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edennohebi · 5 years

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「 BAD ✘ END 」

ATTEND TO YOUR SINS KIKUKO MATSUZAKA &. LET US MARCH TOWARDS THE 2ND TRAGEDY !

CONTENT WARNING:

Fire

Paranoia

Descriptions of burnt bodies

Burning to death

Masochism, Manic behavior, & Psychotic tendencies.

Votes based on morality are a funny thing. It’s an oddity to itself to watch as the killer had clearly outed themselves, a spectacle for all to see, no longer wishing to conceal nor wash the blood of her hands. & Yet the masses had voted in favor of someone who they had deemed as more morally corrupt, more willing of a death than the girl who killed a child herself. It’s funny, Kikuko thinks. Not unexpected, by any means, no, but rather something to find humor in, amusement at this sort of “love” they show for their own lives, their own well-being, perhaps even those of others. But love is a maddening thing, isn’t it? It’s flavors can overwhelm, can become addicting, if one lacks the restraint & willpower. A heart will march to the beat of the drum of love, & she believes that perhaps equating it to a sickness & disease is best, & she is patient zero.

But who is she to judge those who love their lives, or those who give their love to others by assuring their safety? Certainly not she, who devours every ounce of love whole that she can, but she refrains from that. Instead, she only smiles: Lips curve upright, & her eyes flutter shut in a state of sheer calm. On any other person, this kind of expression would be calming, & perhaps even endearing. But that was far from the case -- Instead, it’s nearly uncanny just how serene & at peace someone’s expression could look when faced with the prospect of death. Did she truly not care? Is that the reason she had thrown her life away with only a bare minimum of a fight, if one could even call it that? Had she only allowed it to come this far to test the nature of people’s hearts: To see if they would truly vote for who they personally believed deserved death the most?

Only she knew, & it was the secret she would take to her grave, among many others.

Her smile refuses to falter, even as the very world around her seems to peel away from each & every sense she has. While her shut eyes had already concealed her vision in darkness, it becomes apparent by ear that she is no longer in the court room. There are no more voices surrounding her, ranging in soft whispers to even more booming tones. Voices had personality, she had thought, & personalities were easy to decipher when she had only a handful of information on someone -- If not only assumptions of who they were. Their words spoke volumes, they poured out the truth of their hearts, & when they hadn’t, their bodies had. At times they were cold to the touch, & at times they were warm.

The feeling that Kikuko soon feels on her skin, however, is burning. Scorching, even, as she feels the flicks of flames kissing her flesh & singeing away at the surface.

Light pools even behind her closed eyelids, as if demanding that she is to view its very presence -- & so she complies, her pace ever slow & relaxed as her vision is greeted by a wave of heat. It would have rendered any others with blurry, burning vision & eyes that practically screamed for a way to escape, but she regards it with not even a hint of fear. Instead of fright, there is an expression of utter calm, complete with the crinkle in her smile, even nostalgia & the aforementioned humor from earlier. What surrounds her is as she deduced, a sight she has quite literally burned in her memory, imprinted there to recount over & over, but was hardly her first experience dealing with such a phenomenon:

Flames. A roaring fire screams at her, & instead of the argumentative conversations that had filled her in the courtroom, she is met with crackles & sparks. They burn bright, raising high into the air & blocking off some of her pathways. Their glow is almost hypnotizing in a way -- At least, to her. She finds herself more fascinated by the fire than she is terrified of it, the heat they emit & the clarity they provide against the dark is something that a pyromaniac like her must be hypnotized by. The scent that tickles her nose is not something that deters her, either: It is expected, as is with fires, of the distinct smell of burning: Ash, smoke that would surely burn up her airways until they were completely ruined & stained black, & perhaps something more.

‘Something more’, as she can guess, is only that of burning bodies. But that, too, is something she’s well acquainted with, & chooses not to flinch at. For what is there to evade in death, & being faced with it yet again? Skin bathed in charcoal & being seared away is no stranger to her: Where it would cause some to gag, retch, vomit their stomachs of all its contents & have the body physically reject it due to the brain’s refusal to cope with death, she accepts it. In a way, it is morbidly comforting, entirely macabre in the matter as she recounts her final night prior to her death. She recounts the rush, the harsh & oddly charming smell of gasoline, the flick of a match, & watching her dearest niece fling herself off of the rooftop with the love she had claimed to have found.

