Cathartic Rendezvous
February. The basement fills with frigid ice water, the snow climbs into bed with me. The salt eats through my car and, frozen and drifting, everything dries up. Another blank page, sinus freakout writer’s block. Give me a distraction; give me some sort of hope. This is the month where, one day, I’m afraid I’ll wake up and find out that it’s all over…and I’m still breathing.
It is on the cusp of winter depression madness when the lights flare on and dearest Natasha, bundled up like a Russian doll, bounds into the room. She suffers from a permanent seasonal depression, so February is no different for her. Today, though, she kneels beside me and leans over so her nose touches mine.
“You’re depressed.” She mutters, the air from her lungs red and white peppermint and a dash of coffee, her pale flesh a string of vanilla, her close-cut black hair Herbal Essence.
“It’s the third,” I reply, “And I’m about twenty-nine inches from a total freakout.”
“Gots you worried?” Her voice smiles with her, as do her eyes, which jerk back and forth between my own.
“I don’t think I can make this one.” Every year older, every winter harder. Time for the desert! Move, Nacho, move! The calling card of friends, acquaintances and family: ‘You need, you need, you need, you need…’ Get a wife-car-life-job-house. Only on these dark, frozen nights can I realize how out of touch they all are.
Nat doesn’t say any of those things, though. She knows something I know, though I couldn’t say what. She is a smile, lips warm and brushing mine when she speaks, eyes wild. “You do this every year.”
“I know.”
“It’s silly.”
“It’s February.”
“It’s time for a dance.”
Her face moves away and I sit up. We turn in slow motion, her hand on the back of my neck, electricity under her polished, short nails. The small pinky has been chewed at, popped against her tiny teeth. I don’t need to see it to know, it always is. Just that one, on her left hand. She is a woman of secrets. Scars and chewed nails, a sore shoulder and a missing molar, a bone spur and allergies. Her spine presses against the flesh in her pale back and, at night, she stays awake and watches, her eyes gathering light from the room, the wet gaze of the insomniac with a troubled mind. Her fingers release me and I stare at the door as James hauls a keg into my study, taking one look at the blank computer screen as if surprised that nothing is there.
“If everyone in the audience claps,” he says, “There might be an article on Thursday!”
“Might be.” I stand up and help him. The keg’s ready to go, and Nat is moving furniture aside to make the warm study a proper party zone. I go to the DVD shelf, but James spins me away.
“No movies tonight. I sent out some invitations.”
“For what?”
“The February Gloom-Glam!” Nat’s out of her feathery black coat, the sleeves of her top attached at her thumbs and her tights disappearing beneath an unflattering green skirt in classic 80’s chic. Her boots are a Molly Ringwald faux-alligator throwback that I can’t take my eyes off of as she sits down heavily.
“Nat, is that your mom’s outfit?”
“Shut up, poo-poo head!” She sticks a pink tongue out at me and looks away.
Unexpectedly, the idea of a spontaneous party takes hold. I steer away from unplanned weirdness these days, but this is the worst month of the year. It needs life. Gloom-Glam? I feel a smile cracking my dry lips, sinus blockage shifting. Nat simply cocks her head, looking satisfied. James barks gruffly, pours me a beer and sighs.
The night has begun. Eyes closed, ready, and Shift.
Swirling light and darkness. This is what speaks for James. He’s drinking faster than should be allowed, getting in touch with the inner ghosts that pursue him. Swallowed by an easy chair, it’s hard to tell where gloom begins and glam ends.
“Who’s invited?” I asked, pulling on the silly dragon shirt that Nat had bought for me a year ago. I would have avoided it, but she was in a good mood and I wanted to maintain that.
“The future,” James replied, “Is in plastics!”
Nat and I stared blankly until the doorbell rang and, feeling a trifle uneasy on the Sudafed and booze train, I weaved my way through the dark house to the front door. The heat was always turned down these days, so I could save up enough money for Natasha’s weekly tennis bracelet. (She made me write that.) February was inside as well as out, but my black-haired pixie trailed along behind me, turning on lights and cranking up heaters to the level beyond 90 degrees that scientists refer to as Nat’s Temp. You’d think a girl who’s always vibrating would keep herself warm at any temperature.
