted her death as an inevitability and the fact of her cancer is just small talk, like the score in the hockey game or the way she should have played that last hand. There has been sickness in my family; my mother almost died from a ruptured brain aneurysm and my father is mentally, physically, and spiritually ill. But I don't know how to read this strange, possibly dying, pink tracksuit-wearing woman. I can't tell if she will fight or if she has given up. I don't know if she will live or die. She was right, though: if the worst that happens to me is that I spill my drink and lose a poker game, I'm doing alright.
Apr 21, 2011
Ode to Charlotte, the best cat in the world
Earlier this evening, my dude called to me from downstairs, "Hey! Can you let Charlotte out the front door?" and I told him sure and opened the front door, walked a couple of steps downstairs and called to Charlotte with the special kissing noise we use and an encouraging "C'mon!". Charlotte, excited by the prospect of outside at night, came galloping across the floor, intending to leap up the stairs and (probably) plop down immediately outside the open front door. But her claws found no purchase on the cold concrete floor and instead of making the leap to freedom, she slid and smashed her little calico face into the bottom step, momentum pushing her body forward and to the side, where it, too, thudded into the oak.
It was like that time at school when I saw a girl on rollerblades attempt to go down a too-steep hill and wipeout at the bottom in a heap of bruised body and ego: my concern about her potential injuries did nothing to prevent me from laughing my ass off.
Charlotte stood up and took a step to the side. Sneezed six or seven times, delicate kitten sneezes, then laid down on the unforgiving concrete. Chuckling still, but concerned, I knelt beside her. Are you okay, muffin? I crooned, running my hand over her skull and down her back. Poor honey. C'mere. And I scooped her up and pressed my nose into her fur.
I took her upstairs to the open front door and, as predicted, she walked outside and promptly plopped down on the porch. I stayed with her for awhile, stroking her face, wondering if it was possible to tell if a cat was suffering from a broken nose.
It is hours later and she seems okay now, if rather more on the snuggly side than usual.
Charlotte is the best cat in the whole world. Many cat owners will tell you this, but let me assure you that only I can make this assertion with certainty. She was a skinny little stray (or so we thought) when we discovered her loitering around my mother's fourplex apartment. She was already ours when we learned that she actually belonged to a neighbour in the building next door. Happily, said neighbour was moving and had planned on getting rid of the cat anyway. Her name is Charlotte, he told us, and we approved.
My mother's cat, Caesar, also approved of the new edition, as evidenced by the day he stood in front of her, raised his tail, and splashed a spray of urine into her face, marking her as his.
One winter, Charlotte tore her left Achilles tendon while playing outside in the snow. Equipped with a heavy plaster cast and under orders not to jump or manoeuver stairs for a month, Charlotte was forced to spend her days in a cage. Giving in to her kitten protestations, I slept on a mattress on the floor of the spare bedroom with her for four weeks while she healed. At night she would walk across my face, dragging the cast behind her, crying at the injustice of her captivity, her boredom. I gave up sleep for Charlotte, and you know that that means something.
As a kitten, she once got stuck in a tree and I climbed up and rescued her, her claws digging into my arms and back as she clung to me while I climbed down.
Charlotte still walks across my face at night before she curls up around my head, purring contentedly. She likes people and parties, and she'll steal your chair if you get up to refill your drink. She wigs out and tears up her scratching post when we play rock 'n' roll. She has never bitten or scratched anyone in malice, or used the couch as a scratching post, or peed anywhere other than the litter box or the neighbour's flowerbed, and she doesn't walk across the kitchen counter or sit on the table, so if she sometimes chooses to throw up a hairball on the carpet rather than the hardwood, I can't really complain. She sometimes wanders around the neighbourhood, doing whatever it is that cats do, but mostly she curls up in a chair in the backyard, or rolls around in the sun on the front porch, or hides beneath the bushes and watches the robins. (There was a time when she was a pretty decent hunter, but the Achilles injury has left her less nimble than in her kitten days. A little fatter, too.) She comes when we call her with the kissing noise or a high-pitched "Chaa-ar!", and if she is hesitant to come in, the promise of bacon gets her every time. We don't even have to have any actual bacon; we just tell her "bacon" in a sing-song tone, and in she comes.
