New Divide

Today I stood in the pouring rain and watched you seduce another woman. The lot lights had come on four hours early, in response to the dark sky, and the gold-white illumination caught torrents like beaded strands of gemstones making molten the liquid storm coursing over her hair, then her jacket, her shirt, then her bare skin.

I knew this was the last time I would be here.

"I'd rather hate you
for everything you are
than ever love you
for something you're not."

I miss riding. But it seems that trashing three bikes in one year is enough of a message from God. When my last Kawi went down and over the edge, tumbling more than a hundred feet to her final rest, I spent long minutes, face to asphalt, rethinking my last forty thousand choices. Sometimes it stuns me that I don't drink or drug. Seems a grrl so sober shouldn't wind up eating the yellow line quite as often as I do. I knew there was a Lesson somewhere between my face and the road.

I also knew this was the last time I would be here.

"I'd rather you hate me
for everything I am
than have you love me
for something I can't be."

She is a beautiful woman and, apparently, impervious to rain and cold. Which is impressive. Speaking of perv, I suppose I shouldn't be standing here, leaning back against your truck, watching you like this. The long, slender, strong lines of your body are becoming more obvious as additional layers of clothing are striped away and the storm soaks you through. The angles of your bodies sliding into place and together into one is artwork, sculpture to me. The eroticism isn't lost but it doesn't hold my gaze. I'm detached from the reality and watch as if your images are splashed on the screen -- where I've certainly seen you both before -- technique and technical merit casting you in perfect light, the sound of the rain artfully concealing each gasp, the wind stealing away the scent of cologne and perfume.

I find myself thinking that the garden like this, the heart of the lot and home to so much quiet memorizing and quiet contemplations both joyful and desperate, is actually the perfect place to make love.

The sky loses all light and there is a rumble of thunder.

"I remembered black skies, the lightning all around me.
I remembered each flash as time began to blur.
Like a startling sign that fate had finally found me.
And your voice was all I heard that I get what I deserve."

There had been a pull-jerk-yank. Some unseen and strong hand. Something, some force, someone, God. To rip me off my bike like a drag line, throw me into the road while my bike laid herself down of her own accord, still at ninety miles an hour, and went parallel to the street for a count of one... two... three... and then through the curve in the guard rail and over edge, dropping instantly out of sight and leaving me with my yellow-line, center line view of sky and ocean meeting as a horizon's horizon.

My atheist friend tells me that it was momentum and centrifugal force that tore me off my bike and threw me onto solid road instead of into cold thin air. I tell him he doesn't know squat about physics.

It is two months and several million revelations about life, about truth, about being tested, later that I finally look away from you and your long-time lover. I am sure she knows everything about you and loves you just as you are without judgment or pause. I am sure she has several billion scathing words for me that she is too elegant to share but that are expressed with startling eloquence every time she looks at me and smiles.

We're all damaged and casting the first stone just makes it bounce around in my head. I find myself staring at the asphalt of the parking lot when the storm shifts and I hear your voices tossed together, cried promises both wild and tender at once.

I sink down to the curb, my palms to the cold road once again.

This soldier travels.
Wrists bound in the yellow center line.
The song of storm raging at her back.
This soldier travels.
Pan pipes play from steel forests
all neon and chrome.
The soldier travels
armed with scripture
armed with mistakes
armed with the reality
that she is always
only
forever
a practicing Christian.

I am still sitting there when you drive away. I am still sitting there when the storm surrenders to clear, starry night. I am still sitting there when I look up and find her watching me. Her eyes speak volumes that all begin with disappointment. But then I blink my eyes, I shiver, and she is gone.

A friend wrote to me with her heart in a panic. She said, "I have spoken thoughtlessly and destroyed someone's chance to come closer to Christ." She knows and I know that it isn't true but the regret and sorrow she feels in the pit of her stomach, welling in her chest, is very, very real. I assure her, "No mortal hand can keep a soul away from Christ." They have certainly tried over the ages, and none of them have succeeded. Only we can distance ourselves from God. And even then He fights for our return. My friend writes, "I'm going to make this right. It eats at me. I *want* to make it right. I must." And I pray for her and I tell her, "Do it. No hubris. Be brave. Do it." And she does.

And less than a week later I find myself in the same situation. But still I click Publish Post.

Like a petulant child who will not learn from the mistakes of her parents, sometimes one soldier will throw herself into the mine field in the heat of battle, in her furor to reach and purge the enemy, even as she sees her fellows scattered around her.