Drunken Paulie slammed through the front door before I got there, the doorknob smashing into the dry wall and the rebound nearly catching Paulie and pitching him over the rail into the sunken living room. I grabbed him, Nat grabbed the door.
“A Scot and a dark haired daughter of hell!” Paulie screamed, spinning and pointing at us. I let him fall to the floor.
“Nachoriffic!” Werdna screamed from the porch, kicking the screen door open. “Party inside, or so I’ve been told.”
“Well, Nat and James.” We all three looked down at Paulie who, like a turtle, was powerless while on his back. “And Paulie.”
“More comin’.” Nat muttered.
“Ain’t this sorta rude?”
She looked at me suspiciously, turning her head sideways, “What?”
“Inviting all these people to my house?”
Werdna laughed, handed me a bottle of vodka, then leaned close, “Nacho, you’re going to have to face it some day.”
“Face what?”
“If you have to ask, you haven’t faced it!” He pushed past and started stalking through the house, hands cupped at his mouth, calling for James. James, of course, didn’t answer until Werd had made it back to my study.
Nat’s lips suddenly pressed against my ear, “Winter, winter, wintertime.” She sang.
Your government breath gonna choke them to death…
Coming out of dreams. Coming out of a dance. Hitting the floor, the pictures rattle, the windows fog and freeze. Natasha is a vision under the lights, she spins and she stops and then there’s a pull-back, a sudden focus, a jump to the left. Another year begun, another year finished, and it’s all the same. It’s all over. I’m still breathing and just about everything makes me mad enough to cuss up a cool breeze. More dead, more alive, birth and death and all that shit. The room is a smiling island in a lost sea. Summer, summer, summertime.
“Ladybug, Ladybug,” Jezebel on a couch. She dips her head, a glass of juice in her hand. I blow her a kiss and meander through my cups to Blue and Rotting Corpse, who seem to be tied up in an argument with Natasha. Nat had the floor.
“…so then I ate his heart and he pulled the teeth out of my vagina. Now I am immortal, and only Woman Who Screams With Eagles can stop me!” With this she drunkenly pointed at Jezebel, who rolled her eyes. “Do not roll your eyes at me, Woman Who Screams With Eagles!” Natasha screamed frantically. She made a clumsy rush for Jezebel in what can only be a murder run, but her oversized alligator boots slowed her down long enough for Jez to stand and move over to my side. Nat collapsed on the couch, breathing heavily, staring into middle space.
“That girl is crazy incarnate.” Blue said.
Jez laughed, “I was just going to say that!”
“Oh my gosh!” Blue replied, “I’m psychotic!”
Land, land of liberty.
“Lies everywhere,” James had a hand on my knee, trying to steady himself. Rotting Corpse was discussing the future. “Drift back and drift down.”
RC stopped and gazed drunkenly, “What?”
“We’re drifting.” James replied. “Each and every one of us. I don’t give a damn about the success stories. I don’t care who’s better than thou. We’re all in the same boat, we’re all in the same mist, on the same river – ”
“Trapped in the same metaphor.” I snapped.
“Fucking right, fucking yes!” James pointed a finger in my general direction. “It’s the loss of all Humanity. There are those who move up, those who seem happy, those who succeed. There are a billion points of light, but who the fuck do they shine on? They don’t push us forward. They don’t help us. They develop a cure and charge 300 bucks a bottle. They build a radar and then a missile that can get past it.
“The success stories? What? Computers? Technology? Better Lazy Susans? Smoother spin, better speed, larger space. Not even that. Not even nothing. They succeed in their own dreams, and they give nothing back. We don’t come together. We’re on that metaphorical boat and we’re not looking at each other. Hell, pray to the god of fuck that you aren’t a minority, you’ll get your throat cut to increase supplies.”
RC looked speechless, Natasha was listening, Paulie was ready to argue, Jez kept twenty feet away from RC at all times, Blue was trying to hear. None of us were together in that moment. James had scattered the room.
You reek of purity.
It was 40 years ago today.
