(no subject)
la douleur exquisel
jac+audrey
i posted this on a community (bandgirls), but it may as well be on here as well.
jac still thinks about it, all of it; from finish to start.
it's pink bubblegum, it's felt tip tattoos on her pulse points that
never really washed away. it's orphaned deers and glitter toothpaste,
panda bears with human features and the brown vomit stain in her car
that used to be peach sake, twenty dollar sushi and audrey's stomach
acids.
and none of it biodegradable.
-----
Jac wants real love, she does.
she sells her soul for it everytime she shoots herself naked and
vulnerable, uploading and selling tiny parts of herself to the millions
of ‘zine kids with their fashionable up do's and metal teeth.
and if they could see her shaking, maybe they'd stop. but they can't,
and she can't, so it's all sellsellsell 'cause jac just wants to be
famous, jac just wants real love, really she does.
----
audrey, audrey is something different altogether.
her hair isn't quite blonde, but it isn't quite brown, or blue, or
yellow either; her eyes are these giant bambi amber globes that pour
right into Jac's chest cavern and distracts her from the constant snap
pop of the strawberry bubblegum audrey's sugary mouth keeps chewing and
rechewing.
and she's so bright, so lurid, it burns into jac's corneas.
"I'm audrey" she smiles, extending one hand to shake jac's, the other
entwined with her boyfriends.
their hands swallow each others and jac's skin feels damp when its
pressed against audreys, "jac."
then audrey smiles again and jac thinks that her smile is brighter than
the stars and the night, the moon blurs dull and grey in it's presence.
"nice to meet you, finally", audrey's eye's dart back forth from jac's
and her sidekick. "i've been following you online far too much" she adds
with a laugh.
jac's mouth gapes open, "yeah?". audrey nods, "I know all about you jac
vanek."
audrey's fringe sits low on her eyebrows and when she giggles it bobs up
and down, her fake eyelashes brush her pinkpinkpink cheekbones in a
permanent blush, "I sound like such a creep."
jac smiles at her, "no you don't."
audrey's eyes catch jacs' for moments and it's unexplainable, it's fat
pink babies and childhood pets called toto and mittens, shooting stars
she's wished upon and flowers burst and bloom and jac wants to believe
that this is real love.
but audrey's gaze travels to jac's sidekick which lays haphazardly from
her limp wrist and her eyes dilate and her lips split.
"we have the same hello kitty charm!' audrey says, touching the tiny
plastic cat that swings off the phone.
and jac wants to say that it's the start of a beautiful friendship but
really its more than that.
------
audrey hates hollywood the way jac is in love with it.
she says it will be the death of her, but jac says its the only thing
that makes her feel alive.
audrey smiles, "you're the ying to my fucking yang you know?".
and she holds jac's hand for the rest of the night.
-------
audrey has fake hair, its glued into her scalp and it tears and pulls
till the skin is red raw.
her eyelashes come off at night, with her jewellery and beauty spots.
underneath, her skin is milky white with splatterings of freckles on her
nose and cheeks, she climbs into jac's tiny bed and breathes peppermint
against jac's collarbone and jac always wants her like this.
it's three am, maybe four when audrey says, "he's a virgin you know?".
jac's submerged in light dreams of vegas wedding chapels and icecream
cakes, "huh?"
"my stupid boyfriend" audrey yawns, "I'm dating an unfucked rockstar. my
life is so glamorous".
and jac wants to laugh but her bones feel cold under audreys' and she
never thought she'd be so alone.
