Day: March 3, 2005

cowboy bebop, 7:30 tonight, my place

tank!

It took me awhile to remember, but this morning a bell rang clearly in my mind and I flashed the sound of water, the smell of cold and trees in city darkness. The first time I had sex outside, I was seventeen. It must have been winter or fall, as Gavin had left for Calgary and I was trying to love a man named Ian who went by Lidd. We both wore trenchcoats and he wanted us to pretend we were strangers. It was cold and uncomfortable and I didn’t want to be there, sitting in the dark, waiting for him to find me next to the stream. I lived in Kitsilano then, I was on a stone that everyone in Vancouver must know, it’s under trees next to the Planetarium. There’s a new bridge there, a perfect arc of metal and wood, a half circle to clop over, perfect for pretending to be a billy goat. FEE FI FO FUM, EAT MY BROTHER, NOT ME. I have so many memories attached to that park, stretching back before I lived here. Push the troll off. Splash. I was tiny, white hair running toward the water in bright sunlight. Summertime green grass, I had pink shoes and had just found the biggest rhubarb the world had ever seen. “Mother!” I called, and my cheeks cracked with smiling. I had a chinese yo-yo in my hand, blue and yellow barberstripe curling around the paper. It unwound as I applauded in one of the vast white tents. My father carried me on his shoulders. I was taller than trees.

We think Lidd might be dead now, just another meth overdose over the water in Victoria. No one has seen him in at least a year, and the downward spiral was glaringly apparent. He staggered up to Marissa downtown, a derelict who somehow knew her name. The reek of alcohol forced her back three steps and he told her to give me a hello. Our harshest piece of evidence? I haven’t received a call for my birthday in two years. Last time I talked to him, he was drunk on a pay-phone using quarters he’d earned by reciting poetry to people in the street. His newest scheme was rooftop gardens, enviro-friendly. He claimed to be making pamphlets and getting into bicycle energy. Then gradually I pulled from him that he was homeless. He’d found a place but the people who lived there beat him up and threw him out, “For no reason at all” which I don’t believe in the slightest. I could see his sneer perfectly in my mind. He was a violent alcoholic. Grady lived with him once and was driven out by the extreme destructiveness. My time was punctuated with locking myself in the bathroom, with sitting at night on the balcony, crying. Until now, he’s been the only person I’ve been with who wasn’t an artist, though he would insist he was. Cruel when he was stoned, savage under alcohol, in between the cracks of conversation the death of his mother shone through. I wrote letters to her, asking questions I could never answer.

I used to write to the dead a lot. Now I have this.

Rarely I remember him, our six months, eight months. I don’t look back with enough emotion to call for clarity. When he accused me of hawking his mothers wedding rings, I left him, left the city. Went to Toronto to remember how to be alive again. Break the cocoon, calling out to heaven and love again. I tell people that I remembered how to smile. It’s the show, it’s the grand and glorious world we live in. The thought occurs sometimes to go find him, stay at Mishka’s and scour the streets. Victoria is a very small place. I’d like to leave flowers at his grave, whether he’s breathing or not.

I’m home with his voice in my blood, pulsing with every beat of my warm heart. If it weren’t for antique honour, if it weren’t for the right thing to do. I believe in smoothed flashes of desire tonight, of ragged edges honed down to bone. We’re good at telling catholic beads of guilt, dreams unbound to fly, however against the rules. Time, I say, and time, and I want to scream my betrayal and I don’t know how. I’m wanting, I’m waiting, there’s tension. I have a handy backdoor, a trapdoor in pain, a country to visit, a life to regain, but that’s a curtain call, a final shout out to the audience at large of one and only, my only, my love. I leaned against a cold stone wall and let my pants drop to my ankles, both feet trying to plant themselves firmly in sand. No one walked by until later, small miracle timing buckling belts and softest skin. There’s never been anyone to touch like this, to walk with at night. I have been waiting. Bastard boy, impatience before me, satin in my hands. Transgression hesitation, we’re eating tongues, words. Swallow souls, flying, sliding down like candy. My mouth can’t wait to strain my vocabulary of sweets. springwound like binding like a tight cord his hand at my neck, my breath, my breath it burns to see you go like fire, fire, tingling he’s not here no crimson flushed cheek tide, no silk tide, currents of hair to drown in sweetly calling my name his name our breath candlelight slow slow tearing wanting more and dying dying drying up inside not allowed to not allowed no not ever can’t shant won’t today tonight he’s not here and there’s music playing and I don’t know who gave it to me but I’m alone and the bed is empty