in love with a (strict machine)

[star studded]

<center>

Today is going to be easy
Today, 'cause you're not around
I'll leave off my makeup
I'll sleep in my bed
To pass all the time by
Today, 'cause you're not around
Today you won't be around

I concentrate on empty spaces
A passive pondering of blankness
Sit down, shut up, control obsessions
Your absence, it exhausts me

I always panic when I'm left
I always panic when I'm left

Today I feel destructive
Today who cares about myself?
I'll live in denial
I'll beat up my head

I can't control my feelings
I sip on dreams and choke on real things
Detach myself for preservation
I struggle to not want you

I always panic when I'm left
Is it healthy that we met?
If you stop coming will I forget?
I always panic when I'm left

Panic - No Doubt</center>

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ November 09, 2004 12:37 AM: Message edited by: shiseido red ]</font>

[star studded]

"We could be daytime drunks if we wanted, we'd never get anything done that way baby. And we'd still be ruled by our dueling perspectives. And I'm not my perspective, or the lies I'll tell you every time.."

The empty space that was the half-finished money pit of her store was echoing the sounds that the small boom box emanated. Acoustic guitar mingled with keyboards and a clean voice sounded through and while Lucy sorted tags and labels, she sang along as loud as she wanted to, the well-tuned pitch of her voice bouncing off of walls and back into her ears.

"And I say there's trouble when everything is fine, the need to destroy things creeps up on me every time. And just as love's sillohuette appears, I close my eyes and disappear tonight.."

"You always did hate to sing."

Glancing up from the work at hand, she held onto blue ribbons that she was attaching to each pressed tag with the store's logo branded on it. Swallowing, she tipped her head towards the door, trying to make out the figure from her perch on the upstairs level, peeking over the banister and down into the shop. Instead, she had to stand, wandering to the edge and gripping the rail with two hands rather than one.

"What are you doing here? You can't come in here, this is privately owned property." She spat the words like he was some vampire that couldn't enter unless invited, like some forcefield would bounce him back if he set foot across the threshold. Unfortunately, that didn't happen and he stepped in, the wooden floorboards creaking loudly in protest. A reminder that the floor needed redoing.

"I'm just paying a visit." Fingertips brushed the display case and then across the racks she intended on stuffing with couture. Her own hands gripped the edge of the rail again, green eyes following him as he slid along the bottom floor, staring up at her with intent. "Are you going to come down and say hello?"

"No."

"May I come up and say--"

"No." Adamantly, she stood firm, watching as he sunk hands into the pockets of his long black coat, sighing heavily.

"Fine then. I didn't know you were one for grudges, Lucy."

"Didn't you learn your lesson last time, David?" His name was the retaliation for having the audacity to use hers. His head tipped like an animal hearing a strange sound and she took a step back from the ledge.

"And what lesson is that?"

"That if you come too close, you'll end up with another broken nose."

"You'll hit me?"

"I wouldn't lay a finger on you if you paid me."

David lifted a hand and smeared it achingly over his chest, as though his heart beat too hard for his ribs to contain. "You wound me every time."

"Why are you here?"

"To say hello."

"Why are you really here?"

"To tell you that Marco says hello as well."

Rather than freeze in shock, Lucy turned on heel to reach behind her and grab the nearest heavy object. Throwing the item overboard, David stepped aside as the black metal stapler hit the ground beside him and snapped into its separate pieces.

"You've always been an absolute madwoman."

"I won't miss next time."

"And you never fail to be most beautiful when you're angry."

The door swung closed behind him. Immediately, Lucy was counting down until the moment that she was sure it would swing open with his entrance once more.

[star studded]

Harper: So when we think we've escaped the unbearable ordinariness and well, untruthfulness of our lives, it's really only the same old ordinariness and falseness arranged into the appearance of novelty and truth. Nothing unknown is knowable. Don't you think it's depressing?

Prior: The limits of the imagination?

Harper: Yes.


