“Cuddle up, angel.
Cuddle up, my little dove.
It's just the three of us:
You, me and all that stuff we're so scared of.”
My coffee is hot and sweet and rich sitting on my tongue as I read an article about addiction. I walked away from this particular one several months ago and have just recently jumped off the wagon with a glorious reverse somersault and a perfect landing. It won't wake me up (only one thing does that, babygrrl) but I find it strangely calming. Like an old friend. A tradition unchanged since I started school in NYC at sixteen. There were so many cold mornings and always that hot cup of coffee, dark as the nights I loved, to mark another day begun.
You are awake. I can tell because there is a thrumming in my chest and a warmth in my belly that has nothing to do with the coffee. It is almost dawn. I have fought my desire for you all night. I am somewhat more than unwilling to have you see me like this: so willing to throw away stress and demands and the whole rest of the world to fall to my knees before you. I am not yet ready for you to see the desire on my face like scripture. This living divinity that breaks and remakes me: my passion for you.
“Save tonight
and fight the break of dawn.
... burns like me for you.”
I return constantly to these late nights, so still and sleepless. Here I can quiet my thoughts if not my pounding heart. Here I can become myself, feel every inch of the woman I have grown to be, and be content and strong in that knowledge. But as my parts fall into place I find that I want you even more. We compliment each other. We...
Why do I try to make this into something so complicated and complex? It isn't. This love I feel for you is simple and bright and burning like my love for Christ. I love you because you are you. Not perfect. Not refined. You are untamed and untempered and more than anything else unbroken. I may be able to lay you down, lay you back, but I could never bend you to my will any more than anything in man's world could bend you. You are that perfect balance of elements and reactions and responses and stillness. I want you because you are wild and beautiful and bold. I need you... simply because my heart beats.
My heart beats. I raise my hand, touch my skin with my fingertips. Slide my hand up to linger at my pulse. There is a knock on the door. Isn't it dawn? Oh. Yes. But my work day begins at dawn. My day begins:
Ginny doesn't care if I use her real name because she quit two days ago and this is her last day on set. She thinks Hollywood pretty much bites but she loves it anyway. She just couldn't wake up any more and go to work and be part of a system “screwing so many women.” So Ginny doesn't care about anything right now other than watching me eat pancake sandwiches with sausages and eggs. Ginny is concerned that work requires I stay ten pounds below the optimal weight for someone 5'2” and I'm 5'5”. Ginny doesn't really understand that skipping meals stopped bothering me ten years ago when I started this.
Over breakfast, Ginny stares out the window. She is twenty-one and four days. She looks twice that in a bad way. She looks worn down by a system she's just starting to grasp. Not just the entertainment industry, but all of it. Life. Ginny says:
“It ought to be easy, ought to be simple enough.
Man meets woman and they fall in love.
But the house is haunted and the ride gets rough.
And you've got to learn to live with what you can't rise above.”
And the waitress asks for my autograph and Ginny frowns and we leave and I wonder if any young woman, any young person at all, ever enters the world to find it as they expected. I think I know of only one person who would claim that knowledge and she grew up in a way none of us would exchange for that premature education. I think that life is easy (even when rough) when we're children; Our choices are simpler. The world is the black and white of our parents' beliefs. The surface of everything is reflective. We see ourselves in everything. Life is as simple as looking in the mirror. Then we grow up... some of us at eighteen, some of us when we're first without a boyfriend, some of us when we have our first child... sometimes when we realize our children won't swallow the simple answers we're given them. No man knows another man's destiny. And though there are certainly universal truths, fact is stranger than fiction, and each of us billions have fingerprints all our own. Perhaps reality isn't one-size fits-all after all. So eventually we all grow up into us... and that new us is not the same as the old us.
Ginny wants to know where is the world that she thought was out there. Ginny wants to know when it gets easy and if Christ will make it clear. Ginny wants me to tell her it'll be okay and pat her hand and smile convincingly... just so she can shrug it all off for another day... but what Ginny doesn't realize is that by walking away from her lover and her job and the shelter of family name, she has already traveled beyond the place of easy comforts and convincing platitudes. Though she is not consciously aware of it yet, she has already begun her journey, all of it uphill and none of it easy. Despite Winterson's retelling, Atlas never shrugged and neither will Ginny.
Instead I say to Ginny: I'll get the bill.
T meets us outside. Motions us over to coffee. Tells us quietly that trouble is brewing without being explicit. He exchanges a few more words with Ginny, code worded to speak in front of me, about me, without me really knowing it. T speaks to Ginny like an equal because he is a decent man and doesn't see the difference between cast and crew but more than that, in this moment, when they are speaking about me, they are peers. They are both my friends.
“Somebody did.”
“Or didn't... you know?”
“More copies. Yellow highlights.”
“Unreal...”
“Tabbed even...”
“Somebody counting their lines?”
“Or not.”
T is not a small man. He likes to speak in short sentences and has a vocabulary that includes silences that are heavy and rich. To say his eyes speak volumes would be somewhat overly dramatic but the phrase works for me. I have always had this thing for eyes that speak. For men and women who say more with silence than with words. Not to say that I don't like words... I do. Very much. But T has a gentleness in his gaze that cannot be condensed into words. The way Wings has a confidence in her gaze that cannot be encompassed in a sentence or phrase. Some people just say more when they are silent.
