jolie laide: February 2007

jolie laide

I started this when I lived in Brooklyn and struggled for grace in a city that grants moments of beauty and ugliness breathtakingly close to one another. Now I live in a place where things are a different kind of ugly and the beauty is pedestrian. I struggle with that.

2.28.2007

He takes off his knitted cap. His head is steaming in the cold air of the train station, and I watch it curl off into the dark vaulted ceiling.

A girl wedges herself in next to me. Something today has made her pulse quicken, her body temperature rise, whether joy or fear, I can't tell. She smells like a barely tamed animal while she is flipping through The Economist.

The guy across the way is watching her, he has a crush on her tiny nose, her Economist brain, the economical movement of her hands, but he is aging like Art Garfunkel, never handsome and now starting to be painful, and he knows she is out of his league. I'm as close to her as he'll ever get.

2.27.2007

I've been trapped and poked with sticks too much today and now I am one big snarl. I need this run to work out my fury and frustration and if you cowboy up to my flank at a stop sign yo and I'll turn my head and issue a defiant stringy spit onto your quarter panel while looking you right in the face. Squeal past me, tap your brakes threatening to stop and I am not intimidated, I'll flip you off vehemently and scream at your rear window. Come on, I want to see you hit your brakes hard, I want to see you spill out of the driver's side door, I am standing my ground in the middle of the street and I can hear you trying to gauge what you've got on your line. I want to see you come after me, I want to sit back on my heels, find the flaw in your fight and barrel straight through it to the other side. Don't think I know how, just try me. Yeah, I'm a live one, no I'm a radioactive one and when you turn down the next block I want to see you circle back on me, it's a one way street and you'll have to take me from the front. Go ahead, I want you to.

2.26.2007

Up at 4.30 this morning to the sound of scraping snow plows and yelping emergency vehicles. All other noise is dampened by what I don’t want to think about because now I am just praying for the Shovel Fairy to come and dig out my house. I have a full bore dread of this chore, it’s cold and wet and I hate working my way down from the top of the high steps, unnaturally hunched over.

The alarm goes off at 7 and I resignedly go out to do that thing. It’s a thick snow, but wet, and easy to scrape clean to the bottom. The Shovel Fairy hasn’t come to my neighbor’s house either. So I do. I hope they are happy when they go out their doors later on.

More than one of my friends has likened me to Amelie Poulain, I think they like to imagine me imping about creating beauty. But I think it is there for everyone, I just try hard to keep my head up for it, or down, as the case may be.

On yesterday’s run I met up with teenagers dressed like the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Man. Dorothy was a little further down the block, fussing with her shoes, plain black ones, not ready to go back to Kansas yet. The Tin Man was particularly fetching, in silver spandex pants, a silver mylar bomber jacket, and a colander on his head.

A couple of blocks later I ran past our notoriously short, famously rotund Borough President, out for a grand parade around the park, and looking very much like he should catch up to the others and claim his place as the Mayor of Munchkinland.

I keep going, all the way down the length of the park, expecting the Lollipop Guild to launch themselves from over the stone walls. My friends would not be surprised and perhaps, at this point, I wouldn’t be either.

2.25.2007

2.23.2007

The last 24 hours has me jammed up with words that I need to clear off before I can move on. Feel free to imagine where these came from or what they were attached to.

"THE NYC 2007 ELECTRICAL CODE IS HERE!"

"only the slightest eau d'Bible Belt trailer park"

"abuse is like beauty"

"shining like the brightest star, a radio transmission at midnight"

I also found crumpled in my bag, the phone number that man wrote out for me. I see that his hand was shaking, so his name looks like "Christopher Crime." I think I may have met that character before.

2.22.2007

At the Opening

Working 14 hours straight with no dinner and that second gin and tonic is punching me in the back of the head. I don't need any extras but this is New York City baby and more more more is what we serve on a daily basis so it's no surprise to look up from the cab's windows, swerving onto the FDR and there is the rotting hospital for contagious diseases lit up and falling down on Roosevelt Island and there is the Coca Cola sign in Queens and there is the Citibank tower and then another Citibank tower didn't we just see that now here comes the anchoring strings of blue lights on the bridges count them now Queensborough, Williamsburgh, Manhattan, take the Brooklyn, take the Brooklyn from here we can see the far off chain of the Verrazano-Narrows.