How funny, she thinks, that the hall she’s been thrown into resembles the one of that night. Of course she knows it by heart: It was the apartment complex she had lived in after all, or a near replica created by this strange world. It would almost seem unrecognizable by the sea of orange that surrounds her so, & how its left the walls, ceiling & ground blackened with char. The wooden flooring is hot to the touch, hissing & fighting against her bare feet as she takes a leisurely step forward: It scorches & sends pain shooting through the body, but her smile only tightens significantly. It leaves the skin reddened & aching, the nerves on the soles of her feet protesting against her decision to step forward once more, but she progresses along her path, despite the sharp pain that comes with every inch she takes forward.

This pain too, in a way, is love: A love for justice, or is it a love for freeing themselves of what they deem a “threat”?

On does Kikuko dare to press, the lightness in her step betraying how the pain sears & eats away at her nerves. But her eyes wander & preoccupy themselves with examining her surroundings instead, much more enraptured & entertained by the Hell that they have resigned her to, this “fate” that they proclaim is her death. She prefers it, she thinks as the tail end of a flame singes at her hair, leaving a fresher & yet more foul stench in the air, to that of how she died. Is there symbolism, she wonders, in this death? Lethal injection for her crime was one thing: Boring, dare she say, & while fitting to a criminal of her caliber, there were more entertaining ways to go out. This one way, she believes: It likens her to a witch, doesn’t it? That’s another thing she considers funny in comparison, namely with a few select “players” in this “game” of theirs who had suffered such a fate.

She waltzes carelessly throughout the halls, & finds that there is no ending, nor a beginning. It is all the same, each door, ( & she notes that their metal knobs are hotter than the floor beneath & eating away at the skin of her palms & fingers, leaving blisters & blood. but she couldn’t care less, truthfully. ) only leading back to the very start of it all. Of course, she regards it without a care: only a giggle passes through her lips, & she shrugs as her footwork curls against the ground, giving her a twirl in her step as she sighs in resignation. So this was the game they would play, was it? Well, that was fine by her. If she was not given an exit, then what point would there be in finding one? Clearly they had the intention to engulf her in flames & burn her at the stake like in days told in dusted & ancient texts, & she saw no reason to fight it. This was their “ending”, wasn’t it?

So she falls back against one of the walls, spine curving against the surface as she splays her legs out & hums idly. This would expose the body to the flames further, & that was what was desired of her. She could feel it growing: The heat that pressed closer & closer, the sweltering sensation that ran across her skin & how the fire grew & grew with each passing second. It was odd in a way, as nothing should have fueled it: But little details like that hadn’t mattered now, had it? Her posture corrects slightly as she tilts her head up, gaze boring into the ceiling as she allows the embers to approach further & further. There hadn’t been a doubt in her mind that they would devour her soon enough, & she welcomed it. In the mean time, it was only appropriate to think back & recollect, right?

It is then does a realization dawn upon her.

She is alone, utterly & completely. It is something she fears, something the serpents around her would surely harp on. It’s expected that they do, with the voices that flood into her head. Their whispers seep in like cracks through the psyche, & their chants are one in the same: It’s something of a maddening mantra, blended together to chip away at insecurities. They seek to grab at the darkest parts of her heart & pull, to pluck & tear at her heartstrings until she had been nothing more than a fear-riddled mess, broken & beaten down.

「Disgusting woman.」

「The worst of humanity.」

This would have worked well on anyone else, she thinks, as the flames catch upon the tip of her toes & begin to consume her leg in their embers. The words do not sting in the way that the fire does, the heat tearing & scorching her skin & the scent of putrid, burnt flesh filling her nostrils. It hurts, that much is expected: but she is far too numb to it, finds the situation all too amusing to even bear much of a mind to it. She can feel the wetness beneath exposed muscle, the stickiness of her own blood oozing through the disgusting burn marks that were soon to come, & she pays no mind to it. It is terribly ugly, & by no means is she attractive in this state to many, but she has not a care in the world for that right now.

Instead, laughter is warm in the low of her throat, bubbling & slipping through her constant smile. Kikuko laughs at death, laughs at the wonder of how those around her would cope. She can hear it -- Her own niece’s voice, stern & berating her, attempting to drag her down. It is out of some vindictive desire to hurt her, she feels: that it is petty revenge, a scorned heart attempting to hurt when she had been scarred by none other than the woman she had been barking at. It’s almost cute, really, & whether or not she can separate it from her own niece or another ploy to make her crack matters not. Satou often compared people to dogs, but in this moment, Kikuko thought she was of the same breed: Barking, snarling, attempting to bite at her with her metaphorical teeth & lash out.

「You’re the reason why these awful things happened to Shio-chan.」

「Someone as bitter as you deserves to die.」

Still so young, still so much to learn about being an adult & love. What a shame it is, that she would have no more time left to teach her. She had already broken some of the rules, but that was her consequence to suffer from now.

