previous writings from previous times.
Mostly handwritten (on paper, remember when we used to write on paper?), some done digitally.
Mind the step, turn the light on as you go down the stairs.....
DANDELION WISH (2004)
There are windows in my day, when I miss you so hard, I can hardly swallow or breathe properly, I have to take a moment to regain my composure. Today, this happened while my landlord was here, choosing colours for the exterior of the house with his paint consultant. Spontaneous tears welled up, uninvited and I quashed them immediately, imagine if he came to the door and found me snivelling in my dishes. God knows what he'd think. At 4.30 in the afternoon. God knows what he thinks already, there’s crap and stuff and old furniture piled to the gunnals, everywhere... I am finding it bloody difficult doing everything, the whole house, the whole section, the whole family, without your extra pair of hands and physical strength.
It wouldn’t be like that if you were here, I’m sure of it.
Mostly it’s the conversations and the warm other-ness in bed, the all-the-time, affectionate sex and your company, I miss. You, to have here when I wake up and when I turn out my light. A somebody else to hear bumps in the night and investigate. A someone else to do the firewood in the evenings.
Somebody else to help with the decisions and go out, with. You, always there for me to find, when we're out and the party’s lagging, past our bedtime. You never minding being the sober driver and getting us safely home. You, making dull and frustrating hours into hysterically funny ones, with your beautiful face and your gorgeous, twisted mind. Existence has become more effort and less play, without you around the place. I miss your cynical, funny and painfully sad, take on the world we have to live in. I'm so much closer to finding a way through it, when I know I'm not alone in my fears. Your surety in uncertain times, holds me still and stops me bolting for the cover of the forest, heart racing, away from the uncivilisation, to my burrow-hole under the impenetrable trees, safe and out of reach.
And I don't even know where you are at the moment, even in the country. Are you o.k? Still finding time to work on your music, your writing? I assume that you’re still writing, of course, some piece of exquisitely crafted lyrical beauty.....I dismiss thoughts of which muse you might be writing for, currently.
I write about and around you, quite often. It helps hold you in my mind, or you'd dissolve away in the current of realtime activity, dissipate and really be lost to me.
See, occasionally, when I'm driving home alone, or sitting out on the sofa on the West Wing, I can turn my head and let my eyes drift out of focus; I can almost see you, beside me, smiling, catching my glance. A vision of sorts.
I know it's you, they have your rascally eyes and shit-eating grin.
I smile too, to myself, resist the urge to try and touch you with my fingers.
I'm not mad, you know. I need no reminding that you're not actually here.
I'm moving soon, out of this enormous house that doesn't feel so emptied out and hollow and dark. There's no singing, no acting, I'm not dancing. I practically have to force myself to drink wine, can you believe? I feel myself growing more and more serious and deep and intense, without your steady, neutral presence and I've taken to buying men's deodorants with my groceries, to recreate those civet masculine scents on my body and sheets. I have to say though, it’s an exercise in futility, I'm aware it’s just my flimsily constructed illusion, my mirror-windows to hide the emptiness of the room. There's no one inside and there hasn't been for a long time, a few years.
A few bloody YEARS, not months or weeks but years, love.
WHERE are you? And WHY aren't you here? WHAT is keeping you so busy and held up, TAKING up your life, GET off the phone and talk to ME now, ‘cause it's ME!! I'm trying to call you...I'd really like to get through....
Different ones have assured me that you'll turn up at something, that I'll find you and I just need to be patient and calm, get on with my work and one day, there'll you be..
I'll be drinking you up with my eyes, devouring you like a castaway downs their first good meal, upon rescue. The unfed appetite growls at any old undernourishing junk food, pretty delicious crap that's bad for me. It's not hard
I want to hold you and know that no-one else is holding you. I want you to touch me and be the only one who touches me. I’d like to hear your car pulling in the driveway and know that you’re home. I want to dance for you and sing my drunken words to your dark and meandering melodies, for your heart only to see and to hear, in a room where only we are. I really want to hear you say my name out loud, with tenderness and love and meaning.
