Tag: jon

to hell with me, just let it burn

I dreamed this morning that there was someone else in my bed with me. I woke up quietly, slipped to the foot of the bed, brushed my alarm off, and then crept around the room, getting dressed as silently as possible in the still, quiet dark. I dreamed the details of clothing, the smooth sound of carefully opened wooden drawers, the brief blindness of pulling a dress on over my head. I could feel that he was still asleep, though I knew if he was awake he would be watching and I liked that, too. I chose earrings he had made for me and over the knee high socks with a pattern of flowers that I had worn for our last anniversary. I sat at my desk and wrote him a little note to find later, “good luck with the promotion. i love you. x” then I left it by his keys. I knew he would get up later, read the note, smile, then bike to the library to work. I kissed him before I left, nose deep in the crown of his head. I wanted to crawl back in with him, but there was a focused satisfaction in padding around so quietly, getting ready for work and knowing he was still sweetly warm in my sheets.

When I woke for real, I felt like I had traveled through time and space. Same room, different universe, worse place.

It was a memory of a time with Jon that never was, a time-line where he didn’t commit suicide.

My Days of Awe: Pt III – the girl with the vagina made of glass

pt I, II.

Skip ahead twenty minutes. Stephanie and I have rocked our Moment to sleep, the natives are getting restless, standing outside is the hippest new thing. So suddenly we’re tumbling down the stairs, we’re an interlude between one venue and the next, out front the Railway, trying to manufacture some sort of plan. Shane stands at the centre of our group, a gentle figure of authority, trying to convince us to taxi-pool to the Brickhouse, the semi-hidden pub on the south edge of Cracktown where all the writers quietly go to drink. People are agreeing, asking directions. I want to wait for Mike, who’d already taken to touching my arm when he speaks, so I don’t speak up. I know if they leave, I will girlishly stay, a supplicant curled on the stained sidewalk next to the van, head bent into a book, waiting for him to finish upstairs and find me.

And so I turned every time the doors opened and smiled at the way he eventually spilled from them, concerned, anxiously scanning for my unfamiliar face. (Obviously, I was lost, I had left, never to be found again!) Gratifying, how his worry split gladly into relief as soon as I was located. It punctured something inside my chest, right there, like sunlight. Before I could react, Shane interrupted, scooping him into an enthusiastic hug. (They’d worked together at the Winnipeg Folk Festival). The exodus had gone critical. “Come with us!” An open, easy grin beneath his clumsy black hat. “Yeah, alright.” Quickly, I volunteered to navigate. The van was crammed with stuff, an entire life trapped in four metal walls, it made me smile down to my toes. He seemed nervous, but not overly so. Though I felt presumptuous, I felt okay.

Turn right here, right again again. The same way Vegas is bat country, this is where our junkies congregate. There’s architecture here, under the violence and grime. That used to be a theatre, that’s the crazy studio where some of us used to live. It’s a safe injection site now, maybe.

As some of you know, I’m a regular little history guide, full of odd knowledge knick-knacks, but that night I was only using it as punctuation. Instead, I was explaining as little as possible about my dead boyfriend while still attempting to accurately outline what the rest of my evening had been like. Sometimes it’s hard to be tactful, but I’d like to think I still managed. “Wow, that’s intense.” I had him agree to sit between me and the mystery woman with the socially devastating entrance. Do you ever see a precipice coming, but instead of thinking, deciding to tread carefully, just break out running? I find it borderline precious to waking up after you thought you already had your eyes open.

Worried we might part ways at the bar, I gave him my card as we pulled into the camera-protected parking space out back. Little things. Ink on paper. Another moment of good impression, of making sure we had contact. He reverently cradled them in his hands, red hair and angel wings, delicately painted lips, a cathedral framed against a skyscraper, sincerely thankful. I tried not to feel too delighted, I didn’t want to press my luck. Already, I liked him. I could taste the edges of it. I thought of all my poetry I wear as scars, of a heart made of plastic, how slowly it might beat. I thought, “I am rinsed of my worn places, I am free to do this. Really, it’s about time.”

END OF PART THREE

My Days of Awe: Part II {part i)

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After being stunned by the man who managed to create explicitly pretty music from a jacked-in cowboy boot, (seriously, what?), it was time to find a way to say hello. So, blood still ringing, I did the only proper thing to do – I offered to haul gear. “Hey, do you need a roadie?” For those not familiar, the Railway Club has stairs where high heels come to die, or at least twist some serious ankle. Thin, narrow, legendary killer stairs. (On rainy days, they’re a toss-up between murder and suicide). Stairs unfriendly to performers with large, heavy cases, for example. Like someone I could mention. So after helping tear-down, carrying said cases through the line-up of drunks shoving their way in to the next show, and guarding the gear on the sketchy street below, my help was more than appreciated – introductions were made and kept. I was In.

Which, to be honest, was the entire point.

