intro piece to memoir
Spirit is here, spirit is twisting her fingers around us. She is in the smoke filling the air, she is in the blow-up comforter slouched in the corner losing air. Spirit is in my friend constructing and then deconstructing his bicycle. This is what I tell myself, sitting in the broken chair at Tony's apartment. I tell myself and say it again, I try to figure out what it would be in other languages. I try to create my own language. Spirit is here, spirit is twisting her fingers around us.
I have an apartment, its not mine but I paid rent for this month. The lease belongs to a blonde-haired midwestern girl who moved out here a few years ago. She has huge doe-eyes, and a dog named Pizza. She has a car and the apartment is decorated in a sort of new-age hippie way, with dream catchers and an old record player that probably doesn't work. I am jealous of her, or of how I imagine her to be. We have barely talked since I moved in. Most of the time when I am there, I am locked in my rented room - which has nothing in it but a futon, right there pushed up against the corner. And piles of laundry. The laundry is starting to smell. It must have been 3 weeks, maybe more since I have washed anything. Every time I push the key in the lock, I tell myself: today is the day. I am going to wash these clothes, I am going to buy a dresser. I am going to decorate this room and make it my own. But before I can lift my fingers I am asleep. I can never stay awake in this room, because it is where I go to hide, to drift away, to redeem myself in birth and life and keep myself as stable as I can as a baseline failure.
Most of the time, I am here. At Tony's apartment right by the Mission Church, some old landmark here. Sometimes there are tourists taking pictures in front of it, aliens from some other world with TV dinners, with jobs. They probably have God like I do. They might as well all be my roommate, they might as well all be the same person. Because I could never bring myself to speak to them. Too foreign. I have only my imagined sense of what they are, and what they will become, something wholly different than me.
Tony is fidgeting with his bicycle, I can smell the grease in his hair. I am sitting on this broken-down chair, listening to my heart beat, boom-boom-boom. Staring at the wall, lighting cigarette after cigarette. A sharp pain creeps up into my brain and it feels like a shooting star is passing through my cerebellum. All of the sudden my spine goes limp and I feel like I can't breathe. The temperature seems to rise above 200, I am sweating profusely. I go outside and smoke a cigarette. I feel a little better with the air, but the people walking by seem suspect. I catch my breath. I walk back inside, and turn on the TV. It is the news. The news before the news, the filler news that begins just after the infomercials end. Everybody else watching this must be fucked up too, I think. Maybe we aren't all so different after all.
The TV is muted. I am staring at the silhouette of the news girl, a blonde girl wearing a tight red dress pointing somewhere over New York, talking about a hurricane. There is no sound. There can be no sound. I am staring. Hours pass. 1,2, 3. Four. Four wretched hours. Time to go. I stand up, my brain still hurts. I ask Tony if he wants to walk to the grocery store with me.
We walk to the Safeway on Church & Market. Tony talks about being in a punk band in the 80's. He holds my hand. We walk into the grocery store and steal donuts. We walk around eating them, and walk out into the cold fog once we are finished. "You would make a good girlfriend," he tells me. "You still have life in you. You have a soul." I don't know what to say. Spirit is right here, it is between us. Mine is stronger than his, and I wish I could give him a little of what I have. I would give this away to anyone, if only anyone actually wanted it, if only anyone believed any more.
I have an apartment, its not mine but I paid rent for this month. The lease belongs to a blonde-haired midwestern girl who moved out here a few years ago. She has huge doe-eyes, and a dog named Pizza. She has a car and the apartment is decorated in a sort of new-age hippie way, with dream catchers and an old record player that probably doesn't work. I am jealous of her, or of how I imagine her to be. We have barely talked since I moved in. Most of the time when I am there, I am locked in my rented room - which has nothing in it but a futon, right there pushed up against the corner. And piles of laundry. The laundry is starting to smell. It must have been 3 weeks, maybe more since I have washed anything. Every time I push the key in the lock, I tell myself: today is the day. I am going to wash these clothes, I am going to buy a dresser. I am going to decorate this room and make it my own. But before I can lift my fingers I am asleep. I can never stay awake in this room, because it is where I go to hide, to drift away, to redeem myself in birth and life and keep myself as stable as I can as a baseline failure.
Most of the time, I am here. At Tony's apartment right by the Mission Church, some old landmark here. Sometimes there are tourists taking pictures in front of it, aliens from some other world with TV dinners, with jobs. They probably have God like I do. They might as well all be my roommate, they might as well all be the same person. Because I could never bring myself to speak to them. Too foreign. I have only my imagined sense of what they are, and what they will become, something wholly different than me.
Tony is fidgeting with his bicycle, I can smell the grease in his hair. I am sitting on this broken-down chair, listening to my heart beat, boom-boom-boom. Staring at the wall, lighting cigarette after cigarette. A sharp pain creeps up into my brain and it feels like a shooting star is passing through my cerebellum. All of the sudden my spine goes limp and I feel like I can't breathe. The temperature seems to rise above 200, I am sweating profusely. I go outside and smoke a cigarette. I feel a little better with the air, but the people walking by seem suspect. I catch my breath. I walk back inside, and turn on the TV. It is the news. The news before the news, the filler news that begins just after the infomercials end. Everybody else watching this must be fucked up too, I think. Maybe we aren't all so different after all.
The TV is muted. I am staring at the silhouette of the news girl, a blonde girl wearing a tight red dress pointing somewhere over New York, talking about a hurricane. There is no sound. There can be no sound. I am staring. Hours pass. 1,2, 3. Four. Four wretched hours. Time to go. I stand up, my brain still hurts. I ask Tony if he wants to walk to the grocery store with me.
We walk to the Safeway on Church & Market. Tony talks about being in a punk band in the 80's. He holds my hand. We walk into the grocery store and steal donuts. We walk around eating them, and walk out into the cold fog once we are finished. "You would make a good girlfriend," he tells me. "You still have life in you. You have a soul." I don't know what to say. Spirit is right here, it is between us. Mine is stronger than his, and I wish I could give him a little of what I have. I would give this away to anyone, if only anyone actually wanted it, if only anyone believed any more.