I am a cat person. I find little use for the loyal and attention-seeking nature of dogs, for their constant need for approval. There were always cats in my house when I was growing up, but there has never been a cat as awesome as my little calico muffin, Charlotte.
It was like that time at school when I saw a girl on rollerblades attempt to go down a too-steep hill and wipeout at the bottom in a heap of bruised body and ego: my concern about her potential injuries did nothing to prevent me from laughing my ass off.
Charlotte stood up and took a step to the side. Sneezed six or seven times, delicate kitten sneezes, then laid down on the unforgiving concrete. Chuckling still, but concerned, I knelt beside her. Are you okay, muffin? I crooned, running my hand over her skull and down her back. Poor honey. C'mere. And I scooped her up and pressed my nose into her fur.
I took her upstairs to the open front door and, as predicted, she walked outside and promptly plopped down on the porch. I stayed with her for awhile, stroking her face, wondering if it was possible to tell if a cat was suffering from a broken nose.
It is hours later and she seems okay now, if rather more on the snuggly side than usual.
Charlotte is the best cat in the whole world. Many cat owners will tell you this, but let me assure you that only I can make this assertion with certainty. She was a skinny little stray (or so we thought) when we discovered her loitering around my mother's fourplex apartment. She was already ours when we learned that she actually belonged to a neighbour in the building next door. Happily, said neighbour was moving and had planned on getting rid of the cat anyway. Her name is Charlotte, he told us, and we approved.
My mother's cat, Caesar, also approved of the new edition, as evidenced by the day he stood in front of her, raised his tail, and splashed a spray of urine into her face, marking her as his.
One winter, Charlotte tore her left Achilles tendon while playing outside in the snow. Equipped with a heavy plaster cast and under orders not to jump or manoeuver stairs for a month, Charlotte was forced to spend her days in a cage. Giving in to her kitten protestations, I slept on a mattress on the floor of the spare bedroom with her for four weeks while she healed. At night she would walk across my face, dragging the cast behind her, crying at the injustice of her captivity, her boredom. I gave up sleep for Charlotte, and you know that that means something.
As a kitten, she once got stuck in a tree and I climbed up and rescued her, her claws digging into my arms and back as she clung to me while I climbed down.
Charlotte still walks across my face at night before she curls up around my head, purring contentedly. She likes people and parties, and she'll steal your chair if you get up to refill your drink. She wigs out and tears up her scratching post when we play rock 'n' roll. She has never bitten or scratched anyone in malice, or used the couch as a scratching post, or peed anywhere other than the litter box or the neighbour's flowerbed, and she doesn't walk across the kitchen counter or sit on the table, so if she sometimes chooses to throw up a hairball on the carpet rather than the hardwood, I can't really complain. She sometimes wanders around the neighbourhood, doing whatever it is that cats do, but mostly she curls up in a chair in the backyard, or rolls around in the sun on the front porch, or hides beneath the bushes and watches the robins. (There was a time when she was a pretty decent hunter, but the Achilles injury has left her less nimble than in her kitten days. A little fatter, too.) She comes when we call her with the kissing noise or a high-pitched "Chaa-ar!", and if she is hesitant to come in, the promise of bacon gets her every time. We don't even have to have any actual bacon; we just tell her "bacon" in a sing-song tone, and in she comes.
I am a cat person. I find little use for the loyal and attention-seeking nature of dogs, for their constant need for approval. There were always cats in my house when I was growing up, but there has never been a cat as awesome as my little calico muffin, Charlotte.
Mine Is Clouds: A Book Review
Mine Is Clouds was written by Jeff Warren, who also happens to be a good friend of mine. I met Jeff online on Myspace many years ago, back when people had Myspace pages. (I still have mine. Obviously.) His writing was vulgar, bold, sensitive, thoughtful, and I thought to myself, Holly, this is someone you need to know. I felt a peculiar kinship with this fellow; not as a brother or a lover but as something entirely unique. And so we met, online, and then, later, in person, and we hung out and lent each other books and drank together and went on rock and roll road trips together and we, occasionally, wrote some things together. Those were good times, man. But this isn't about Jeff Warren and me. This is about his book, Mine Is Clouds.
