I'm going to tell you straight: this is a story with a happy ending, even if it's a story about a girl who wanted to be a boy. She thought they could run faster, and she knew they were allowed to kiss girls. She had wanted this since she was a child, since she was three and running naked in the mud.
She cried more tears for this than she did for anything else in her life, enough that she could have watered her flowers. But salt water burns instead of nourishes, and she may have burned her skin dry with tears.
She fought everything. She fought her parents; she fought dresses of silk and cotton; she fought the people who told her who she could and couldn't be. One night, she fought breathing.
So she ran away from home when she was eighteen, skipping college and taking the train out west. She saw an old lady hitchhiking in the sun once, halfway between Denver and Santa Fe, with this woman trailed by a cop who couldn't or wouldn't arrest her. She felt sick and stuck to trains.
One place she felt safest was a city on the bay, with lakes breaking up the buildings and a cement troll hiding under one of the stretching bridges. There were bars with expensive drinks, or bars like English pubs, or bars with pinball machines in every corner.
In one where everything was rather average, she met a girl who said, "I don't care what you are. Boy or girl, you are a person. And you are beautiful." And maybe she didn't say it all at once. She took her time, drawing it out slow and true. But the girl heard her words, and thought they were simple, those words saved her. She stopped taking trains, and she stayed in the one place where she felt safest.
Here's the happy ending. There's a lake with the sun setting against the water and a spray of mountains, the scent of campfire smoke mixed with driftwood and salt, and this girl who wanted to be a boy--safe, not fighting--just a person loving another person, in a beautiful place where they were safe.
shorthand, n. /ˈʃɔːthænd/ free writing, mostly.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
I like boys who are almost--but not yet--men. They are always older, and sometimes they have a beard, but never are they more mature.
I met the first man late at night in the kitchen. I was still in college, early in college, when you're still sleep-deprived from trying to hard, and you're baking in the kitchen at two in the morning to relieve the stress. His name was Jeff, and he was one of the ones who did have a beard. Two years older, and he was placing chocolate kisses on pretzels. He spoke as if he were a writer, or as if he wanted to be. He used a typewriter. I've forgotten much of what he told us that night, but I remember his brown eyes and the way he talked to me--like he had lived somewhere else, and he was trying to tell me with with the way he moved pieces of chocolate on the counter top. And every time I dared look, he tried to tell me with his eyes.
There was a man I met only twice, and both times, he swelled in music. The first night was a cool one during early summer in the mountains. He sang me to sleep. Neither of us realized that I'd move away before we met a third time, so he played fiddle all through the second night as the bar danced laughingly on the outdoor patio. Again with the cool night in the mountains, this time late into the summer. We didn't say goodbye. I don't remember his name, but he had a lot of sandy hair that hung over his eyes, and a soft way of talking that always seemed to laugh with you, even when you were sad.
Charlie wrangled cows for a living, and he brought raw milk to his friends because it was illegal to sell. He was the oldest of all the men, although I don't know any of their true ages. Charlie had red hair, a beard, and wide, slow eyes. I met him before he met me, across the room at a housewarming party. He was alone in the yellow light with his slow eyes and his hand closed around a mason jar filled with ice cubes and tea. I knew then and there that he was beautiful. And every time we met, he never remembered my name.
I stayed at one man's house when he wasn't there. He played the most beautiful music I had ever heard, because it came without thought straight from his fingertips. He never used a pick, and I can still see his wide fingers and flat nails moving over the guitar strings. He exists as a series of beautiful images in my mind. Early morning on a mountaintop, he and his bike coated with mud after a race. In the corner of a well-lit, well-loved room, putting life into a guitar while the entire house danced. Nearing dusk, when a fog hung thick in the cold air and we all wore sweaters, hugging me goodbye on the mountaintop as rain started to fall. When he spoke, it was as if his words were only for you. We scarcely spoke all summer, but when I needed it, he told me where to find the keys to his house. I can tell you he keeps a calcifying beer can in his shower, and seats from an old van for furniture in his living room. He doesn't own a can-opener, and I think he pries open tins with his teeth.
I have a string of "year-olders," who are so close to boys, but just enough to be men. One was saved solely by a fierce blond beard and gauges in his ears. He taught me everything, except how to love. Another lasted twelve years and brought me some of the best writing of my life. Reality moved us forwards, and we realized contingently that we fit better in memories of each others' childhood. The last was blond, as most of them are, with two scars by the bridge of his nose and hands that do nothing but ask to be drawn.
