Blunt Trauma

It’s that tone you take with me.

As if I am a telemarketer or

Your bloated cousin. 

I can stop talking if you want. 

Let the quietness drown out the pretention

And in the transparent lull

I can fully perceive

How empty your heart is..  

Color BLIND

I am white. 

If that made you cringe,

Then you won’t hear my voice

That is as inflamed, violent, as subdued and

Melancholy as yours. 

Just like you,

I traveled over flammable mounds of garbage,

In impenetrable alleyways.  I have heard the howls of

hopelessness and felt the impregnable void of loneliness. 

I too moved in a world constructed only for somebody else

and learned to navigate the darkness. 

Except,

I’m not really white.

Are you still listening? 

I am African. I am Latina.  I am Eskimo, Polynesian, Chinese, Mulatto,

I AM.

All of you.  

I’m a mistake cloaked in compassion,

I linger in your hallways, inhale your musky scent;

Cigarettes and oil;

I swallow your leftovers and amble in your stilted shadows;

Your anointed nymph, forever waiting

For your recovery.

But she waits too, with needles and tar.

A spineless debutante, caressing you with necrosis  

Replete with corpulent tranquilizers,

Unconditional numbness and love.

She’s a lumbering beast

With a fistful of pills and rancor.

And I understand

Why you choose her.       

In my homelessness, I have made another bad, but desperate, choice.  I ended up staying with Adam for a few days.  He went to jail (again) and when he got out, he needed help, so I said I would help him.  I paid for the registration for his car and got insurance on it.  Then, somehow, I ended up staying there for about 5 days.  And some of it was nice and the rest was absolute pain.  That type of pain that aches like an ulcer in your chest and makes you cry.  He doesn't come around me, ignores me, sometimes acts like I am just a nuisance actually, makes me feel very very bad about myself.  And last night I was there and I was helping him with a job interview for the next day and while we were on the computer a message pops up from the LADY IN THE SKY Alexis.  What does he do?  He shuts off the computer so i can't read anything and no we are not together and no it shouldn't even bother me but it did.  Very much.  So much I couldn't sleep.  I started thinking about how much he never even speaks to me unless he has to and is not attracted to me anymore and that ulcer pain just comes and overwhelms me.  I just thought over and over "you have to get out of here.  You just have to leave."  But if felt stupid really because I had nowhere to go.  Around 2:30 in the morning, I just picked up my stuff and left.  And he saw me leave through the window and I haven't heard a word from him which is just what I expected and in so many ways I just feel better.  I slept in my car in a couple of different parking lots and cried a lot and thought about that bridge by the Gateway center that lets you stand on the rails and how easy that would be, just to fall straight into the ground and not feel this terrible emptiness anymore.  At one point, I did fall asleep and when I woke up a half hour later, I thought "I feel so much better now.  So much better."  And then for some reason the pain hit me even harder all at once and I cried until my cheeks hurt and that chest ache surges with cries like that.  So I just stayed there and then when it was 7:45 I went to work thinking that it's not that I really want to be dead, I just don't wan to be alive.
And that is what Adam does to me.  Every.  Single.  Time.  

Here I go again, in the hopes that no one I know is actually reading any of this.  I just need a place to go to spill out all of this bad stuff.  This weekend was horrible.  I had no money and had Max with me and on Friday I had bought Max food but by Friday night my brother had eaten it all.  So this weekend, and in truth, I can barely remember the weekend, only that it was full of a lot of sleeping and hunger.  And poor Max, poor Max.  I did make sure he had something, but in thinking back I am not even 100% sure of anything I did at all.  We went camping with Andellyn and her boyfriend.  I remember that.  Just a fire pit and marshmallows and Max did like that because he wanted to go again.  But other than that, I just did nothing.  Yesterday I didn't have enough gas to get to work and so was going to take the train...but I missed the train by about one minute and I brilliantly just decided not to go to work at all.  And I slept in my car all day.  I mean all day.  At one point I used what was left in my checking account; $1.76 and bought a bean burrito and coke.  And then I slept some more.  My whole body hurts today from head to toe.  But I went home and my brother and sister in law had managed to come up with food somehow and they fed Max but I was mad because I had bought him food that should have lasted.  It doesn't matter.  I went home last night and took a sleeping pill and couldn't sleep.  Was awake all night and aching and was on that couch with Max and what would I do without Max...but I think I am depressed, know that I am because I just don't care much about anything at all.  Everything is getting to me, every little mistake and I am afraid every time I leave, even just to the bathroom, because my boss gets upset when I leave and I hate this job actually.  And I find very little enjoyment in it, but then that applies to almost everything right now.  My stomach hurts again but if I leave, if I leave, my boss will know.  The last time I did I came back and she was standing over my desk.  Just while I went to the bathroom because my stomach is a mess.  My head is a mess.  I thought I had already hit rock bottom, I did hit rock bottom, and this is just another bottom not quite as close as the other bottom.  But worse than at other times, is that I have no real friends.  Kurt was my friend and he is the very one who put me in this place this time.

