Headful of ghosts.

[greedy fly]

Paintings for Paiva.

It was obvious which one was the newer of the two; the one that was still redolent of paint and the spray that was sputtered to keep the colors from bleeding into one another. The newer was made up of really fascinating hearth-reds -- crimson, orange, deep reds, light reds, right down to the pink on the subject's cheeks. Paiva was painted from memory-- but it was just her side profile, and the dark, firelicked hair that doused the side of her face. It was simple in its' message. Her fingers (fore and thumb) were clamped around a candle wick, smoke sizzling through in pastel gray streams. The candle was poised on top of a deep-burgundy table, wax trickling down the sides. The firelady that put out ominous fires.

The second was a creation from a year prior. It was a dark, hollow forrest in the winter. Gnarled, anorexic tree vines, and the ground clotted with multicolored leaves and tiny clumps of melting, glittery snow. It was a more complex scene of two children (it looked as though it were seventeenth century) running around playing hide and seek -- and if one looked close enough, they were a boy and a girl. The boy was wearing a blindfold, counting, and the girl was ducking behind tree bark.

[greedy fly]

Early Sunday afternoon with the solar rays poisoning dialated ink-iris and the crisp winter-ripe air stinging his skin with goosebumps, his barely-functioning, battered teal car pulled up alongside a slate curb on Riverside lane. Solomon Stills had two canvases in his backseat-- one he had painted years ago, and a newer one. It was his intention to show her them, but to do his volunteering as well - the smile just about blinded him and sculpted his mind with persuasion! He almost didn't understand it!

Stepping from his car, his cigarette was flung facefirst into the street asphalt with a jerk of a jacket-swallowed wrist, the heel of his palm jamming the door to puzzle-piece shut. Ascending into the main office, he loitered in position for a moment until someone finally questioned why he was here. The first thing that he wanted to inquire was whether or not Paiva was there. But instead, a whole different thing fumbled from a haunting tongue.

"I came to volunteer."

[greedy fly]

Solomon Stills.

Journal.
December 3rd.

Lately.

I've just been kissed by a syrupy sweet mouth, that tasted of the perfect blend; honeysuckle and Mary Jane. All of the purity in it was lost, all and every doubt left behind.

Lately, I've been feeling bewitched. I can't get her out of my mind, the vowels hang off my tongue when my car stalls in front of her doorway when I drop her off (reluctantly, I might add.) I go home, I shed my clothes, I get into bed, and I fall asleep, still thinking of her.

Tonight we were quiet. Some of our conversations have been raw, with real emotion shining through. Tonight we smoked, we kissed, and she told me that she needed a couple of days to think about this. About us. I can't say I understand-- because, I don't. I don't see how another person can interfere with what Paiva and I could be so much.

But, all I can do is wait.

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<font color="#EE0000" size="1">[ March 25, 2005 01:51 AM: Message edited by: softcore jukebox ]</font>

[greedy fly]

"You know what I'd like? I'd like to come up here on a sweltering summer night, with you in an armless chair and me in some nostalgic, see through, sleeves summer dress. I'd like to kiss you senseless then ride you with our hands clasped tight, until the stars heard you whisper my name. That's what I'd like."

Seated indian-style (legs as elastic as hers when they haloed his laboring hips) in the shadowed alcove of his room, brushstrokes frolicked in vein-severed red shades, dipped idly in a jar of art store paint. The suede layer and subtle ripples of his body was lounging in nothing but bleach-spat straining, navy jeans, as the last whimpers of sun drifted into dusk's open womb and painted him in winter tangerines and fading pinks. Urban symphonies were blurred by the frosty ripples that chased chill-plagues over his skin. His forehead lolled against the wall, just above the words he had for the most part, memorized. Right above the floor, he kept their secret, without naming the author.

Scrawled sideways with huge dots:

I'd like to come up here on a summer night, with you in an armless chair, me in some nostalgic summer dress. I'd kiss you, and then ride you with our hands clasped tight, until the stars heard you whisper my name.

