Thursday, March 12, 2009

I lay in my room with memories flickering like candle flames. Moments I've not thought of in years are clear...precise. People I no longer understand who used to matter. The flames hurt my eyes.

Kellie plays "Some Kind of Stranger" while she laces up her boots. Her father stops in to say hello, wishing us well, a decade before I find him giving head to some tired old cowboy outside the gay bookstore. Kellie shows me her photography and drinks cheap red wine. I never could stomach the red, but the white has grown on me.

Back in 2000, a week after Shawn and Maggie and Laurie made me so very happy, I wandered downtown and laid down in the vivid green grass, in the diag, just as we'd done the week before... Only Shawn was insane now...and I was a pale imitation of Kellie who used to wander the Ann Arbor night, drunk and hungry for lusty kisses. That's what I thought that night as I wandered. I've become Kellie now. I should get some cigarettes.

I remember my first night in this room. There was no furnature. For a long time the computer sat on the floor. That's how it was then. Exchanging e-mails with two uncomprehending women; a liar and a goddess. But the first night was magic with the promise of new adventures just over a year before sickness robbed me of hope.

I've not been taking my magic pills lately. Yet the magic lingers. Perhaps I'm cured? Why doesn't this make me happy? Maybe because the pain pills aren't working. At least I can keep them down now. So many pills. All of them perscribed. I've always been such a good boy.

In my mind I'm painting surrender in cigarette smoke. Cloves. People I know and loved in passing wander by and tell me not to jump. I'm nowhere near the edge, but they can't seem to see the truth. The candle flames blind them I guess.

Memories become stories and memories of stories. Stories that ended become dreams. Dreams become wishes. And wishes are just desires made palatable, respectable & marketable. Apparently, wishes are desires made able. How odd.

I see washed out boyfriends at their worst and give them a smile. I invite them in. Give them a smoke and a white zinfandel kiss. A laugh and a snuggle.

Maybe today won't be so bad after all...

Is it so crazy to be haunted by the living?

   posted by Bald Jason at 10:22 AM
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