<center> ---- </center>

I'm laying here with my bottom lip swollen out to hell and every bone in my body feels like it's been crushed or twisted foully. I usually would be whining and complaining, but instead, I'm thrilled at the feel. I have this surge of adrenaline still pumping through me and I haven't moved in hours. I'm lethargic, lazy and wrapped up like a mummy in these fucking sheets, and I love every minute of it. I love it. I swear, I haven't loved it in a long time, but this is different. This is the Charlie I remember. The Charlie that I know exists somewhere under that layer of false sensitivity. The Charlie that leaves a necklace of blush-rose marks along my neck and collarbone, the Charlie that bites so hard that you feel like you're going to burst if he doesn't ...

I feel like I've been squeezed dry. I have had every last piece of me taken out and there's no more sincerity left in me to give. That's alright. I wrote it all on him in poetry when he let me move enough to dig my nails under skin and pull away until I saw red. It seems one of us is always clawing, crawling, scratching at something that holds us in. And when one of us finally bursts out of the wrapping and stitching, the other one has just been sewn up again, sloppy, uneven and tight. So instead, we're off by a beat. But here, both of us reeking of Jack Daniels (he had too much, I had too little and his spilled over onto me), we crawled out of our respective holes and it felt like for the first time we met above ground, gasping and choking on air, gripping each other because it was all that was familiar.

The real world is so funny. It's so dried out and dead, everything is so hard and permanent and then again so easily knocked over and destroyed. Nothing is soft and alive anymore. Nothing. I've been dead. I am dead. I am just a shell, lifeless and meaningless, shuffling along to go through minimal rituals, confused and angered by the tiny electric shocks of emotion that he jolts into me when he kisses me, or touches me, or tells me he loves me. I am not soft nor am I alive. For those long, drawn out moments I felt something. I felt everything. I felt like there was a power surge in my body and suddenly all my circuitry sparked to life, my eyes opened, the world cleared, the fog lifted and there was this massive, struggling, shuddering rebirth. Or maybe it was just another tiny death. Either way, for a moment I was here, right here in this shared moment, gripping and clawing and living. Crawling on hands and knees, but for God's sake, I was living. I went from cold stone dead to this blossoming, breathing, thriving, writhing, screaming human being.

Part of me begs and prays that something alien and separate starts to grow. If not for my sake, then for ours. Save us. Scare us. Shock us back to life. Jump start us.

I usually notice when I'm crying because I'm making myself cry. I must have been crying for awhile, however, because I notice that the fresh wet streaks on my cheeks are pouring over dried out old ones. I don't cry because I'm happy. I don't cry because I'm sad. I cry because it's over. My one beautiful shining moment to share is passed and gone and I don't know if I'll ever be able to feel that again. I want it. I want it like I remember wanting hits and pills and another glass of wine. I just want that feeling again, just for another second, just one more jolt of life.

Water won't ever accomplish the end, no matter how much you cry. Flood's not the answer, people just float.

It's happening again. I'm dying, right here, right beside him, in our bed. My insides are freezing up, turning to cold, cracked marble. All the stars I chased slow down and stay still. Colors dull. My heart slows. Things are the wrong sort of normal again. I want to live, I want to live. More life, more life. I want to love. More love.

Burn me up. Fire is the answer, the great awakening. He is my good heart. Burn me to ashes and he will turn me into something beautiful again.

[star studded]

For once, the autumn chill was a still one instead of the gusting wind that had been assaulting people and places alike in the past few days. Lucy walked along the sidewalk, her arms full of supplies. Labels, folders, order forms, paper all packed away in a box that she balanced with frozen fingers hooked in the handles. Sneakers did little to keep toes warm, she found herself clenching them fitfully, trying to rejuvinate the blood in them, motivation, movement. Just a few more steps, just a few more feet, just a few more blocks.

"Let me help you with that." A hand closed over the top of the box and immediately it was taken from her, with little struggle or strain. Her head lifted from staring at her shoes and coasted easily over the person who now carried her things for her. Steps quickened forward, hands shoved angrily in her pockets.

"I told you to leave me alone."

"I'm just trying to help you, Lucy."