[greedy fly]

The end of a short-lived fairytale:

Drunken slurs littered her answering machine at four AM.

"So wot is it? Yew were cheating on me with him? Your heart really belongs to him? Is that it? After ... after those things, yew fucking said...to me..the pretty things yew whispered in my ...ear..the way yew asked me to spend Christmas with yew with stars in your eyes. Fine. Just fine. You're not the first gurl to do this to me, and probably not the last. I knew this was coming. I know that if I go out for a weekend to find a nice present for yew you're going to leave me. I was walking on fucking shells. Fuck it. I gave your cat away to some random fucking bloke at the tavern. Jonny said to me..he said: 'do yew think you're the first person Paiva has ditched, Sol?'" After rambling ninety-miles-per-hour, he picked up where he left off. "I .. I don't know where I'm getting ...at..I..fuck..this... never had anyone make me cookies before.." The machine promptly chimed a beat, murdering the pacing bass of his accent.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

At first when he found the cookies, he was angry---completely rioting on his way to his car. But the drive placated him, and saddened him, mellowed and diluted his red rage before he pulled up on Avondale, and slammed the door briskly behind him. He stood in clumps of dirty snow, and canted his head back at her building like he did that one day. A palm cupped the side of his mouth for a makeshift megaphone, tongue lashing information to the whole neighborhood because he couldn't speak to her machine, and he couldn't to do her door.

"How can yew say yew were going to write me songs and sing to me, and watched the stars? How are yew going to say that when yew broke up with me! A little over one week before Christmas! Christ--" He started to place like a caged lion, tremoring in his t-shirt and jeans.

"Wot was I supposed to think? I get sick when yew get that serious tone with me, because you've done it to me twice before! Hear that? Twice. Both times it was yew trying to cut your ties with me over another man. Yew said 'yew couldn't do this to me anymore?' Wot the fuck is that supposed to mean? Yew can't keep hurting me? Wot was I supposed to think?"

A bewildered stare fixated at him from another window as the morning's dew settled on anorexic tree limbs--but it wasn't hers', so he didn't concern himself with it.

"Don't break up with me and tell me that you're going to fucking do those things, Paiva! To rub it in a sore fucking wound! Yew did this, not me! I treated yew as well as I knew how, I tried really fucking hard to be good to yew! And this comes back in my face?!"

He was referring to the cookie of course, that were in his front seat.

"So wot now? Are yew happy now that yew don't have me fucking haggling yew? Is that it? Yew think just because yew have me wrapped around your finger that yew can---"

--"Shut up!"

"I will come over ther--" Solomon butchered his threat, and kept pleading to her.

"Break up with me, and then say yew were going to do all these pretty things? Then take it back and say 'fuck yew' to me?!"

Outstretched arms collapsed to his side, bluntly, dangling there.

"Well, yew can. Paiva, fucking come downstairs, I know you're home." By now his voice had creaked into a swollen, sandpaper-raspy vocal grind, saline lacquering his eyes. "I don't like feeling this way, yew know..." Did anyone? "I don't like knowing that soon you'll be okay, and you'll be back with him, and that this is for the better for yew, when I fucking tried. I don't like knowing that for a couple of weeks I was living for yew, and smiling, and I was alive, I could feel my heart in my throat again and I had something to look forward to. Yew made me believe in Christmas, and now even that's dead. Yew even took that away from me."

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ October 11, 2004 02:43 PM: Message edited by: so pass? ]</font>

[greedy fly]

Ressurrecting the past ---
9 days until Christmas and counting.


Devil is stoned;
he's making friends.

Winter buzzed past his cheeks in sloshy street sirens and the spray of icicle-murky puddle water that stained his jean cuffs when speeding cars passed on the urban strip. Doused in his black, eyebrow-brimming beanie and mangled chocolate/copper ringlets, his nose was red, his cheeks hollow, his cigarette earthquaking in Mary Jane-vicing fingers. Swirling snowflake nicotine kisses outside of the restaurant, he watched the traffic through a deadbeat visual screening.

