Tag: the hotel ghost

never get that anymore


01 – yes
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

A few years of violence and now I flinch in my sleep when the maid comes to collect towels in the hall. Waking comes slowly, but comfortably. In spite of the lingering memories of being six, hotels almost always feel like home. An acoustic Life on Mars is blending seamlessly in my head with the police car siren dopplering past as I open my eyes and look at the alarm clock with serious doubt. It’s begun blaring terrible R&B hip-hop rip-offs of uninspired 90’s music. Terrible. Unforgivable. It’s nine o’clock. I slide out of the blood messy sheets and get up to turn it off, knocking a pack of cigarettes off the bed. It’s a good place to be, I think, picking it up and putting it back. I understand how to fit here.

My clothes are over the back of a little chair, except for my bra, which has somehow found it’s way into a plastic milk crate of three-quarters full of funk records. I look in the mirror as I pull my shirt over my head and ridiculous hair. It’s lined with photographs of Kyle with his baby son. They look happy together, the smiles almost match. It’s obvious that his child is paramount. He wears dog-tags around his neck with both their names engraved. I like them, how they chime musically when he moves. I like almost all of him, how he laughs easily and sincerely, the way our hands wind affectionately together when we’re talking. His body feels like candles. That warm glow particular to wick’d fire, as if I can taste a pool of light on his tongue. His body is that way too, though not his movement. There’s a smooth weight to it reminiscent of heavy bronze sculpting wax. I like how he purrs and teases me for my taxidermy, makes silly jokes about carrying around giant skinned mink to terrorize the front desk clerks with. It’s refreshingly supportive. Exactly the kind of pleasing mockery I require. It makes me bury my head in his neck with unfeigned delight.

The night before, we’re lying in bed and he asks me if I’ve seen his tattoo. I sit up a little, “Where is it?” I’ve never seen it. “It’s a little scorpion, really intricate. I did it when I was in jail.” I start to ask why he was in jail, but he brings his left hand close to my face and I see a small dot of ink and start laughing. “See? It’s really detailed.” “Incredibly.”

His smile tells me he’s almost kidding as he explains that he was in for aiding and abetting a felon. Seems years ago some cops had shown up at a party and started rounding kids up in a rather typical Vancouver fashion. Kyle sneaked around them and pulled an arrested friend out of a cop car. They ran, banging open gates, running across yards, but eventually they hit a locked gate in a chain link fence that his friend couldn’t climb with the cuffs on. Kyle was caught two blocks later. They were held an extra half day because the cops thought they were jerks – they were put in separate cells, but as they could hear each other, they stayed up all night drumming on the black metal bed-frames loudly singing DAY-O, DA-AY-O, DAYLIGHT COME AN’ I WANNA GO HOME.

understand me, I’m not going to wire you shut

My invisible relationship continues. His son spent the weekend in the hospital. Last night I expected him to be home at seven and he wasn’t there by eight. I suspect there may have been a relapse. Either way, I’m worried. I feel now that I should have accepted the proffered key to his bedroom. Then I could at least sleep in his bed, play goldilocks and the sweet-hearted amateur DJ. It’s only a block away and our work schedules strangely match. He starts at five in the morning, I have to leave for work at ten to start at eleven. There’s enough time for sleep in there. In the evening he wakes up at five:thirty, I lock up at six. I could have set the alarm, rescued it from where he threw it if he hasn’t already. Red glowing lights made up by little bars in rows. It’s enough to make me smile. My clock is for the blind almost specifically. The dial is huge, blue, and exceedingly bright if I want it to be. I can read it from the head of my bed if I squint a little. A miracle clock, granting me time without eyes.

A week after NASA’s top climate scientist complained that the agency’s public-affairs office was trying to silence statements on global warming, the administrator, Michael D. Griffin, issued a statement yesterday calling for “scientific openness” throughout.
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp “Remember there is no such thing as global warming. Use only space words. Don’t mention the big bang. NASA needs to teach more religion.”