This busy spring afternoon, as I knelt in the middle of this grassy battlefield between two armies engaged in hostile invasions, a friend handed me a perfectly whole undisturbed dandelion clock that had somehow survived the tanks and foot troops, the falling bombs and deadly missiles. She insisted I took the wish, I had all of three seconds to summon up the desire at the top of my list of desires.
Time briefly stood still. The planet paused –
-then tilted back into motion again and I knew it was you and nothing else, nothing quite so vitally important. I WISHED you. All my concentration was focused on you, momentarily.
I sent it away into the blue sky over me, up, out.
So you are on my mind tonight and I’m writing because I can’t talk, I have no phone number for you, no mobile, e-mail, address, or even location. No clues as to where you’re living, or working, who your friends might be, or which circles you are currently circling in, no means to find you, either.
It’s allright.
I’m not going to wear myself out in an exhaustive search and strive for you, I can practically feel you when I reach out psychically, so you must be reasonably close, either in time or distance. Happening along in the near future. Any year, now.
MARK MY PLACE, PLEASE.... (2008)
I’m in the theatre on a Wednesday afternoon, painting city windows when he wanders in and starts to help with something, moving stuff around with the director.
I maybe see him a couple more times before we move everything to the venue, we chat, he’s been looking after his sick girlfriend, working..
Nothing spectacular.
It’s in the Green Room, grabbing my first coffee from a trestle table surrounded by cast members, that we first talk and exchange silly nonsenses.
Somehow the topic is men in heels, I mention my perfect 6 foot tall cross-dressing husband I’m hoping to find one day..
He suggests I place an ad.
I’m not sure.
He reasons that I’m denying that special person their chance of a lovely romantic life and he is right.
I’m noticing how he moves across the room to the bin and back.
Can’t help but wonder if he was being general or specific.
As I agree with another comment, saying “Sweet as..”, he tilts his gorgeous butt my way, saying “ thanks..”
Is he flirting with me?
I’m backstage every night, op side (that’s opposite prompt or stage right) he’s on the other side with their crew.
Backstage back in black, moving large, occasionally wheeled pieces of furniture, barns, corn, carts quickly and quietly on and off the stage, in our own groups, working together to create the set.
Sneakers, tiptoeing and whispering or a low mutter.
Later on there’s giggling, but first, learning, cues and ten minute standbys.
Turn, lift, run, MOVE, MOVE, mowing over munchkins.
So we get on really well, he’s funny AND nice AND smart.
With silver hair.
We’re getting on really very well, did I say?
I think he’s my age.
He tells me that at home, he wrestles his cat with oven mitts on.
He likes my black hat, wants to bring one to cover up his glowing hair in the dark.
I tell him I think its striking.
He likes my dyed red, asks me if it’s my natural colour, as if...
Nice, though.
We all, fly guys included, get three rehearsals and opening night wrong.
Fuck.
In between getting the job done, we loiter and tell show jokes, retell blunders
Watch the cast do their thing
Talk about our day
He’s just quit smoking, eight days ago and is finding it kind of ok, hanging with the smokers at the back door during breaks, getting his secondhand fix.
Later, at the very tail end of the show he tells me if there was any one place where he would want to be able to smoke, it would be here, at the theatre, during a show, the biggest trigger of all.
I feel for him, tell him he’s doing it hard, then and he agrees.
He’s got three audits in 48 hours to do and he’s not smoking..
Second week of the show, I’m wearing the spare lion’s tail tucked into my trousers in the blackness of the wings because I’ve always wanted one.
It’s silly, a bit of a laugh, I ham it up for my few spectators.
Standing together on his side, talking in a quiet corner, he looks into my eyes and says he wants a tail, too.
I know, but you do have to watch slamming them in car doors, I offer and we both smile.
Can’t help but waggle it at him and Julie, too.
Like it, the tail.
He. Is. So. Lovely.