"You aren't helping. You're.. you're.." Her brain searched desperately for a word, an opposite that sounded witty and smart. She turned up nothing.

"Hindering?" David offered it to her and she marched along with equal irritation.

"Hindering! You're hindering, you're badgering, you're harassing."

"I am most certainly not harassing you."

Lucy turned the corner, watching as David followed, carrying her things like a servant, like a friend, a confidant, like all of her lovers did. They picked up her things and carried them after her, cleaning up the messes she made as she searched out and destroyed anything obstructing her path. "Yes. Yes you are. You're harassing me, David. Leave me alone."

"I won't."

"Leave me alone!" Reaching she grabbed for the box, fingers clenching the edges of corrugated cardboard, pulling it towards her.

"Let the box go, Lucy."

In a moment of classic struggle, Lucy attempted to wrench the box from David's hands, yanking with as much efford as she could manage, which was clearly not much in comparison. Benevolently, at the pinnacle of one of her pulls, David's hands came free, Lucy stumbled and the box went sprawling, spilling papers and packs of receipts, sending them littered all over sidewalk to be trampled by endless pairs of feet.

"You're such a fucking asshole, David." Dropping down, she moved to pick up what she could salvage.

"I suppose I am. I just thought it would be wonderful to see you crawling on your hands and knees again."

Looking up, she narrowed green eyes at him. Her brain spun with a thousand scathing things to say, she had so much ammunition that she could hardly sort through it, but for some reason, only one phrase seemed to fire off the barrel of her tongue.

"My husband will fucking kill you for that."

[star studded]

"People who are lonely, people left alone, sit talking nonsense to the air imagining ... beautiful systems dying, old fixed orders spiraling apart..."

I'm well aware that I'm doing things that I'm not supposed to. I think that's what attracts me to them. I just hit this point where nothing else matters but me and then all hell breaks loose.

Hell. That's a good way to describe it.

Charlie's at work, as usual, and I'm here waiting for him to get home. We've assumed our roles quite nicely. I can't help but run the conversation we had the other day through my head over and over again in attempts to pick everything he says apart. I'm trying to make this jacket for him and that's what reminds me, I think. I think it's the fact that while I was screaming at him and arguing as hard as I could, I was fitting this jacket on him and pinning sleeves and collars and not-quite-lapels. I was making something for him and he refuses to even think about collaborating with me to make something that's so much bigger than a jacket.

He's selfish.

No, maybe I'm selfish. Maybe we're both selfish and that's why we can't reach a fucking agreement. I know he lied to me. I know he looked me in the eye and lied, and I know he did it more than once. That drives me insane. I'm angry with him. I'm angry with him because he doesn't understand what it feels like to be eternally empty. All I can lay claim to is myself. I can't even rope him in tightly enough to feel like he's mine. What if I want something that I can really feel as my own?

The needle pushes through the two thick pieces of black fabric and drags black string after it. It looks like the fabric, thick, dark and coarse, is giving birth to this shimmering, smooth, perfect object everytime I push it through. The thread keeps it constantly tied to what created it. It doesn't separate until I cut it, or pull it, or bite it with my teeth. And then I imagine.

I imagine telling Charlie things just to scare him into giving him what I want. I imagine tricking him because I know I can. I imagine a new world to live in, where everything shines and sparkles like my sewing needles, or is smooth and white like the two valiums I've been taking every day at lunch time. I imagine big bright spiraling lights and a colorful Christmas, and Thanksgiving. I imagine housedresses and pearls, potholders and saying grace. I imagine being Episcopalian. I imagine making love, calmly, mildly, and everything is soft and quiet like how I want it to be, and in the middle of it I turn into clay and start to fall apart, piece by piece in these little flaking chips and then he is left with nothing but a pile of dust.

I imagine giving birth to a baby born addicted to pills. A baby who does not dream, but hallucinates, who stares up at us with big mirror eyes and does not know who we are.