You know it’s bad when someone puts on ‘Helter Skelter.’ By someone, of course, I mean Natasha who was celebrating Beatles week in true form. It was her fucking mom’s outfit. Trust me when I say you don’t want to meet Nat’s mom. That’s some deep weirdness, there. Baby, let me ask you, where’d that keg go? I know Nat’s been at it. I know Blue drank daintily. RC, Paulie, James and I have represented the most damage. Jez, you see, is up at the top of the slide. She’s a ghost, now. She moves constantly through the drunk haze. What’s real and what isn’t anymore? Natasha’s in a corner, completely absorbed with a Twizzler. She shreds it like a child, she eats absently, she’s humming to herself. Is she real? Is she now fading with the other ghosts? I remember their touch. I remember how each of them have felt.
February is a long month. I can see why it became Black History Month. It never ends. It’s never forgotten. It’s the worst of all of them.
“It’s punishment!” James screams.
That there music is too loud. Paulie is in the bookshelves again. Be a dear, get the broom and get him down.
I serve no punishment. I am cleansed of sin. I serve no punishment.
Andrew, marry your writing.
When I left her, it was supposed to be for the best. I thought I was doing right. Do we ever do right? You haven’t. I can tell from all the way over here. You’re making a mistake.
My horribly deformed manservant handed me some mulled wine and I leaned back.
“As I was saying,” Texas Billionaire Oscar bin Laden continued his thought, “Revolution. The greatest example of a sell out. The song gets sucked up by Nike and that, right there, is what happened to the revolution.” He grinned through his beard, “You’ll never get out of them shoes.”
“We’re being rounded up, aren’t we?” I asked. “For something big?”
“It’s happening now.” He replied. “You’re living it. The opening salvo.”
“I’m not.”
Oscar leaned forward, his thumb and forefinger pinched together. “All you gotta do, Nach, is speak clearly.”
Now she’s hit the big time in the USA.
Natasha and I were doing the Charleston to ‘Honey Pie.’ The room was a blur around her smiling face. Is a muse a ghost? Does it exist in that form? Some supernatural force outside of the body, removed from the mind? Nat had straightened her hair last month and cut it like a Flapper. When we went downtown, she even painted her face and eyes to look like the perfect Gibson Girl. Not, technically, a Flapper, she always explained to anyone foolish enough to get in a conversation with her. She was blurring history, but close enough to the mark to have built an argument to stand by. We spun to a stop in the center of the room, holding each other.
“You’ll write about this.” She predicted. “You’ll write and we’ll spin beneath the pages. I’ve always been here, you know. I am that voice. I am the other woman.”
I am the warmth beside you on lonely nights. I am the guide. I am the past. I am the lover – first and always. I am the words. I am the images. I am inspiration; dreams; focus. I am yours and you are mine till the day we die together, till the day we wake up and it’s all over.
And I’ll still be breathing.
But what is sweet now turns so sour…
February. I am alone in my room, thinking of women’s bodies. I can feel myself inside of them, I can taste them on my fingers, I can see myself coming towards them and sealing it with a kiss.
The computer is blank. The weather, dry and cold. There’s nothing to write, nothing to do. Depression carves through a flat field like a dying stream. There’s no direction, and everything was a mistake. I can name then off – Jenny’s and Claire’s and Nicole’s and Laurie’s and Catherine’s. Jill’s and Meri’s and Melanie’s and Anne’s and Marika’s.
It’s a crazed game. It doesn’t matter. Slow February thoughts. A novel scattered across the floor, surrounding me spread-eagled and staring at the ceiling. A light comes in from outside, security against the impossible darkness. The computer’s screensaver gives me only a dark brown glow and I count the seconds, minutes, until the energy saver clicks on and I’ll be in final darkness. Maybe the security light will go, as well. Maybe total darkness will come and wash through me. I can’t breathe.
Natasha bursts through the door, but she doesn’t turn the lights on. She kneels beside me and leans over so her nose is pressed against mine.
“You’re depressed,” she says.
“It’s February.”
I feel rather than see her smile. Her face moves in a certain way, feathers my cheeks, and I take a breath from her.
“It’s time for a dance,” she says.
“It’s been a long time,” I reply, “You and I.”
“That’s right.”
“It changes?”
“We always change, my lovah. We always change, you and I.”
“I’m ready.”
Natasha kisses me, a touch of her lips. She slides so that she is lying on her side and I turn my face so it’s still pressed against hers. Spots of security light are in her eyes, and our bodies hum together.
“I know.” She says to me. “Everyone’s coming over later.”