The van was loaded, the blinkers tossed on, and plans for dinner bravely made, then we went back inside. I wandered about while he was sucked in by fans, trying to find friends who hadn’t fled the mediocre following band. (No worries on being left behind by this point, carrying cases that heavy awards Honorarily With-The-Band.) On the porch, I found my luck. And more besides. Shane was out there, as was Jessica and River and Michael Campbell, a few other folk, and a thin, blonde woman I’d never seen before. She gasped when she saw me, her entire face going blank. “Are you Jhayne Holmes?!” I blinked, startled, but not terribly surprised. So I said, “Yes.” I assumed she was from the internet, a reader maybe, or someone following Heart of the World. It happens. But then she started crying, looking as if she’d been struck by stones.

“I was a friend of Jon Gaasenbeek.”

This, to me, meant a thousand unsung emotions stopping my heart, but, I’m sure, tells very little to you. Let me fill you in: Jon, dear heart, was my boyfriend who hanged himself a few years ago. It’s not something I generally discuss, and his name isn’t one I’ve heard anyone speak in years. When he died, it was a strangely isolated event. In spite of knowing each other for years, we were taking things as slow as humanly possible. The few people we had in common were mostly not speaking to us, hardly any of my other friends had met him, and I hadn’t been introduced yet to any of his. It’s been one of the strangest traumas I’ve carried, this solitary and unspoken lance through my heart. To have a stranger suddenly drop his name on me, let alone claim some sort of kinship, was tremendous.

So we had a bit of a Moment, out there on the smoker’s porch, us crying and people edging away, trying to give us space in the crowded din. Turns out her name is Stephanie and her long-term ex, John, was Jon’s best friend. Twenty years, they grew up together. She has contact info for his family and his old bicycle, the black one I helped him build five years ago, the one that came up to my solar plexus. She asked me if I wanted it. I asked her how on earth she came to know I was connected with Jon. And this is where it blossoms past merely improbable into a full fledged soap-opera list of associations, as if my night hadn’t been ridiculous enough. (Remember, this is the same evening that started with a transit stabbing.)

Stephanie found my post about visiting Mackenzie, who lives on the block Jon did, through the blog of the woman who used to roomie with the love of my life, the one who slept with him as soon as I went out of town.

Right. Now that’s over with, let’s get on with the rest of the night. I’m not even up to midnight yet.

END OF PART TWO

Kristen was at breakfast, a lovely surprise.


Friday night the star-fall was beautiful. Some were so violently bright, it was like we should have been able to hear them shred through the atmosphere. On our backs in a row under the too-cliche starry night, we irreverently cracked jokes about proverbial movie endings, but still gasped every time the sky impossibly ripped open with light.

The language of morning, music, two silk black cats, a matching short kimono, claws hooked into the chain of a pocket watch like an eccentric playful ribbon. Knocking down the mess. Sorting papers, shifting things into drawers, off the floor. Work at three o’clock.

Mechanical heart removed after organ heals itself.

Free of the future, he lives on the same block as my boyfriend who killed himself the night we were going to be together. I can see his bedroom window from the back porch. It’s unsettling. I’m almost breaking down, every word I’m holding on, trying to gain some equilibrium. My friend is telling stories that flow like an archaeological river. He’s been doing it for hours. Acid trips in London, working with Peter O’Toole, where he was when the Berlin Wall fell down. They go well with the house, his implacable gestures. I try to memorize as much as I can, anchor myself, keep the car running. Catching myself in a simple mirror over his shoulder, the naked frame is a prison, I feel like a photograph hung on the wall.

Walking towards breakfast late in the afternoon, one block down, someone has gracefully drawn absolutely perfect hot-rod flames into the dust coating a black vintage pick-up truck. It looks like something my buried love would have done. In my mind, I rock back on my heels into his body and, with a silent smile, I gesture to my friend, stuck on his cell phone, who sees it and smiles back. Suddenly, everything will be alright.

this was going to be something else

Switzerland Invades Liechtenstein.

If you stare at a dead channel long enough, you begin to see pictures. It’s like picking out mythology in static. Imagine a line, a straight line, and you’ll see it. Imagine a letter, an initial, a simple symbol, and it will appear. Pattern recognition, linked to our ability to recognize faces in clouds, but the image will keep moving, you’ll follow the line back and forth around the screen. Letters will slowly rotate. This is a trick I learned in hotel rooms. If you’re dedicated, it will also work with scrambled pornography.

Jon was the kind of tall that has to slouch to smile. I’ve written about him before. Thick plaid shirts and dark black jeans, he would whistle like a bird, a beer can in his hand and a mischievous smile for the confused cat, Merin, that came with the house. He would look up and catch me dishevelled, new to morning, watching shyly from the bedroom door, all of nineteen, and I could see how much he wanted to quietly reach out to pull back my robe and push me back against the wall. Soft-spoken, he used to scare me, but I never felt it as anything but a sacrament. Every conversation we carried was a dare. He would lick my heart with illicit games, see how far I would be willing to shed my skin.

I only wish I’d said yes a little earlier. I should have been brave. I’m even sorry I wasn’t the one to find him. I miss the kiss of his hands, his insane intelligence, the strength he offered me that I was too nervous to take. No one else could catch him looking anything but nervous, but he was a beautiful man. With him I could look past the static to pick out stars, supernovae, all the gentle secrets of the big bang. It’s been a few years, but I will never know all I lost. The categories are too vast, the themes too closely kept.

Mortality. Love. Just do something.

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