-
<center>We thought we left possession behind
But the truth is I am yours
And you are mine</center>
Everyone says morning creeps in, but they're lying. Every author or songwriter who uses that phrase has never been in this position. Morning is a policeman's flashlight in the driver's side window of your car, after a night of drinking and excitement and fucking madly in the backseat, parked in an empty parking lot on the coast somewhere. Morning is a warning flare, a comet blast. It doesn't slither in and warm one up. It cracks you in the back of the head with a beer bottle and starts a brawl. Idiots.
Most of the time, when Michael's asleep, he's partially awake. Or it least it seems like that. If I slip myself against him at some angle, he'll reciprocate and drag me in further, or tangle his hand in my hair. He moves when I want him to. He gives me more blanket when I tug. He accomodates me, even when he's unconscious. It's flattering, but I just take it all in stride. Of course he would. Of course I get what I want. I'm most important. I'm on the top of his list. I mean the most. I'm the one thing he can't live without.
My body is on a timer, and I wake up long before my alarm goes off. I never hear it. Instead, I lean over and switch it off, so that when it is time for me to wake up, Michael isn't shocked into morning with me. While I fight with the light that streams in from behind drawn curtains, I trace out the usual morning pattern. Over shoulders and arms, across stomach and an expanding ribcage, across the cleft of shocking hips, and back up. I groan and creak and stretch out, and everything smells like laundry and skin and familiarity. Here, I feel most comfortable. Here, I feel most at home. Here, between the space of his shoulder and neck, I feel the most okay.
Reluctantly, I have to get out of bed. I pull myself to a crooked stand and search my closet for clothes. Oddly enough, or maybe not oddly at all, I pluck out something pale pink, and the pair of pants I love most, the pair that fits perfectly with no need for a belt, though wearing one makes for good form. I steal one of Michael's off of it's hook and hope that it wasn't the one he wanted to wear today.
In the bathroom, everything is white and pristine. I actually remember to throw my pajamas into the hamper instead of leaving them pooled on the floor, and, in some vain show of my absorbed self-obsession, I peer at my face in the mirror. What stares back is very much me, but something looks off. In an attempt to remedy this issue, I tear hands at my hair and mash it into place, I pry fingers at my cheeks and the corners of my mouth. I furrow my brows and search for wrinkles that I know won't show up for another ten years. I crease my eyes. There it is again. I widen them. It's bigger now.
The eyes that stare back at me aren't mine.
Of course they're mine. I mean, they're in my head, I'm the one seeing through them, but they're not the eyes I'm used to looking through. Instead of the green and brown flecks that I'm used to, something irresistably clear stares back at me. It's like someone took out all the brown and left me with the rest. A pretty, glimmering lake green. These are not my eyes. They look more like..
"What the fuck.." I grumble, leaning in closer and flicking on the light. I pry my eyes wide and stare directly in, searching for some sign. I'm used to this. My eyes change color rather frequently. If I wear something with sharp color, they'll be greener than brown, or if I wear something drab, they turn to a muddy brownish color. If the weather is rainy, they go undeniably gray. But they've never been this bright before. This is unusual. Maybe the cloudy periphery I imagined last night wasn't so much a shock as it was an omen.
I'm getting cataracts. I'm going blind.
Well fuck me.
After my shower, I pick up a pen and paper and scrawl a note to Michael on it.
Michael,
Can you make an optometrist's appt. for me while I'm at the studio? The sooner/earlier in the day the better. I'm going blind. Will explain later. Have a good day. I'll be thinking of you naked.
Love,
Harlen
<font color="#000000" size="1">[ August 08, 2005 07:16 PM: Message edited by: godawful champagne ]</font>
-
<center>http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...hiteblue06.jpg</center>
One.
Full Name: Harlen Andrew Prior. The scion of an ancient line.
Goes by: Harlen.
Current location: New York, New York. Paris, France, when I'm not here.
Description: An empty flat, with half-moon windows and a collection of support columns. Expensive.
Occupation: Pianist, songwriter, knockabout, general genius.
Current age: 26.
Date of birth: May 5th, 1979.
Birthplace: Paris, France. Parents were on holiday.
Name(s), age(s), and occupation(s) of parent(s):
Dr. Harlen Prior, deceased, surgeon/heir.
Anna Prior, deceased, painter/musician.
Name(s), age(s), and occupation(s) of sibling(s):
None.
Height: 5'11"
Weight: 150-something.