-----
ryan is in the same band as audrey's boyfriend and jac starts dating him
the next week.
she always had a thing for boys in bands and sometimes in the right
light he has the same cheekbones as audrey.
he tells her that she's beautiful and jac rolls her eyes. he says, 'I'll
write a song about you', and jac says, 'I look forward to seeing how
many palahniuk quotes you fit in this one'.
when she tells audrey about it later she laughs obnoxiously till bubble
tea drips off her septum and calls jac a fire cracker and words never
sound more beautiful then when they roll out of audrey's sparkle pink
mouth.
audrey paints her toe nails red and watches all these movies jac hates
on repeat until the lines run through jac's head on a continuous track
of dead socialites and emotionally inept cross dressers.
audrey calls its culture.
jac calls it trash.
she breaks audrey's copy of igby goes down into a hundred pieces with
her fingers and turns the television onto the history channel, the
sounds of bombs dropping and innocence being crushed filter through her
tiny apartment.
audrey disappears into jac's kitchen and comes out holding a black
marker, little red pools of nail polish cling to jac's carpet. "wrist"
she barks and jac's skinny hand shoots out automatically.
she paints a ying yang sign on the underbelly of jac's wrist, she paints
them as a whole dancing across the constant thumpthumpthump of jac's
heart beat.
and when audrey pinches the tip of jac's nose, there's a matching one on
her wrist.
----
It's night and jac is sitting on the front of her car, back against the
cold metal as she watches the stars. behind her, audrey screams
profanities into a pay phone but the sound mixes with the stale smell of
fast food and it all becomes background noise anyway.
jac wants to melt into the stars and away from the in 'n out parking lot
and audrey and her stupid boyfriend. she dreams of bigger cities and smaller beds where it’s okay to kiss girls and like it.
audrey runs out of silver shrapnel eventually, she lies down next to
jac. "ryan says hi".
jac doesn't say anything for a long time. and then.
"why do you stay with him audrey?"
and she can feel audrey's shoulder shrug against her, "he drives me and
crazy, but then we make out and it melts away."
jac asks, "lust?"
and audrey says, "yeah."
jac rolls on her side and in the light of the neon parking light sign,
audrey looks so fragile. her mascara is running races down her cheeks,
painting liquid spiderwebs that jac can feel her fingers itching to
touch. her skin blurs yellow and sallow in the reflection and everytime
she inhales her cheeks deflate till their corpse hollow but then audrey
exhales and her body shakes with the force.
jac asks, "don't you want real love?"
and audrey blinks, "ryan says he misses you".
----
jac comes home from work and audrey is cutting her tee shirts into
dresses.
she says, were gonna be famous.
she says, he broke up with me.
----
audrey paints black inkblots on jac's lips and glues feathers on her
eyelids, and everytime she opens her mouth this glistening new
introspect spills out.
"people will do anything to be famous, jac, they'd kill their mothers".
jac nods, waits patiently for the timer to ticktock down and stands with
shallow hips and shaking fingers, indie darling delight, at audrey's
side.
"the world is made up of two sorts of people, jacolantern, people who
fall behind and burn and those who prevail and make it."
flashflashflash.
audrey pushes broken cigarettes into jac's mouth, cups a flask to her
own doll lips and her shoulders and elbows may perfect sunken angles
against the whitewash.
"but not us jac, we won't crash and burn, were gonna take over the
world. jac and twigg, fuck everyone else."
jac smiles, such a rag doll nymphet as audrey preaches sweet and soft in
her ear, all of it fucking gospel, and jac, and jac, she just shoots it
all and calls it magic.
----
jac wakes up with cigarette butts in her hair and another girls lipstick
on her teeth, four am chimes in her veins.
amongst the tea cups, audrey dyes her hair sparkle pink in jac's kitchen
sink.
she smiles, "you like it?".
and jac says, "I love you."
audrey's doe eyes, their painted blue and gold, and they blink once,
twice, thrice in the morning light.
her fingertips drip liquid fairy floss across the tiles as she walks
across them, tiny pink pinpricks against her feet.
and audrey cups jac's cheeks in her wet hands and presses their lips
together, in a perfect clink of teeth and fingers and skin.
audrey tastes like 'good morning' in the afternoon and fortune cookies,
burnt smores and butterflies, lovers and japanese candy, lazy
afternoons, peroxide, watermelon vodka, skin, fear and stars.
and when audrey pulls her hands away, she leaves two pink hand prints on
jac's skin; makeshift indian, makeshift lovers.
audrey's life lines clings to jac's blush like sticky fairyfloss, and
and everytime she smiles the lines stretches a little bigger.
jac walks around all day and calls herself one of the lost boys, and she
swears this is what real love is.