Mine Is Clouds is a love story. It is about beginnings and endings and the things in between. It is about expectation and ecstasy, anticipation and loss, the magical and the mundane. It is about music and beer and joy and despair. Clouds herself is both Everygirl and each girl the narrator has known. (And she is beautiful.) The language of this love story is simple, sparse, complex, honest. Similes abound, analogies that made me pause and wish that I had thought of them. If you can't somehow find yourself in this story, in the narrator's pain and in his rapture, then you've never been in love.
You can get your own copy at www.brokenbeard.com, but act fast because Jeff only printed 100 copies. (I have a feeling he'll have to reprint.) As an aside, Jeff, it's gorgeous. I am so privileged to have been able to read it, and to have been trusted with parts of it before it was finished. Riot on.
Mine Is Clouds is a love story. It is about beginnings and endings and the things in between. It is about expectation and ecstasy, anticipation and loss, the magical and the mundane. It is about music and beer and joy and despair. Clouds herself is both Everygirl and each girl the narrator has known. (And she is beautiful.) The language of this love story is simple, sparse, complex, honest. Similes abound, analogies that made me pause and wish that I had thought of them. If you can't somehow find yourself in this story, in the narrator's pain and in his rapture, then you've never been in love.
You can get your own copy at www.brokenbeard.com, but act fast because Jeff only printed 100 copies. (I have a feeling he'll have to reprint.) As an aside, Jeff, it's gorgeous. I am so privileged to have been able to read it, and to have been trusted with parts of it before it was finished. Riot on.
Apr 5, 2011
My daddy was a greaser and my mommy was a hippie.
My daddy was a greaser. He slicked his hair back with Brylcreem and wore Old Spice cologne. He smoked cigarettes. He played the drums and harmonica. He listened to motown and the blues and American doo-wop and the British Invasion. He wore white shirts and Levi's and a denim jacket that I adopted and wore in high school. He wore dark brown shoes with laces.
My father taught me to use the potty, and he taught me how to read, and he taught me the importance of good oral hygiene. He taught me the difference between longitude and latitude. He taught me to mistrust authority and religion. He taught me that just because we can't see something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
My mommy was a hippie. She wore glasses and long blonde hair parted in the middle. She smoked cigarettes and sometimes pot. She listened to The Beatles and Janis Joplin and Queen and Harry Chapin. She wore blouses and bell bottoms and a silver peace ring that I adopted and wore in high school. She wore brown thong sandals.
My mother taught me to use the potty, and she taught me how to read, and she taught me the importance of good oral hygiene. She taught me to order my own cheeseburger at McDonald's. She taught me to mistrust authority and religion. She taught me to work hard because life is hard.
Thank you, Mom and Dad.
Much love always, in spite of it all.
My father taught me to use the potty, and he taught me how to read, and he taught me the importance of good oral hygiene. He taught me the difference between longitude and latitude. He taught me to mistrust authority and religion. He taught me that just because we can't see something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
My mommy was a hippie. She wore glasses and long blonde hair parted in the middle. She smoked cigarettes and sometimes pot. She listened to The Beatles and Janis Joplin and Queen and Harry Chapin. She wore blouses and bell bottoms and a silver peace ring that I adopted and wore in high school. She wore brown thong sandals.
My mother taught me to use the potty, and she taught me how to read, and she taught me the importance of good oral hygiene. She taught me to order my own cheeseburger at McDonald's. She taught me to mistrust authority and religion. She taught me to work hard because life is hard.
Thank you, Mom and Dad.
Much love always, in spite of it all.
Jan 28, 2011
cunt
I'm just a soul whose intentions are good. Oh lord, please don't let me be misunderstood. -The Animals
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -Kurt Vonnegut
I find myself, often, thinking about intent and perception. About the way/s I am perceived, and by whom. About the vibe/s I give off. About the discrepancy between how I feel, in my core, in that pit, and about the way I present myself to the world. (Not new ideas, I realize. But then, is anything ever new? iPhone apps, maybe. Not that I would know.)
In my core, in that pit, I am good. I am patient and kind and caring and understanding and humble and fun.