This is beauty, yes, god, this is beauty and I want to go running extend this spangle of a night into a blur through and down my beloved streets, offer myself up to hard pavement unlove and there is the moon again tonight clear and with its two horns. Amidst the $1,000 tickets and pin-striped suits I picked an early Marsden Hartley landscape for mine and I did get my head turned by an Edward Weston and who wouldn't, and a pair of Diane Arbus' raw and flat and vicious and impossible. The man who watched me watch a Man Ray saw only a woman who did not mind looking at a nude, not a woman who was looking for the divine and he wants to buy me with his plastic but that's not the currency I take, take my phone number because what do I care you won't remember me when you are sober tomorrow I'm just another thing, but you don't know I'm the thing you can't have.

Driver, turn right here, yes, this is the way home, this is where I live, where I have my secret dreams, where I breathe, where I look at the night sky, where I see stars stars count them until you fall asleep sweet, precious, one. two. three. three. three...bless you all sweethearts and good night.

2.21.2007

The train is crowded this morning but this song makes me smile, makes me close my eyelids to trap bliss inside my head. When I open my eyes I see a little girl in a pink coat doing everything she can to engage her delighted father, touching his nose, then her own, putting her head in his lap, then sitting bolt upright, smiling, smiling, love me, adore me.
I dreamed last night I was being examined for signs of aging. Someone was holding my chin, turning my face from side to side, sighting down my jawline for decrepitude and debauchery. I knew he would find none and I am restless and irritated at the unnecessary incursion. I want to wipe this memory from my head so I run up the subway stairs two at a time, burst into the blue at the top of the dark passageway.
Today it is warm and the sun is so brilliant I grin just to feel it hit my teeth. I spin the wheel on the machine to bring up a song that makes me feel so here, so right now, so joyous, this stretch of sidewalk gets worked over in my head like it's a runway. I stride loose and fast and my coat flies open and flattens itself against my shoulders and yes I will accept you as you are because here I am and we are beautiful here right now on this filthy sidewalk in this winter light in this cracked existence.

2.20.2007

I‘ve got a new soundtrack crashing through my head on tonight’s run. It’s not as harsh and fast as usual, but it is beats with intent. That passion is pulling me along the streets narrowed and rimmed with a collar of stubborn snow, making me juke ice drifts stretch to leap cold stands of water. I am mouthing the lyrics and when they sing love I touch the tip of my tongue to the edge of my front teeth and it is delicious and fierce and I am lit up.

This is the day that once my whelping bitch of a mother spread her legs not to receive my twisted stick of a father but to issue me forth. What my mother had wanted was an abortion, she would tell me, without apology, when I was eleven. By the time I was seven my father had decided I was no longer a worthy investment, making his initial intercession to get me born seem like a simple cruelty waiting to be paid forward.

Tonight my only companion is a fuzzy crescent moon and that is the way I want it. He is rolled over on his back, exposed, and if he had the guts to come down here and face me I would grab him by his horns, wrestle him down, and tear out his belly with my teeth, the same teeth I tap with my tongue when I say the word love.

2.19.2007

The pagans down the street have invited us to a barbeque. Actually, they have invited the whole building. I guess they think they need to conduct a bit of a charm offensive, since the last time they were setting something on fire in their backyard one of the neighbors promptly called the fire department who promptly doused their doings.

The pagans amuse me more than baffle or upset me, but I accept their invitation because I am really curious about pagan hospitality and what pagans eat at a barbeque. Also, I would like to know how they are going to finish the art project they have started on their white micro-bus. It has begun as a bas-relief of the Green Man several months ago, but it doesn’t seem to have progressed very far, and it doesn’t seem very aerodynamic, or able to successfully endure the long distances having a hippie bus suggests they want to travel.

The event is perfectly nice. The pagans show us around their apartment, take us to the back, show us the circle of stones they have planted. They are grilling hot dogs. Their bathroom is a bit, um, mossy for my taste, but I would imagine the pagans might find it downright welcoming.

