Grim Grinning Ghosts
It’s Tuesday. I came down here five days ago, and I’m still dragging my feet in preparing to return ho... home? Home 2? The Annex? Attic? Compound that stretches nearly 100 miles? How can two places be home? And yet here I am, hearing the little warning bells that this is becoming home. Charleston’s bridge, every time I see it there’s the “it’s your bridge now, not the Boston one.” Mine. Where I belong.
Twice now I’ve heard the whispers of painful moments to come. “You’re ruining the clothes mom folded! I mean Jewel! Jewel folded!” And more than a couple of times now R has accidentally come to me, calling me ‘mom’ before shaking his head and saying “I mean Miss Jewel”. Like roadsigns, they mark the beginnings of things drawing nearer. They are the first indications of what may come. Am I prepared for that? Will there come a day when they slip and then just never correct it? What will I do if that happens? What if I’m reading this all wrong?
So long now I’ve been waiting for roadblocks, for the things that reveal none of this is actually going to work and it was just a lovely dream. That never comes. From the first moment it’s been as if I stumbled onto a gold vein and followed it to the mother lode. There are bumps, tweaks, perhaps a spot where the gold dimmed for a shimmer of a second but never more than a hiccup. Certainly nothing to suggest this is a dream. In fact it feels more like reality than some realities I’ve lived.
I’ve been cleaning the house from the massive party this past weekend. A month of preparation coming down in hours. My hands smooth along vinyl wallpaper, pulling tacks, recalling the noise, the thrum, the vibrancy of people swarming in and out as if the room was breathing. Music blared, hosts ran about, and I slid back in to an old mentality as if it were a well worn pair of shoes, perfectly broken in.
My hands pull down the stringing webs and my mind recalls the trio of soldiers in wool uniforms on the porch shamelessly flirting, the one with dark eyes competing with blue-eyes at who can better flatter in a British accent. Men, women, sometimes a blur of gender pass in front of my memory’s eye. They flirt, compliment, pour in like glitter. So much glitter. “You’re beautiful. Stunning. You catch eyes with your walk. Your eyes are weapons.” But it’s not gold. It’s not substance. I can smell the booze, I can feel it in my own veins. This is glitter. This is just for show but will fall away into dust. It sparkles, but you don’t let it into the deepest parts where it grows into irritation and annoyance.
They’re forgotten as soon as I turn and move on to the next crowd. It’s assumed they forget me just as easily. I find the stragglers, the outliers, the wallflowers. I spend some time talking, warming them up, and then introducing them to each other. By the end of the night, I hear all sorts of wonderful things. “Your friend with the pink hair was great!” Oh.. she’s not my friend, I don’t know her. I was just breaking the ice for you, but I don’t tell them that. Let them think I am the All-Friend. I see new friendships popping up, numbers exchanged, facebooks swapped. I like to imagine they’ll talk about this party for decades as the beginning of their friendship and the strange Gotham Siren that introduced them. Maybe in five years when they re-tell it, they discover I was new to them both, and laugh.
A Halloween social ghost making connections I most likely will never see take hold. Call me Fate.
I have been anxious for him. Unsure of where to step in this poly dance where he feels discomfort. It’s made me unsure, and so I have thrown myself into the party. I don’t remember all the faces I’ve kissed, all the ones who have kissed me. Who has pulled me tightly to them for a photograph. Who has offered more. A can recall a dozen kisses at least, men and women. All reactive unless I asked “Do you want to kiss me?” When they’re leaned in close and staring at my lips. Let them drive, I just want to feel the music in my feet and the alcohol in my veins and lose myself for a few moments.
But then it opens the door. They want more. Others want to kiss me. It seems like blank permission to approach me. Others want to drag me off. They meet only a smiling wall. I’m not here to find more gold, or to indulge in lust. I’m just tasting glitter. Some of them figure it out and play with me, whispering bets in my ear about who they want to see seduced by Poison Ivy. It’s a game, and I win small favors. Usually I turn them into commands to socialize with wallflowers. Twice I have them bring me drinks. They think some poor soul is my target when all along they were as enslaved.