He does his backstage thing so lightly across the floor, he is graceful AND strong.
Bet he can dance.
Mental note: Want to see him dance.
In black tee and trackpants, I can still find him in the dark, across stage.
I get to occasionally relax and watch him do his thing over there, rearranging the set.
In the halfdark, I see him, no one else.
I see him in black suspender stockings, bustiere and boa on the stage, making a godlike Aryan man.
I see him in heels and orchid-coloured ivory silk dressing gown in my kitchen, making our Free Trade morning espresso.
On final night, we both do the munchkin dance in unison on opposite sides of the stage, complete with manic singing and all the arm movements, synchronized munchkin fun. God, he’s delightful.
Show over, curtains drawn for the last time, all the crew dives into packout immediately, we begin to dismantle, unscrew and dismember the entire set.
My crew destroy that goddamn heavy corn with gusto and satisfaction.
An hour and a half later, they’re packing the last of it into trucks, the girls want to go to the cast party so we get ready to go.
I ask him if he’s coming to the thing, he says he’ll see.
I want him to come, if just to see him one more time before I disappear off the scene for god knows how long again.
Another eight years, maybe.
I don’t know when I’ll see him again, otherwise.
We’re at the party and it’s going well, there are lots and lots of tequila shots and people and live music and smoking and talking crap.
He pops up on the verandah looking suitably bent already for the evening and I’m so pleased.
He looked happy.
Still to this day cannot remember what we might’ve said then.
It was eclipsed and obliterated, shortly after.
A little later, thoroughly well along the road to fantasyland, I wander into the kitchen, he happens to be there, along with a few other people.
I walk through the room, grab a beer out of the fridge, turn and there he is standing in the middle of the room, holding his long fingers out to me, for a look.
I glance down and see his elegant fingernails painted perfect hot fuchsia pink.
Bam! And the brain is gone...
It’s him, him with long pink nails, standing right in front of me.
Moving through water, I step forward and gently grasping his right hand with my fingers, nuzzle my nose and mouth along his cheek to his right ear, finishing with a quick soft suck on his earlobe as I step past him.
He bolts for the lounge.
His flatmate says wearily from the kitchen bench, he’s got a girlfriend, you know...
I knoooow, I knew that, what the fuck!
I cover my face with my hands and there’s a stunned silence all round the tiny room.
I cannot belieeeeeve what I just did. What the fuck was that!
Therese says, did you just DO that? Like she can’t quite believe what she saw..
Yes, I did, it’s hitting me now like a concrete lamppost between my eyes, in a brightly lit populated room in a crowded cast party, with his girlfriend in the lounge, I just slurped that lovely man.
She snorts “ fucken lesbians..”
I’m in too much shock to correct her.
He’s no woman. I'm no lesbian.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck and fuck
I want to leave now.
I want to panic, but I can’t, everyone’s here, be calm, try and be cool, don’t make any sudden moves..
He’s in the lounge, I’m not going in there, no way in hell.
I’m going to assume that in at least half an hour, the whole party will know.
Jesus fuck what have I gone and done now?
Outside, smoking on the verandah, I’m nearly in tears with shock and self-mortification, walking the fine edge of composure.
I think to grab the flatmate and ask him to please pass on how totally sorry I am, he assures me he will and that if there was a man in the theatre I could actually do that to, it would be him.
It doesn’t help at all.
I ride it out without seeing him again and we all drink more, talk more, sing more, leaving at dawn. Zan is still completely unaware, amazingly enough, she happily burbles away in the back seat of the taxi as we float back to her house at 6 am.
A drunken regretful wreck, I fill her in, sobbing, as we finally pile into bed to sleep.
I’m terrified of her reaction.
We wake up in the full pounding blaze of the afternoon.
I have to go with her and drop her off at a post-show meeting at the theatre so she can take me home afterwards.
I just want to go home and sleep for a thousand years in a dark sarcophagus, alone.
My head is thumping and my hands shake when I try and hold them still.