Afterwards we continue our friendly head-bobs in acknowledgment when we pass on the street. I don’t think too much about them, until spring solstice. Since they have the backyard with the rune stones and the hot dog grill, the big festivities take place there. I am not even aware of the date, until I hear singing coming from the back of the house, random, warming-up kind of singing, single voices, an occasional duets floats up for a minute. Then they get serious, ready to begin the proceedings, and it makes me bark with laughter. They sing “I Got Rhythm.”

2.18.2007

We are standing on the platform waiting for the train. When it comes, the doors open and it's a crapshoot with all of us tumbling into the car like dice. It's late and we are all angling for a seat. I don't want the small disgrace of hustling and jockeying, I'll risk not getting to sit for this ride.

One long bench has one end open and there are three of us left so we slot in. I lose out, I get the least desirable seat, next to the listing hunched man. My other two companions have taken full advantage of sitting first, taking up extravagant amounts of real estate, forcing me right next him.

I take him in with a sideways eye. He is rocking a little, caressing the neck of the bottle between his thighs, sliding the black plastic bodega bag over the screw threads, crinkling. I am trying to be subtle, but he is watching me too. He catches my eye and turns towards me, turns his full face to me.

It doesn't feel confrontational, his face is wide and guileless as a baby's. His mouth is working, he is trying to say something. Through the crash of my headphones I hear "I hate you."

That doesn't match the expression on his face. And maybe because I've just come from teaching a room full of social workers, or maybe because I am looking for a scrap of grace, or maybe because I am simply curious, I make my eyes wide, turn my full face to him in innocence and ask "You hate me?"

His mouth starts to work again, he is making noises in response. He says it over and over, it getting a bit clearer each time, until I understand. He is saying "Behave. Behave. Behave. Behave." And there I see the monsters he keeps on a leash, the wind howling under his skin, the slice of needles in his head.

I could move away, jump up and go to the other side of the train. The people across the way are watching us, uncomfortable, edgy. But I don't want to leave him. I don't want to shame him, reject him, dishonor him and his attempt to simply be. I smile my brightest, most encouraging smile and say "That's good." And we both turn back into ourselves.

It's a long trip, and later he will fall asleep, the grip on the bottle loosening, it falling to the floor and spilling its pungent contents. The rocking of the train, his muscles relaxing will make him occasionally fall against my shoulder before he jerks upright. I don't flinch when this happens, I let it, let him rest his head on me, that is what I can give him, if only for a moment.

2.16.2007

On the train this morning I am walking through a mental gallery. I am calling this exhibition “Awesome Attempts to Attain the Attention/Affection of ttractor.” This show reveals the curator’s aesthetic in a carefully selected group of works, and the pieces reflect a variety of media.

First up: At the end of fifth grade Billy Rankin giving me his 18k gold electroplated scarab ring from the King Tut show at the Chicago Art Museum. He also names one of his fish after me. He has allergies and these are the only pets he can have.

In high school, a gear head Mopar freak taking me to the municipal rose garden for a little trespassing after dark and al fresco dining. He has tucked pots and pans into his engine, and is cooking dinner as we drive, resulting in a perfectly hot soup for starters and an excellent steak for entrée.

The shy, sweet 22 year old virgin giving me glow in the dark dinosaur stickers, whom I have previously mentioned.

The too-young very blond aspiring writer doing his tremendous Michael Jackson impersonation for me in front of all of my friends, several writers of note, and a bunch of unalloyed people who were completely confused as there was no Michael Jackson music playing.

The tape, back when there were tapes, of him playing the accordion. And that would be joyously goofy enough, but he was playing the Patsy Cline hit “Crazy.” Oh how painfully delightful.

The mix download, because that’s how we do these things now, to honor that most irritating of events, Valentine’s Day. In a tremendous bravado turn, it includes a cut from Alice Cooper. The absolute pink icing rosebud on that cake is that it’s “Feed My Frankenstein.” The curator finds this hilarious.

Dinner is at eight, and I am early, so here I am at the bar of a trendy swank restaurant. It’s nice to sit here and write, not worry about all the horse hockey going on around me. Next door is a terrifically awkward first date. On Valentine’s Day, no less, and she is already giving all the signs of a thumbs down, her seat is moved as far away from his as possible and still be in the same zip code. Her purse occupies another chair, she wants to take up as much space as possible and keep everyone away.

