Street Spirit (Fade Out)

A few weeks back, a favorite person of mine rolled through town. Every time he does, it serves to remind me of the patchwork that makes up 'home'.

The smell of gasoline. The hollow-strong bounce of a basketball. Grease under fingernails that will alway be there. The grit texture of Lava soap, and the waterless soap that now comes in orange-smell. The crunching of tires on gravel. Matches. The smell of Marlboro Reds mixed with beer mixed with the warmth of skin that presses up against the shirt collar. The slight weight of frozen breath leaving parted lips. Burning leaves. The bang of a screen door. The rattle of a chainlink fence at night.

It's not just sights, sounds and smells. It's the way people *are*. The way they talk and carry themselves. The way they support you, and the way that they don't. The people I love support me in all sorts of ways~ but there are particular ways that reminds me of home. When being sexually harassed and fucked with at work, it is the difference between someone offering to go with you to talk to your supervisor, and someone offering to "take care of the fuck who is doing it". Both are arguably valid forms of support. One makes me feel safer.

I remember the exact place that I stood on the end of my driveway when Dave told me he would kill my father.
He wasn't angry while saying it.
It was a discussion.
I decided against it but from that point on,
I felt safe in a way I never had.

I've never been able to articulate this particular piece of home. I've been rolling it around on my tongue for the past lifetime, but have yet to come up with its language. If were a split second of late-80s-cusp-of-the-90s imagry, it would be split second 4:09/4:10 (almost 4:11) of this video. [This video was- as most things in life-influenced or replicating the Fritz Lang film, Metropolis.] It is the hands, the grease, the pull. More than anything, it is the exact moment that grease smears satin.


smear



(pause)



Jeff


I've been reading Fromm lately. Love being a form of art. Jeff telling me that I *am* art. That letter he wrote to me, got to me. Man, who did he become? The same dude who was always so comfortable. With sex *and* with farting. He's the kind of guy that isn't afraid of blood- both as a nurse and as someone who fucks women on their periods. He holds his daughter with the ease of a pro holding his football. That old Escort wagon. Dark blue. Tapping at the window, 3 am. I have a memory of standing out in front of my parent's house on the driveway. It is broad daylight and I have on a skirt, knee highs, and a thin, kelly green v-neck cartigan sweater. Jeff is slant-lounging on the sidewalk, and I am standing above him. He is looking up at me while he's talking. His hand is on my leg while looking up at me; his fingers on my pussy through my panties while looking up at me.

I liked looking down at him.

Perhaps that's when it started. Perhaps that is when I learned that I like looking down at people during sex. Mike, Eric, Erik. We all tangled at some point, but none of them held a candle to Jeff. It's not because I was in love with him. I never was. I was in love with the safety. I was in love with the comfort. I was in love with cumming as hard as I wanted to because I could with him. For all of the above listed reasons. I always felt safe with him. Maybe it was because of Eric and him being former best friends. Maybe it was because of his wide smile. Or the way his eyes (fittingly midnight blue) would narrow when he wanted me. Maybe it was the "Who would have ever imagined such"? he scrawled on my bedroom wall with a felt tipped marker. Maybe it was the roughness of manual labor fingers. Maybe it was the mole on his cheek I found sexy, or the way he wanted to kill Jon for breaking up with Renee because she ended up killing herself over it.

More than likely, it had at least something to do with the fact that he was a man's man who wanted to be a nurse for the elderly and never had to defend it because no one would dare challenge him on it. And so he became a nurse: his trajectory so clearly marked. So obvious.

I wonder if it feels that way to him.



(pause)



Andy

The last time I saw him was the year he, Rob, and Duncan came to my parent's house for the first and only time. We walked through the house like a crime scene: Careful, but with heavy-footed detachment. When we made our way back to the living room, we found Rob huddled against the wall, and he asked to wait outside.

We were 18 then.

Years have grown ivy of the same roots that connect us. He is glass ground in honey; he is black eye removing hat when I walk in. He is home. You know the kind. The kind that loves his friends and his kids with every piece of his heart and, at the same time, has 'ASSHOLE' tattooed on the inside of his bottom lip.

That night, we were years later, sitting inside a borrowed pick up truck. The night was cold; his bus would leave in 20 minutes. He offers a way to contact him, and we make the pact of sailors.

He reaches into his pocket for a pen, and as he pulls it out, a pair of brass knuckles falls out onto
split leather
of the bench seat between us. There is a
split second delay as the air rearranges itself between us.

"Can I see those?" My voice is the lick of a reed and before he even answers, I am turning their weight over in my hand. Sliding stirring straw fingers through solid brass. He watches with eyes ready to catch me. I am not looking at him, but feel myself transform into his son riding by without training wheels for the first time. The brass is wrapped in a thousand different rubber bands- a muted rainbow criss-crossed and stretched.

I run my finger across them.
cold dull cold dull
I clench my fist and imagine.

"What are the rubber bands for?" My eyes leave brass to meet his. Blue gold safety nets worry back at me and, again, I am reminded that the angels watching over me have always played dirty and with knives. "They make it hurt less when you use them", he says

and I am barely aware that he is slipping them off my fingers.


(pause)



It has been a month of writing, reading, poetry, and gossamers of symbolism the size of an auditorium. It is because of this that I am in the mood for the primal. The crass. The uncoated emotion. I am craving the abandon of throwing concepts of 'truth' out the window in order to appreciate the rawness of what someone is feeling in a particular moment. The abandon I am craving is not that of anyone, however. I'm craving it from people who are usually so careful and eloquent in their speech and/or art. Poetic, even. Chomsky, belching out "The United States is a fucking joke" mid-lecture. Yo-Yo Ma breaking a string and saying "Arghh...that fucking RUINS it." Edward Said (retroactively) saying "No, ASSHOLE, I would prefer to NOT DIE and continue working/writing" to the interviewer who asked him in his last interview before dying if he felt a sense of peace because he had accomplished so much in his lifetime. Saying what is true without impulse control. No filters.

With that, I will leave you with a line I've been appreciating in this way. Blake Schwarzenbach is one of my favorite lyrcists when it comes to imagery and word choice, which is what makes these lyrics fit so perfectly into what I'm craving. It also makes it just fucking awesome/hilarious. Imagery of broken hearts and thought-out ideas are tossed. What remains both feeds this craving and also serves to illustrate my never-ending preference for beauty mixed with a broken bottle.





Be well; be loved~

xx


k.



They're playing love songs on your radio tonight

I don't get those songs on mine

YOU KEEP FUCKING UP MY LIFE

YOU KEEP FUCKING UP MY LIFE

YOU KEEP FUCKING UP MY LIFE



song


full lyrics


(photo by me)