“I can't believe they're making this something dirty,” Ginny says.
T just tilts his head to one side, purses his lips, blinks once, slowly. Ginny nods. She shakes her head. Looks away. “Yeah...” she says. “Yeah.”
By the end of the day, forty bound copies of my entire blog are circulating throughout the set. Seems my two worlds have collided. I call my lawyer at 7 and my publisher's lawyer at 8:45.
“If this is where memories are made
I'm gonna like what I see.
And everything and nothing is
as sacred as we want it to be.
And this time, this time
is fine just as it is.”
I am unshaken. The nonreality of reality strikes me as humorous today. I want to go dancing. I think clubbing on the Sabbath is why there's no cover on Sundays at my favorite spots. I'm simply meant to remember my body, this tangible gift from Christ, more than ever, on this day. I think about a friend singing: “Let's give them something to talk about... a little mystery to figure out...” She laughed to me about humming it for three days straight. The flip attitude, the joy in stress, the “oh, get a life, people” murmur behind the words. I found myself fixated on:
“Give me your sweet forgiveness
sweeter than honey.
Give me your sweet forgiveness
sweeter than wine.”
And I wasn't sure what I wanted to be forgiven for but I sure did know that sweeter than honey is exactly what you are to me, so I hummed that one all day while the strangers in my friends muttered about expectations and persona and responsibility.
I walked off set when a grip mumbled that four-lettered word while I sat eating my side salad. Funny... but I'm starting to think of it as a badge of honor.
“These people 'round here
wear beaten down eyes
sunk in smoke dried faces.
They're so resigned to what their fate is.
But not us, no, not us.
We are far too young and clever.
Ah come on...”
In the Catholic church, Cecilia is the patron saint of musicians. A muse of sorts bringing inspiration, watching over music makers. But if I ever had a patron saint it was Joan of Arc and the inspiration she brought me was historical proof that the more faithful one is, the higher the chance that she will be called a lunatic. I was equally inspired by Galileo and moved to smiles instead of tears when I walked into the Spot to hear:
“Cecilia, you're breakin' my heart.
You're shakin' my confidence daily.
Whoa, Cecilia, I'm down on my knees.
I'm beggin' you please to come home.
Come on home...”
And that's when it hits. I have my muse. I have my inspiration. That is why the dark drama at work is unable to strip me or burn me at the stake. I have my armor and sword, yes, yes, always... but they are often not enough. As in war and football, not always in life. A good offense is not always a good defense. Sometimes we need something *bright* not just something *sharp.* Sometimes we need something funny, sexy, challenging... responsive, irresponsible, wild and, of course, untempered, to remind us why we continue to fight.
And as I come to this realization, I know at last that sleep will stop eluding me. The night after night of dropping into exhaustion for two hours and then waking for the rest will be gone. I tore myself apart looking for why... *why* wasn't I *worried*? Why wasn't I hurt by that nonreality that was my very personal collision of worlds? Why, why, why?
Because I have you.
“You flash your bedroom eyes like a jumpin' jack.
You drive the pretty boys outta their heads.
Then play it pretty with a pat on the back.
You know you got it... so come and get it.”
I laugh myself through three hours of music. My laughter appears to be contagious. The energy on the floor is light, bright, sweet and fluffy like cotton candy. Like the Monster Bag I loved at the Puyallup Fair... both of them *blush* At one point, a lanky leather-and-neon raver I've seen before sizes me up. She grins crooked and cocky. “Well,” she's all-knowing, this punk. “*Somebody* got laid.”
And I laughed harder. Much harder. Because she was right. *Somebody* did get laid all right. But it wasn't me.
“Who's that casting devious stares
in my direction.
Oh baby, this surely is a dream.
Yeah baby, this must be my dream...”
There was tension -- exquisite and torturous and pounding through my bones and muscles and veins. There was stress and danger and betrayal and deceit all outside my control. And then...
And then it was just gone.
I have been called many things, some of them four-lettered and others much longer. But Polly Anna is not one of them. And so... I worried. I fretted. What insanity had taken my mind that I was so content? So settled? So pleasantly resigned to my fate? Why was everything, suddenly, so good to go? Who had harvested my emotional state?
But now I know...
“She don't like losing,
to her it's still a game.
And though she will mess up your life,
you'll want her just the same,
and now I know:
She has a built-in ability
to take everything she sees.
And now it seems, I'm falling,
I'm falling for her!”
And I was still laughing as I tumbled into dreams, beneath skylights of scattered stars and wispy clouds, and a three-legged cat snoring loudly and announcing, most certainly, the beginning of the End Times. But hey *shrug* I'm down with that *grin*
EJ
You look at me and I fall into the forest of your eyes. I am enchanted and lost and found and saved and damned. I would walk through fire to live this life, to love you. Dear Lord, sometimes, I think I do. Do you think me a fool? I look at you -- a treasure, an angel, a warrior -- and I see you quiet and fierce. Talk to me. Tell me anything. Let me read your internal state in the cadence of your words over the still night quiet. Tell me you walk with me. Tell me that nothing is left unsaid. Tell me you love me.