Darkness had already took its toll and took the whimpering daylight by its chained grip, sullying the sky with a vivid noir black. His livid stare puddled on the squalid gutter, black-hugged legs shifting from side to side, in a wary-choreographed sway.

He was waiting.

Just waiting. Warren called him back, and he promised to pick him up. He said he wrapped presents for himself and pretended they were from other people. Solomon told him they could go to their special place like they used to and stare at everyone else's windows and admire their Christmas trees and call them fools.

Waiting for love and war.


"I turned twenty."
"I turned twenty-four. I should give you twenty kisses for each year you aged, and thousands of tongue-strokes for every day you breathed."

[greedy fly]

Solomon Stills.

Journal.
8 Days before Christmas and counting.

This is entry is bound to be a tangled mess, but without explaining anything, I need to let these things pour out. It's about the people I know, and the people I semi-know. It's about where I am in my life right now. It's a dead end with bright streets on the other side, and another twenty-four years of branch-pricking thicket.

I found myself speaking with the "enemy" today. For some reason, there's an unspoken wire of respect between Jonny Rockefellar and I. It's because I know he's a man, and as much as we both hate to admit it, I am too. His boyfriend, on the other hand doesn't seem to have a mind of his own. And I wanted to tell him how pathetic he was for talking about Paiva and calling her useless and a liar when he was just giving her a present the other day and talking amiably to her. Obviously, he's just trying to take Jonny's side on an otherwise moot argument. If I hear him say another thing about her, I swear I'll hurt him. Nobody should ever talk about her like that. No one. Especially a pathetic waste of sperm like him. But, anyway. That's that.

Another thing on my mind, that's been haunting me was what happened yesterday. I went to tell Jude the news---the news---the news.. Christ, the news. Warren and I. We're going to try that reconciliation thing. I'm the battered puppy and he's the scorned one, I keep coming back for more even if I hurt him. But more on that later. I told Jude and Jude freaked out. It was as though his dreams had died, and I realised right then, that he had some surreal scenario lingering in the back of his mind that he knew wouldn't happen now. He thought that someday, somehow, despite the fact he has two children and a wife he loves very much that we'd get back together. He told himself that. I think that was how he got through everyday. But, I oblirated his fantasy, severed it in half and made him so upset that we were slamming eachother in brick walls and screaming--and calling eachother "cunts." He thinks he has no competition with my female lovers, but he doesn't want me with a man cos he's afraid I'll love that man more. Cos secretly inside, he wants the one to take care of me, when he knows that Warren is well off, that Warren has everything he had, except the poison in his veins and the rage. I honestly, don't need anyone to take care of me. I'm not nineteen anymore, and it's true, Warren's younger than me, but...

So Warren. It happened because I was so upset with Paiva that I called him to come and coax me. Well, he did. He came to pick me up, and we drove so fucking far that right now we're in rural fucking Pennsylvania. We drove until the night was too cold, and our lids were heavy, and we've been using eachother as flesh blankets for the past hour in his backseat. He's sleeping, angel-twitching behind his eyelids, and I'm writing. I knew to bring my notebook with me on the way, because I knew I'd be seriously inspired. He always comes back. I'm such an asshole to him, I always leave him, over and over again, but still. This boy comes back cos he loves me with some amplified passion that I can barely even comprehend. He's faithful.

That's when I had a revelation, his chin was quivering, tears were streaking his cheeks, and I knew. I knew that every male companion I've ever had (okay, that's two...) Jude and Warren always loved me, even if Jude couldn't show it. They both were faithful, and I left them. I always left them. But girls only leave me. I never leave them. That says something: are they really good for me at this point? I know I can't renounce women forever, I'm barely bisexual when it comes to men--but I found that with a lot of love and a lot of belief, there is a lot of pleasure. Sometimes, even moreso than there is with a woman. I know I can trust them. I know they live for me. And women are different, they lie to me, they mangle my heart, they beat things into my brain, they call me a whore and they leave me behind. They drive me to drink, to suicide, to clawing at asylum walls, and writing about them for hours and hours. And for what? For petite bone structures, batting eyelashes, pretty voices, and ....submission.