----
and she's so unexplainably gone; a never ending sugar high with tiny
pink audrey flavoured candies.
----
jac ties balloons around around audreys wrist with string.
giant orbs of pale pink and blues, jac's breathe trapped inside, and
audrey says, 'I want to float to the stars!'.
jac thinks maybe their already stars. audrey runs around arms out
stretched like she can touch the moon, and she's screaming all glitter
and bliss, tiny litte j-a-c's printed on her pulse point.
they're on the edge of the ocean, they're on the edge of the world.
audrey says she's flying, no really.
and jac wants to say I love you, want to say is this real, wants to say
what are we?
but, but, but it comes out all wrong.
"there's no helium in those balloons audrey."
----
audrey is infinite lust, she's wrist kisses at 3 am, she's fake
eyelashes that get in between jac's toes when she steps on them.
audrey cooks blueberry pancakes cause they're the only she knows how to
cook, makes jac breakfast in bed and when they lay so close with sticky
maple syrup fingers jac thinks she wants to be a wife one day.
she always does this, and ryan, yeah he still calls but one night her
phone rings at an obnoxious hour and ryan says he kissed another girl.
and jac says, me too.
----
then one day audrey stops writing jac's name on her wrist in permanent
marker, and starts using it to circle apartment advertisements in the
black and whites.
audrey stops making blueberry pancakes, stops bleeding philosophy, stops
watching all those movies that drive jac insane.
audrey says 'jac, it's not you', says 'I don't want love', says 'not
like this'.
jac comes home one afternoon, ying yangs weighing her hands down like
anchors and audrey, she's gone and jac knows what it means.
----
jac will spend her whole life looking for real love, not fake lust.
she scrubs her wrists till they bleed red raw, but it won't erase what
it all means.
she throws out her hello kittys' and her tee shirt dresses, bleaches her
regrowth and takes photos in violet because its the only colour audrey's
hair never was.
and jac knows that none of the stains from audrey's make up will wash
off of her sheets, the cigarette burns she left in the vinyl won't melt
back into wholes.
but that's okay, eventually it's okay; jac knows that they're makeshift
scars. tiny little etches in her skin and soft bone tissue, made from
japanese candy and glitter and all the talk of world domination.
because jac will pick herself up, dust off her bleeding and bruised knee
caps and she will carry those scars around on her skin where audreys
name used to be, and everytime she gazes down at them, all ugly and
puckered as they pull her veins together as singular wholes she will
remember that she wants real love, real fucking love.
and one day, a million minutes from now, jac will be standing on a
sidewalk with frozen fingertips when she'll see audrey with another girl
with blue hair and ugly teeth.
audrey's eyes will catch jacs' for a moment and it really it could be
the first time they've ever seen each other, it could be that night when
they did first see each other backstage at some really bad show.
but then the blue haired girl would grab audrey's wrist and she'd walk
past jac in slow motion, all infinite beauty pulsating in the cold.
and jac would smile, soft and warm, because it would be okay. because
eventually she would be able to watch kieran culkin again, and drink
peach sake without convulsing, and talk to girls with technicolour hair
and metal in their skin.
audrey would look back over her shoulder and smile at jac, because she'd
know, they'd both know.
ying vs. yang. they had never been real or fake, lust or romance; just
been a single moment of idle completion.
jac would say, jac would say the truth.
and audrey wouldn't hear her but her eyes would, and then she'd wink one
of those sparkle bright eyes one last time before she'd get into a cab,
and it would be the last time.
and jac would say, a million and one minutes from now, "it wasn't
terrible, but it wasn't love."