I met the first man late at night in the kitchen. I was still in college, early in college, when you're still sleep-deprived from trying to hard, and you're baking in the kitchen at two in the morning to relieve the stress. His name was Jeff, and he was one of the ones who did have a beard. Two years older, and he was placing chocolate kisses on pretzels. He spoke as if he were a writer, or as if he wanted to be. He used a typewriter. I've forgotten much of what he told us that night, but I remember his brown eyes and the way he talked to me--like he had lived somewhere else, and he was trying to tell me with with the way he moved pieces of chocolate on the counter top. And every time I dared look, he tried to tell me with his eyes.
There was a man I met only twice, and both times, he swelled in music. The first night was a cool one during early summer in the mountains. He sang me to sleep. Neither of us realized that I'd move away before we met a third time, so he played fiddle all through the second night as the bar danced laughingly on the outdoor patio. Again with the cool night in the mountains, this time late into the summer. We didn't say goodbye. I don't remember his name, but he had a lot of sandy hair that hung over his eyes, and a soft way of talking that always seemed to laugh with you, even when you were sad.
Charlie wrangled cows for a living, and he brought raw milk to his friends because it was illegal to sell. He was the oldest of all the men, although I don't know any of their true ages. Charlie had red hair, a beard, and wide, slow eyes. I met him before he met me, across the room at a housewarming party. He was alone in the yellow light with his slow eyes and his hand closed around a mason jar filled with ice cubes and tea. I knew then and there that he was beautiful. And every time we met, he never remembered my name.
I stayed at one man's house when he wasn't there. He played the most beautiful music I had ever heard, because it came without thought straight from his fingertips. He never used a pick, and I can still see his wide fingers and flat nails moving over the guitar strings. He exists as a series of beautiful images in my mind. Early morning on a mountaintop, he and his bike coated with mud after a race. In the corner of a well-lit, well-loved room, putting life into a guitar while the entire house danced. Nearing dusk, when a fog hung thick in the cold air and we all wore sweaters, hugging me goodbye on the mountaintop as rain started to fall. When he spoke, it was as if his words were only for you. We scarcely spoke all summer, but when I needed it, he told me where to find the keys to his house. I can tell you he keeps a calcifying beer can in his shower, and seats from an old van for furniture in his living room. He doesn't own a can-opener, and I think he pries open tins with his teeth.
I have a string of "year-olders," who are so close to boys, but just enough to be men. One was saved solely by a fierce blond beard and gauges in his ears. He taught me everything, except how to love. Another lasted twelve years and brought me some of the best writing of my life. Reality moved us forwards, and we realized contingently that we fit better in memories of each others' childhood. The last was blond, as most of them are, with two scars by the bridge of his nose and hands that do nothing but ask to be drawn.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
καταιγίδα
There -- in the back of my throat, hard against the warm, soft fleshiness, trickling down to my stomach and settling like a weigh.
My limbs tangle half in sheets, half in the air. Thunder sounds far away, confusedly outside or in my mind, and I stretch nearly imperceptibly to search for the drum outside.
This is the beginning.
The thunder is the longest drawl I've ever heard, longer than a full day's tides washing ashore. I don't have to guess at its presence any longer, for the waves slither through the night with the sensuous tread of a snake. They draw themselves out in lines.
A flash of lightning illuminates the trees, and the air holds its breath, tremulous.
Staccato bursts of thunder shatter the night, interspersed with lightning like hot peppers or chili flakes thrown to the air. They burn my breath, catching in my throat, choking me, and while I try to inhale, exhale, calm, feel less of the lightning and the thunder--a slash of white cracks the sky. My heads aches from it, and my skin shies from the roll of energy that fills the cracks left behind. The sky spills out of itself, breaking away from infinity.
In the deepening night, the lightning cools to a glow. A soft rain like static replaces the thunder, and I sleep.
My limbs tangle half in sheets, half in the air. Thunder sounds far away, confusedly outside or in my mind, and I stretch nearly imperceptibly to search for the drum outside.
This is the beginning.
The thunder is the longest drawl I've ever heard, longer than a full day's tides washing ashore. I don't have to guess at its presence any longer, for the waves slither through the night with the sensuous tread of a snake. They draw themselves out in lines.
A flash of lightning illuminates the trees, and the air holds its breath, tremulous.