Well, fuck that. It's not worth it to me right now. Warren is a ghost with two syllables, he's so fucking far into his religion that he clutches his legs until they're pale because he knows he's defying it for being who he is. He's gay, and it's no surprise. I'm the only person he's ever loved, and all he wants to do is be with me. With me. Isn't that hard to believe? That someone would sacrifice everything to be with some starving artist, pushing, drug-abusing lush like me? But, at the same time it's credible because of the passionate times we had. We even started on a foundation of pure passion---no friendship, no tripping into it.

Warren found me when I was sick. When cocaine ruled my life, and my eyes were bloodshot and my smiles harlot-sly. Our first meeting was angsty. Quinn knew I needed money and she knew Warren from beforehand and told him that if he needed a model (for some project he was doing for the local gallery) he should've give me a call. So, I came over completely blind. I let him take those artsy fucking photographs of me, clothes off, body contorted in those pliable ways I can move. He was fucking tearing at his hair and sweating. I knew he had it for me, and I just kept manipulating him to the very end. Something happened, we got into some sort of spat (which is very rare with Warren--the pacifist, but I'm a Scorpio, and he can barely extinguish me) and he threw five-hundred dollars at me for the photography session.

Somehow, some way or another, he found me. Strung up behind my work, on a cigarette break, coming down. I was so sick and nauseated that I could barely stand up straight. I hadn't slept for at least four days. I ended up at his apartment, in his bed and he fell asleep in the rocking chair across from it. Before I knew it, as soon as I woke up, there were our mouths--our hands--our hearts. And suddenly we were together.

This is the third time in the past year that we've tried to get back together and to ressurrect this. I don't know if I'm quite over Paiva, but I know that with him breathing like this next to me, she almost doesn't exist. She's been put in the back of my mind for a reason. Now she's free to love Meesha, and now I don't have to suffer.

All's unfair in love and war.

<font color="#060101" size="1">[ April 02, 2004 08:45 PM: Message edited by: electroshock ]</font>

[greedy fly]

Solomon Stills.

Journal. 12/26

Christmas morning was just what I needed to wake up to. Even if she was strung across my couch, swathed with a blanket, I was so happy to see her, and I must've paced by her for at least an hour before she finally woke up and I made her breakfast. I drove her home so we could spend our days alone like strangers.

Her. She's definitely very new, and I haven't had time to write about her because I've been busy lately. Her name is Ginger Salvador, and she's from Las Cruces, she has red lips and skin that's darker than mine, and I had to burrow all of her Mexican recipes. Gorgeous is hardly the word to describe her. She's so lovely, and funny, and sweet.. she talks to fashion magazines and asks for my opinions, and on top of it all she's being my subject for a painting that's probably going to have multi sittings. She doesn't seem to mind posing for me--in fact, she likes it. It's nice to find someone who genuinely appreciates art to the extent that she, herself, is a designer and a photographer. Today I'm going to see her again, to get down a little more.

I visited Quinn on Christmas, I bought her some clothes (and this time, I think she liked it) and she well .. she bought me a dress as a joke. I love her to death, but does she really think I'm going to wear a dress for her? Jude was next. Alice knitted me a scarf and insisted on buying me new jeans.. and that scarf---I just don't know. Then, Jude got mad at me for buying the twins toys when they were already up to their necks in it, but we ate dinner in peace, with Emily in my lap and Mia in Alice's --leaning over to hit her dad every so often.

Then, I came home, watched some old movies on the TV, and fell asleep there. I guess I didn't mind it as much as I thought I would. I wasn't really lonely at all.

I wonder if Paiva's spending it happily.

[greedy fly]

"Ginger, baby," his accent was muffled, and slurred together, liquor-lathered.

"I'm not going to be around for a little, a few days, maybe longer. I'll call yew when I have time, alright? I'll explain it all, I promise. My friend's in trouble, I need to go help out."

He was desperate, choked and obviously upset, there was something raspy and pacing in his tone.