She tries to joke about my misadventure and I dissolve into tears, it’s not funny yet, not yet, at all..
So Fate dictates that, of course, as I pull up to drop her off in the red pocket rocket, who should be just getting out of their car in front of the theatre, him. And her.
I just can’t fucken believe it and mouth the words to myself in disbelief.
He waves a friendly hi to me from the footpath, she’s driving.
I floor it in the sportscar, outta there and away down the steep hill, sunglasses hiding my distress.
Bloody Hell!
I wait for two hours to pick Zan up at three and of course, they’re just leaving the building, it’s too cruel, the universe is toying with me in my shattered and vulnerable state, the gods pissing themselves with laughter, at my expense.
And just when I was thinking of joining the theatre, like fuck now.
I’ll be lucky if I get away alive without being lynched by a mob of righteously indignant girlfriends, the place will be full of them by now.
Hung by the neck with a flycord from the lighting box at a committee meeting.
I text a faraway friend the entire gruesome turn of events, she phones me when I’m home and I get to sob and sob and sniff then curl up in bed and sleep.
Spend Sunday night drifting in and out of a stupor into loathing and bad tv.
Wake four or five times before dawn, disturbed and restless.
It’s the night from hell.
Monday morning, post-show and he’s all I can think about, his face all I can see everywhere.
I’ve looked up his name in the phone book, and his workplace by nine.
I’m not going to contact him.
I’m not.
But I could.
If I wanted.
I could send a carefully encoded fax with my phone number hidden amongst the audit lingo, saying For your Urgent Perusal.
No.
What if he never rang?
Could ring him and leave a casual, undesperate, how-are-you message.
No.
What if its open plan offices and she works there, too?
And hears me leaving the message, the way answerphones work in the movies?
She’d be a better accountant than me, he might like that kind of thing..
Bet he does.
Numbers in straight, well-ordered lines, everything making sense.
There’s just two more questions I want to ask him.
Ok, four more questions I want to ask him.
Half an hour, I just want to see him for half an hour and ask all the essentials as fast as I can.
Is it him? Is he that beautiful girlyboy I’m looking for, him?
Is he wondering too, or was it just my fantastical delusional construct?
Could sit in the car outside his work with a newspaper and cutout eyeholes to find out if she works there, too.
No.
Could find out where he gets his lunch and accidentally be there at the same time.
No.
They’ve got an old silver hatchback, maybe he uses the parking building.
No.
See in fact I don’t get to see him and I don’t get to ask him anything, he is in a flipping relationship and I have to just leave him alone. Cause. Anything else conflicts with my internal ethical code.
But what if this IS the way we meet?
If he really wants to, he can find me. Through Zan, if she’d let him.
But, here’s the kicker, do I want to be with someone who would do that to a girlfriend?
Could I always trust him at the theatre, during a show, working backstage when I (in theory) couldn’t always be there?
I .
Just.
Want.
To. See him.
Can’t sleep, go to bed at ten thirty, still awake at 2.30 having cried myself into a soaking wet catatonic state quietly, I am numb and no longer feel anything but a gnawing sense of unease.
Why would someone who wears a suit and likes things in straight columns love a chaotic whirlwind like me, anyway? And Love?
That’s a very very big word.
I don’t even get a chance to find out. We don’t get to go out a couple of times and see if there’s anything there.. it’s torturous, the not knowing, the maybe never knowing....
Knowing it’s over before it even began.
The night takes forever for morning to come like a concrete bunker and I’m locked in behind a 3 foot thick door.
Tuesday morning is shaped like a nuclear fallout shelter and I am buried inside the sheer tonnage, suffocating alive.
Today I have reason and cold, bare clarity.
No air. No sun. Cold, cement-coloured fluorescent light.
I know today there is no other option than walking away, moving on, forgetting. forgiving. Leaving it alone.
Getting on with it.
(ADDENDUM: With the help of some time and some absinthe, this encounter turned into a bittersweet cartoon book and Anna moved on well, see Cartoon page and click on the link)