But in my core, in that pit, I am also bad. I am impatient and spiteful and ungrateful and mean and vain and dull.
And how does one balance these things? Is there a balance? I am mistrustful of people who seem too happy, too full of optimism and joy. I see the world through (contact) lenses of reticence and cynicism. There is a lot of shit in the world, a lot of stupidity and ignorance. I am not content to let it slide. But who am I to say, anyway? Always this conflict in me, between honestly believing that personal value is value, regardless of my opinion on the subject, and wanting to shake you and call you a fucking moron for liking that movie. I don't know why I care.
And I wonder why I can't just be nice, pleasant, fun. Share my life with you, my stories, be interested in your life, your stories. I am terrible at small talk. I hear things about myself sometimes, things that make my core squeeze and tighten, the pit blacken and curl in on itself. She is bossy. A bitch. A snob. And as much as I want to know these things, because of my interest in intent and perception, I also don't want to know them, because it hurts. And there is this well, deep and cool and dark, somewhere inside my core, behind the pit, that feels, boundlessly. Such overwhelming joy and desire and gladness and empathy and pain and sadness and despair.
Shut up. Fuck off. I don't give a shit. I want to punch you in the face. Get over it. Grow up. Take some responsibility. Stop whining. Do something.
Tell me. Come here. I'm listening. I'll do whatever I can to help. I admire those qualities in you that I do not possess. I'm okay with it. You are smart, beautiful, talented. I enjoy spending time with you. I'll never judge you, for anything, ever. I'm sorry. Forgive me.
You know?
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -Kurt Vonnegut
I find myself, often, thinking about intent and perception. About the way/s I am perceived, and by whom. About the vibe/s I give off. About the discrepancy between how I feel, in my core, in that pit, and about the way I present myself to the world. (Not new ideas, I realize. But then, is anything ever new? iPhone apps, maybe. Not that I would know.)
In my core, in that pit, I am good. I am patient and kind and caring and understanding and humble and fun.
But in my core, in that pit, I am also bad. I am impatient and spiteful and ungrateful and mean and vain and dull.
And how does one balance these things? Is there a balance? I am mistrustful of people who seem too happy, too full of optimism and joy. I see the world through (contact) lenses of reticence and cynicism. There is a lot of shit in the world, a lot of stupidity and ignorance. I am not content to let it slide. But who am I to say, anyway? Always this conflict in me, between honestly believing that personal value is value, regardless of my opinion on the subject, and wanting to shake you and call you a fucking moron for liking that movie. I don't know why I care.
And I wonder why I can't just be nice, pleasant, fun. Share my life with you, my stories, be interested in your life, your stories. I am terrible at small talk. I hear things about myself sometimes, things that make my core squeeze and tighten, the pit blacken and curl in on itself. She is bossy. A bitch. A snob. And as much as I want to know these things, because of my interest in intent and perception, I also don't want to know them, because it hurts. And there is this well, deep and cool and dark, somewhere inside my core, behind the pit, that feels, boundlessly. Such overwhelming joy and desire and gladness and empathy and pain and sadness and despair.
Shut up. Fuck off. I don't give a shit. I want to punch you in the face. Get over it. Grow up. Take some responsibility. Stop whining. Do something.
Tell me. Come here. I'm listening. I'll do whatever I can to help. I admire those qualities in you that I do not possess. I'm okay with it. You are smart, beautiful, talented. I enjoy spending time with you. I'll never judge you, for anything, ever. I'm sorry. Forgive me.
You know?
Nov 22, 2010
Brown Bread and Butter
My maternal grandparents lived on a farm in rural Saskatchewan in a tiny town called Blumenhoff. We would drive across the prairies in December through windswept waves of snow, ice crackling and shimmering in the sun. My little brother and I would write songs to pass the time, or I would re-read the weeding adventures of Mary and Dickon as the merciless wind whipped snow across the frozen highway.
We would stop at the general store-cum-gas station-cum-post office to announce our arrival, and I would pop the cap off of an icy glass bottle of Coca Cola using the metal opener attached to the side of the freezer. My brother and I would buy a dime's worth each of mojos, getting bits of pastel taffy stuck deliciously in our molars to be picked out and savoured later.