I know I should try to write on this blog when things are maybe not so horribly bad but the only time I feel like writing, like really writing about my life, is when things are horribly bad.  Today I am feeling low.  Desperate low.  I am homeless right now.  Kurt and I got into a big fight and he said that he wanted me out of "his" house (can I capitalize, italicize, cap and bold the word "HIS" because that's what he did during our argument).  He said his son was coming into town and he didn't want him sleeping on the floor, you know, the floor where Holden has been sleeping for the last nine months.  And that his son said that HIS house was too crowded and a bunch of other stuff.  Ultimately in the argument Kurt called my mother a dumbass alcoholic, my father a drug using loser and my sister a total whacko.  And even if all those things are true, he should not have said them.  I did not at any time insult him personally or talk about his family. I did, however, throw my diet coke in his face (I still gush when I think about that.  That was lovely).

Last Thursday I moved my stuff out then drove my Mia and Holden to Arizona to stay with my family.  Eric is with his dad and then there is the nightmare of Adam which is too much to go into right now (but Alexis basically kidnapped Max on his birthday and Adam was high on oxy.  Great day!)  So, when I got back from Arizona I had no where to go.  I had Michael with me and my dad hates Michael so he wouldn't' take him.  So we drove around to about 5 parks, Michael, Max and me, and it was a very difficult day.  Michael ended up going with his dad and I went to my brothers.  It's been hard.  I cant' really take a shower and I can't shave my legs and I am taking pills so that I can sleep.  Then this morning on the way to work a giant rock hit my windshield and my windshield is shattered.  And i am broke. And scared.  And homeless and sad and then my boss said that i was dressed inappropriately today.  Michael keeps sending me texts about how he is crying himself to sleep every single night.

I keep hoping things will get better and for a moment they do.  And then it comes crashing back down. Today I have those bad feelings, the ones that seem to bury me deep.  The worst thing about it is that there is so little, so absolute little, I can do.  I know things have been worse, but not much worse.  Maybe not worse.
Most importantly, I HATE KURT.  I will never, not ever, speak to him again.  And if it happens that I have to, certainly I will never fake the pretense that I am with him, care about him or respect him.  He has been telling me for the last five months that he doesn't have enough money for toilet paper.  For nothing.  But when I stopped by there on my way back from Arizona, his cupboards were full of food.  He had everything.  He is a liar. And to think that he still wanted us to be together, to date, saying he loved me and I was family.  To be fair, I never loved him and I have always known that.  

I was working in the library, checking in a book about Lou Gehrig, thinking about how I would never read a book about Lou Gehrig, when a man leaned over, nearly touching my ear with his lips. 

“Did you know that a pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes?”  I jerked up quickly, almost hitting my head on the man’s chin.  He was about 40 years old, dark green eyes and stood looking at me with a half-cocked grin. 

“Oh yeah?  And how long does a horse’s last?”  I asked the man.  He laughs.  I know I should be offended, I should leave or call somebody but he is funny and peculiarly brave and I can’t walk away from that.   

“I’m Joe.  You’re new here?” 

“Yes, I’m new.”  He studies me for a second and then just walks away.  I stand there, watching him walk away, not sure what all that was about and why it ended so quickly.  He is tall, but not too tall, with the soft slouch of a bookish man.  He reminds me of a brooding tree, really.  I would have forgotten him except later that day I receive an email from him.  “Meet me upstairs, row three, by the Middle English poetry.”  I quickly get up, smooth my skirt down and head up the stairs.  He is there, pretending to look at books.  He picks up a volume of poetry and begins reading.  He has seen me, I can tell, and a grin spreads over his face.  Unsure of what do, I decide to walk over to him and as I get closer he puts the book down and faces me directly. 

“I know where there’s an unoccupied room.  Are you interested?” 

“Of course I am.”  We head to a small room in the back, the repository room.  He has keys and unbolts the door.  I see a ring on his hand, but I had already known he was married.  People like us, always searching for lovers that we never want to commit to, can spot each other easily.  As easily as we can spot the people that would wantonly burn adulterers at the stake.  He grabs my hand and leads me to the back, down the long bookshelves where old alumni newspapers and photos of people wearing graduation gowns and caps were collecting dust.  We stop at the end of the row and Joe puts his hand up my skirt. 