Only to find that the enemy, when faced, is not roaring, but weeping.

"So give me reason to prove me wrong, to wash this memory clean.
Let the floods cross the distance in your eyes.
Give me reason to fill this hole, connect the space between.
Let it be enough to reach the truth that lies across this new divide."

Because from the depths of my heart, I'm sorry.

EJ

Caught in the Act

Winter light is pale and sharp, adding a definitive edge to the profile of a stranger. The light is tinted with time and emotion even though to some it might just be the color of the stain glass sunset (sunrise?) hung in the window of the coffeehouse. The stranger is the son of my favorite professor. She and I spoke once or twice every month since I graduated. A lot of years to stay in touch. I was expecting to hear from her again, having already had a early-month exchange... instead I hear from him. She never told me she had cancer. She never told me her estate would pay off my school loans. And now her son has flown three thousand miles to tell me he hates me.

Richard (let's call him Richard) is all pressed linens, polished buttons, expensive shoes. He is a hard worker in the sense of hours and stress and mergers. His hands are long and tapered and groomed and graceless. He does not have his father's hands. Those large, open, welcome hands that met mine only once. They were callused and paint-speckled, his fingerprints always in relief from acrylics, from charcoals, from life. Nor does Richard have his mother's hands -- expressive, expansive, ethereal. He is a hybrid from both but of neither.

"When my father died, I thought my mother and I would finally connect. He always took up so much room in her life."

Richard's coffee is cold now, crude oil in his mug, but still it is warmer than his eyes as they pin me to my chair. I imagine that everyone in coffeehouse is wondering and watching to see if and when he'll leap across the table and kill me.

"We... she... would finally see our shared love of business. Our common ground."

I feel physical pain in my chest that a person -- an only child, an only son -- might know his own mother so little. Professor Montgomery cared more about pocket lint than about commerce of any kind. She believed in barter and trade and art being free. She taught and ran a gallery because of pure passion. Her all-consuming love of painting, raw, wild, explosive, just like she was. Richard is angry I was named in his mother's will. Richard is angry because he was only twenty-four when my only New York gallery show opened in his mother's gallery and the central piece was a woman he wanted to own but obviously did not even know.

"But she was just as gone... distant... absent. Maybe more then, than ever before. I tried to engage her in my graduate work but her... interest... was obviously held elsewhere."

I look past Richard's face. It is most likely a handsome face -- both Mr. and Professor Montgomery were handsome -- but not today. He cannot seem to uncurl his lips to cover his bared teeth. His snarl is almost stage dramatic. He seems incapable of stilling the vein throbbing between eyes so narrowed, only the pupils, wide and black, glint with malice.

He knows, of course. And he knows I know he knows.

I wonder, fleetingly, why Richard is so angry. Is it because of who and what I am? Who and what I was? Or is it that she wasn't in love with him instead? Why was it me -- right place, right time, right canvas, right colors -- instead of him? Doesn't Freud and Shakespeare argue that with the father dead, the son is rightful heir to his mother's heart?

"I've come here to give you this chance," Richard tells me. It is not an offer. "This is your chance to make so many wrongs right."

Richard leans back in his chair. His expression is neither hopeful or grateful. It is entitled. It is spiteful. It is resentful.

I think of Professor Montgomery. I think of how she looked in class and out on the town at a gallery not her own. I think of her standing in front of a piece she has never seen before. Her first emotions and responses and reactions bursting. I think of her face, lips parted, cheeks flushed, brows knit with the beauty of it all, with the beauty of each stroke so extreme they were almost too much for her to bear.

I painted only 5x5 back then. Wide and high. She was barely an inch taller than the canvas. She would look at my works in progress and trail the strokes in the thick paint, barely a quarter inch between her fingertips and the work. "It breathes," she would say. "Here is the pulse." Her reviews were like poetry of detail and technique. She could deconstruct three hundred hours of work in thirty minutes and I was a better artist because of it. Because of her.

I lean forward. Richard leans forward.

I read everything in his eyes. I realize that as much as he knew nothing of her in life, he knows no more of her in death. I wonder what happened to her journals. In his eyes I see a million things. In the pacing of his breath. His choice of cologne. He is consumed with his own thoughts.

"The most powerful thing one person can say to another..." I murmur, almost a whisper. His eyes burn cold. I continue, "More powerful than I love you... or I'll wait for you... or I'll never forget you...."