But it's not a baby. It's a doll with his blue eyes and a smile that never goes away. It's a collaboration of all of the mistakes I've ever made, written all over it in Charlie's handwriting. I imagine that I drop it, and the doll smashes into pieces, but it still cries. It wails and screams and there is nothing that I can do to stop it, so I scream too. I scream as loud as I can because I can out-scream anything. I can and I will.

I don't want to imagine anymore. I don't want to make up things anymore. So I open my eyes. But they're already open.

I'm in the bathroom and everything is so white. Everything is white except the bathtub. I don't know how I got here. Somehow, I filled the tub up with the hottest water I've ever felt in my life and now I'm sitting in it. In all my clothes. My skin is pink like a lobster.

The water is pink. The sewing needle is on the floor, red and sparkling. Still perfect.

My hand is bleeding. I look at both of them, the one that's covered in scratches from the day before, healing and dark. And now the new one, raw and red and all hacked to hell, but in the exact same lines and patterns as the healing one. At least I am neat. At least I am consistent. At least I am those things, if nothing else.

The hot water is making me tired, and the valiums I took are still putting me in that funny, cheesecloth-lens haze, where everything is just a little soft around the edges. That's my favorite part.

For the first time in a long time, I would really just like to be alone.

[star studded]

<center></center>

"I'm not here to see you."

"Consider me relieved."

The quaint suburban living room had been transformed into a war zone with the simple introduction of an opposing force. Lucy had stepped inside and then suddenly all was in disorder. Her younger sister Lola was a thin, angular replica of the older girl. She was long, tall, and everything about her was straight and without deviation. Her hair never curled, her mouth never bent or crooked. Lucy, in contrast, looked animated. She curved in certain places, her eyebrows lifted in surprise, her nose wrinkled in distaste. Her hair waved, she frowned and smiled -- she was less stone than someone in this world, and that alone was enough to comfort her.

Staring at her older sister for some time, Lola couldn't help but remember when she was nothing but skin, bone and a trail of cigarette smoke. Lucy had been Lola's source of blame for all of their family issues for quite sometime. Her defiance as a child was what drove their mother into emotional isolation. Her criminal rebelliousness as a teenager was what forced their father's health to slowly nosedive. Her addiction as an adult had torn them from one family into four separate spinning satellites that twisted round the same burned out star.

"What do you want."

"Where's dad?"

"Not here. Go away." Lola spat her words with the venom that only a family member could muster up to project at another relative.

"Fuck you, Lola. Drop the embittered student act for five minutes. Honestly." Lucy shrugged her jacket off and draped it over the arm of the couch, her purse following suit. Leaning, she sank down and crossed legs, content to wait.

"Don't get comfortable."

"What the fuck is your problem?"

"You are my fucking problem, Lucy!" Lola's fists were gathered at her sides as she leaned forward to shout loud enough for her sister to hear. "You can't just walk in here after never coming by, never visiting.."

"I don't visit, because I don't want to look at you. Or Mom. God, this place is a fucking sty.." Reaching into her purse, she fished around and dragged out a cigarette that she was positive she'd need, fumbling with matches to spark it to life.

"You look so much like her right now that it makes me sick."

"Yeah, well at least I'm not fucking my husband's brother and starting cocktail hour at noon."

"Your husband, which one is that? The hispanic drug lord or that heroin addict that you brought here that one time. Skinny, pale.."

Lucy lifted a finger to silence her sister, the cigarette dangling from her free hand. "You watch what you fucking say about him."

"Don't try to deny it, Lucy. All you do is hang around with trash, it's all you know. It's all you feel comfortable around, because somehow, they make you feel better about yourself. Your friends, your boyfriends and now this.. this anonymous fucking guy that you married without.. telling any of us, without inviting us, without introducing him to any of us."

"I tried! You threw a fucking shoe down the stairs at him!" Ash was flicked lazily into one of the trays that littered the house for her mother's convenience. Lucy sat back against the cushions lazily, her legs angled oddly. "You don't even wait to know someone before you decide you hate them, Lola. You just hate anyone who isn't lonely and pissed off like you."

"Where do you think I learned that from?"