Hair color: Brown.
Eye color: Green, because I am going blind.
Left-, right-handed, or ambidextrous: Ambidexterous. Comes in handy when forging signatures.
Heritage/Nationality: Greek/French.
Religion: It's complicated.
Education:
Diploma from Deerfield Academy.
BA in Classical Piano Performance and Music Composition from Brown University.
Marital status: Making calls and booking ice sculptures.
Children: Are like tiny people.
Two.
Likes: Opera, music, literature, debate, philosophy, sleep, trashy romance stories, old movies, tea, coffee, being the center of attention, James Dean, singing in the shower, different languages, making out.
Dislikes: Control freaks, being elusive, losing sleep.
Phobias: None.
Three: Do you...
Smoke: When Michael isn't looking.
Curse: Fairly fluently.
Sing well: I think I could make it through karaoke night alive.
Sing in the shower: Who doesn't?
Talk to yourself: Sure, when it's necessary.
Believe in yourself: Of course.
Play an instrument: Piano, guitar.
Want to go to college?: That's alright.
Want to get married?: Of course.
Want to have children?: Like, tiny adults?
Think you're a health freak?: Not by choice.
Get along with your parents?: Not applicable.
Get along with your siblings?: If I had them, I assume I would.
Five: Favorites...
Food: Crustini with basil and sundried tomato. So sue me, I'm a prissy brat.
Drink: Wine.
Color: Red.
Album: Umm. Does Carmina Buarana count as an album?
Shoes: Nothing beats a good wingtip.
Candy: I'm not allowed.
Animal: Tosca!
TV Show: Again, I'm not allowed.
Movie: The Wizard of Oz.
Song: Che Gelida Menina from La Boheme.
Girl's name: Aemilia. Carmen.
Boy's name: Michael.
Vegetable: Potatoes.
Fruit: Oranges.
Six.
If I were a month, I'd be: April.
If I were a day of the week, I'd be: Saturday.
If I were a time of day, I'd be: Four PM.
If I were a planet, I'd be: Uranus. I'm sorry, I couldn't help it.
If I were a sea animal, I'd be: A lobster!
If I were a direction, I'd be: To the left.
If I were a piece of furniture, I'd be: An end table.
If I were a sin, I'd be: Greed.
If I were a historical figure, I'd be: Alexander the Great.
If I were a liquid, I'd be: Salt water.
If I were a tree, I'd be: A birch.
If I were a bird, I'd be: A sparrow.
If I were a flower, I'd be: Ivy.
If I were a kind of weather, I'd be: Tempestuous.
If I were a mythical creature, I'd be: Apollo.
If I were a musical instrument, I'd be: A piano.
If I were an animal, I'd be: A large cat of some sort. Cheshire preferably.
If I were a color, I'd be: Red.
If I were an emotion, I'd be: Lust.
If I were a vegetable, I'd be: cooked and served to some poor, unsuspecting family.
If I were a sound, I'd be: Music.
If I were an element, I'd be: Chlorine.
If I were a car, I'd be: Something sleek but practical.
If I were a song, I'd be: O Fortuna
If I were a movie, I'd be: Alice in Wonderland, the Disney version.
If I were a food, I'd be: Apple pie a la mode.
If I were a place, I'd be: Paris.
If I were a material, I'd be: Cotton.
If I were a taste, I'd be: Pure sugar.
If I were a scent, I'd be: Rose oil.
If I were a religion, I'd be: Miserable.
If I were a word, I'd be: Can I be a phrase? Allegro con brio.
If I were an object, I'd be: A record player.
If I were a body part, I'd be: The mouth.
If I were a facial expression, I'd be: Satsified smiles all around.
If I were a part of a house, I'd be: The walkway.
If I were a subject in school, I'd be: Lunch.
If I were a cartoon character, I'd be: Bugs Bunny.
If I were a shape, I'd be a: Arrow.
If I were a number, I'd be: One.
<center>http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...sontc/3317.jpg</center>
<font color="#000000"><font size="1">[ August 08, 2005 09:05 PM: Message edited by: godawful champagne ]</font></font>
<font color="#000000" size="1">[ August 12, 2005 03:50 PM: Message edited by: midnight radio ]</font>
-
<center>We were standing in the garden
And I had a machine that made silence
It just sucked up the whole opinionated din
And there were no people on the payroll
There were no monkeys on our backs
And I said, "Baby, show me what you look like without skin."