My husband is here with C, a pair of steampunks. She’s helped me with my finishing touches and shows me hers. She’s created a boutinnerre for Matt with gears and an ivy leaf as a call to me. She is me from the past. Shy, anxious, and overwhelmed. At least I have helped Matt learn how to cope with these things, and hope that he still finds a good time. My question is answered when I see him kissing another girl in the kitchen.
He tells me later that I was beaming, shining, absolutely in my element. It’s helped him understand where I am now, to feel less possessive. I glow, he says. I have become the woman I has lamented having lost for years in the city. I have returned to myself and he can appreciate that more than anything else. He tells me quietly that it was one of the greatest moments of loving me and his only regret was that I didn’t shine more of it on him.
I feel a bit selfish now, looking back. I aschewed a partnered costume, I pulled away from having asked T to be my date. I could not belong to one, and so I would stand alone and burn. Matt, so used to taking care of me, checking in on me, handling me, stood back and gave his caretaker energy to C. I needed no one, and in response to that I found reception everywhere. Was that unkind? Did the way I burned to entertain singe the fingers of those who love me because I did not shine for them alone?
Should I have dimmed myself?
I am a lot to handle. I’ve always said that in context of my anxiety, but being a party girl is also a lot to deal with. Being open and approachable and initiating means people will gravitate. I become a wild card when untethered. Is that fair to my partners?
These thoughts spin around as I clean up the house. Mopping the floors, opening windows.
There are quiet times in my mind. Curled up on the couch, watching a scary movie. I can still feel the altered beat in my heart from the pain of Hill House and the wound it’s re-opened. Like a sick drumbeat, it’s off balance. Pain leaks out into everything. Sometimes it’s lessened though. Z grows closer, sitting on my lap, hugging me more tightly and more often.
“Do you like this? These quirks of each child?”
Yes. Because I can see under them those quirks. I can see who they are and who they will become on these tracks. I can see the whys and hows and feel the parts of me that want to put my own personal needs aside and be better for them all.
I see another woman, E, who loves them as I do. Who has watched me from sidelines with caution. I have felt her touching up against the edges of me, on social media, in mutual settings. She’s looking to see if I’m safe, if I’m all I am sold as. She must have felt what she needed to. At the party she made it clear that she liked me. In a flash I saw us all as a tribe. I saw her and I as valuable resources to the Bs. Bee keepers.
When I close my eyes and let my mind expand, I can see so many things. So many moments laid out ahead that could come true. So many moments I want to be a part of. So many moments we could all be a part of.
T’s ex remains here, fading from the main line. Mostly smoke and a few black tendrils. She will always be a part of the narrative, a thread in the weave of this history. She was a lesson, and she existed and she cannot be erased, but she fades.
I’ve learned that some of the places I’ve been with T bear the scars of her damage. A beach, a restaurant. He’s re-writing, re-associating. He’s healing these parts of himself and I can feel the pulse in his heart that he’s placed in my hands. I don’t want her gone. I don’t want her to be as if she was never here. She taught him things, she taught them all things, and in her own strange way she cared for however short a time. My intense dislike of her does not negate her existence.
It’s true that she started me far behind the line in every step. Friends, relatives, children, as a metamour. It’s true that I have a personal vendetta against her for cruelty. But I am stronger than all the damage and caution. What is extra time to someone who has years to give?
Years to give. What a statement to make. Have I ever felt time stretch out so endlessly before now? All these years and years piled up now, stocked, saved for a future I never found. Now free to give elsewhere. Again I keep looking for signs, signals, roadblocks. I find none. What does that mean?
He tells me his ultimate dream. I feel a hundred thoughts around it. A thousand ideas spring to life in my head. A million questions. And only one feeling. The feeling that it’s pulling me to it and that I can fight and resist all I like, but every lesson before this has taught me that the inevitable will happen. I will only exhaust myself in trying to prevent it. I can only control the speed with which I meet it.
