in love with a (strict machine)

[star studded]

They're sitting there like two beacons in the middle of a hazy morning bedroom. It's past the point where he has to watch me swallow them down and then inspect my mouth for hiding places. Instead, he just settles them down on the bedside table with a glass of water, both standing there waiting. I don't dread them anymore. I don't think of reasons why I don't need them or want them or think that I should take them today. Reaching my hand out from beneath the covers, I snatch them up and gobble them down like ritualistic candy, followed by a gulp of water.

By now, he's gone, already off at work. And as usual, I'm here, a lazy mess of bones in comparison, lavished in blankets and pillows without so much as a very idea of the meaning of work ethic.

Things have changed. Are changing. And we all know how I feel about that. The ice skating, the subway, the lunch at Sal's. Months ago it never would have been like this. Months ago we were untouchable, iced over. And now, now what? Now what are we? I don't think I really know. I don't think I really care. I just know that if I keep taking these pills, we'll stay that way. I know that on my own, I'm just a crumbling failure. Myself, unaltered, is not what is wanted or expected. There are rules and requirements. There are two pills that I have to take every morning in order to be what everyone finds acceptable.

Being liked isn't so bad. It's just a shame that I have to take these things in order to get that far. But I can live with it. I can live with the way he looks at me when we're in public. I can live with being able to get work done without thinking too much about things that normal people wouldn't give two moments of thought to.

It's not so bad, though. For all of my complaining and protest, I prefer this to the way things have been in the past. I prefer closeness to that gap of separation that we used needles and spoons to span. I prefer normalcy to broken glass and a raw throat. I prefer this life. I prefer it.

It's the routine of it all that I'm going to smash with a hammer.

[star studded]

<center>I'll follow you down til the sound of my voice will haunt you.
You will never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you.

fleetwood mac, silver springs

</center>

[star studded]

The scenery of the office had become so ritualistic and normal now that Lucy noticed when things changed. The tiny painting in the corner had been switched with the mirror that hung behind the desk. A terrible way to make a patient look at themselves, a forced reflection. Glancing up into it now, she examined her appearance. Well put together. Far from haggard and harrowed like she had looked time and time before. This did not signal recovery, however, as much as she wished it did. The stretch of her jeans blended together, one knee placed over the other, her heel tapping against air like she was waiting for it to shatter around her and leave her in black.

"And everything's smooth?"

"Yep."

"Medications?"

"Stellar."

"How about the other ones?"

"Hn?" Lucy drifted off for a moment as the image of her therapist came into clearer view. She was the Dark Lady, dark hair, dark clothes, dark rimmed glasses. Dark dark dark and a contrast of shockingly pale skin.

"The supplements?"

"Oh! Those. Yeah, they get tossed in the cocktail in the morning." She joked, tapping cigarette hungry fingers against the arm of her chair. It was a rhythm all her own, the click and clatter of long nails against hardwood. She mocked herself. What a joke she had turned into. A mental parody of herself, widened and magnified, smiling blissfully and complacently at anything.

"How're the stress levels treating you these days?"

"Oh. You know." She didn't really know. It was tough to separate stress from annoyance, the big from the small. It all melted together lately, and anything too hard was handed off to Charlie to handle or smash into a million pieces. Glancing up at Elissa, Lucy let out a sigh and decided it was best to carry on. Fake it when you didn't know just how to make it. "The store's open, Charlie's mother and sister are staying with us for another day or two.. there's bound to be.. stress and shit. But.. nothing big. Nothing too bad. Nothing I can't.. deal with." On her own. Or with the help of a substance to slip her down the rabbit hole, to clear her mind into a blank slate and blur her world around the edges.

"Good. Things are looking up, aren't they?"

Lucy was silent a moment, her eyes glancing out at the window. It gave a gorgeous winter view, the awnings of buildings decorated in heavy frozen snow from the winter squall the night before. Everything was gray, but clear. No haze. No heavy clouds settling. Just the quiet whisper rush of traffic a dozen stories down and the honk of horns. Green eyes were glassy and glazed, staring intently at the rush of it all, the people in windows of the office building next door, working, rushing, taking calls, shuffling papers and looking important in their business wear.

"Lucy."

"Yeah." She snapped back to reality, her head turned away from the seductive stretch of the outside world. She never got that far. No matter how far out she stretched her arms, she never touched so much as the edge of that world, where everyone lived and breathed and existed. She was kept behind the line, fenced away. Do not touch. Do not approach. Alarms. Bells and whistles. She was confined to her life and her comfort. Her new routine on repeat.

"How are things looking?"

"Up. All the way up."

[star studded]

<center>

girls you know what I mean
when swivelin' that hip doesn't do the trick
me pureed sanitarily, Mr. Sulu
warp speed
warp speed
warp speed

every road leads back to my door
every road I will follow
every road leads back to my door
got all your crosses loaded

and I know she's not that foxy, boys
I said I know she's not that foxy, boys
you gotta owe something sometimes
you gotta owe, boys, when you're your momma's sunshine
you've got to give some things sometimes
when you're the sweetest cherry in an apple pie

in the springtime of his voodoo
he was going to show me spring

Tori Amos - In The Springtime Of His Voodoo</center>

[star studded]

For some reason, the lines across oceans were staticy and indecipherable. The awkward, square hotel phone was pressed to Lucy's ear as she curled in the chair beside it. Long, graceful legs were now clumsy and too thin, bare and pulled up to her chest like she was trying to fit herself somewhere she was too big for. Toes curled against the scratchy material and she waited for the strange, double-ring tone of an alternate country's phone system to make way for a voice. It sounded and felt far away, distant and dreamlike.

"Hello?"