She attempts to move her legs, but finds that there really is no point: They ache & feel too much pain, & she’s noted with a tip of her head that the fire has already begun reaching her abdomen. Her dress is only more reason for it to burn brighter, devouring at the fabric & threads & growing in size & intensity. Further & further up it travels, & for humor’s sake, she reaches out a hand. It burns: of course it does, she expected no other outcome, & where others would have screamed in pain & hurriedly tried to pat themselves out, Kikuko does not. Rather, she allows it to take form upon her hand, coat every digit in its light & tear apart every piece of her so-called “disgusting” skin. Allow it the freedom to burn, allow it to hut. She never minded pain before, & she hadn’t now.

Again her laughter roars, this time trembling & shaken from the pain, but in death, Kikuko Matsuzaka smiles. Closer & closer do the flames draw, & they disfigure her body so, outer layers of skin washed away in the pain, burning to a crisp. But even so, she never falters.

Not once.

For even here, she has the upper hand in it all.

THE TRAGEDY OF CHAPTER II HAS ENDED.

LET US GO BACK TO HAPPIER TIMES .

#Mod Kita #ENH Executions #Mod Kitsu

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ashtrayfloors · 2 years

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Finding inspiration for creative projects, or indulging in nostalgia-based masochism? Why not both?

#ashtrayfloors #my photos #books #coffee mug #inspiration #nostalgia based masochism #chicago #tony fitzpatrick #aaron cometbus #jessica hopper #nelson algren #ok to reblog

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ashtrayfloors · 8 years

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I’m gonna r-u-n-n o-f-t // June 2008

#my photos #gpoy #running away with the circus #2008 #nostalgia based masochism

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ashtrayfloors · 8 years

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still Disobedience at heart // June 2007

#rust belt jessie #my photos #gpoy #nostalgia based masochism #2007

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ashtrayfloors · 8 years

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Coney Island baby, part one.

My first time to Coney Island, I was with Lira, and in a way I was glad I’d never been before, though I’d been wanting to go for five years. I was glad because it was Lira’s first time, too, and there is no one in the world who would have felt the enchantment the way I did, no one but her. We danced along the sand, clacked seashells in our hands, danced to the end of love and out into the ocean where the winter water froze our toes blue. On the boardwalk, we found these words stenciled: The wind is the moon’s imagination wandering, it seeps through the cracks, ripples the grass, explores the unknown of this city, my soul is my love’s imagination – how much do I love you? Imagine. We got coffee from Nathan’s, sat listening to the wind’s saturnine song, wandered past the closed-down rides and attractions. We found a pile of junk someone had left, strange tokens and a wool hobo coat for each of us – I still have the coat, and no matter how many times I wash it, there is still the faint smell of saltwater and fried food hidden in its fibers. There was a ghost of the moon in the sky though it was midday, and we decided that the moon must always be out at Coney Island. We went to the fleamarket, where I bought a cheap, broken guitar; went to the museum and watched the slideshow of Topsy the elephant’s execution, and I vowed that one day I would get a tattoo of Topsy, and a banner reading Coney Island Baby. We both agreed that the place felt like home to us, and that during October, we would make it our actual home for a couple weeks, camping in the weeds and broken bottles behind the Shoot The Freak pit, making our money by playing music and telling fortunes on the boardwalk. We went back to Nathan’s before we left, to use the bathroom, and on the back of my stall door was written: You are in the right place at the right time.

-from Sad and Beautiful World #13, August/September 2008

#rust belt jessie #my writing #coney island #nostalgia based masochism #2008 #2007

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ashtrayfloors · 8 years

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There are so many stories I’m not telling you. Each month contains almost an infinite number. For September of 2006, I could tell you about finding my lakelegs on a ferryboat to Michigan, about smoking jasmine shisha from a hookah with Levi and Maggie, about visiting Oshkosh and meeting Olive – Olive, the dark beauty whom I fell in love with immediately and didn’t know what to do about it; we slept next to each other in her small bed while the cold rain tiptapped on the windowsill, her small hands on my waist made me tremble; I asked the rain what I should do and the rain replied – Be patient, my dear. I could tell you about rockabilly dance parties and leaving offerings to the gods of darkness.

But the real story of September is about being alone. I woke early in the gold autumn dawns and took shots of bitters and whiskey, and I told myself it was to stave off the cold I felt coming on but that was just an excuse I used to justify drinking at 8:30 in the morning. I drank whiskey and bitters, I chainsmoked, I felt sorry for myself. Afternoons when I wasn’t in creative writing classes, sharing my bloody faerie tales and rambling melancholy memoirs that none of the other students seemed to get, I wandered the streets of Milwaukee with my collar turned up and my hands shoved in my pockets; the rain never ceased, the earth was muddy and gray, the gutters were clogged full of leaves – green, with a crimson spray. I was sick with remembering old flames.