His left eye twitches.

"Even more powerful than I'm sorry...." And I stand up. Abruptly. Reined in. I look down at him without pity and without remorse. I am done wasting this day that God gave me. This day that started with his phone call. With the drive to the airport where I shook his hand, not understanding, and without letting go he told me so bluntly, 'My mother died Monday.' I am done sitting in shock and pain. I want to be walking in a sculpture garden. I want to be in a quiet gallery. I want to be somewhere remembering my friend. Anywhere but here worshiping at the alter of this monument of self-importance. I tell him, "I forgive you."

Richard jerks, startled. But not nearly as startled as when I add, "And so does Katrina."

I am almost to the door when he shakes off his shock and barks, "My mother's name was Kathrine!"

I don't bother to look back. "That's what you think."

We're All Damaged

I have nothing to say. That t-shirt floats here. A cataract of reason if not good-taste. "Actions speak louder than blogs." I couldn't agree more. Felt so good to hurl that laptop off the roof. Sounded so right to hear it splinter, shatter, scatter like the fatal collision that proceeded it.

I find that I prefer it when I don't speak.

I've basked in and endured a myriad of responses to essays here (in writing or life) and I can honestly say that I try of myself sometimes. I feel it coming. My own dismay at my own spin, my own happy-happy-joy-joy crap. When the truth be told I can't always find the positive learning lesson behind every slap in the face, smack on the ass, turn-me-inside-out-why-don't-you golden moment brought to me today by the letters F and O-Lord and at least a triple X. Before my dismay turns to disgust, I try to forget my password.

If I were self-righteous and always right, would you still be with me?

I think the most honest relationship I've ever had is with Christ and strange as it sounds He doesn't seem to give a fuck whether or not I use a swear or slang or ancient Greek with bad pronunciation. Strangely, He doesn't seem to care as long as I'm honest with Him. More honest than I am with myself. He doesn't get hung up on the lexicon of this urban grrl just trying to vent, just trying to keep it real,just trying to really *talk* to Him.

I still dream myself there. Though not always with you.

I really do have nothing to say. No more, at least, for now. The maze of blame is always concentric circles and mob mentality blends so nicely with popular belief for a little salt in the wound. We will always believe what preserves ourselves. The proof is not in the pudding, which so many of us will eat double-helpings of, but in which one of us bends first.

You will allow the baby to be torn in two.

She will offer you an olive branch three times... before you betray her again.

Represent

Tonight I will stand witness. Tonight I will not look away. Tonight I will know the truth.

The music is loud and booming. It does not crash with sharp brights, it rocks, vibrates the floor, the columns, the bones of the dancers. The bones of me. Of you. This is the first time you have invited me dancing with your friends. I never knew this side of you. It has been several months of living together but no one here has known you for less than ten years. I am the outsider. And the you that you are with them is not the you that you are with me.

A voice is shouting in my ear. Just loud enough to be heard. The cologne already familiar. "'Lizagrrl, wazup u don hang it wit us bafore?" Marx spreads his hands, palms up, his hip cocked, his head tilted. His hips bump-rock into mine. He is a spit heavier than a twig. Great big eyes and sweet dreads. His belly shirt is Bedazzled to spell a three-letter F word. I'm nervous for a minute that our belly button rings will get tangled. I blink. I have never had anyone call me 'Liza, let alone 'Lizagrrl.

The strobes flash. Blue purple green blue blue red white. Alvaro thumps down behind me, one combat boot steps the beat between my ankles. Shouts to Marx, "E her fuzz, not her grrl! You know the rulz wit Sun!"

And the sound of my jaw dropping and the sound of my head whipping 'round is surely louder than the music. I pin you to the bar with my eyes, which are huge and brown with shock. You turn suddenly, do a double-take because I am staring at you. Like you know my thoughts. But not my thoughts at all as your surprise fades into appraisal and you turn all the way slowly, your butt to the bar, a Coke in your hand, your braids and beads glinting, you take me in like... well, like some fuzz, some grrl you'd shag but not date and never marry. It is clear that you like the sight of me sandwiched snug between your friends. I think I'm hearing the music for the first time. "It's so good to meet you all," I shout to Marx and Alvaro, my eyes never leaving you. One-handed, I unsnap my leather vest and throw it to Tonka back at our table. I turn my back to you as I continue to dance.