There are bowls of candy hearts set out, and when my friend shows up we grab them and shake them like magic eight balls. We each draw out a heart, to read it like a prophesy. Hers is unintelligible, which seems like not a good thing, since it is her birthday. Mine says “angel” which seems perfectly funny.

We are marooned at the bar. The reservation desk has forgotten we are here, despite us consistently reminding them, and when we are finally seated it is an hour past. We are so giddy and relieved to be actually sitting in chairs, with actual menus and the promise of food, that we decide to draw on the paper covering the table. I give her a pen, and, like the plate is a head, she draws a crown on top of it, a crown with winking jewels, fitting, as this is her day. She hands me the pen, and at the top of my plate I draw a jester’s hat with jingle bells. I hand the pen to her, and she starts to make an elaborate monogram alongside her forks. I am anticipating my turn when the antipasti comes.

There was more food than we could possibly eat. There was a man there just for cheese, and you have to know how much I enjoyed that, never mind the way he set his handsome face as he kneaded the mozzarella so intensely, and it was so good and covered in crisps of ham. I lost track of how many dishes we tried to work our way through: wild mushroom crepes with crème fraiche; orichiette with fennel sausage; gnocchi; risotto; charcuterie with toasted garlic bread; and meats so succulent that we could barely do more than roll our eyes and breathe them in.

We are full and we are tiring and we roll into a sleeted salt spattered cab. When she gets out at her apartment, the driver turns and says "Happy birthday! You are beautiful!" and that is how it should be, because everyone should be beautiful on their birthday.

2.14.2007

Lucinda Williams is moaning about making mistakes but I have already gone this morning to pick up my laundry and now I am picking my leisurely way through a hot poached egg on toast and a steaming latte.

On the escalator to work I put my hand on the black rubber rail. It is cranky and jerks my hand upwards in spasms, making my ring flash in the light. The ring will outlive me, I have designed it to be so.

It's time, it's time, it's time. I will talk into the night until my brain has gone slurry but in the morning the questions remain. How much more are you willing to miss? When will you finally forgive yourself? Do you dare to see yourself as you are?

2.13.2007

Dog that I am, I am missing the smells, pent up, pacing. There's Dmitri smoking on the roof, I have not seen him in a while. Everyone seems to have gone to ground. The cold weather and the cold I have been harboring in my sludgy lungs have kept me artificially stilled and now I am ready to chew off my own paw.

Somewhere on my run is a bakery and sometimes the air smells like bread and sometimes the sick sweet of cookies. If I kick the detritus at this curb I might get the rank smell of rotting ginko fruit, foul but evocative of a walk I took down a side street once that marked me indelibly. Here is where the Parks Department mulches each winter, ground up Christmas trees breathing and sighing their pungent last ghosts.

I am missing it, missing it terribly, the nighttime raids of distance, of blurry speed, of drawing this world into my lungs and streaming it out clean.


(this blasted system is not letting me log in except for sporadically. so when it surprises me and does so, I am slapping up any old or not old thing I have on hand. I apologize for the lack of quality control and consistency. feh.)

2.10.2007

More scraps from various pads:

The monster side of the bed. You know the side, the side open to the door, or the window, or closest to the closet. For years I slept on the monster side. I didn't trust him, whoever he was, to do the right thing when the monsters came.

The woman on the train that is so beautiful she transcends her bad make-up. I want to tell her how sublime she is, beg her to scrape the garbage off her lily. But who am I to say anything. In the dim black window of the subway car I see my blurry reflection, clear enough to show the marks under my eyes. This year has aged me so.

The crazy drunk man on the train who turned his face to me, big eyed, guileless as a baby. He was working his mouth, trying so hard to say something, trying over and over. At first I thought he said "I hate you" so I made an I-don't-understand face and asked "You hate me?" and he tried again, and again, finally saying "Behave. Behave. Behave. Behave." Oh, I can hear the sound of his monsters, whistling under his skin, and just like that, from under my own skin, I can hear the sound of my heart cracking.

2.08.2007



On a cold morning, hot buttered toast takes on qualities of the divine. Or, quit looking at your food and eat it already!

