Day: January 29, 2005

Shame erases needing my own little world to stay in. I don’t feel pointless when I’m around you. You don’t get angry either. I still count my years because I need to, I don’t know what you do. There’s always something. A little thing, unmentioned. Trigger moments, I can’t believe I talk about it. Here, and again, and touch me please.

I was in the shower, enveloped in heat. I remembered being cold. I remembered taking the pills and my fingers turning blue. A different room, another life. Teeth chattering fit to break. The water turned on so hot, so hot, not hot enough. I burned myself, crouching in water, dying. Watching out the open door for someone who wouldn’t come to me. Smoking in the basement, probably more important. This is devotion.

I was at school when they stole me. My father had broken down the two inch door and the cops had come down. A woman in a skirt who was too fake for me to like her, she came to my classroom and tried to take my hand. The principal told me to get into her car and I was quiet. I was trying to remember every word said, evaluate and plan.

He tried to hit me and I got away. Slammed my knee into his belly and twisted under his arm to the door. I wanted to sit a moment in the hall and catch my breath, but I knew that would be stupid. My neighbor wasn’t answering her door, she probably heard the one sided yelling, the crash as I ducked thrown dishes. I sat on the street a few blocks away. There were stairs there, and a fountain, the open courtyard of some apartment building. I had nowhere else to go.

I am thinking about a chair. How two bodies may fill the same space. I’m thinking geometry. Jezabel angles and the curvature of spines. Skin and bones.

Yesterday could have been fiction. A brass band of events strung together. My mother woke me, my mother with plans for my brothers teenage birthday. Brr-ring. I pretended to be more awake then my four hours of sleep and nodded when I needed to say yes. Tumbling out of bed, the phone rang again. I wanted my quarter back, but no return. There was a strong Thumbalina moment of wanting to crawl back into the rose petals and let the day continue without me before I sighed and answered the phone. Discharged the day before yesterday, my friend was free from the coma ward. Stress snapped like a band wrapped too tight. His voice shattered my branded pictures inside my head of stretched canvas people, baffling in their immobile insensitivity. Two days under, going on three, they wouldn’t let me in to see him anyway. He’d fallen and couldn’t get up. He’d fallen from a building and his head smashed in, cracked like an egg cliche. The surgery was delicate and the surgeon admitted that he had no hope. His call was short, “come see me”

So I went. He’s taller now and his scar spectacular. Building webs over his left temple, it radiates outward from a moment of impact. Time encapsulated in pink lines, lobotomy style. I like it. He seems practically unchanged, his grasp of words the only missing piece. Strangely, I’m not worried in spite of supplying half the nouns in every ten sentences. It seems like something that can be dealt with. A drawback that can be worked around, a concession which could possibly go away. The doctors are amazed he’s alive. They were shocked when he sat up and spoke.

I took he and his mother for dinner. Robin’s birthday and they’re family, after all. My book was gone from Taf’s. Someone found it yesterday, told the staff they found it and said, “but I’m taking it with me.” There was nothing they could properly do, I understand, but it would have been nice if I had a chance to finish it first.

We went to Sweet Confections, after, on Denman street. The tiramisu cheesecake may not have been the wisest thing to order on bloodtime when I know I’m going home alone, but it was worth it. I was not alone in my response, we all drowned in flavour. Quality sweets can be where it’s at. Fingernails clutching the table. Robin overdid it, had to excuse himself for a moment of feeling ill, but recovered admirably and finished his cake. On Monday I’m taking him to get an ear pierced. We don’t have ceremonies into adulthood anymore, transition state moments from childhood that mean anything, so I’m going to do my best to give him something permanent this year.

Mum dropped me off on Davie Street at Burrard and I stalked up to Numbers, stripping layers off as I walked. By the time I reached the door I had clothes what met the dress code. It was the official opening of The Leather Loft and a partial celebration of the Vancouver Bears Club yearly anniversary. Upstairs was filled with shirtless men in harness, leather pants and vests. Officially, I was there to take pictures, but I mostly stood waiting for the award ceremonies while S&M gay porn played meaningless on the monitors. Silva was being honoured, a certificate and flowers.

From a micracle recovery to a teenager birthday to an S&M night. I like.