We met again at the bus-stop yesterday. He bashfully idled out of the hotel as I was on my way to work and explained what his day was going to be. Last night I padded over at midnight in my barefeet and almost wasn’t let in by the nervous front desk clerk. (This morning, of course, he was incredibly friendly. I suspect my “position” logically asserted itself). It is refreshing to finally have a relationship not be that delightful and frustrating thing, a secret, (those were too many), but standing the confidence of being coupled on the strength of only a few encounters feels odd, as if I shouldn’t assume so much, though I know I am a fool to think so. Established is established, with no reason to justify calling or arriving at the door. In my long absence from these things, my natural inclinations have been eroded. I’ve forgotten that my partners also tend to think in marriages.

old news: MIAMI – An agitated passenger who claimed to have a bomb in his backpack was shot and killed by a federal air marshal after he bolted from a jetliner that was boarding for take off.
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp No bomb was found. “Go back to bed, America, your government is in control. You are free to do what we tell you.”

Aiden and I made headway on one of the mink last night. We sliced off about a pound of flesh from the female. Once beheaded, it looked less sad and depressed and more anatomically interesting. We filleted her until she was almost skeletal, then we packed what remained in salt and put her in the fridge. Aiden wants to name her Anne Rand so that he’s had the satisfaction of tearing out her intestines and slitting her throat. I am refusing, however, on the grounds that my mink will be pretty when they’re finished and not fascist.

He also made the incredibly unfortunate comment that claimed that he was feeling better about it as the corpse cooled. When pressed as to why, he very haltingly admitted that he was finding too much similarities between the feeling of the dead mink and plunging fingers into female genitalia. I think that disqualifies any of his more poetic suggestions. There was also a comment about killing me if I posted that, so I suppose I’m lucky he never reads this thing. *teases*

Bringing me back to life to(o).

Walking across bridges at night used to be one of the more dangerous things I could do. All the hollow butterflies cut out of my tummy silenced when I finally stood on the rail. All the water catching the lights. Why does the ocean never reflect the stars?

A man found dead on a NYC subway car may have been dead for hours before anyone noticed.

It could have happened like this, I could have lay on my back in the middle of an intersection.

Instead, I picked up the phone. I dialed. I said, “hello”.

It’s a heavy on the saxophone moment, an understanding of grace with a long hard breath of sound. “Hello” Yeah, I know that one. Emphasis on the beginning of the word, low on the aich, more air than vibration. “Is this?!” There’s someone in town who knows how to conjure your name, your careful explanation of the hazards of cussing out christians in french. You know the game. It’s like a quick agile dance, how we speak. Soft insinuation this way, a little that way. All of it encapsulated in the way I shape your name. Those eyes, watching mine watch your hands. I remember that ring, but I didn’t think of it at the time. I almost offered to trade. Now I know that would have been meaning for meaning. We’re lunatics.

“Jhayne, can I ask you something?”

“Anything you want.”
“Are you crazy?”

The children were delightful, small tiny voices that didn’t know english. A catastrophe of insane grinning.

Sleepless in Seattle re-mixed as a horror movie.

Mike was upstairs when I wrote part of that, but all I heard was the soft susurration of cars passing by in rain. A very vancouver thing. The room I was in is full of polished steel appliances and red hardwood shelves clumsily full of yellowing books, a modern room cleverly awash in english antiques. The lamp at the foot of the stairs, (which has on the landing a half-size grandfather clock), is a bronze victorian woman, hands upraised like victory, a torch in each hand where the lightbulbs fit. Explosions In The Sky playing quietly, making the moment feel as if it was cut out of a novel about a lonely young professional who is questioning life enough to make an interesting book. It would have the kind of ending where you feel incomplete for having run out of pages.

That was before going to Afrikaa Bombata on Thursday, while waiting for Andrew. My day had been splendid, full of fierce joy. My smile felt like it would crack, I was so happy. Friday was different. Friday was still, flying in a comfortable holding pattern as my absent keys looked for a way to land at the shop, where I needed them to open with. (Raphaella came bringing the succor of sweet responsibility, no worries.) Friday was a dopamine calm. Friday I woke naked after an hour’s sleep in an unfamiliar bed. Friday the door opened at nine:thirty as I was about to tie my shoes and Kyle came in with a metal pail of tea and juice and bottled water.

Turkish court dropped the case against renowned writer Orhan Pamuk

My hero, my clumsily found grace. He lives only a block away from my home. The worst part is that this is perfect timing.