Staccato bursts of thunder shatter the night, interspersed with lightning like hot peppers or chili flakes thrown to the air. They burn my breath, catching in my throat, choking me, and while I try to inhale, exhale, calm, feel less of the lightning and the thunder--a slash of white cracks the sky. My heads aches from it, and my skin shies from the roll of energy that fills the cracks left behind. The sky spills out of itself, breaking away from infinity.
In the deepening night, the lightning cools to a glow. A soft rain like static replaces the thunder, and I sleep.
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Music loud like buzzing against the wind, when you don't want to go home because the sun meets your bare skin with a kiss. Or the cable-knit sweater rubbing opposite your skin, when you're alone in bed with legs inextricably tangled in the sheets. Dirt under your nails from days of unshowered, unadulterated nature, walking in the dust and breathing in air and looking at muted stars.
You wrote a story last night, one about the sun and how it spun, and how the earth followed it angrily, exerting a pull of its own. Gravity, where even the earth is equal to the sun. As in somehow, you are exerting an force equal to the loud buzzing of the music. Perhaps sound doesn't apply to gravity, or gravity doesn't apply to sound, but something about the music settling in your chest feels like heaviness--and while gravity isn't heavy, it feels that way.
The music keeps going, growing and growing, until it's the heady thrum behind your eyes in a migraine and you can't feel anything except your temples. Everything just needs to be beautiful, but it is loud, so loud, like a drum of cicadas, or a star thrusting itself into combustion, or all of these things echoing at the same time in the small pockets behind your eyes.
It has only been five minutes.
You try to scratch at the sweater rubbing against your skin, or swat at the sunlight that warms your body with the heady sense of ultra-violent cancer--violet, not violent, but still there is something persistently violent about the sun's rays' refusal to fall on the ground, how they pick and nip at every bit of skin until you are dry with white lips of skin pursing upwards with gravity.
Six minutes now. Breathe faster, smooth the sweater, ignore the sun, and maybe the music will slow.
It started when you were small, when your hands were still balls of white flesh that curled into themselves and never wanted to let go. It started as a light tickle against your stomach, and it was soft like when you pass over a cloud for the first time and realize its fragility. But as you grew, the tickle spread into something more like the thrum of a hummingbird--still impossibly small, yet now impossibly persistent and heavy and thick with energy. It grew hard, like when you pass through a cloud for the first time and realize that its fragility is actually hiding a wave of energy. Like passing over and then through a cloud, it happened in a second. You were a child with a tickling wisp against soft baby skin, and then you were you, chased down by a wild thrumming that wouldn't stop.
Sixteen minutes, one minute too long, but the music hasn't stopped.
You wrote a story last night, one about the sun and how it spun, and how the earth followed it angrily, exerting a pull of its own. Gravity, where even the earth is equal to the sun. As in somehow, you are exerting an force equal to the loud buzzing of the music. Perhaps sound doesn't apply to gravity, or gravity doesn't apply to sound, but something about the music settling in your chest feels like heaviness--and while gravity isn't heavy, it feels that way.
The music keeps going, growing and growing, until it's the heady thrum behind your eyes in a migraine and you can't feel anything except your temples. Everything just needs to be beautiful, but it is loud, so loud, like a drum of cicadas, or a star thrusting itself into combustion, or all of these things echoing at the same time in the small pockets behind your eyes.
It has only been five minutes.
You try to scratch at the sweater rubbing against your skin, or swat at the sunlight that warms your body with the heady sense of ultra-violent cancer--violet, not violent, but still there is something persistently violent about the sun's rays' refusal to fall on the ground, how they pick and nip at every bit of skin until you are dry with white lips of skin pursing upwards with gravity.
Six minutes now. Breathe faster, smooth the sweater, ignore the sun, and maybe the music will slow.
It started when you were small, when your hands were still balls of white flesh that curled into themselves and never wanted to let go. It started as a light tickle against your stomach, and it was soft like when you pass over a cloud for the first time and realize its fragility. But as you grew, the tickle spread into something more like the thrum of a hummingbird--still impossibly small, yet now impossibly persistent and heavy and thick with energy. It grew hard, like when you pass through a cloud for the first time and realize that its fragility is actually hiding a wave of energy. Like passing over and then through a cloud, it happened in a second. You were a child with a tickling wisp against soft baby skin, and then you were you, chased down by a wild thrumming that wouldn't stop.
Sixteen minutes, one minute too long, but the music hasn't stopped.
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