Another mile down the road, my father would turn right, into the driveway set between two rows of single trees that tried unsuccessfully to break the prairie wind, and we would be there, finally. Time passes slowly when the horizon does not end.
The neighbour's black and white dog, Snoopy, would bark and come to greet us as we pulled up in front of my grandparents' old farmhouse, a small one-story building nestled into a copse of trees in the middle of nowhere. My cousins built a treehouse in the tallest of the trees, with a bucket attached to a pulley. Summers, we would climb the wooden rungs nailed into the treetrunk and take turns pulling things up, apples or comic books or kittens.
My grandfather would be there, thin and grey and wiry, standing in the twilight on the tiny concrete stoop in his stiff grey winter coat and the hat with the earflaps, a worn red plaid scarf, workboots with the laces undone. And we would pile out of the car and I would run to meet him and he would swing me up and kiss me, his stubble rough against my cheek. Behind him in the coatroom stood my grandmother in her housedress and nylon stockings, dull grey hair in pink rollers, skin soft and sagging, her bosom enormous and pillowy. "I love ya little, I love ya big, I love ya like a little pig," she would say in her German accent, and chuckle, and I would flush in embarrassment.
We remove our jackets, stamp the snow off our boots, and are welcomed into the kitchen, warm with the scent of cinnamon and bay leaves and anise. Plastic fruit magnets adorn the refrigerator, a tall bucket of well-water sits on a stool beside the counter, the ladle hangs on its hook next to the window. We slide in socked feet across the faded linoleum and sit at the formica table while my grandfather fills red tupperware cups with cold water and my grandmother fills melamine bowls with chicken soup. My grandfather sits beside me and carefully butters thick slices of brown bread, cutting the cold butter into small pieces so the bread does not tear.
Isaac and Agnes Ens are both dead, buried together in the unforgiving prairie ground, but to this day there is nothing, NOTHING, in the world like sitting beside my grandfather on a cold December evening in Blumenhoff, Saskatchewan, slurping my grandmother's homemade noodles and chicken broth and eating brown bread and butter.
We would stop at the general store-cum-gas station-cum-post office to announce our arrival, and I would pop the cap off of an icy glass bottle of Coca Cola using the metal opener attached to the side of the freezer. My brother and I would buy a dime's worth each of mojos, getting bits of pastel taffy stuck deliciously in our molars to be picked out and savoured later.
Another mile down the road, my father would turn right, into the driveway set between two rows of single trees that tried unsuccessfully to break the prairie wind, and we would be there, finally. Time passes slowly when the horizon does not end.
The neighbour's black and white dog, Snoopy, would bark and come to greet us as we pulled up in front of my grandparents' old farmhouse, a small one-story building nestled into a copse of trees in the middle of nowhere. My cousins built a treehouse in the tallest of the trees, with a bucket attached to a pulley. Summers, we would climb the wooden rungs nailed into the treetrunk and take turns pulling things up, apples or comic books or kittens.
My grandfather would be there, thin and grey and wiry, standing in the twilight on the tiny concrete stoop in his stiff grey winter coat and the hat with the earflaps, a worn red plaid scarf, workboots with the laces undone. And we would pile out of the car and I would run to meet him and he would swing me up and kiss me, his stubble rough against my cheek. Behind him in the coatroom stood my grandmother in her housedress and nylon stockings, dull grey hair in pink rollers, skin soft and sagging, her bosom enormous and pillowy. "I love ya little, I love ya big, I love ya like a little pig," she would say in her German accent, and chuckle, and I would flush in embarrassment.
We remove our jackets, stamp the snow off our boots, and are welcomed into the kitchen, warm with the scent of cinnamon and bay leaves and anise. Plastic fruit magnets adorn the refrigerator, a tall bucket of well-water sits on a stool beside the counter, the ladle hangs on its hook next to the window. We slide in socked feet across the faded linoleum and sit at the formica table while my grandfather fills red tupperware cups with cold water and my grandmother fills melamine bowls with chicken soup. My grandfather sits beside me and carefully butters thick slices of brown bread, cutting the cold butter into small pieces so the bread does not tear.