"Don't give me the bad big sister guilt trip. I don't owe you anything, you aren't my daughter, you aren't my responsibility. Blame your failings on mom, not me, not dad. The reason we're all so fucked up here is because she taught us how."

"She loved us until you decided you were too good for this family."

"I decided I was too good for this family when I found out that I was good enough for something better. Maybe when you meet someone who isn't repelled by your absolute lack of optimism, you'll understand what that's like."

"You're good enough for an addict. That's all you've ever been good enough for, Lucy. Addicts and dealers and criminals."

"Who the fuck cares?" Angrily, Lucy stabbed her cigarette into the ashtray and left it there to smolder out. "Who cares what you think of me and my choices, what do you matter to me? You're not a great sister, either, Lola. In fact, you're a terrible sister. You don't support me, you don't love me despite the shit I've done, and you certainly don't try to offer me sound advice. I don't need your approval so I certainly don't look for it. I spent years of my life being absolutely nothing, but now I feel like I'm doing something. I'm opening a store in two weeks. I'm helping plan my best friend's wedding, I'm designing her bridesmaid dresses. Maybe in a year or so.. I'll be planning my own, when we get around to getting enough money. I don't want you there, though. I don't want you at the store opening, I don't want you at my wedding, I don't want you at anything important to me until you get the fuck over this bullshit misery you think I've caused you. I am not going to be the source of your problems because you can't be happy. Make yourself happy. Get out of this house. Get away from mom. Go to college upstate, or wherever. Just get out. Honestly, you'll feel a thousand times better."

Both girls paused until Lucy moved to stretch herself into her coat again, buttoning it up and slinging her purse over her arm.

"Tell Dad I came by to talk to him about the store."

"Yeah."

"I'll see you around, Lola."

"Bye."

[star studded]

I'm laying here tangled up in blankets and a body and everything feels so foreign. And familiar. I'm still not sure how that could be. There's something different about all of this.

None of it goes according to plan anymore. There used to be this apprehension attached to it. A sense of duty on my part and this overwhelming fear for him. Everything shook with nervousness, nothing was solid and assured. Now they've changed. Now we dive head first into it without waiting or wondering or even fumbling. Every motion is fluid and everything is concrete. Honest. Nothing wavers, falters or falls like it used to. I don't think I've changed. I don't think it's me. For once, I don't think the source of something that's going on between us is me.

I think it's Charlie. Something in Charlie has changed.

I hate change. I hate it with everything I have. If I had some magical power to make everything freeze and stay the same for the rest of my life, I would do it in a heartbeat. But there's something about this change that I don't hate. He's become more awake, more alert. He notices small things, he's paying more attention to detail. He's promising me the moon and the stars and Chanel turtleneck sweaters.

Charlie, in some weird twist of fate, has become confident.

He was confident before when it came to things, just never when it came to me, or anything that had to do with us. He second guessed dinner, the sort of gifts I'd like, the way I wanted to be kissed, or where I liked to be taken out. He'd fumble over long-winded confessions and shortlived answers to my inappropriate questions. He jittered when we discussed anything serious, he hesitated to let himself sleep when I wasn't sleeping. He bent whenever I pushed him.

Things are different now, however. He's firm. He doesn't let me get away with trying to skip out on ritual responsibility. He doesn't say yes when he knows he should say no. And he doesn't ask before he acts. I think that's my favorite part. Being blindsided by affection, or something surprising rather than having him hint and flirt and build up to a kiss or a compliment.

Maybe it's the jogging he's doing every morning. Maybe it's the extra hours at work, maybe he's planning something. In fact, I'm almost positive that he's planning something. Rolling over, I plant my chin on his collarbone, flattening myself against him and he complies, accepting my pass like he does everytime. He stirs and hums but never really wakes, because he isn't really sleeping. He's never really sleeping. My hands fold across his collar and I rest my chin on them instead, staring at him in that uncomfortable way until his blue eyes are forced open. It takes awhile, a few minutes at least, but there they are, bright and significant in the dark room.