"I'll miss yew. And I promise we'll finish that painting together, and yew can take all the pictures yew want. Of me, of the painting, of my walls, of everything--then we'll go to that warehouse I told yew about. I promise."

[greedy fly]

With the twins deposited with a very worried Aunty Kate, Judas was tooling in his car towards Solomon's apartment. He wanted to get to New York and he wanted to get there now, which was why he had called Solomon and told him to be ready in twenty minutes for an overnight fucking trip. Rather than take the time to go up the stairs and into his apartment, he was just leaning on the horn something fierce. He was smoking his fourth cigarette in an hour, waiting impatiently, the money from the Red Room account tucked nicely in the backseat, duffelled up in a bag like it had been described. Jesus.

Solomon rummaged down the stairs, battling the cold with a thin hoodie and a woolen beanie guising still-moist ringlets. He was in the process of tucking his wallet into his backpocket as he merged unto the slum sidewalk, twitching open the door, gliding inside with a drip of his lean body.

" ..There are fucking men watching me."

Solomon slid inside and Jude just grinned at him.

"You too? There are men outside of Kate's apartment watching my kids.. plus, there are men in that town car behind us that will follow us all the fucking way to New York."

"Fuck off," he sighed, quivering fingers borrowing into his hoodie to shakily extract a Marlboro, using Jude's car lighter to mash flame, before slicing it in again.

"Did yew get to talk to her?" He pivoted in his seat to toss a defiant, black-chipped middle finger at the back window.

"CUNTS!" Leave it up to Solomon. Anyway.

"That seems simple enough."

"Seems. But we'll see." He had stuck the pistol in the back of the car, lodged next to ammunition--empty, but maybe it wouldn't be for long.

"Knock it off, Solomon.."

"I'm sorry," he composed himself to the best of his ability, through impatient cigarette drags, ashing out the window, a frigid breeze misting them.

"Yeah, I talked to her. She's alright.. I just told her to give them what they want, to not put up a fight.. I'll take care of whatever they fuck up." Money, identity, college funds.

"Good. Yew should've had Quinn watch the kids, not Kate. Yew shouldn't have dragged Kate into this, it's not good for her-- plus she has windows. Quinn doesn't."

"You think windows are gonna stop these guys? You'd rather have them in Quinn's apartment than sitting outside of Kate's? She'll be fine. I gave her money, told her to take the day off tomorrow.. she'll survive." Jude didn't want to be critiqued right now, he just wanted to fucking do this the way it had to be done, and get Alice home as quickly as possible.

"They'd be just outside the building like they are right now. I bet they're right out-fucking-side of Kates, so yes, that's wot I prefer."

"Well, it's not what I prefer, and they're at Kate's, so that's how it is, okay?" Don't fucking question him, he couldn't take it right now. "Since when were you so fucking concerned? Either way my kids are in fucking danger."

"Fuck yew, prick. I care about Kate." And now the car-ride was shifting into turmoil. "Yeh, Judas. Good fucking job, man."

"Well, yew just fucking made it about Kate by snapping that fucking cheeky comment!"

Solomon whipped a glance to the rearview, and then accusingly over to Jude, trying to tranquilize the notches of his own rising voice.

"Yes, my schedule. You're disturbing my fucking schedule, that's it. No, you're not disturbing my schedule, twat. Alice is. Alice is. Not yew. I'm doing this for Alice." Did someone resent someone for stealing money? Oh, yes, yes they did.

"Jesus.. fucking Christ, I can't believe you.. I can't fucking believe you." He was going to pull over and shove Solomon onto the sidewalk in two fucking seconds. Resent? Of course. Because no one ever let anything that Judas did in his past just go. Everyone hung onto every last little mistake and threw it in his face.. except Alice. Alice never did that to him, and that was why he was so fucking remorseful.

"Then shut up and do it, and if you have any better ideas, feel fucking free to share."

The rest of the car ride was spent in nothing but a flatline of silence. Solomon's knuckles temporarily scarred with the consistent gnawing, almost half of his pack wasted away, Jersey turnpiked out the window.