Love is Like a Bottle of Gin

I have a bottle of Bluecoat this morning to pull against the cold. Drunk when my roommates can still taste the toothpaste. Don't you love this time of year? Clouds pile high in the sapphire sky, remnants of gold still gilding the woods, the wind finding every crack in the house to pull you from your bed, to follow the sound, to stop up the holes and the noise and go back to sleep, to try and drown your memories. Boys keep me awake. Bees sing me to sleep. Drunken backwards days of waiting, for work, for winter, for something to break. 

I am wary. Treachery waits for me in the cracks and corners of my house, in the bottoms of all my bottles. It whips in the wind, slamming doors, whispering rumors to sad susceptible friends. Gin is not the only poison I am swimming in. Smoke can't rise in it. It just clouds my judgement. I need to stay sharp, needles and pins. I need to cut through this as quick as I can. So much of getting through is holding my breath and waiting, letting go and sinking, hoping sometime soon, my feet will touch the bottom. 

This bottle is bluer than the November sky. And just as cold. The liquid inside is just as bitter. Memories, sky blue and gin soaked, cling to all my fingers just like the smell of juniper. Sharp, sticky, still green smelling after so much time. It smelled like juniper the day he died. It grew outside the school. I smelled it as I was walking in, when they made the announcement over the PA. I was late, and the sky was this blue, brilliant and shot through with late autumn light, early morning light, that day I was late for school. In my midnight blue dress, and my best smile on, taking a moment to straighten the hem, looking up into the high-piled clouds with the light sifting down across the juniper bushes, warming them up, releasing that scent over the duller, dustier scent of the dew evaporating off the concrete. Thinking, "I look pretty," and not really listening to the morning announcements, not really caring that I was late except to hope some boy would notice my legs in the short blue dress I never wore and the tall black boots. A bit of mint still on my teeth pleasantly, the same rich sunshine in my sister's hair as she turned around ahead of me, her face wet and strangely crumbly. Her voice thick and pinched and wet we she said that he was dead.  The juniper and the blue and the bend of light and the bend of knees turning to liquid and suddenly standing on the dewy concrete drowning. Drinking in the mornings, drowning. "Love is like a bottle of gin, but a bottle of gin is not like love." 

Sounds Abound!

There is this spot at work, outside an open doorway where they keep fax and copy machines, and there is an electronic singing sound that comes out of there that makes me see rainbows. I walk out of my way every time I leave my desk just to walk through this shimmer of sound. (If you want to hear something very like it, listen to the static in the first 30 seconds of (This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan, by DNTEL.)

There is also a glorious noise at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, when the table that tells you what track the trains are on changes. It is an older table, and instead of being digital, it is a bunch of little character cards that flip. When it changes, they all start to flip real fast then slow down until there is only one left. People who think rainsticks are cool would really enjoy that noise. It is one of my own personal favorites.

And since it is winter time, if you happen to be over Robbie and Stephen J.'s house, they have a kerosene heater that, when you turn it on, makes this amazing bendy metaly whale sound. Oh man! It is all curved and echoing, like listening inside a shell. But it only does it for less than a minute, so you have to be there at the right time. I think it is one of the most beautiful sounds in pretty much the entire world. 

I love...

Traveling alone by train.
Long grass with purple edges, bending in the wind.
The hum of bees in purple clover in the middle of the afternoon.
Words with the sound "snick" in them.
Crooked smiles.
Reading inside listening to children's voices outside.
Boys in shiney shorts.
Leaving a hot party to go outside and feel cold snow fall on my face and neck.
Fresh baked croissants.
Listening to languages I don't understand.
Being kissed on the inside of the upper arm.
Cooking for people I love.
Little girls laughing.
Receiving a letter from a foreign country.
Listening to my lover sing or speak with my head pressed against his chest.
The yellow color of the clock on Independence Hall.
Drunkards singing in the street.
Scabby knees and elbows on kids.
Fireflies rising after a thunderstorm.
Discovering an echo.
Lying still, not speaking, only touching.
Sifting dry rice through my fingers.
Girls with dark curls.
Old men in belts AND suspenders.
Thick wet eyelashes.
Popsicles.
Music from a distance.
Coming home after being away and sleeping alone in your own bed.
Cold water causing condensation to form on a dark blue glass.
Hands with dirt or ink deep in the lines.
High tension wires.
Thinking the same thought at the same time.
Walking into a room and catching the smell of someone you love who has just been there and is now gone.
Painting a pretty girl's toenails.
Boys who put flowers in girls' hair.
Waitresses.
Making a stranger blush.
Brushing teeth.
The smell of men who have been cutting grass all day.
Shaved heads.
Smoke.