"What?" He knows I have something to say, and it's true. I have a thousand questions I want to ask him, dozens of diffferent conversations I wish we were having right now where things are sorted out and talked about rather than argued and disputed. I want to confirm all these things that I feel are still mixed up and wrong.

"Nothing."

"No, what?"

"I was just.. wondering if.." Something about my tongue trips me up. This is a bad idea. A bad place to ask him if he's humoring me and stringing me along. A bad place to remind him that I'm thinking of this still and it won't go away. ".. can we have waffles for breakfast?"

"Sure."

"With strawberries?"

"Sure."

[star studded]

Harper: I'm undecided. I feel ... that something's going to give. ... Maybe seeds will be planted, maybe there'll be harvests then, maybe early figs to eat, maybe new life, maybe fresh blood, maybe companionship and love and protection, safety from what's outside, maybe the door will hold, or maybe ... maybe the troubles will come, and the sky will collapse and there will be terrible rains and showers of poison light, or maybe my life is really fine, maybe Joe loves me and I'm only crazy thinking otherwise, or maybe not, maybe it's even worse than I know, maybe I want to know, maybe I don't. The suspense, Mr. Lies, it's killing me.

-- from Angels in America; Part One: Millenium Approaches, Act One, Bad News, Scene Three.

[star studded]

Take care of him.

Words echoed in her ears long after they were spoken over miles and miles of buzzing, flickering telephone wire. Take care of him. It was like some extension of herself had been screaming the same thing for so long in a language that she just hadn't heard. It had been garbled vowel sounds and the smash of a hard consonant instead of that fluid, feminine voice that was so rich with misery. It was as if she knew that she hadn't been taking care of him. He had been the one taking care of her, of both of them in most instances. It was her turn.

But what did that mean? How did you take care of someone without any skill or know-how about taking care of even yourself?

The links in her spine cracked out of place as she sat up on the couch, the white phone replaced on its charger, her hands knotted in her lap with gnarled, twisted tension. Her brain buzzed with licks of French read to her, lines of TS Eliot that she didn't quite understand even in translation, but pretended to with a nodding head and a wide smile.

She had a long list of things ahead of her to do, and a short amount of time to do them in.

[star studded]

The dress mannequins stared at her, legless, lifeless, headless, armless creatures dressed in gorgeous, half made clothing. One had the skeleton of a cranberry colored bridesmaid's dress, it's tea length skirt spanning out in tulle rather than in smooth fabric. The one in the middle had its waist and bust wrapped in the top of a wedding dress, the skirt (left unsewn from the boddess) was pooled around where the feet of the doll would be, a spanning circle of white, it's hem being finely detailed by hand. Just not now. The last doll, smaller, slimmer, was clothed in the makings of a modest halter top of blue fabric. Lucy was craned over it, pulling the frayed bottom down and sliding scissors along white chalked lines, slicing it straight and pulling the two straps back to knot.

Glancing outside, she waited patiently for the gloomy day to give way to sun, but she knew it never would. The sun would set, the gray, wet light would fade, and she'd be stuck waiting for him in the dark.

As of now, afternoon raged on with dim light peeking through heavy clouds, ready to burst at their seams with precipitation. The next time she glanced back, it would be snowing, thick heavy flakes that stuck to the window and the pavement. Abandoning her project, she wandered over to watch their tiny green and brown lawn turn into a white canvas with pieces of grass and dirt sticking through. The snow fell heavily, the fat flakes clinging with wet, sticky determination to take over. Already, cars drove slower, people walked faster and dug their chins into their scarves, keeping their necks warm and away from danger.

She spent the better part of an hour working on each individual piece, stringing thread through fabric until the wide spanning blanket of white was too much for her to resist. Barelling downstairs, she slid on her black boots and white coat, sticking her hands into white mittens and pulling on her infamous pink hat with the tiny ears that stuck up, the one River danced around singing the Meow Mix song in, the one that Charlie had bought for her after her last one had been lost.

When he came home, he'd find his wife out in the backyard constructing snow angels and the base of her first snowman from the snow that poured down in droves. Lucy would be red-cheeked and smiling wide, frozen and excited.