–

A touch of glamour is the only cure for remembersickness and lovesads, and glamour was hard to come by in those drenched days, so I spent money I didn’t really have on bottles of rose wine and gourmet foodstuffs, vampy witchboots and 1940s dresses, thin black cigarettes and strong coffee. Nights, I sat alone at home and wrote letters ‘til my hands cramped, and I had the thought that I could, if I wanted, measure the days of my life not in dates and numbers, but by the names of people I’ve written letters to – Oh, that happened in the year of Penny, during the month of Hertz. I listened to those ladies who sing so well about the same kind of deepdown blues I had – Lotte Lenya, Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee, Edith Piaf, Nina Simone. My foolish heart betrayed me so; I couldn’t help lovin’ that man of mine. I drowned my past regrets in coffee and cigarettes, and smoke got in my eyes. And I asked that old rag man how much he would pay for a heart that was broken, baby, when you went away. For a burnt out old love light, that no longer beams, and a couple of slightly used second-hand dreams. But all he was buying was just rags and old iron.

-excerpts from “Rags and old iron.,” from Sad and Beautiful World #13, August/September 2008

#rust belt jessie #my writing #memory #love #nostalgia based masochism #2008 #2006 #nostalgia embedded within nostalgia #drinking #cigarettes #sorrow #the blues #rags and old iron

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ashtrayfloors · 8 years

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I said before that I’d been remembering June journeys of years past; remembering seemed to be the theme of the trip. I name all the travels I go on, maybe I should refer to this one as the “Ghost-Town of My Brain Tour.” It was just Levi and me in the car, but the seats felt crammed fulla ghosts, and the ones that didn’t hitch a ride appeared in other places, standing alongside the road, or peeking out of alleys in various cities. When you’ve been as many places and known as many faces as I have, it’s damn near impossible to go anywhere without being reminded of a soul or event from your past. Zane’s ghost was a passenger for a time, he pounded rhythms on the dash, and every time there was anything gorgeous or strange to be seen he shouted – Yes! Man! Dig that!; he talked about the roadtrip we’d gone on with T., three years prior, to the Underground Press Conference in Bowling Green, Ohio – Remember drinking bathtub gin, in a bathtub, with all those halfnaked underage chicks? Remember driving out on country backroads, parking between cornfields and silos, and sharing our deepdark secrets? Remember? And only a few weeks later, in Chicago, you broke my heart. I miss you. Maggie’s ghost was there, too, which was unsettling, cos she’s still part of my life, but it was the ghost of how she was when we went on the “How ‘Bout That Tour” in June of 2004, she rolled cigarettes and sang – Sometimes I miss those days, that’s right, you heard me; other times I could not give a damn. Me and little Maggie’s ghost, we silently traded stories of that vagabondage, all those words and phrases we’d whispered so many times before – carnies, magicians, The Púca, and of course, my little accident. Subsequently, all the How ‘Bout That ghosts were there, too, the ghosts of folks and heartache and the sound of trains, and werecats, and the scent of cigarettes and weedsmoke.

-excerpt from “Keep it light enough to travel.,” from Sad and Beautiful World #13, August/September 2008

#rust belt jessie #my writing #nostalgia based masochism #ghosts #travel #nostalgia embedded within nostalgia #2008 #2006 #2004 #2003 #hahaha #wtf is wrong with me?

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ashtrayfloors · 8 years

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Springtime can kill you.

The end of March found me in Chicago much as the beginning had, no surprise, I spent the better part of that month there, because it was more haven than Milwaukee was, and because of Pete. Pete, of the heartshaped face and inkstained hands, who I met mid-March at a Hell Houseparty and hit it off within seconds flat; Pete with eyes the watery blue color of one of those mixed drinks that have tiny paper umbrellas in ‘em, Pete with sandy hair, Pete covered in tattoos of children’s book illustrations.

Pete was an illustrator, also a barista, well-read and also goofy, a little shy, a little sensitive, and he was the kind of boy who cooked breakfast in the mornings, wonderful eggy things full of cheese and vegetables – it was perfect the way it happened (except for the fact that it bothered Levi), a perfect springtime crushlove that budded into my life like daffodils bursting from the earth – it was romantic, we made each other mixes, I rode the train down to see him, we stayed up all night long drinking, talking, fucking. And he assured me he wasn’t looking for a monogamous relationship.