"Hell Yeah I Wanna Go to Europa and Spit Jupiter Seeds at the Moon!"

In Rainbows, by Radiohead 

I'm on my brother's couch, hallucinogens zipping through my blood, sonic spans and bursts of colors arching across the inside of my skull for hours as I fall asleep.

They've been my favorite band since I heard Creep on college radio in 1993, and my brother came home with Pablo Honey later that week. When the crunchy guitars on You started buzzing down my spine, I knew Creep wasn't a fluke, and Lurgee became my own personal teen-angst anthem. With each subsequent album, shift in sound, and change in direction, Radiohead has never failed to capture or keep my attention. They're my favorite cause no matter what my mood, I always want to listen to them. 

I'm particularly pleased with In Rainbows. 

Sonically speaking, its the happiest damn record they've ever put out. Sample that bright up-beat in House of Cards. Hear the entire spectrum of colors in Weird Fishes, and all the fireworks and sparkles in Reckoner.   

The studio recording of Nude/Big Ideas (Don't Get Any) sounds like Virgin Blue satin, and although I still love the haunting, falling-off-the-carousel sound of that on live cut with the Hammond organ, this incarnation of that song works for this perfect record.

Although right now, I'm gonna find that live cut, and mix it on a tape, or cd or whatever, with Procol Harum's Whiter Shade of Pale and the Arcade Fire's My Body is a Cage, cause that right there is a profound religious experience in just 3 songs.
You don't need to be taking psychedelics to hear the colors in that either, a span of cutting reds, smoke-saturated blues and some surprising bursts of pink and orange from the top left corner, and if you've got good enough speakers to get the thrum in your feet and head and chest, you may not need to have sex tonight.

Dav and I frequently argue about music today, and is it worth a damn. I say yes and sight Radiohead, Regina Specktor, Sufjan Stevens, The Arcade Fire, Aesop Rock, The Decemberists, and Modest Mouse as my reasons, in particular: In Rainbows, The Crane Wife, and Illinois, which stand up through the entire album.
Dav says, "Meh," to everything with the exception of In Rainbows, but he's a grumpy bastard who hates just about everything.
Except for the Slowskys. I heard him say yesterday, pre-psychotropics, that Bill Slowsky is a compelling character with a lot going on under the surface. He follows the martial tension between Bill and Carolyn the way other people follow Brad and Angelina.

Its these quirks of character that make me want to spend time with him.