And in the Garden of Simple
Where all of us are nameless
You were never anything but beautiful to me
And you know, they never really owned you
You just carried them around you
And then one day you put them down and found
Your hands were free</center>
It's an endless struggle to try and figure out how long I've known this, consciously or not. I tell myself that if I had gone to Paris with him with any other intentions than just having a good time, I certainly would have known it. I would have done a lot of things differently. It would have been completely out of character and such a diversion from my usual path, that I myself probably couldn't have believed it. But the truth is that I had to have known. Something had to have told me to keep chasing. To scurry and follow and pop up from behind bookshelves and subways, in bars. Something told me to show up at his door, over and over and over again, until when he opened the door to anyone but me, he sank in a little undertow of disappointment.
I had to have known. Everything about the situation was so atypical. I never chased after, I preferred to be the one being chased. I never brought anyone to Paris, into my home, into my bed. I always preferred to use theirs. If anyone else had said they loved me from behind a bottle of Evian water, I would have laughed at them and suggested we go get something to eat. There had to have been an inkling in my brain, some sign that things were not to be handled normally, or with my usual recklessness.
He's always been so much older, maybe not in age, but in mindframe. And intimidating. He's the one person who can reduce me to just a pile of bones and skin with a few choice words. All my insides liquidize and I can't remember how to breathe. My eyes burn and my heart thuds and everything breaks. Sometimes it's good, and sometimes it's bad, but no one else does that. I can laugh at anyone else. I can scream back at them and refuse to be defied, but I bend and break.
So here we are. The place I begged to be for so long. Maybe I pushed and pressured, but there's a swelling of satisfaction to know that this was his idea. He wanted this as much as I did. This was ours, in all of its technical, paperworking glory. Someday later, whether it be this week, or tomorrow, or later today, I'll figure out what it was that I wanted to say, what speech I wanted to give, or what promises I felt appropriate to make. Soon, I'll be more eloquent and meaningful. Soon I'll have something worth saying. I've never not had something to say. This is fucking strange. This is my twilight zone.
Now here, in the almost-morning at the most overpriced hotel suite we could manage on such short notice, in a city where we clearly don't need to be staying in a hotel considering we live about ten minutes away, things are just as they've always been. I've stolen all the sheets. We're both bitemarked and bruised. We've tangled, legs, arms, bodies, the crooks of our elbows wrap around, my chin hooks into his shoulder, every breath he inhales lifts my hand a little, and we twist in. This marks the opening of something new. Another door to lean through.
Normally I would think this was the climactic end to some grand story. I'd tack an expiration date on and we'd trudge through until everything curdled.
I can't see any roads ahead anymore. I don't know what's coming.
-
Perusing through the display of Lucy's store, her own handmade things mixed with high end materials and brand names brandished across in advertisement, Harlen Prior couldn't help but find himself uselessly drawn to the women's section. Where everything he bought from Filth was decked in its blue-ribboned tags, he now tripped fingers over the pink, tugging at the bottom of frilled skirts and fraying, tiny tops. Behind the desk, Lucy said little, letting him do as he pleased. He was a Friday afternoon staple in the store, always leaving with a new pair of jeans, or a decorative pin to brandish on the lapel of his new jacket.
The prophet wandered almost carefully, craning his chin over his shoulder every few moments to see if she was staring awkwardly at him as he marched through the women's section. She wasn't. She was far too occupied with punching numbers into an adding machine and scrawling down numbers into a log. It was only when the prophet's voice lifted up from behind a table of fanning jeans on display that she felt some sort of break in the not-quite-silence they had adopted.
"You're a firm believer in the idea that clothes make a person, right?"
Peeking up from the book in front of her, the icy blonde quirked a pencil-thin eyebrow at the pianist. He stood there in red-striped fitted shirt and black vest, in a pair of jeans that she only wished her newfound body looked that good in. Tapping at her chin with stunted nails, she huffed out a gust of breath.
"I'm a firm believer in the idea that a smart person wears clothes that contribute to the sense of their identity, and that a person who just doesn't care will look like they just don't care."
"Well, you make clothes for a living. Who do you make clothes for?"
"Uh. People." She laughed, pushing away from the counter and wheeling around towards him. Her heels clicked assertively, and Harlen couldn't help but feel like she was a teacher stalking towards him in the hall of an elementary school far, far away. "Look. Baby, if you wanna buy a skirt, buy a skirt, I can help you find your size."