So the end of March, I arrived in the evening, met Pete at the Hideout – a tiny bar tucked among factories and warehouses – to see Mucca Pazza, a circuspunk marching band. Pete swayed slow, I danced wild with a can of beer in my hand, I hopped up and down and shook everything I had and one of Mucca Pazza’s cheerleaders got me to dance with her, so I ground against her while Pete watched, half-horny, half-jealous – though jealous of her or me, I can’t say. When the show was over, we plopped worn-out at a table; a girl at the next table over spilled beer on my lap and then started hitting on me, and Pete watched, half-horny, half-jealous. We conversed and sipped beer by candlelight – sometimes I think you can see people’s true nature best in candlelight, the way the shadows create secret patterns on their flesh, showing you what they’re like under their human facade, if only you look close enough. I glanced out the window at the factory smokestacks and warehouse roofs, and beyond them, the lights of Chicago glowed and made the city duskbright though it was past midnight.

I drove Pete to his place, he invited me in, but the way he looked at me was too mournful, too much, something had changed; I knew a discussion was coming and I wanted to postpone it for at least a couple days. I hugged him tight and kissed him goodnight, and drove myself down to Pilsen. On the walk from my car to Hell House, the breeze played with my hair, tickled the back of my neck, made me giggle; it was 1:30 a.m. and still above 50 degrees. The robins were awake, hopping from tree limb to tree limb, twittering joyful songs so late at night. I smiled, and mumbled under my breath – Ah, springtime in Chicago, just as I passed a man getting out of his car, and he looked at me like I was insane. So I smiled at him and said – Don’t you know, everyone goes crazy in the spring? Even the birds! – and I went on my way.

The next day was an exercise in nostalgia – Maggie and I bummed around Clark and Belmont, déjà vu to spring of ’04 when we wasted our time on Clark and Belmont in the afternoon sun, rolled cigarettes, drank iced coffee, took pictures of everything, explored cemeteries and spraypainted cryptic messages under the bridge by the river, cos that’s the kinda stuff you do when you’re young and unemployed. And all that déjà vu day, the early spring wind flirted with me, pulled my hair from its braids, lifted my skirt to give passerby peeks of my polkadotted panties, brushed ‘gainst my shoulders and legs. It was truly spring, not just near spring anymore – I was plenty warm enough in a skirt and tanktop, and the first freckles of the year popped out across the bridge of my nose. We got iced coffees and visited friends at Uncle Fun; Mr. Sex-A-Peal was outside wearing a rubber pandabear mask and doing silly new wave dances. And before we left Belmont, we went over to Schuba’s to have a beer, because at the start of spring there is nothing like drinking while it’s still light out, watching little kids run squealing by and jumping in puddles, watching the early evening sky fade from aqua to azure. Mr. Sex-A-Peal happened to walk past the window as he headed toward the el train; we waved to him and he joined us for a beer, then the three of us crammed into the photobooth and mugged it for the flashbulb.

We returned to Pilsen with a jug of sangria in our possession, at Hell House we guzzled the sweet cool wine and worked on our costume for the upcoming Dresden Dolls show – we were to be conjoined twins, Maggie a preacher and I her deadgirl ragdoll twinbride, I was going to tell people’s fortunes and she was going to baptize them with tea. Then we got stoned and Maggie said – Come to the park with me. I will show you the most beautiful scenery. We walked through the park, high and winebuzzed, past kids on slides and seesaws soaking up the warmth, past teenagers making out. O teenage love, I have written so many poems about it, o teenage love where every kiss is the best kiss, where every boy or girl is the one, where every breakup is the end of the world. I climbed up on the back edge of a bench and walked ‘cross it with my arms out, highwire-style. We walked all the way to the furthest reaches of the park, to the empty baseball field, stood on the pitcher’s mound and Maggie said – Okay, turn around. Look. And there was the skyline of Chicago, all lit up before me, beyond the ballfield lights, beyond the brick houses of Pilsen, there she was, the tops of her buildings glittering in my glazed vision. Then we sat on the bleachers and stared out over the baseball field, pretended we were cheering for a spectral ballgame.

We took off our shoes and walked back through the park. We dodged broken glass and felt the new grass tickle our soles and the mud squish between our toes, the wind tugged my hair and I longed for old loverfriends. We sat on the swingset and tried to swing so high we could touch the skyline with our feet, to fly so high we’d never come down. We swung ‘til our legs gave out, and we lamented the loss of childhood magic, when a simple stick really was a sword, when it was so easy to believe we were pirates and bankrobbers. We discussed how to get that back – is it possible? – we couldn’t say for sure, but we decided we were certainly not gonna stop trying for it. And I was glad to realize that some of the childhood magic had been seeping back into my life over the years, the magic I lost sight of between the ages of twelve and eighteen. During the long nightmares of those six gloomy eternal years, I shut my heart off to beauty and magic, I told myself I was too old to believe. All I saw in those years was pain and hatred, ‘til the day I began to awaken from the long nightmares. Of course I still get depressed, but generally I do not despair; and I see the pain, hatred, and evil in the world, but I also see the joy – and, what do I always say? It is a sad and beautiful world. Yes, that night I realized that some of the enchantment had returned, and that night was full of more magic than most; the springtime sky was a thin lilac curtain of gauze covering the other side, and that night it took no effort to find the corner of the curtain and pull it back.

