Graceful Dive

Outside, it was raining and had been forever. But inside, it was as blue and red as a Nyquil dream, smoke coiling slow as ghost snakes up through the spotlights on the stage. This Mortal Coil, Bauhaus and Dead Can Dance bled from hidden speakers and there I stood with all the other fuckers, up against the railing that separates the stage from the audience. I was one of three girls in the front row. They were giggly, slightly inebriated, sparkling with enthusiasm. I stood and stared at the floor where my one empty beer can sat at my feet. It occurred to me that - in the eyes of the band I was about to watch - I was the beer can: cheap, disposable, good for a buzz that would last perhaps an hour, then quickly discarded and forgotten, identical to a million others cast aside before me.

The stage lights went on without fanfare, just suddenly turning the dark, sodden, beer-heavy air around us into golden champagne, as if a thousand angels had suddenly thrown open the doors to Heaven and cast their halos at our feet to light the way. At the first sign of light, the dull murmur around me abruptly fell silent and stayed that way for a whole quarter of a second. Then, eruption. Vocalized love, mere words worthless and utterly incapable of conveying the myriad emotions within us: adoration, recognition, justification, and deep, sincere gratitude. I wondered, as I watched them walk out onto the stage one by one, if they can feel it physically. It is warm? Bright? More pleasurable than the purest narcotic crystalline high? More exhilarating than the profoundest orgasm ever experienced in your otherwise humdrum sex life? How does it feel to stand up there, listening to hundreds of total strangers scream your name, knowing their love is all-consuming, unconditional, everlasting? Is it addictive? Is it frightening, never knowing who sincerely cares for you and who simply wants to touch the golden idol, hoping its magic will rub off? Or is it actually the loneliest thing in creation, knowing that everyone loves who you are on stage, but that no one really knows you at all?

The Firebrand

The first one was a torch, crowned with flame. He never burned, only smoldered. But when you're a fourteen year old girl left to freeze to death in the barren wasteland of unpopularity, you will jump into a bonfire without ever reasoning that a single match would have been sufficient. Twenty years went by, and he was the first one to emerge from that ethereal plane where celebrities exist. I thought he was molten bronze, never for a single second assumed that it was false gold I saw sparkling in the dirt. He singled me out, pursued me the way fire greedily consumes a trail of gasoline; black on black, but he saw me and lit me up and made me think I was the first and only and most important act of arson ever committed. 

And then the lonely phone calls, the cocksure confidence that I had nothing better to do than put myself on a six hour bus ride and bring myself to his door like Domino's Pussy Delivers. And that fire was put out as though a great, damp fist had closed around it and crumpled it all into ashen silence.


Mr. 105°

Oh look, a kindred spirit! A wordsmith, a dweller in the darkness, a nerd not unlike myself, head stuffed full to splitting with useless knowledge of the horror genre. His eternal goofy grin was disarming, his frying-pan face and bullet head surely not indicative of a contemptuous, belligerent soul lurking beneath. But one remark, one hairs-breadth of suspicion that I might be anything less than a fawning, unquestioning, unchallenging disciple of his obvious superiority, and out came the switchblade tongue, the almighty slam dunk which - in retrospect - was not unlike being suddenly and viciously punched in the face by a pony. How dare I? How dare I even think about questioning him? I am no one. I will always be a no one. And if ever I should forget my lowly status, he would be there to remind me. He expected an apology, a humble acquiescence. What he got was dropped, blocked and cut off cold. I was not impressed.

BullHead

For the better part of three years, we played Scrabble, shared jokes, discussed everything from music to pharmacology. He even asked for my thoughts and opinions on certain matters he was researching for his next film. He had high hopes that I would forge a relationship with his favorite leading man, and for a while it seemed highly probable. Promotional scheduling brought him to my neighborhood, sans the leading man, but no matter. We would meet at long last, throw back a few beers, pick up our discussion where we'd left off. We were friends, well and truly. Until he realized I was no one, had nothing and could not offer him anything but my friendship. I had written for him, glowing reviews that were earned, not purchased. But while he was discussing possible future projects with Hollywood A-Listers, I was just another nerd in a sea of nerdiness. A dime a dozen, nothing special. My services were no longer required, thank you. Goodbye and don't ask us for anything ever again. All I'd ever wanted was to commiserate with a kindred, and all I got was a kick in the ass. I cried for three days, and withdrew, and was no more.