"I do not want to buy a skirt. Not unless I have a birthday girl to buy a present for."
"Well then why are you getting all Aristotle-meets-Armani on me?"
"I don't know." He lied, twisting away from her and sighing out a long-suffering breath. "Have you ever been attracted to a woman who wasn't classically a woman?"
"...have you met Liv?"
"But she looks like a woman!"
"Are you leaving Chachi for a drag queen?" Lucy's mouth rocketed open in a state of shock, her eyes wide and glinting for gossip.
"No! God no!" Hands fanned out in front of him as if to attempt to silence the woman as best he could. "Never mind. Just.. never mind."
"Okay.." Lucy shrugged, leaning to reorganize a display of thin, sheer t-shirts by size. Behind her, Harlen wandered around in a bit of a sulk, his fingers lazily passing by the seersucker jacket she had anticipated him to throw a fit over.
"You know," she began carefully, "I don't think appearances are worth much. I mean, I do. I do think they're worth a lot, considering the business I'm in, but I like to think of what I do more as costuming. You can dress something up to be what it's not, but you can't ever really change what's underneath. Not without like.. years of psychobabble and incessant therapy. What I mean is, people have certain traits, certain ticks and personality pieces that make them who they are. You can put them in a different body, you can change their sex, you can... I don't know, mess them up like a Picasso piece, take them apart, expose all their wiring and machinery and then stitch them up back together in the wrong order, with all the wrong pieces in place, but still, behind all of that mess, there's something that can't change."
"I don't know, I just.. I don't get how you reconcile that. How do you remain a man, attracted to men, when you find yourself attracted to one dressed like a woman? You don't like women. Yet here's this thing that looks like a woman, talks like a woman, walks like a woman and just happens to have a dick, and you're all over it. It takes away from your credibility, doesn't it? It... skews your boundaries. It makes it look like all you value in another person is what's between their legs. Oh, but that whole part about the unchanging identity was really.. uh.. encumbered-self of you." Harlen smirked.
"No, I mean it! I'm not just spouting early 19th century American philosophy, here, I'll leave that to Chachi. Here, simpler terms. I just.. I was watching Oprah the other day, and on it, there was a woman who had married a man who had had a sex change and become a woman. So now this woman was married to a fully functioning woman. And they stayed married. But the thing was, that didn't make this woman a lesbian. She couldn't change that part about her, you know? She stayed with this other person because she loved who they were, not what was between their legs. It's really all relative. I don't fuck Liv because I want to have sex with a woman, or just any woman, I'm not really even attracted to women. I'm attracted to her because of who she is. She's.. she fits my modus operandi, or something. I met a woman who ... finishes me, in a way. And from there, I decided I didn't want to be with anyone who didn't understand that, or who couldn't appreciate that, or who was going to try and confine and restrict who I was because of that. I'm not a lesbian."
Harlen craned over his shoulder at her a moment and took a quick look. Immediately, he could read her like a book. He could see a flickering montage of Tokyo lights and strobe effects, of dance floors and New York, and a destroyed kitchen.
"Obviously not." He countered.
"So the moral of this story is.." Lucy breathed with a flourish of arms. "If you want to wear a skirt, you should, because you're still Harlen, and you still have all of your experiences behind you, and your talent and your knowledge, and Michael would still love you. Though, you'd have to shave your legs. Nothing is less appealing to men and women alike than body hair."
"I don't want to wear a skirt. But thank you. I don't think it would do anything for me but ride up and make me look like a two-bit whore."
"Oh, honey. You're clearly a twenty-bit whore."
Harlen's palm folded against his collar, eyes rounded and glinting with the compliment. "That is so sweet of you to say."
-
He could throw away dozens of creased glossy photos without blinking an eye. He could set aside a handful worth keeping, and disregard the rest. He could erase a litany of people who barely inspired a jolt of recognition by way of a sleek, new prosthetic memory. The woman who took his plate away when he took too long to eat his dinner, a grinning man proudly holding up a lobster, a bundle of school children making faces at the camera, skinny adolescents, apathetic college student, pretty boys wasting away via club drugs and poverty, nameless men, inconsequential women and a dark, guilty shadow that still draped over him like a velvet cape, hanging onto his neck and hoping to squeeze the life out of him with the methodical tightening of hands.