At the house, we drank more sangria. It began to rain, the first true warm spring rainshower of the year. I ran outside barefoot and danced around under the sodden springtime sky. I raised my arms up, shouted – Is that all you got? It began to pour, and I let myself get drenched before running back inside. That night, I shared Maggie’s bed, and we slept with the window partially open. I drifted off to the spatter of raindrops on rooftops, trains creaking their way through the night, and the distant blare of sirens.

March went out like a lion. On the final day, Maggie had to work, and I spent the day with Pete. We were going to fly kites, it was a perfect wildwind day, but as we drove to the lakeshore the lowhanging clouds burst open, so we went to a coffeeshop in Wicker Park, instead. He inked panels for his comic book, I scribbled scraps in my journal, I drank tea, he had coffee, both of us had inkstains on our hands. When we stood outside in the gray wind and rain to have a smoke, Pete introduced me to a neighborhood character – an oldman homebum who makes his living playing the blues on streetcorners and selling his poems for a quarter. –If things had worked out different for me, he said, I coulda been rich. But maybe I wasn’t meant to be rich. I don’t have much, but I get by, and I’m happy with my life. That’s the most important thing, being happy – any fool can pay the bills.

Then it was over to Pete’s apartment to have a couple beers, and then Maggie and her boyfriend Elston arrived and the four of us walked ten blocks to Wicker Park, to see Slim Cessna’s Auto Club at the Empty Bottle. I in my striped vest and Maggie in her porkpie hat, we stood so close to the stage we saw our faces reflected in Slim and Munly’s beltbuckles, and we leapt sweaty and raised our hands up to testify! and Munly grinned down at us like the sluagh he is, all ghoulblue eyes and gaunt cheekbones and a mouth fulla silver teeth. I felt like I got religion.

Walking the ten blocks back to the apartment, Pete and Maggie and I sang Dead Milkmen songs at the top of our lungs.

But it is a sad and beautiful world, a lovely and heartbreaking world, and I was right in thinking that something had changed with Pete. And I guess it was April 1st at this point, but it was still March to me cos I hadn’t gone to sleep yet. Something had changed, our exchange was strained where it had once been loose, we sat in his bedroom, me curled up under cat-haired blankets and Pete in his desk chair, we drank coldsweaty beers and listened to French pop music and Pete talked of thermonuclear energy or some such thing – I’m hopeless with science but find it fascinating, so when someone tells me about scientific theories it’s like they’re reciting poetry.

And then the dreaded words poured from his cherry mouth – I can’t do this. I’m already too attached to you, and there’s a limit to how much attachment I can have. I s’pose I’m looking for something more old-fashioned. The words he didn’t speak aloud, but hung in the air the smoke, were – There will be no more kisses, my arms no more around you, no more drinking-talking-fucking, cos you want other people, and I only want you. –But Pete, I said, this is just new. We don’t even know what’s going to come of it. Can’t we continue as we are, and see what happens? I mean, haven’t you been having fun? -Yes, I’ve been having fun, but no, we can’t continue. I can’t do the just-having-fun thing, or the friends-with-benefits-that-might-lead-to-something-more thing. It already about kills me to think of you being with anyone else. The thing was, I didn’t want to be with anyone else, not right then; since the night I met him, any night I was without him I’d been lonesome and wrapped my arms around myself pretending they were his. I had not told him that, because we were so new and it was not the time to rush into seriousness, and also because there was Levi whom I still loved, though in what way I was no longer certain. And I did not tell him, then, either, because I was scared, and because even if I’d dropped my whole life to be with him, there would have eventually come a time when he’d give me the ultimatum that most boys give me – You have to choose. – Between them and another person, between them and all other people, between them and a city, between them and the whole goddamn world – You have to choose. It’s my way or the highway, your way or the bore-way. Their way or the stairway.

I kept my mouth shut; we made love one last time, and it was holy, Holy, his body my altar, every tattoo and freckle a hymn, in the glow behind my eyes when I came I saw the face of God. And then he held me in his arms one last time, and I soaked the pillowcase with hot saltwater tears – true, I hadn’t known him long, true, similar things had happened to me many times before, but that doesn’t mean it hurt anyless for all that – but I still said not a word, still didn’t try to change his mind. I just cried myself to sleep and thought of the words of Rainer Maria Rilke –

We need, in love, to practice only this – letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.