Invasion of the Space Dogs

Me and the roommate were having a girly-night.
If you think that means that we were lounging around the apartment in our underpants, eating chocolate and having sexybouncy pillow fights, normally you would be correct. But not this time. Which is a good thing, cause I would not want to confront Mind Control Space Dogs in my underpants.
So, it was Friday night, and Stephen J. was working and Blondie was at a wedding and Lauren was a sleepy girl and Robbie and Jim! (you have to spell his name like that because that is how you say it) took the train to Atlantic City to see Flogging Molly. Andrea was supposed to go, but they couldn't get her a ticket. And I didn't want to go on account of it only takes the boys a little bit of whiskey before the phrase "Flogging Molly" gives them ideas in my direction. Its not abuse! It is love expressed with violent ferocity.
There we were, confronted with an entire Friday evening to do whatever we wanted, and we decided to be very Lady and go out on the down. We got all stylished up and I said, "Let's go visit Chris Butler!" cause he's my fiance, even tho I stood him up on the day of our Vegas wedding to go have birthday sex with my ex-boyfriend.
Ours is the kind of love that can weather hedonism and forgetfulness.
Ever so stylishly we entered the Shanachie, my Girl and I.
I was in one of those shirts I wear with the collar and the cleavage and she had her hooker boots on and a sweatercoat. It was hot. And we drank drinks and ate frenchfries with Irish musicians and when Chris Butler got off work we skipped over to Agave and did you know that they have pool in the basement? Cause I didn't even know that they had a basement. But now that I know, I think I'll be there more frequently, and so should you be.
Drinks were had and pool and fuzball were won and compliments were slung like hash in a depression-era diner.
And then we were soooooooo tired.
And Robbie and Jim! did not have a ride home from the train station. But we are supergirls, and so we went to fetch them home again. Only it took some doing because we were tired and she is from Boston and I don't drive or pay enough attention, and our map was crappy, and I couldn't remember that 30th street station was also on Market Street, because my voice in my head kept saying, "No, that's Market East."
It was a long and convoluted journey. But we made it and packed the boys in the car and were heading home, playfully bitching at our drunken men. They had taken a beating, let me tell you. Jim! has a boot print on his arms and Robbie got the pants torn right off him! By the time he left the show his cords had become really baggy ass-less chaps. Ass-less chaps that were also crotchless. They were in a bad way.
And then Robbie did an unexpected thing, which was to jump out of the car. While we were moving. At the time I thought it was drunken belligerence, but that was before I knew about the Space Dogs.
Because of traffic laws, we have to drive 2 blocks before we can turn around and get back to the station, and by then, Robbie is gone. So we leave Jim! in the car (don't worry, I cracked a window) and we set out in search of a big tall kid in ass-less, crotchless pants. I ran into many strange and scary people, but nary a Robbie to be found, and then! I heard it. The battle cry that confirmed suspicions I had been suspecting for quite some time. A very tall man with a big mighty voice was stalking down the street with his arms high over his head in challenge. "Hanson!" he screamed. "Hanson! I'm comin' for you! Hanson! You mind control mutha-fuckin' Space Dog from hell! Hanson! It's on! Oh, It's on. I am a God of Mass Destruction. I will mass destruct yo ass! Hanson!"
Now, Space Dogs is one thing, and Space Dogs from Hell is quite another, but MIND CONTROL SPACE DOGS FROM HELL? It's just too much. And I knew right then that I needed to get out of there ASAP. But where was Rob? Clearly the Space Dogs had already got to him, and caused him to irrationally leap from a moving vehicle outside 30th Street Station at 4 o'clock in the morning.
Using all of my superhero powers, I managed to break through the haze of their spaced-out mind control and send Robbie the thought, "Answer your damn phone!" It worked and I established his location and busted a mission to recover him. But before I could get there, the Dogs had gone after Jim! prompting him to leave the car and wander aimlessly down the sidewalk, starring at the sky. It took quite a bit of man-handling to persuade Jim! to abandon his rambling and get back in the car. I had to poke him in the boot print.
Then I recovered Rob, who was also dazzled and confused. He had no idea about Hanson and thought the whole harrowing affair had been his fault. I deposited him in the car as well, and foraged out again, this time to recover Roommate, who seemed to have vanished. "If that Space Dog has snatched her," I said to myself, "It is so on." And I walked all around the building again and through it and was about to despair when she called and said, "I'm at the car, lets get out of here!" So I high-tailed it back and its a good thing too, cause the mind control was starting to affect everybody. I mean, I saw this man having sex with 30th Street Station. Like, the actual building. I know the Corinthian columns are sexy but, Jesus! I mean right there in front of everyone. And when I say everyone, I mostly mean "right there in front of me!"
Ew, it was yucky. Roommate is a speedy getaway driver though, and we managed to escape the city without further incident, though the strain on our brains was astronomical. My fellow adventurers passed out for the better part of Saturday, and while I couldn't sleep for fear of lowering my defenses, I was rendered completely useless for the entire rest of the weekend.

And that is the end of the story for now, though if you are further interested in Space Dogs, you might tune in to This Comic, though it is mostly about a rock band and a cyclops jack-o-lantern.

A word of warning for people currently residing within Philadelphia city limits, particularly those that must travel by train: Hanson, the Mind Control Space Dog from Hell is still at large.
So if you have to take the train, I recommend perhaps a tinfoil hat.

Oh I can't sleep.