He wanted to throw them all away, every last one, every little item in that box, hidden letters, slips of paper, records scattered, a birth certificate. He held them all over the garbage disposal, tight-fisted, white-knuckled, wild-eyed and with the slant of his jaw tightened like a vice. Enough. Enough. Enough. Let go.
He could not, however, throw away two glossed over cards, each bearing a name, two dates, and the same selection of verse.
<center>Anna Hawthorne Prior
August 27th, 1956 - June 9th, 1985
Harlen Andrew Prior
November 15th, 1952 - November 23rd, 1978
Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me;
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and souls delivery. </center>
<font color="#000000" size="1">[ August 26, 2005 01:35 AM: Message edited by: midnight radio ]</font>
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<center>And you're trying hard to figure out
Just exactly how you feel
Before you end up parked and sobbing
Forehead on the steering wheel
How many times undone can one person be
As they're careening through the facade of their favorite fantasy
You just close your eyes slowly like you're waiting for a kiss
And hope some lowly little power will pull you out of this
And nothing comes at first and little comes at all
When inspiration finally hits you, it barely even breaks your fall
And who are you now
And who were you then
If you thought somehow
You could just pretend
If you could figure it all out
The mathematics of regret
It took three beers to remember
And five to forget
I loved you so
Yeah, I loved you,
So what.</center>
In the steady still of the unmoving bus, Harlen stretched out against the plane of his small bunk, doubly cramped with Michael's half-asleep body wedged against the wall. Ironing his spine out against the flimsy mattress, his head lolled to the side and he peered out of the crack in the drawn curtain. Across the way, murmurings of a one-sided conversation from Liv's bunk were heard, and the subtle glow of her cell phone's screen moved when she did.
She'd tell everyone. And everyone would know. Everything he had held as true and real would now turn into a neverending joke.
Creeping quietly from the bunk, Harlen stepped into jeans and hoisted them back up and over his hips. Arms dove into a raggedy sweater and feet into sneakers. Once he was wrapped up in his sweater and scarf, he slunk quietly off of the bus and hit pavement, treading in the direction of lights and traffic, just out of sight.
In front of him, a block or so away, she waited. He knew it was her from the way the wind hooked on every loose end of her hair, every last ruffle of her skirt. Everything was white and haloed. If he had wanted to turn back, he wasn't sure he could have. Digging hands into the pouch-pocket in the front of his sweater, he paused in front of her, just a foot or so away.
"You came." She announced matter-of-factly.
"I said I'd come, so here I am."
The blonde across from him extended a hand to curl fingers over the flop of his hair, tucking it behind his ear. "It's been how long. A year?"
"I don't know." He mumbled, his head tipping towards the stretch of her fingers. "I don't know. I don't know what's... everything's an absolute fucking mess. I want to go home."
"And where is that?" She asked, as cars whizzed past despite the late hour.
"I don't know!" He blurted, stepping back and lolling his head up at the streetlights. There were no stars here. Just like New York. Just like Paris. So what was the difference? Dragging his sweater closer around him, tightening his scarf against the chill, Harlen groaned and folded his arms. "I don't know. I don't know anything anymore, I can't separate my dreams from my fucking daily life, I can't... I don't even.." Breath launched up and caught in his throat, and out of nowhere, a sob croaked out, ragged and miserable.
"Do you remember what I told you the first time you met the professor?" She asked in her melodic, sonorous siren's voice. "When we danced and had that awful, silly fight.."
Harlen struggled to wheel back time that far. Back to when he was emaciated and full of life, instead of flushed like a Rennaisance angel and brimming with the appropriate struggles between the concrete and the theoretical. He couldn't remember. Everything was in flashes and wire sparks. An image here. A drink there. A naked body. A bed. A meal. A sale. A stretch of city.
His head shook no.
"I told you that the professor, no matter how convincing, could not turn you into something you were not. He can't rewire you." Her palms had caught at his cheeks again, thumbs strumming at cheekbones to smear slow rolling tears away. "No matter how hard he tries to remold the shape of your past. The path of your future remains the same. There are things you can't change, not through dreams, not through promises, or vows or.."
"Stop, stop.." Harlen demanded, clapping his hands over his ears. "You don't mean that."
But he knew very well that she did. Moira meant every word she said with fervor and conviction, like a travelling preacher with healings and evangelist teachings, spreading the New Word. Miserably perched on the street, Harlen swallowed a breath and bowed away from her touch.
"I want so badly to fucking believe.."