In 1983, a woman was raped by two men in the pool room of a bar. A group of eight other men circled and chanted encouragement. The rapists were convicted. The spectators were acquitted.

"It is not a crime to watch a rape. But it is a crime to command, induce, entreat or otherwise persuade another person to commit a rape."

Apparently not.

On October 24, 2009, ten young men and boys raped a fifteen year old girl while another twenty looked on.

Are the spectators responsible? The spectators who stood and watched (that's what spectators do). The spectators who did not step forward. The spectators who did not call the police. The spectators who let it all sink in, right down to their stomachs, right down to the souls, for two and a half freaking hours.

Four hours later, we sit in Alvaro's condo with the breath-taking view and the swank wood floors and giant balcony and windows showing off the glimmer gloss of Los Angeles at night. Everyone is still buzzy from the club and I am made to feel very welcome, though I am constantly a step behind the conversation. You all speak in the short-hand code of long-time friends. Alvaro appears to be madly in love with you, the way he hangs on your every word. But by the end of the night I'll know that isn't true. I wish it were. Lord... I wish it were.

There are variations on this theme:

"I have always feared being violently raped. (beat) That's why I walk alone at night."
What?
"It's good for her to get out every day and walk. (beat) She can't let fear rule her life."
What?! Am I the only one who can spell "self-fulfilling prophesy"? Perhaps being a victim of violent rape would give her an excuse to be a lesbian? For the first time in my life, I feel the urge to slap Jennifer. Who should know better.

Ten years old. Abducted. Violently raped daily for two months. Sixty two days in July and August. Ten years old. Followed by ten years of prostitution. I think people would add that up to ten years and two months of abuse, wouldn't you? I know Cris would. I know I do.

"We were kissing." (I chose to touch the rabid dog.)
"He reached to open my jeans." (The dog snapped at me.)
"I told him no." (I told him no.)
"He urged me on and moved over me, pinning me." (He growled and cornered me.)
"I continued to tell him I didn't think we should. I was scared. I said no. I said stop. I was... it was... he was..."
And this is called acquaintance rape or date rape. Which we are supposed to classify differently from violent rape. But every human with a brain calls it all what it is: Misogyny.

There is laughter here in this swank residence. The walls are hung with original paintings. There is an abstract sculpture of a male dancer in the foyer. You and Tonka make a spread of nachos and Spanish rice. You turn sometimes and catch my eye through the kitchen pass-through. You like me here. Surrounded by your friends. You have allowed me into your inner circle.

This one at least.

Marx is telling stories about clubs you all used to frequent. Marx is telling about your long line of conquests. They were creative. Wild. Often very public. I like the professor from UCLA best. The one you talked up for three hours about Margaret Atwood, Joanna Russ, Camille Paglia, and Marge Piercy, matching her wit for wit, scathing observations followed by political observations, sprinkled with economic repercussions. Your friends were so dang bored they drifted away, leaving you two alone at the booth in the corner of the crowded club.

"Then it was, like you know, four in the morning and time to go grab some meats, so I goes back to the booth and nobody is home, 'Lizagrrl! 'Cept," Marx laughs hard. "Sun is home. She going home on this professor and the only things I see 'bove the table top is a black high heel digging into Sun's yin yang ink on her shoulder!"

I find myself blinking a lot tonight. I catch Alvaro looking at you. He seems nervous, excited to be in your presence. It is odd to see a grown man like this, especially one as classically handsome as Alvaro. On his right ring finger, a thick silver band imprinted in black: Five Years Sober

"Food," you announce as you smile at me and you and Tonka drench the coffee table with noms for all. Your dark hair falls away from your shoulders. In your white skin-tight tank I can watch your muscles tight from the gym and from dancing every weekend. There is no yin yang ink.

Do you think I'm that innocent? Or am I not allowed to bear witness for your truth?

We eat. None of you drink. It's all Coke and Dr. Pepper. You know how much I like that. You wink at me. You wipe cheese off my bottom lip with your thumb. Your arm around my shoulders, your thigh against mine, I am trying to listen to Marx's new stories as Tonka adds in street-slang sound effects and commentary ("Dats da truth!" "Fersure, boy!" "Hm-hm!") but my gaze keeps slipping back to you.