2.07.2007

Waiting for the plumber to arrive, I am doing fussy things, pruning the lavendar wintering on the windowsill, stacking the books I have promised to read, filling the old heavy glass milk bottle serving as a water carafe by the bed. I dislodge a piece of paper with my handwriting on it. It says:

The spaces between words
You were never a back-looker,
I always was, greedy for one more
precious image, if only just the
back of your head.

2.06.2007

February was when I first left my parents’ house. My only plan was to escape the beatings. There was no plan of where to stay, no plan to deal with the winter chill. I turned 16 under the hard lights of a late night greasy spoon, spending my last two dollars on a hamburger and getting out of the cold. Old enough to fuck, to work, to drop out of school. I knew that was what was expected of a girl alone, unprotected, unclaimed.

The ice of that winter, of those damaged ambitions, of so many nights in a thin coat and no bed is still conjurable. I am realizing just now, what a shock, it is nearly exactly 25 years later. Something in me must know the anniversary, because standing this morning on the stoop of the house that I own, buttoning my warm coat, I am squint-grinning into the brilliant morning sky.

At the corner there are spatters of blood rusting in the sun. Someone had a bad night, but I did not hear it, tucked into my bed in the room with red walls. I bob my head in greeting to Mr. K with his kufi on underneath his hoodie, sweeping in front of the mosque. The train is coming, I can feel the vibrations in my boots, hear the rumbling through the subway grates. A girl farther up the sidewalk does not want to miss it, she starts to run to the station. She is wearing a red coat and an orange skirt, and as she runs the white skin above her boot tops flashes in the light. I don’t want to run, I don’t need to, I just watch her go with her urgency, with her strong legs, with her bright colors, with how she makes herself beautiful.

2.05.2007

My Goodness
Standing in the dining room of the settlement house, tea steaming from a paper cup in my hands, watching the brilliant light cheer the walls.
I passed that ancient man again on the sidewalk, the one with the enormous dramatic upswept eyebrows.
My friends inviting me to go out more than I possibly ever could, and them being smart and thoughtful and generally awesome.
The ticket to Burning Man that is on its way to me, and the faith I have that made me order two, faith that the arc of my emotional ambition will catch up with me by the end of this summer.
This music that makes me stride, feel the strength in my legs, smile into the chill morning, head out to do what it is that I do.

2.04.2007

This can of baked beans is humiliating me. It has been sitting in my cabinet for over a year, it has probably been in my possession for well over twice that. It came from a man now long gone, a terrifically bad pairing, and this can of something that would never cross my mind to eat is an embarassing testament to how far I would go.

Noone needs to know it is there. I could just not say anything. But it is like the tell-tale heart, beating and radiating in the dark, it's very presence a constant reminder.

OK, enough of this already. I know exactly what to do. To the grocery store. A pound of ground sirloin. An onion. Back at home, combine that with garlic, a half a bottle of ketchup from the same man and era--two birds with one stone there, the last of the coarse ground mustard, finally the dreaded baked beans. Cook it up, serve it on a bed of tortilla chips.

There we go. That is so much better.

2.03.2007

This cold is making me trippy. On the escalator at the train station I lean my head back, perhaps the flourescents will burn me into reality. I feel a door in the back of my head open, and playing cards are flying out, now dominoes, now bumble bees and egg salad sandwiches. At work I put a thumb tack through my index finger. I should be in bed.

I finally wobble to the grocery store, where I can barely understand my check-out lady. I am sure she is speaking English, but it is barking and heavily accented and I am having a hard time mating her words to our transaction. For the first time I notice that each check out lane has a lit numbered sign, lane one has the picture of a peach on it; lane two has strawberries; lane three is a lemon and a lime. I am in the tomato lane.

Now I have slept through the day, rolling and dreaming, waking only to deep evening. The curtains are still open, and the light from my neighbors' windows makes orange squares across the yards. From the window by my bed is the white round moon. Hello, do you remember I was in love with you?

2.01.2007

*I have a terrific cold and Blogger is not letting me log in in any kind of reliable fashion. So, I am fine, but necessarily erratic. Hi CW! Blogger ate your comment!*