Isaac and Agnes Ens are both dead, buried together in the unforgiving prairie ground, but to this day there is nothing, NOTHING, in the world like sitting beside my grandfather on a cold December evening in Blumenhoff, Saskatchewan, slurping my grandmother's homemade noodles and chicken broth and eating brown bread and butter.
Sep 30, 2010
Mary Goes Down At The York Hotel
This room is cold tonight. It has been a long time since I’ve seen the sun. I light a cigarette, inhale, let the smoke burn my lungs. I catch my reflection in the mirror, ghostly pale. From this room on the third floor of what used to be the York Hotel, I feel the shock of the bass drum pounding its way up through the floorboards, a not-unwelcome intruder. I spend most of my time in this room. The furnishings are sparse, blanketed in an ageless layer of dust. The carpet, threadbare even before my time, has long since been removed, and the wallpaper, once a vibrant pattern of ivy weaving its way up the walls, now lies curled in faded brittle strips in the corners. But I don’t need much anymore. A window to look out, a place to sleep. A cigarette. Sometimes I wander these mostly empty hallways, when the nightmares keep sleep from me. I dream that I’m falling, but wake up before I hit the ground.
I have grown shy over the years, preferring the company of my memories and my nightmares, but sometimes, when I am dying for some company, or maybe just for a pack of cigarettes, I make my way downstairs to the bar on the first floor.
The walls of the bar are exposed brick lined with band photographs and plastered with concert posters. Brass footrails run along the bases of the two bars, and mirrors behind the bars reflect bottles of whiskey, gin, vodka, rum. It is a lively place, particularly on weekends, when the crowds come to hear the bands. I like the music: The Dead Boys, Forgotten Rebels, The Damned. Something about their outsider aesthetic and their ripped jeans appeals to me, their energy and anger and sex.
On those nights when I venture downstairs, I slip largely unnoticed through the crowds of raving drunk people. They unnerve me. I feel disconnected. Lonely. I quit drinking a long time ago. But every once in awhile, I’ll catch someone’s attention, feel their eyes upon me, feel that shiver run down my spine, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up: the thrill of recognition. It both exhilarates and terrifies me, and I wonder if these strangers feel the same.
I turn away from the mirror, take another deep burning drag of my cigarette and look out the window. The weather reflects my mood tonight; icy winter rain beats down from sodden grey clouds. I think back to when I was young and as carefree as a girl of ill-repute could be. Even now, tonight, I would fuck you if you paid me. Not that you would want to. Or even could. Not anymore. But there was a time when I was young, and alive, and beautiful.
A panicked flutter in the pit of my stomach on the nights when he would come to my room. This room. I would wait and watch for him, smoking cigarette after cigarette, listening for his footsteps up the three flights of stairs, my lungs (among other things) on fire. And he would come to me, different from the rest, and, like the rest, he would pay to be with me while icy winter rain beat against the windowpane, or while moist summer heat bore its way into the room, making the edges of the ivy wallpaper curl. After, we would share a cigarette, a glass of whiskey, a kiss, and if I dreamed about something more, something other than just this, well, you can’t blame a girl for dreaming.
I wonder what band is playing tonight. It sounds primitive, electric, masculine. Shrieking guitars, a relentless beat. I wonder what day it is. Hell, I wonder what year it is. Not that it matters. I am restless.
I was restless then, too, and wild, living on cigarettes and bottomless glasses of whiskey. Sleeping until dusk and working until dawn. Or, if the weather was bad and the night slow, dancing, by myself or with some of the other girls, passing a bottle back and forth, passing the time. And, always, waiting for him to come.
I go over what happened again and again in my nightmares, trying to piece it all together, but I am left with only disjointed emotions and fragments of memory. They scratch and bite and claw, wild things, trying to get out of my head. They are trapped there, of course, as surely as I am trapped here, in this room, in this building, in this ceaseless nightmare existence. If there was a way to get them out, to get myself out, surely I would have figured it out by now. God knows I’ve had the time.
