Mistress cellophane

You didn't notice me when I walked in the room.  That's ok, I'm used to it.  Sit down on the bed, open my computer, try to find solace in the virtual world.  You make it look oh so easy.
Remember tonight, man-boys buying me drink after drink, me insisting that I am Taken for good.  After all that, you're feet and worlds away from me here.
My stomach turns, the sick is coming-I can feel it.

Somehow, tonight I just want to be loved.  Turn and toss-toss and turn.  Tonight I feel restless, tonight I feel wild.  Sitting there, your eyes on the screen, I could toss myself out the window and you wouldn't bother to blink.  So maybe tonight I shall do just that.

"Want anything?"  Not a murmur or mumble in response.  The kitchen is cold, I shift my weight in a ridiculous dance while I wait for the microwave to buzz it's tired finale.  Hot soup burning the taste off my tongue.  You don't glance up at my return.  I balance the soup on top of the weeks of junk on your table, standing sentinel beside your chair.  You look up, annoyed at my apparent interest.  Your expression doesn't change as the cold serrated metal slips between your ribs.  Your last moments on earth will be spent wishing you could just level your alchemy already. 

I turn, ignoring the spluttering as YOU taught me to.  If you're lucky, I will notice you in an hour.

If you're lucky.

Something you won't read.

You have four moles on your cheek that look like a constellation who's name I always forget.   
I will remember this.
You're just tall enough that I have to stand on tip toe when I kiss your cheek.  I think too that I will remember the way you smell after you step of the shower, soft and a little musty.  I hope I don't remember how I feel tonight.

The game is on the flat screened tv behind me; every so often I turn to look at it.  Not because I'm  actually following the action, just because it seems the right thing to do.  I stare across the table, looking through the girl who is busy ticking off great aunts and second cousins on her fingers.  Instead of listening I count; hockey pictures on the wall: four, cigarette butts in her ashtray: six, people at this table:five, people that I know: zero.  I'm comfortable in anonymity.  Being a friend of a friend of a friend suits me just fine, for now.

It's not until the talk turns to common ground that I start to flinch.  I know the stories by heart.  I know the way the ache rises in the back of my throat and how to push it down again.  Tonight is different.  Tonight they are laughing. 
"-walking in the room and pulling off the blanket...priceless expressions...begged us not to say anything but of course we were gonna give him shit."
She waves her cigarette in a lewd expression, trailing tongues of smoke.  Pinching myself under the table, I look away.

Before I can remember not to think about it I remember another bitterly cold night.  We are in the front seat of your car and I am leaning towards you, trying to avoid the old soda that has leaked through it's paper into the cup holder.  You are asking me what I would do if you told me you love me.  I am panicking in such a wonderful way.  My heart is pounding it into my chest over and over again;
He loves me
BA BOOM.
He loves me
BA BOOM.
To me, that night seemed so real.  Now I try to pinch myself out of it before I remember the next part; The way I skipped through the double doors and up the stairs to my bed where I fell asleep, hugging my pillow and still listening to the tattoo of my heart.

A pause in the conversation-everyone looks at me expectantly.  Non-committal noises from the back of my throat and they are off again, this time comparing notes on mutually acquainted low-lives.

I imagine their conversation a year from now.  I can see them nodding as they talk about your new fling, joking among themselves about this crazy girl who seemed to believe that she was worth a change of your heart.  This crazy girl who believed it was worth risking everything.  This crazy girl who no one has heard for in months.  This crazy girl.  But quickly the talk will turn again, and I will be a side-note in your history.  Maybe someday you will tell another curly headed girl how you once were silly enough to imagine a future with me; before quickly assuring her that she is nothing like me at all.

Tonight I sit here and think and remember and try to pretend I'm not wilting inside.  I drag the smoke into my lungs gratefully, relishing the scratch in the back of my throat.  You're somewhere miles away, not worrying about any of this. I try to bed my mind to think of nothing.

Your eyes have little flecks of gold in them that spark when you're feeling particularly devilish.
I will remember this.

The fairgrounds.

In the steel gray moonlight your hair spikes up the wrong way in the front, casting a shadow over your eyes. The wind is heaving and sighing every so often, chilling our bones. I pull your canvas jacket a little closer around my shoulders, centuries of patriarchy have at least given me this privilege. Together we slip through the gate and crunch slowly across the frozen gravel.

Across the midway a barn springs up out of nowhere, the wind carries the stale smell of last summers livestock to us from it's open doors. Your hand in mine is strong and reassuring and I clutch at it. My timidity is nothing but a coy mask. Alone I would skip over to play in the looming shadows, with you I shrink into a giggling mess that jumps at the sound of the stars.

"The grandstand?"
"Oh yes! But don't let go ok?"

My boots breaks the ice that has just begun to form over the muddy divits and furrows. There is nothing quiet so satisfying as snapping something brittle and newly formed. I make a point to step on every icy web, grinning at my own childish fun. You stand by indulgently, jabbing your hands into your pockets and clapping your boots against each other. I almost feel bad for taking your jacket. Almost.