Special Thanks

To all of the writers and producers, pseudo scream queens and fellow critics, directors and tin stars and hopeful sycophants who took time out of their busy schedules to acknowledge me with blisteringly vile hate mail when I failed to lie about the stunning depth of their non-existent genius. Thank you all for showing me how worthless honesty is in a world where favor is bought and sold like cocaine and friendship is weighed by physical attractiveness. Thank you for lowering my expectations and teaching me the wisdom of never expecting anything in return from anyone, ever. Because if you had not prepared me so well by rejecting me, using me, assuming I would fall in line without question or protest and meekly accept your authority over one such as I, I might have been sorely disappointed last night when yet another fallen angel crossed my path.

And I watched, and I waited, and I closed my eyes more than once, watching the strobing stage lights play kaleidoscope patterns against my eyelids, praying that I would be seen and recognized, knowing I wouldn't be, accepting that I would never be anyone's muse, never qualify to be a sister, or a lover or a friend or a memory called up when the days turn cold and grey. Several times, the alabaster bassist bestowed a wide, white smile upon me, which I returned. But nothing from the God. No communion, no blessing, no faith. the music stopped and so did my prayers. The theater grew quiet, the worshippers went away into the rain, and I was one of six remaining, VIP stickered fuckers still hanging around in the hollow cathedral, hoping for a fucking miracle.

And when he emerged from his chrysalis, I saw a caterpillar where a butterfly had been. His music had poured out of him like holy water, but the vessel was only human after all. The voice of God spoke through a mere shrub once: it didn't make the leaves and branches holy.

I saw a glass unicorn, one of those spindly little blown glass cheapies they sell at tourist shop kiosks. He was a bird skeleton, a wren whose ribcage would have shattered like Pringles if I'd hugged him too hard, But I never got that opportunity. The top of his head might have cleared my eyebrows with an inch to spare. Surely there was nothing beneath his clothes but common air: he was concave, void of substance. I couldn't picture him naked: he was so small and meatless, he couldn't possibly have an ass or a set of sex organs in there anywhere. He was just a boy, really. For all that he's pushing a mid century, he's just a sparrow boy, weightless as a cigarette wrapper and just as likely to be blown away by the wind.

He turned his back on his friend of many years, and kept turning it deliberately, showing us his spinal cord and hipless silhouette, his eyes very carefully never flicking our way. I knew him not at all, but his friend, with whom he had experienced fame, sorrow, death and glory, was ignored. We were the only two cast aside, like the rest of the beer cans currently being swept up by maintenance. He spoke with all but us. I listened to his voice rise and fall. I stared at his feet. He was wearing hideous slippers that made him look ludicrous. I wondered who had been tasked with fetching them: they were far too white and pristine to be his. They were new. They were awful.

I didn't want anything from him. I made it very clear beforehand that I wanted no posed pictures, stiff and awkward with plastic smiles for the flash. I wanted no autographs. Why would I? What would I have done with it? I've seen his name written a million times on inserts and album covers and guitar picks. What good would it do me on the back of a check register or one of the outdated receipts stuffed in my purse? I didn't want a conversation; the hour was too late and my bed was waiting 82 miles south. I had work the next morning. I didn't want sex. I'd had a terrible crush on him initially, but upon seeing him up close and in person... no. I realized it was the music I'd had a crush on. It was the music that had seduced me, the colors and emotions pouring forth from the well that had stolen my heart. I had mistaken the gift wrap for the actual gift. Again. I hate it when people do that to me, and there I was doing it to everyone. Setting them up on pedestals and erecting altars in their honor, offering flowers and silver coins and tarnished rosaries. Above all, offering my blind devotion. My stupidity and naivete and emptiness that a single look could fill up for a short while. I have to stop doing that.

He took not a moment, not a single second, to simply say to his friends: "Excuse me just a moment, just want to pop over and say hi to an old friend and a new one." And I would have been happy with that. A "hello." A "thank you for coming, safe home and sleep well." A wave goodbye as he walked off again, back to his friends. Back to that scrawny horse faced groupie with the stick up her ass. I don't care. Talk to whoever you want, go drink whatever you want, fuck whatever is willing to bend over. But don't dismiss me. I know you have peripheral vision. I know that you know. I can feel it.  Thirty seconds, good sir. Was that too much to ask? He owes me nothing, nothing at all. But would it have killed him to meet our eyes? Smile? Nod?

Fine. Goodnight. Farewell. May the rest of your tour be happy, lucrative and inspiring. I hope you see a thousand sunsets over a hundred different countries and never grow bored with the sight. I'll stay here in my own world and leave you on the shelf. Thank you. Truly and genuinely, I thank you. We will never meet again, fair creature. And I slept perfectly well, knowing as much.