Years to give.
I could live this life. I realize, right now, I am living this life. And when he walks in the door tonight I’ll feel that same gold feeling and wonder how I can stay just one more night. Just one more moment. Just one more.. and then another. With him.
Twice now I’ve heard the whispers of painful moments to come. “You’re ruining the clothes mom folded! I mean Jewel! Jewel folded!” And more than a couple of times now R has accidentally come to me, calling me ‘mom’ before shaking his head and saying “I mean Miss Jewel”. Like roadsigns, they mark the beginnings of things drawing nearer. They are the first indications of what may come. Am I prepared for that? Will there come a day when they slip and then just never correct it? What will I do if that happens? What if I’m reading this all wrong?
So long now I’ve been waiting for roadblocks, for the things that reveal none of this is actually going to work and it was just a lovely dream. That never comes. From the first moment it’s been as if I stumbled onto a gold vein and followed it to the mother lode. There are bumps, tweaks, perhaps a spot where the gold dimmed for a shimmer of a second but never more than a hiccup. Certainly nothing to suggest this is a dream. In fact it feels more like reality than some realities I’ve lived.
I’ve been cleaning the house from the massive party this past weekend. A month of preparation coming down in hours. My hands smooth along vinyl wallpaper, pulling tacks, recalling the noise, the thrum, the vibrancy of people swarming in and out as if the room was breathing. Music blared, hosts ran about, and I slid back in to an old mentality as if it were a well worn pair of shoes, perfectly broken in.
My hands pull down the stringing webs and my mind recalls the trio of soldiers in wool uniforms on the porch shamelessly flirting, the one with dark eyes competing with blue-eyes at who can better flatter in a British accent. Men, women, sometimes a blur of gender pass in front of my memory’s eye. They flirt, compliment, pour in like glitter. So much glitter. “You’re beautiful. Stunning. You catch eyes with your walk. Your eyes are weapons.” But it’s not gold. It’s not substance. I can smell the booze, I can feel it in my own veins. This is glitter. This is just for show but will fall away into dust. It sparkles, but you don’t let it into the deepest parts where it grows into irritation and annoyance.
They’re forgotten as soon as I turn and move on to the next crowd. It’s assumed they forget me just as easily. I find the stragglers, the outliers, the wallflowers. I spend some time talking, warming them up, and then introducing them to each other. By the end of the night, I hear all sorts of wonderful things. “Your friend with the pink hair was great!” Oh.. she’s not my friend, I don’t know her. I was just breaking the ice for you, but I don’t tell them that. Let them think I am the All-Friend. I see new friendships popping up, numbers exchanged, facebooks swapped. I like to imagine they’ll talk about this party for decades as the beginning of their friendship and the strange Gotham Siren that introduced them. Maybe in five years when they re-tell it, they discover I was new to them both, and laugh.
A Halloween social ghost making connections I most likely will never see take hold. Call me Fate.
I have been anxious for him. Unsure of where to step in this poly dance where he feels discomfort. It’s made me unsure, and so I have thrown myself into the party. I don’t remember all the faces I’ve kissed, all the ones who have kissed me. Who has pulled me tightly to them for a photograph. Who has offered more. A can recall a dozen kisses at least, men and women. All reactive unless I asked “Do you want to kiss me?” When they’re leaned in close and staring at my lips. Let them drive, I just want to feel the music in my feet and the alcohol in my veins and lose myself for a few moments.
But then it opens the door. They want more. Others want to kiss me. It seems like blank permission to approach me. Others want to drag me off. They meet only a smiling wall. I’m not here to find more gold, or to indulge in lust. I’m just tasting glitter. Some of them figure it out and play with me, whispering bets in my ear about who they want to see seduced by Poison Ivy. It’s a game, and I win small favors. Usually I turn them into commands to socialize with wallflowers. Twice I have them bring me drinks. They think some poor soul is my target when all along they were as enslaved.