I know it isn't even quite one, but I can tell by the buzz under my skin, the hum in my head, its not going to happen.
Between 3 and 6 am I hate hotels. In a building full of people, you're completely alone. In the dark and the quiet, the room becomes an island. Nothing exists outside, and if that was comforting before, when I first got here, its awful now, with my head full of nightmares and no one familiar breathing deeply on the couch, or turning over upstairs, or snoring faintly through the floorboards.
I miss my boys.
I miss lying in my little bed under the stairs, drifting in the smoke between asleep and dreams. Hearing Stephen's key in the lock, the shudder of the front door closing behind him. He comes over and sits down, sometimes with his coat still on, and tells me about his day, or a funny thing he heard, or the last thing he was thinking of before the bar got rushed. Sometimes he sings a snatch of a song that is stuck in his brain and asks me to identify it.
Whatever happens after that, weather he goes upstairs to bed, or settles on the couch to watch a few episodes of M.A.S.H., weather I get up with him and we smoke and talk, or he goes out again to meet someone, weather I stay up the rest of the night, or fall into a fitful sleep, hearing those sounds, his key in the lock, his low voice in the dark, it make me think everyone everywhere that I love is for the moment safe and sleepy, and my chest doesn't feel so pressed and heavy.

I miss Robbie in the mornings. I am always awake when he wakes up, but I lay under the covers with my head in the pillow and pretend I could slip back to sleep just any second. He comes downstairs trying to be so so quiet. He thinks I am asleep as he tries to tiptoe past and not crash into anything, and I smile to myself. He makes a quiet racket setting up the coffee machine and then he goes back upstairs.
When he comes down again I say, "Hi baby," in my smiley sleepy voice, and he gives me a quick hug and grabs coffee and goes to work, or else he crawls in bed and cuddles for 5 seconds before he makes me get up and play with him.
Robbie the sun, and Stephen the moon. In this way I divide my days.
Except now I live in hotels, and when I go back to home, I have my own apartment, and a big bed, and a room with a door and everything.
But I miss them.

Hotel USA

You don't need ID yet to travel by train. You can take the yellow line north and west to some small town far out from the city. Find a hotel where they won't ask your name. Pay in cash and they will give you a room key that's still a real key, cold cut metal on a steel ring, painted with a little white number.
Climb the stairs to the fourth floor, which is the top floor, so its the furthest from anywhere. Close the door behind you. Twist six locks, and if there is a phone, unplug it from the wall. The windows are already closed, white shades down behind thick white curtains. Everything outside this room does not exist anymore.
Everything inside is white and scuffed and nothing smells like anything. If there are paintings they are just lines and colors. They don't remind you of anything. There is tea on the counter, small bags wrapped in paper, next to a white chipped porcelain coffee cup. Pour yourself some hot water from the dispenser, just to watch the steam curl up. It moves like dreaming. Rest seems to be a thing you could hold, distance is a sound that maybe you could hear if your head was clear and empty like this room.
Peel your clothes down. Leave them on the floor. No one cares about those things anymore. Leave the bathroom door open while you take a piss. No one exists to listen. The shower is running for seventeen minutes before you even get in because you like watching the steam twist into the white room. The clouds and curls bring comfort to you.
Everything beyond this tiny room has just switched off. This is everything you want. The water is hot. You laugh out loud; hot water is good. The sound bounces off the tiles and you smile to hear the sound of yourself happy. The bed will be soft. The white towels are clean and so are the sheets. Everything outside the empty walls has ceased to be.
Ivory soap and mint toothpaste. Your skin smells like a stranger. Naked in bed, you have no identity. The TV is off because quiet is better. You're no longer a person who watches television, and in the morning you will not read the paper.
The world outside here has turned out the lights. The dark doesn't scare you like it did before. You can dissolve. Inside the dark, inside the white walls, all you can hear is your own pulse. Beating heart, slowing breath, a building music inside your head. The swelling sound drowning out everything but this island. All the world is in this room. You catch yourself smiling again. It will end soon. But now there is this:
Yourself inside the shell of a white room, ivory smells, the folding light, steam and clean sheets, ironed smooth, and the music inside.
Hold it in your mind. Write it on a folded piece of paper and tuck it into your back pocket. Keep it in your mouth under your tongue behind your teeth. Press it into a pattern and tattoo it in black ink under your skin to remember when you are called back again.