-from Sad and Beautiful World #13, August/September 2008

#rust belt jessie #my writing #long reads #nostalgia based masochism #lovers #breakups #friends #chicago #2008 #2006 #brb crying forever

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ashtrayfloors · 8 years

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On a late-February night in 2004, I drove with my then-boyfriend through the suburbs of Chicago. Our breath fogged the windows and traffic lights along flat stretches of suburban roadways stained my vision cherry red, gumgreen, urine-yellow, click click click through and through the traffic cycles. We’d just gone to see a movie, an awful mainstream epic of horses and valor, he had free passes to it – I was bitter, I’d skipped a show at the Fireside Bowl, the Mr. T Experience and Screeching Weasel, to go with him to this movie where I sat bored in plush cinema seat sucking stale, greaseglobbed popcorn kernels and dreaming I was dancing to 1-2-3-4 whoah-oah with a coldsweat beer in my hand. We went to see the movie and then we drove, drove, out into strange sparse towns all identical and staunch stony silent, towns with names like Riverside, Berwyn, Cicero. We drove through the traffic signal cycles, past houses locked up tight, alarm-system safe for the night. My boyfriend’s bony fingers traced designs in the fogfilm of his windowpane breath, cryptic symbols and song lyrics. We listened to a mix tape on the broken car stereo; really, it was broken, I’d played too many songs on midnight summer drives with windows down, stereo turned to maximum volume to compete with grrooosshh of highway air against car body, and one of the speakers blew out and at this point only made a drone and bzzz. Finally tired of driving endless circles through endless identical streets, I pulled over in a mysterious pot-holed parkinglot, a parkinglot half-rubble, near no building and illumined only by a lone streetlamp, like the places where myself and skinny skateboard boys’d do graffiti when we were doubletrouble teens with pop!pop! Chinese firecracker mayhem souls – I turned my dented 1996 Grand Am sinwagon into the lot, turned the steering wheel a few degrees to the left, soft-slid into a spot. I left the car mrrmmm-ing, idling, it was a night too bonecold for sitting in a car without heat. I hit the button and my window ratcheted down, only a fraction, but it was enough for an icy finger of winter air to work its way in, I lit a cigarette and watched the orange crackle at the tip. My boyfriend and I began to talk about ghosts. Namely, how after you’ve spent enough time in a place, ghosts start piling up on every corner. I’m thinking I gotta move soon, he said, this city’s just too damn full of ghosts for me. –Yeah, I understand, it almost kills me to go back to St. Ben’s. St. Ben’s my first Chicago home, that old brown Polish cathedral you can see on Irving Park Road as far west as California Ave. and as far east as Southport, it killed me even to think about the churchbells ringing the blue evenings and the babypowder/chocolate chemicals of the flavor factory and that one time I kissed a boy on the cold stone steps of that cathedral, both of us pulling on the lapels of each other’s greasy leather jackets in the late-May lilac early morning; and o the House of Regret, my apartment, that smelled of coffee grounds and booze and garbage, everything thick with a layer of dust and the bathroom tiles falling off in rains of plaster. –I’m surprised I can still hang out around Clark & Belmont, I said, that little patch of the city is more full of ghosts for me than anywhere else, cos I started hangin there years before I even moved to Chi-town. But it mostly has happy ghosts, so for the most part it’s okay. -Sometimes happy ghosts are worse though, he said. And he was right; with the ghosts of the bad times there’s at least the relief that comes from knowing they’re nothing more now than moanin memories & phantoms, but the ghosts of the good times, o you just want ta know why they couldn’t have stuck around a bit longer. We grew quiet as churchyards, both of us haunted by our own haints, I lit another smoke and he sighed, his dustbrown hair falling over his eyes. The mix tape squeaked into the next track – “Broken Radio,” by Rainer Maria – Caithlin De Marrais’ pained-strained voice sang – And I’m certain, if I drive into those trees, it would make less of a mess than you’ve made of me. –What the fuck is this bullshit? the boyfriend asked. Bullshit, huh, I’d always thought it a particularly poignant song, a kind of teenage-bedroom torchsong, so I said – Whaddya mean? -That’s the most emo song line ever. –Well, I guess it is kind of emo, but I know I’ve felt that way, I’m pretty sure everyone’s felt that way. –Of course everyone’s felt that way, doesn’t mean you have to write a song about it.