Smell of whiskey and, faintly, urine. Tobacco smoke. Stale breath hot in my face. Screaming explosion of pain in my jaw as bottle meets bone. His voice low, menacing, even as I scream and twist and scratch and bite and claw. Betrayal like a fist in my guts, pounding pounding pounding. My insides ripped open. Fraying curtains twitching in the slight breeze from the open window. Dead weight as he collapses upon me. Smell of sweat. Blood. Semen. My sudden fury and a burst of pain as bone meets bone and somewhere someone shrieking and now I’m falling, falling through the open window, falling, falling endlessly...
The beat from below is primal, distracting, and the thought of spending another night alone in this haunted room is unbearable. I light another cigarette, catch my reflection, pale and ghostly, in the mirror, and I go down.
I have grown shy over the years, preferring the company of my memories and my nightmares, but sometimes, when I am dying for some company, or maybe just for a pack of cigarettes, I make my way downstairs to the bar on the first floor.
The walls of the bar are exposed brick lined with band photographs and plastered with concert posters. Brass footrails run along the bases of the two bars, and mirrors behind the bars reflect bottles of whiskey, gin, vodka, rum. It is a lively place, particularly on weekends, when the crowds come to hear the bands. I like the music: The Dead Boys, Forgotten Rebels, The Damned. Something about their outsider aesthetic and their ripped jeans appeals to me, their energy and anger and sex.
On those nights when I venture downstairs, I slip largely unnoticed through the crowds of raving drunk people. They unnerve me. I feel disconnected. Lonely. I quit drinking a long time ago. But every once in awhile, I’ll catch someone’s attention, feel their eyes upon me, feel that shiver run down my spine, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up: the thrill of recognition. It both exhilarates and terrifies me, and I wonder if these strangers feel the same.
I turn away from the mirror, take another deep burning drag of my cigarette and look out the window. The weather reflects my mood tonight; icy winter rain beats down from sodden grey clouds. I think back to when I was young and as carefree as a girl of ill-repute could be. Even now, tonight, I would fuck you if you paid me. Not that you would want to. Or even could. Not anymore. But there was a time when I was young, and alive, and beautiful.
A panicked flutter in the pit of my stomach on the nights when he would come to my room. This room. I would wait and watch for him, smoking cigarette after cigarette, listening for his footsteps up the three flights of stairs, my lungs (among other things) on fire. And he would come to me, different from the rest, and, like the rest, he would pay to be with me while icy winter rain beat against the windowpane, or while moist summer heat bore its way into the room, making the edges of the ivy wallpaper curl. After, we would share a cigarette, a glass of whiskey, a kiss, and if I dreamed about something more, something other than just this, well, you can’t blame a girl for dreaming.
I wonder what band is playing tonight. It sounds primitive, electric, masculine. Shrieking guitars, a relentless beat. I wonder what day it is. Hell, I wonder what year it is. Not that it matters. I am restless.
I was restless then, too, and wild, living on cigarettes and bottomless glasses of whiskey. Sleeping until dusk and working until dawn. Or, if the weather was bad and the night slow, dancing, by myself or with some of the other girls, passing a bottle back and forth, passing the time. And, always, waiting for him to come.
I go over what happened again and again in my nightmares, trying to piece it all together, but I am left with only disjointed emotions and fragments of memory. They scratch and bite and claw, wild things, trying to get out of my head. They are trapped there, of course, as surely as I am trapped here, in this room, in this building, in this ceaseless nightmare existence. If there was a way to get them out, to get myself out, surely I would have figured it out by now. God knows I’ve had the time.
Smell of whiskey and, faintly, urine. Tobacco smoke. Stale breath hot in my face. Screaming explosion of pain in my jaw as bottle meets bone. His voice low, menacing, even as I scream and twist and scratch and bite and claw. Betrayal like a fist in my guts, pounding pounding pounding. My insides ripped open. Fraying curtains twitching in the slight breeze from the open window. Dead weight as he collapses upon me. Smell of sweat. Blood. Semen. My sudden fury and a burst of pain as bone meets bone and somewhere someone shrieking and now I’m falling, falling through the open window, falling, falling endlessly...
The beat from below is primal, distracting, and the thought of spending another night alone in this haunted room is unbearable. I light another cigarette, catch my reflection, pale and ghostly, in the mirror, and I go down.
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