When the last crunch has echoed across the grounds I finally let you take my hand again and we turn towards the Everest of steel and aluminum before us. The top row is somewhere above us, hundreds maybe thousands of steps up. Clunk! One step. Clunk! Two steps. Clunk, clunk, thunk clunk. Twenty six steps until the top of my boot doesn't hit another metal tread. Up here there are no seats, just a wide isle backed with chain link fence. We are at the top of the world and only the moon and the stars can see us. You lean in to kiss me, and when you close your eyes I keep mine open, watching your lashes flutter in the ebb and flow of the embrace. You are so fresh, and so wonderful and so new. I watch as you let the kiss die slowly on my lips, and then just before you open your eyes I push.
Clunk
Clunk
Clunk
Snap.

128

Tonight I will not write the crisp plot floating around the back of my head. Tonight I can't do crisp. Tonight is all fuzzy and blurred lines. Somehow want came into the equation long ago and things changed. What I should want, how I should want, who I should want. Want ruins things.

Tonight, and tomorrow night, and the night after that will all be cut out of a cookie cutter pattern. I don't have excitement, I haven't earned it or I can't handle it anymore. Better to go slowly crazy as the days drip by then create a cacophonous crash of a mess. I miss mess now, life is too clean and too expectable. I will never be happy here in this life, but I will never be that painfully unhappy either. I will spend days floating in this in between. I'm not the girl I once was, passionate and brazen and headstrong. I feel like false advertisement on those few occasions my emotions get stirred. My wings have been clipped.

One thing, at least, is true. I am sold to the first person who tells me they want me. Going, going, gone.

Today was a fairy tale

Just like those guilty pleasure songs that I used to roll down my window and fling out my arm to. Something about the wind whipping through my fingers, everything around me became so alive. If I didn't known better, I would think that I had traveled back a year through time. We were still playing card games, I was still pretending to watch tv while really smiling at you playing your game. Once, only, I lost it. I saw those words and saw your hurt and I lost it, silently turning my back to the camera and letting the salt stream down. You told me I'm worth it, told me I'm pretty, told me all the things you're supposed to say. More then that, you meant them.

Day by day I get better, day by day I relearn myself. Now, I don't flinch at those heavy lace up boots and crew cut. Now, I can think about the slanted ceiling and rough smell practically, from a writer's point of view. I could still write murder, if I wanted, but the past is a tool now and no longer the cause. I hear that he's hurting, I hear that he crumbling like I did once. Used to be I waited for this day, prayed for it even. Now I feel pity, genuine pity. I hope he doesn't lose himself, I hope he wakes up to the world. It's a passing thought, gone before I even realize it's there. We live in different universes now, and everything is as it should be.

None of this makes sense, I know. It is 12:58 pm and I will be up again at six to drive myself to my thoroughly frustrating dream job. I am babbling, and it is your fault. I'm so unused to happiness, to contentment, how should I know what to do with it? I am always as voraciously happy as I am sad, it's the actress in me. You can take the girl out of the theater, love, but you can't take the theater out of the girl.

Soon I will be driving, and we will be dancing, and then we will be alone. Too soon again I will be crying and driving, then throwing myself exhausted onto clay stained sheets and pulling your hoodie close in this 106 degree weather. This fall, perhaps, things will be different. As for right now, I'm just happy. Well Miss Swift, I did it, I found somebody today who actually will treat me well.

Postscript- I'm back again. I'm not even sure you knew I was gone, but you're right you know. I can't give this up, it's who I am.

Exeunt

Mama. I don’t know why you have to make everything so difficult. I look at having this baby as the opportunity of a lifetime. Sure, there may be some risk involved. That’s true for anybody. But you get through it and life goes on. And when it’s all said and done there’ll be a piece of immortality with Jackson’s looks and my sense of style…I hope. Mama, please. I need your support. I would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special.

That was my thirty minutes of wonderful. For the first, and probably only, time in my life I was a heroine. Yes, there was teased hair and awful high wasted 80's jeans and a horrid wig. But for once I wasn't a chorus girl, and when I died, people cried. I spent my whole life wanting that, and I will probably spend my whole live reliving those few moments. As time goes by I will forget the nights that we did our lines in circles, the nights we wanted to kill our fellow cast members, the nights we caused the director to want to go into early retirement. I will remember the smell of fancy face paint and hairspray, how hot that vest was under the lights, how that one night everything just slipped perfectly into place.
I have spent seven years now learning that I am not an actress, and I will spend fifty more at this rate. But, as the years pass me, so will the roles. Too late for Juliet now, and soon too late for Shelby too. Desdemona, my favorite, has maybe two years left. I am getting too old for the heroine, people get dried up faster in this business then in any other one in the world. So, through high school college, a job...somehow I still read these lines, hug my pillow, and cry.

What can I say. The stage is a fickle mistress.

Middle Plantation and Romance

I never thought I would give up an accurately recreated pair of stays for one hot sticky day at the beach in a 21st century bathing suit. All of a sudden, I can't even get excited about bustles anymore. Pleats and under-petticoats and hoops are all worthless in comparison to brown eyes and a jeep that perpetually smells a little like fast food.

What's happened to me, a year and a half ago I wouldn't have recognized myself today.

I used to be in love with fashion, with history, with hopeless romance and intrigue.

Now I'm in love with a man.

One man.

What's more, I think he's worth it.