I saw him regularly after that, about three times a week.  It was often the same routine, but in various rooms and buildings.  The book binding room is small concrete room with a hard, egg white table.  We were in there one night, both of us with our clothes off and we hear the doorknob jiggle and then keys being pulled out.  We both scrambled to put out clothes back on and by the time the woman figured out the lock and opened the door, we were sitting at the table with a couple of books in our laps.  “What are you two doing in here?” She asks and Joe looks at her as though she were stupid.  “We are binding books is what we’re doing.”  She briskly turned around and left and we both laughed until tears ran down our face. 

I wondered if I loved Joe, but really, I knew I didn’t.  He was good to pass the time with and good for ebbing my furious, daily, anxiety, but most of my feelings were confined to the rooms we spent our time in.  I knew people were looking at us and that the old women in the break room had lengthy discussions regarding our nefarious looks at each other.  Everyone knew but nobody knew for sure until the Christmas dinner.  It was a company potluck and Joe and I sat together with a few higher ups right across from us.  I had a big spoonful of pasta salad on my spoon and Joe took his fork and knocked the pasta off my spoon.  He laughed at this, but I was stunned and irritated.  Our boss looks over at us and while Joe continues laughing and spoons pudding into his mouth.   She watches me carefully and her lip twitches. 

Joe quickly ate his dinner and just before leaving pinches my thigh under the table. I know this means that he wants me to come to his office in a few minutes.  After he leaves, I eat dainty spoonfuls of company contrived vanilla pudding and tried to make small talk with the other co-workers around me but no one, at this point, was much interested in making conversation with me.  I am used to this, actually.  Always the office tramp, the spurned outcast.  Forever the lover, never the loved. 

I leave as soon as I figure no one is thinking about us anymore.  I go to Joe’s office, knock on his door, and he opens it wearing no pants.  I walk in and quickly shut the door.  “Joe what are you doing?  There are people everywhere?”  But he takes me in his arms and it isn’t long before we are laying on his grainy, threadbare and abrasive office couch that I despise. 

We are naked again and much less alert that usual.  We weren’t ready for any interruptions when it happened.  We hear someone jiggle the doorknob and then hear them go for their keys.  We scramble to get our clothes on but whoever it is, is too fast.  I am shirtless and dart under Joe’s desk.  Joe stands up, his pants were on, but not his shirt, and faces the two old ladies standing open-mouthed at his door.  “What do you two think you’re doing charging into my office like that?” The two old ladies mumble something about a scheduled delivery and they are very sorry and they both back out, one pulling the door closed behind her.   

“Come on out.”  He says to me.  I come out from under the desk, knowing that one of the old ladies at the door was the boss’s executive secretary.  We are done for.    

“She will know it’s me!”  I say.  I am exceeding anxious.   

“No, she’ll think it’s my wife.  She has dark hair like you.”  I later learned that his wife was more than 100 lbs heavier than me with short hair, but I let myself believe him.  I had no other choice. 

Surprisingly, the most that came out of being discovered were office rumors copious contemptuous glares and deliberate whispers.  I stopped seeing Joe for a couple of weeks and we avoided each other in the hallways.  He would walk past me and all I would get from him were looks from the corner of his eyes.  I also started seeing a new girl come around.  She wore tight red dresses, heels and loose buns.  She would go to Joe’s office, shut the door and bumble around about some important budget issues they needed to discuss to anyone passing by.   She often tried to make eye contact with me, but I made sure I was always sifting through papers when I passed her. 

Finn is the computer technician for the library and mostly works in the basement of the building but comes up a few times a day to check for problems and update software.  He is tall, auburn hair and handsome.  The girls at the desk all gawk at him.  I overhear one say “He’s dreamy.”  Yes, dreamy. 

He is much younger than I am and lacks the charm of the older, practiced man.  When we talk it is awkward and abbreviated.  He searches for clever things to say and always falls short.   I watch him a lot, watch him carry computer monitors up to the third floor and boxes of books to the cataloging room.  His untucked shirt billows when he walks and as a nervous habit, he tucks his hair behind his ears when he thinks someone is looking at him.  Usually he never looks around, keeps his eyes straight ahead.  I imagine it’s because people are always looking at him and to do anything but look ahead might risk uncomfortable eye contact.  We talk very little but suddenly I find myself searching for his scent when we are in the same room together or he passes me in the hallway.