"That you can be programmed for this new life. I know." She nodded, slinking fingers over his shoulder. "That you can want all these little things that not even the professor really wants. He doesn't want a house in the suburbs, or a cushioned job. A future to plan for. A family. And you never wanted those things either. What's changed? What has changed inside of you that made you suddenly think that that was the life you were meant for?"
Another harsh swallow was pressed down. Harlen felt a tempest of contradictions brewing and he couldn't sort them out. Nothing had changed. Everything had changed. He liked these changes, and yet he hated them. He wanted simplicity and permanence, but the idea of that terrified him and sent him flying back towards everything complicated and unpredictable.
"I don't know what I want anymore, Moira." Harlen confessed, his head lolling forward in some sort of search. "I don't think I'm... built for this. I don't feel like me anymore.."
"Who do you feel like, if not you?" She asked, a light brow furrowing in confusion.
"I feel like parts of me are gone and I can't get them back. Parts I want back, they've been ... cut out and replaced with other things. Parts of someone else."
Pausing, his green eyes widened up in a slow realization.
"Parts of him." He finished for himself. "I'm not me anymore, I'm.. I have to go. Oh God, I have to.." Backing away, his feet stumbled against pavement in a reeling towards nothing at all. "I have to go, something just.."
"I'll be waiting, you know." She admitted, her hand falling back to her side as Harlen shrugged his shoulders in and plodded off into a Cleveland nightscape.
-
"Has anyone seen Michael?" Harlen asked the bustling throng of everyone around him, some men whisking past with clipboards and sound information, some of them tuning instruments at the last minute. With his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, the prince's green eyes slipped around in search of his other half. It was strange. Usually there was a magnetic field he felt himself drawn towards, a pulse of radar that indicated how close or far away Michael was. Now it was all dead air.
"Ten minutes." A manager chirped at him. Harlen's eyes went wide again, and he felt his throat clog up.
"I'm not ready. I'm.. look, someone's missing, and.."
"Are they in the band?"
"... wh.. no, they're.."
"Then no go, you've got ten minutes."
Nothing registered. Ten minutes dwindled down to five and he felt everything well in him, desolate and miserable. Despite the fact that several hundred people waited out in the small ballroom to hear him sing, he felt absolutely isolated, thrust in the middle of nowhere with no compass, alone.
Pushed on stage, he smiled weakly at the crowd and felt the music start long before his own voice carried out and over the crowd.
"You who were born with the sun above your shoulders.."
The common opening song to his set was sung like a cry for help, a search light longing for a figure to snag in it.
Time passed. He plodded through his numbers with minimal jokes and chatter, and a worried, doe-eyed look out among the crowd. Maybe he was out there. In a sea of eyes, he couldn't snag the matching pair. Michael was nowhere to be found. His stomach lurched nervously.
"Thanks. Goodnight." He beamed fakely and marched towards the wings, shaking out his tired fingers and shouldering past those who offered towels and praise.
"Harlen.." A voice called. His hand waved them sharply away.
With his breath lurching in digging, drawn breaths, he struggled to fill lungs up enough. Sinking down onto the couch backstage, he hunched over, elbows on his knees and tried to remember all methods. Slow breath. A concentrated point of focus. Limp shoulders. A blank mind.
Uselessly, all the focal points Harlen had trained himself to remember failed. In a heavy thud of sound, he fell forward in a heap, limbs sprawling as his body tremored and the crowd of people shrieked in panic.
-
"Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey." An unfamiliar voice chirped melodically at him. Harlen groaned, drew the curtain on his empty bedspace tighter towards the wall and rolled back over. In a rush of metal on metal, a skinny, pale hand snagged the curtain and yanked it open. Light screamed in and he dragged the pillow over his head.
"Go away."
"Move over."
"I'm not wearing any pants."
"Do you ever?" The mattress around him depressed as someone threw their weight onto it and drew the curtain back behind. Rolling over, he peered up at the face of the unexpected Althea Adler, all Snow White, complete with the ribbon in her hair.
"Get up. It's a beautiful day."
"I'm sick, and it's cold out." Harlen grunted back, snarling at her and pushing effortlessly at her shoulders in an attempt to shove her out of the bed.
"I heard you got sick." The cheerful perk of her voice drooped into remorse and maternal fingers tore through his hair in a motion that seemed to make him forget how badly he wanted her to leave.
"What're you doing here?" He asked groggily.
"Visiting my brother. I left his dog with David."