"Not too wild for you, E?" Alvaro asks and I tear my eyes away from studying you. Alvaro is reaching for a Coke. Tattooed inside his wrist: Never Forget and a date.
My mouth is dry.
"Nothing too wild for my Angel," you say and I can taste the possession in your tone. It is sweet and bitter at once.

Marx is not telling stories about you now that you're here. Like he knows not to. You are the group leader. The only gamer grrl in a posse of gamer boys. You have inadvertently over-shared tonight. Not over-share for me. I have soaked up your truths like a sponge, dry and empty before. But I am sure there is nothing I've learned tonight that you actually wanted me to know.

"Oooh! Boi!" Tonka slaps his leg. "Marx, tells da one 'bout the Underground rave! Dat one grrl gettin' wit both--"
"Nuf." You stand. Alvaro stands. The two of you look at each other so intently. Alvaro's eyes are huge wide. Your jaw jumps.
Marx kicks Tonka, "You weren't there, man. Shutup!"
Looking up at you, I slide my hand up your leg. You look down at me with a snap. I say softly, "I'm ready to go, Sunshine."
One. Two. Three. Silence passes. Then you smile. "Of course, baby."
You bud-hug everyone good-bye. You hold Alvaro a moment longer than the others. He looks at you with a silent question while I pretend to look down at my (not really) stuck zipper. You shake your head no. Barely a movement.
"Good to meet you, E." Alvaro extends his hand to me. His smile is like a little boy's. I have a crazy feeling. It grips me, cold and sharp. I don't want to take his--
I see you looking at me. Your lips are parted, jaw juts, one eye squinted, your eyebrows twitch.
I take Alvaro's hand tight then pull him into a quick hug. "Yeah. Good. Thanks."
You smile at me. Whatever it was pissing you off, it's gone now. You think it was an imagined slight. But it wasn't. It was an instinctual one.

Good thing I can ignore my instincts.

G, Liquid X, Liquid E, Scoop, Soap, Gook, Grievous Bodily Harm, Georgia Home Boy, Natural Sleep-500, Easy Lay, Gamma 10. GHB. Gamma-Hydroxybutyerate.

You toss your keys on the kitchen table. I have rarely been so happy to be home. You shrug out of your jacket. I watch you. You never turn on the lights. The whole room is in shadow. You see perfectly even in the pitch black. I never realized before that all your tight friends are men. I never realized before that your mannerisms are so masculine. I never realized before how very little I know about you.

You turn to me. The distance between us seems full of something present and tangible. A beast wrapped in static electricity and incendiary charge. You smile at me, light and sexy and gentle, your eyes already sliding over all the places your hands and mouth have explored before. You say, "I'm going to shower." Already you've dropped the urban edge. The slang, street lilt. You linger for a second (I remain so still I am not breathing) then you're gone into the darkness of the house cloaked in more than the low tock of the grandfather clock. It is not even a minute before I hear you lock the bathroom door. As always.

I am breathing. That is all. I am not thinking. I wet my lips. I am sweating more than I did at the club. I take the skeleton key from the fob.

I unlock the bathroom door.

The mirror glass is already steamed over. How long did it take me to move from my planted place in the kitchen? You have lit a candle. It's red. Cinnamon. The only light in the room. The textured glass of the shower door makes your body a mosaic of smaller images.

I am very still.

You turn off the water. You step out, looking down. You reach for the bath towel, turning away from me. Yin yang ink. And three others I have never seen. And a scar, long an arching, jagged and ugly, down your side and across your abdomen, curling around your hip.

You see me. You drop your towel.

The ink along the scar reads: Never Forget. Same date as Alvaro. It repeats along the length of the thick, still-raised trail.

I cannot breathe.

loy.al.ty

1. the state or quality of being loyal; faithfulness to commitments or obligations.

2. fealty, devotion, constancy. Loyalty, allegiance, fidelity all imply a sense of duty or of devoted attachment to something or someone. Loyalty connotes sentiment and the feeling of devotion that one holds for one's country, creed, family, friends, etc. Allegiance applies particularly to a citizen's duty to his or her country, or, by extension, one's obligation to support a party, cause, leader, etc. Fidelity implies unwavering devotion and allegiance to a person, principle, etc.

I know these definitions. But I don't know the definition of what I feel beneath my fingertips. The truth is never pretty and some truths are so jagged they can still wound after years and years.

There are no words. There were no words. But the truth is still there. I have witnessed it.

And I do not believe that spectators are ever innocent of the crime.

Stand up. Intervene. Represent.

EJ