09.Jan.2004

and I only have two cigs left.

--

i didn't even know you had this side to you.

A recant. A recession. A reverie. Reality.

The club was vacuous, though not vacant. I'm seated in an arm-chair toward the back, donned in vinyl pants and an Army-green button-down tank-top, jeweled choker and Ankh necklace in place, watching, waiting, the voyeur to a musical universe that merely begs to be beheld from a safe distance.

The stage separates us. I've been drinking gin without the tonic, lighting cigarettes off of each other, staring at my cell-phone, counting the minutes, anticipating the encapsulation of boredom, the very moment where I cast eyes upon the ceiling and beg for my own deus ex machina to come through the walls, until, I heard the voice.

That voice.

His voice.

Complimented by the bass in his hands, pallid, gargantuan, positioned, the vigilante over the strings via the fingers. I know what you're thinking. Bass players know nothing about music. I agree, but, this was a shift. In mid-riff, I found myself peeling my jacket off of me, stirring in my seat, dropping the leather to my knees, arching my back toward the song's bridge, sustaining an eye-contact we never could outside of the chords.

And this voice, that voice, his voice, repeating ad nauseam, "Just let it go, just let it go, just let it go ..." with that wicked black iris aimed directly at my frame. I'm not sure from where I should even attempt to invoke a language for which I've cockily taken for granted. I'm not sure which adjective does this justice. I don't know how to bend myself over the easel of verbal art. I'm not even sure if even this literary abortion could place you into that very same arm-chair where I ceased counting minutes, and I turned my cell-phone off, and I gazed, and I choked.

I must have choked.

I josh bathetic rock dirges every second I have the opportunity to, and I wish very much I could say this band will be the next rock-revolution explosion, but I could easily hear them on a morning slot, rammed between bands that even now churn the bile in my stomach, but you simply do not understand.

To the rush of him, the blood of him, the heart of him, the measures of him, tempting solely those moments of my wee, girlene days hovered over Pearl Jam and Led Zeppelin, that gritty, stifled guitar-inamorato, and I clung to my delts, and I breathed in a voice I've never heard emerge from within me, "You deceiving fucking darling ..."

There is nothing I can offer you, anymore. There is no promise I have for you. I can return to my house and my upright piano, and I can bend myself over the treble in an attempt to muster the musical imago of you, but I could never give this back to you, I could never allow you to stream into the mainlines of me and lave the essence of my tribulations. I cannot give you back in music. There is nothing I can do for you.

Mid-song, I ducked out of the club, against the wall. Two in the morning, negative two degrees Celsius, Marlboro Medium 100s, an off-white lighter, the voracious inhaling of toxins, the proliferating of cancer-wishes in the back of my throat. I hear the bass crash against the Western side of the club. I breathe. I stop. I breathe. I stop.

There is a brief silence followed by applause. The bands change. I keep my back firmly against the wall. I hear a door open. He stands in front of me, leans over me, takes my cigarette from my hand and inhales.

"What did you think?" he asked, exhaling to the East, the full moon, and, I averted eye-contact.

"Hey?" he asked, and ran his index finger underneath my chin.

He moved his face closer to mine and whispered, "Michelle ..."

"There's nothing I can say to that," I murmured, shivering, though I'm sure it wasn't from the weather, nor my sore throat, nor my fever, nor my envy, nor my yearning.

"Michelle," he whispers.
"There's nothing I can say to you," I begin, and, I pause, merely to break.

And it rushes from me as though it were water I had forgotten to swallow, and I paint his silhouette with an influx of mania I simply cannot control, and I tell him I had no idea, and I tell him I wish there was something I could do, and I tell him I've been drinking too much, and I tell him I don't know how to let go, and I tell him music means more to me than anything outside of that realm, and I tell him, and I tell him, and I tell him.

And he moans into my ear, "I know, baby."

"You have no idea," I say.
"Do you want me to take you home?" he asks.
"No, this is your night. I'm going to be just fine. Let's make a night of this. There are more drinks to have."

But he's taking my arms into his hands and slipping my leather jacket onto me, pressing his thumbs into my scapulae. There was a veil of shame separating us, and to hold eye-contact with the boy who had difficulty always maintaining eye-contact with me is visual blasphemy, and I'm a good, guilt-ridden Catholic girl, and, really, I had no idea.

You can't do this to me. You can't pull me into a universe I spend inordinate amounts of time attempting to build, the very foundation of my molecules without me gliding a scale behind the passion he puts into it, and I find myself stammering, "All of the excuses I made for you, all of the moments I've had with you, I just can't fathom ..."

And he says, "I know."
And I respond, "You have no idea ..." and turn from the black heat of him.

He traces his lips against my jaw-line and I murmur, "I have nothing to give to you, anymore."

I'm certain this is melodramatic. There's nothing else I can say.

--

Sitting in my driveway at three in the morning, he asks if I want to come back to his place. I decline. I tell him it was entertaining. I kiss him on the cheek and he lingers in the pose, mayhap awaiting more, mayhap awaiting me to invite him into the library of my bedroom, mayhap awaiting me to break out the chains. The truth is that I can't. The truth is that I know the finis of this fairy-tale. The truth is that I choked. The truth is that I can't fucking do this, anymore.

--

In the midst of this, I bought a six pack of Zima and a six pack of Bacardi Raz. I shared this with Terri, Anna, and Jason, and I trace my tongue against my upper-lip. I endeavor to throw myself into situations I will regret afterwards, as opposed to beforehand, but this time, I could not see myself as another whimsical phantom passing through his life. I can see him sober, staid, endearing, rebuffing the wishes I regurgitate in subtlety over his voice, and I can't do this anymore.

I should have said goodbye to you when I had the chance. I should not have let your revenant follow me home. I really should have not called you. I really should not have slept with you. I really should have forced you to put down the instruments.

I don't know.

Maybe I'm drunk.

Maybe I'm just human.

--

time & machine