"How is the new boyfriend?"
"Just wonderful." She sighed dreamily in reference of him, a palm skidding across her collarbone. "He buys me flowers and sometimes he dances with me when I pout hard enough."
"At least he doesn't leave you in the middle of nowhere and then doesn't pick up his fucking phone when you call him. He's ignoring my calls. He's purposely not picking up when he sees my name on the little screen, I know it, I know him." Harlen spit venom, his head digging under the pillow again, pushing it around his features and smooshing them against the feather and cotton construction of it.
"Oh honey. Men are all the same, from Michael to Mussolini." Althea spouted wisely, crawling closer and skidding a hand over the eerily slight plane of his shoulderblades. Harlen was surprisingly small, skinny, even though he was lanky and long.
"Thank you, Rosie." He retorted with a tiny grin. His head lolled sidelong, flopping onto her shoulder, his hair moving as though it was independent from the rest of him.
"What did we ever see in him.." Her voice arched and sang out in a little showtune lilt, her hand lifting and flitting around. "How could we ever think that he was nice, take it from us, we paid an awful price.." She jostled Harlen's shoulder, and he simply groaned and rolled back over. When he sang, it was muffled into the pillow.
"It was rough, from the start, broken dates, broken nails, broken heart.."
"Men will always botch things up, and we will always be left picking up the pieces of the things they make the mess of." Althea sighed, her fingers tripping through his hair still. "Our best bet is to just get up, keep living and buy a new pair of boots to march all over them in. That's what I did, at least. I maxed out my credit card after Michael left in the middle of dinner. In the middle of a sentence."
Harlen frowned. He wasn't sure if it was because he didn't want to remember that Althea had once felt the same pang of disappointment in the same man, or because he genuinely felt for her, that terrible, lonely, helpless feeling when someone was walking out the door and there was nothing you could do to drag them back.
"I don't even have the energy to shop. We aren't near anywhere worth spending money in." Excuse after excuse, he stretched his spine out and flopped backwards, peering up at her, a pair of spooky green eyes locking on the set of her blue ones.
"So what are you going to do?" She asked curiously. For the first time, Harlen's mouth twisted into a vicious grin. His answer was far more vengeful than any other form of revenge, hot or cold.
"Write a song."
-
With a guitar strapped across his chest, unconventionally, Harlen remembered all of Liv's advice. The attitude had to be different, the stance was more assured than usual. With a grand fuck you in mind, he smirked at the microphone and cocked his hip dramatically to the side.
"This is to a very special someone, you know. I wrote this this afternoon after I talked to his ex-girlfriend and realized that.." He lifted his hand and combed it through the mess of his hair. The crowd giggled at the self-conscious motion.
"I really tend to fall for asshole straight men. But it's totally worth it with an ass like his."
With the drummer and bass player briefly informed, the new song lifted up and filled the midwestern venue with deceptive major chords. Harlen's voice hit every note in its usual perfect pitch.
You can go out, dancing
And I'll write about you, dancing without you
And I'll shed a tear between my legs.
When you were here, I missed you
Now that you're away, I'm out there without you
And I shed a tear between my legs.
Though we live in the same city,
You live in another state, far away from me and all of my unfaded charms
But when the rocket ships all fall, and the bridges, they all buckle,
And everybody's packing up their station wagons
There's a number you can call, like a breast that you can suckle
And we quietly will exit as it all is happening
Again I will pray with one thing
Will I walk away from love knowing nothing, wearing my heart between my legs?
But when I know you're naked, lying on my bed while I'm at the piano
All I can say is I can't fake it
When the rocket ships all fall, and the bridges, they all buckle
And everybody's packing up their station wagons
There's a number you can call, like a breast that you can suckle
And quietly we'll exit as it all is happening again
'Cause there's a river running underground,
Underneath the town towards the sea, and only I know all about it
On which from this city, we can flee
On which from this city, we can flee...
And the crowd went wild.
-
<center>http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...ntc/Gael07.jpg
All the sad boys come home with you
Drape you in garlands and
Sing their sad songs to you
Pour their stories like rain through you
All the sad boys come home to you
All the green children pine for you
They learned all your secrets and
Made up your mind for you
Although they were unkind to you
All the green children pine for you
All the pale grey stars shine through you
Your body fell prey to the
Transparent mind of you
All the ghosts search for signs of you
All the pale grey stars shine through you</center>
a benediction.