My husband is here with C, a pair of steampunks. She’s helped me with my finishing touches and shows me hers. She’s created a boutinnerre for Matt with gears and an ivy leaf as a call to me. She is me from the past. Shy, anxious, and overwhelmed. At least I have helped Matt learn how to cope with these things, and hope that he still finds a good time. My question is answered when I see him kissing another girl in the kitchen.
He tells me later that I was beaming, shining, absolutely in my element. It’s helped him understand where I am now, to feel less possessive. I glow, he says. I have become the woman I has lamented having lost for years in the city. I have returned to myself and he can appreciate that more than anything else. He tells me quietly that it was one of the greatest moments of loving me and his only regret was that I didn’t shine more of it on him.
I feel a bit selfish now, looking back. I aschewed a partnered costume, I pulled away from having asked T to be my date. I could not belong to one, and so I would stand alone and burn. Matt, so used to taking care of me, checking in on me, handling me, stood back and gave his caretaker energy to C. I needed no one, and in response to that I found reception everywhere. Was that unkind? Did the way I burned to entertain singe the fingers of those who love me because I did not shine for them alone?
Should I have dimmed myself?
I am a lot to handle. I’ve always said that in context of my anxiety, but being a party girl is also a lot to deal with. Being open and approachable and initiating means people will gravitate. I become a wild card when untethered. Is that fair to my partners?
These thoughts spin around as I clean up the house. Mopping the floors, opening windows.
There are quiet times in my mind. Curled up on the couch, watching a scary movie. I can still feel the altered beat in my heart from the pain of Hill House and the wound it’s re-opened. Like a sick drumbeat, it’s off balance. Pain leaks out into everything. Sometimes it’s lessened though. Z grows closer, sitting on my lap, hugging me more tightly and more often.
“Do you like this? These quirks of each child?”
Yes. Because I can see under them those quirks. I can see who they are and who they will become on these tracks. I can see the whys and hows and feel the parts of me that want to put my own personal needs aside and be better for them all.
I see another woman, E, who loves them as I do. Who has watched me from sidelines with caution. I have felt her touching up against the edges of me, on social media, in mutual settings. She’s looking to see if I’m safe, if I’m all I am sold as. She must have felt what she needed to. At the party she made it clear that she liked me. In a flash I saw us all as a tribe. I saw her and I as valuable resources to the Bs. Bee keepers.
When I close my eyes and let my mind expand, I can see so many things. So many moments laid out ahead that could come true. So many moments I want to be a part of. So many moments we could all be a part of.
T’s ex remains here, fading from the main line. Mostly smoke and a few black tendrils. She will always be a part of the narrative, a thread in the weave of this history. She was a lesson, and she existed and she cannot be erased, but she fades.
I’ve learned that some of the places I’ve been with T bear the scars of her damage. A beach, a restaurant. He’s re-writing, re-associating. He’s healing these parts of himself and I can feel the pulse in his heart that he’s placed in my hands. I don’t want her gone. I don’t want her to be as if she was never here. She taught him things, she taught them all things, and in her own strange way she cared for however short a time. My intense dislike of her does not negate her existence.
It’s true that she started me far behind the line in every step. Friends, relatives, children, as a metamour. It’s true that I have a personal vendetta against her for cruelty. But I am stronger than all the damage and caution. What is extra time to someone who has years to give?
Years to give. What a statement to make. Have I ever felt time stretch out so endlessly before now? All these years and years piled up now, stocked, saved for a future I never found. Now free to give elsewhere. Again I keep looking for signs, signals, roadblocks. I find none. What does that mean?
He tells me his ultimate dream. I feel a hundred thoughts around it. A thousand ideas spring to life in my head. A million questions. And only one feeling. The feeling that it’s pulling me to it and that I can fight and resist all I like, but every lesson before this has taught me that the inevitable will happen. I will only exhaust myself in trying to prevent it. I can only control the speed with which I meet it.
Years to give.
I could live this life. I realize, right now, I am living this life. And when he walks in the door tonight I’ll feel that same gold feeling and wonder how I can stay just one more night. Just one more moment. Just one more.. and then another. With him.
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