He was wrong about that. Every person, every place, haunts someone else’s heart, someone else’s head. All of us are just waiting to become ghosts. All of us carry cemeteries in our skulls. And when you are being followed by all those spooks, sometimes the only thing you can really do is sing about it. Sing to the ghosts and hope it appeases them, tell their stories and hope they’ll quit keeping you awake nights with their chattering.

I left Chicago in March 2005, and only God knows why I left. No, no, I know why I left, but it didn’t take long for those reasons to seem pretty thin. I left cos I needed a change of scenery, a break from my longest-running affair with a city; I left cos Lady Chicago beat me down with doubleshots of whiskey, beat me down with unemployment & heartache & overpriced cigarettes; and yes the ghosts were getting so thick I couldn’t breathe, and everything was gray & wind & a cold water flat in Pilsen, and all the big dreams I’d had when I moved to Chicago had smashed like bottles in the street. So I sat awake in bed on my final almost-dawn there, bedroom window open to smell the neighborhood, a smoke of sweet corn tortillas and laundry detergent, I could hear that the man in the apartment building ‘round the corner was once again playing his scratchy records of mysterious sad Spanish zarzuelas – men and women singing passionate songs about the thorns of love and the thorns of Christ’s crown, Y en su pecho, lacerado, se han clavado las espinas del dolor... – I sat awake and wrote so long, farewell lists in my journal to all the Chicago ghosts I’d miss most.

And real quick after I left, the glamoured light of nostalgia made the bad things seem not-so-bad and the good things seem even better, and all my grand reasons for leaving were scraps of paper blown away. I didn’t just leave the city, see – I left part of myself there, some of my grit & spirit, it hid out beneath the el tracks between Belmont & Addison and stayed on without me, probably was still there drinking forties and giving the finger to Cubs fans during baseball season. Funny, I’d once wished to disappear right beneath the very same stretch of the el, wished to turn into vapor and hover around the trains like what happens in the winter when sometimes they gotta set the tracks on fire to keep ‘em from freezing over. I never disappeared into steamclouds, but I left part of myself hovering there nonetheless, and other folks noticed it too, I’d come back into the city for a day and familiar faces would look at me bug-eyed like they’d seen a ghost and say – Where the hell’d you come from, I thought you vanished. I got my long-ago wish; I should’ve been more careful what I wished for.

We’re all specters and we’re all haunted, and I am haunted all the time – haunted by the lovers whose beds I’ve passed through, haunted by friends now dead or just gone far-off; haunted by ghosts of gray Chicagos, golden dreams of Denvers, ghosts of blue San Franciscos and Los Angeles neons, ghosts of eternal New York Citys and bayou New Orleans, ghosts of steel-steep Pittsburghs and Philadelphia brothers, ghosts of yeasty Milwaukees and stinking Kenoshas. I am haunted all the time, my heart an eerie city, and if my heart-city has its own public transit system and we pay the fare and ride, well, I guess we’re riding the blue line tonight.

About a year after I left Chicago, I found that part of me I’d left beneath the el tracks, let’s call her Disobedience; I found her there and it was just as I’d expected, she was lurking in dark corners and alleyways with nightrats, sipping bottles of bum wine & collecting cigarette butts & coins from the dirty pavement, her hair briar-tangled and her clothes threadbare. Disobedience! I said, you’re wasting yer life! Come with me! I didn’t say I’m lost without you; knowing her like I did, after all she was once a part of me, I knew she would’ve rolled her eyes at something that sappy. So I kidnapped her, shoved her in my car and took her with me to Milwaukee. It was good to have her back, my instigator, but it wasn’t a smooth transition – I’d grown shy and afraid in the time since I’d last seen her, and when she was around she’d convince me to do things the way we used to do, but afterward I’d feel all kinds of gloomy hopeless guilt. You only feel guilty cos you’re not living up to other people’s expectations of you, Disobedience said, but fuck ‘em, live for yourself. And all I could say was – But, I, I’m not a seventeen-year-old anarchist brat anymore. She didn’t let me off that easy, continued to send me rushing crosscountry, pilled to the gills, indulging in all my wonderfully bad ideas, violentspinning, doomed love affair after doomed love affair. Slow like springtime, I started to feel less guilty about being true to myself. You can only fight against nature for so long before nature wins, and when your true nature is a redhot firespirit, she’ll burn you to ash in a frenzied flash if you even attempt to go against her.

-excerpt from a longer piece, written sometime in 2009

#rust belt jessie #my writing #long reads #nostalgia based masochism #2009 #2004 #2005 #2006 #ghosts #chicago #disobedience #why can no one ever touch a fire spirit?#late at night talking over a broken radio #i used to write like kerouac

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