"Dad? It's Lucy!"

"Oh, hey!" The cheery voice on the other line chimed in its strange accent and even stranger pacing. Her father had always been eccentric in pronounciation and speech -- not because of some foreign bloodline, but more because of some crazy, undiagnosed disease of permanent silliness.

"Guess where I am?"

"Home?"

"Guess again!" In this moment, for some reason, things had transformed her back into some child playing guessing games and the knowledge that she would always win.

"Uhhhh.."

The suspense was too much for her to bear, so in an as excited a tone as she could muster for fear of waking the sleeping, sick Charlie who was sprawled out on the bed, she offered her answer. "Italy!" Glancing over, she assured herself that Charlie was still asleep, or at least feigning it to the point where he wasn't paying any attention to her phone conversation.

"Little Italy? Do you need a ride? What does Charlie think about you wandering around there by yourself?" The crackle of static made things difficult to hear, difficult to discern. It added syllables and took some away.

"No, Dad. Italy." She spoke clearer, all consonants pronounced and elaborated on. "Like.. the country. With the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Sistine Chapel and everything.." She rambled, another glance up of green eyes at Charlie's sleeping frame. It had shifted, but was still in tact, the pillow over his head, limbs in a tangle of sheets and blankets.

"What the hell are you doing in Italy?"

"Charlie took me ---" She raised brows and hushed herself again. "Charlie took me on vacation. I think the only part that's sucked so far was the plane trip. I nearly took his hand off and made him play six rounds of 'I'm Going To The Picnic' with me. But then they put in some shit movie so I fell asleep. Oh, and when Charlie got food poisoning. He's still recovering.." She pouted. Charlie, in his place in bed, groaned at the mention of it. Clearly not asleep, but not awake enough to join in conversation save for a few neanderthalish comments like that one. "He says hello. Anyway. And we went to a wine tasting, it was great. Until Charlie got sick, then it was not so great. But, apparently they have them all the time in New York, like at Bacchanal, and stuff.. we should go sometime. They're fun. And they have these great little crackers.." Rambling on and on, she took a moment to pause and realize that she hadn't given him a moment to get a word in edgewise. It took her a moment to even remember that she had been the one to dial the phone. Usually, he called, he spoke, she smoked and nodded along, and they said their goodbyes with promises to call later. And surely, a week later, her phone would ring with her father's voice on the other end. "I'm sorry, I'm just.. babbling. How're you?"

"No no! Not babbling. Just telling me about your trip, that's all. It sounds like you're having a really good time."

A really good time. Was that what this was? Was this a good time? Day one had been tempestuous and terrible, filled with screeching and shouting and a hate for the change, a hate for the new hotel, for a bed that wasn't hers. It took time to get used to it, and a dramatic lopping away of blonde hair. And then everything was lighter again. Everything was brightly colored and brilliant. The narrow streets didn't close her in, the hotel room was perfectly put together. The second day had been exploring streets and painting stupid pictures with too expensive art supplies. And now this. The aftermath of sickness that should have ruined everything, but just had Lucy laughing at the sillier parts. Charlie wavering outside of the cab and curling up on tile until she coaxed him to get up and into bed.

"I am. I'm having a really good time. We're going to a museum when Charlie gets up. He's still feeling pretty gross, I guess. But he still wants to go, so.. we're going. And tomorrow we're going to wander around Rome and see all the historic things. And be obnoxiously touristy and take lots of pictures. We've been using this like.. little thirty-five millimeter I bought for Charlie for Christmas. It takes great pictures. We're going to hang a lot of them up, I think. Some of them are just gorgeous. You should see this place, everything's so.. I don't know.. alive."

Alive.

"Some day, Lucy-girl, some day. You can show me pictures, it'll be good enough."

"Well, put aside a day, we've got a lot. Oh.. fuck, my fucking phone card is running out. It's gonna disconnect us. I'll buy a new one and call you before we leave."

"Alright, I'll talk to you soon then. Don't move to Italy without telling me."

"I won't! I won't." She assured him. "Bye!" It was stuck in before a lovely voice told her the call would be disconnected, and she sighed, clicking the receiver down onto the cradle and glancing back up to where Charlie slept again. He had turned over, relinquished the pillow and sprawled out comfortably. With a need to disturb and add herself, she fumbled forward on clumsy legs and leaped wildly into the bed beside him, burrowing under the sheets and fitting herself beside him.

"Don't wake up." She warned him, mouth fitting to press words against the back of an angled shoulder. "I feel like we're stuck in the best fucking dream."

[star studded]

Italy faded away like a page turned, all reds and golds blending back into stark grays and whites. Where Italy promised mild weather and sunshine, home was covered in a blanket of snow. A vicious blizzard settled down on New York City, fierce winds blowing that turned tanned skin back to a raw pink. Up in the air, Lucy didn't notice much of it save for what Charlie told her about weather reports. Where she would have boarded the plane with just her street clothes, he packed heavy jackets in their carry on bags, a scarf and a pair of gloves -- none for him. Just for her, as usual.

Between them, they had nearly filled up an entire silly coloring book with their own rainbow renditions of each picture, a multicolored garden, cartoonish animals in rather human situations all lined up and poised. There were multiple rounds of tic-tac-toe, two glasses of wine finished off to stop jittering nerves and a lame movie to put her to sleep to. Though sleep never came. There was always the bump and rattle of slight turbulence to force fingernails into Charlie's forearm, her eyes wide once more and her knees bouncing nervously.

Though, once startled, it was easy enough to fall back into lazy complacency, the fuzzy edges of a wine-soaked world swirling around and settling back into place. Her temple pressed to the slant of Charlie's arm, his attention focused on a book rather than anything else. He seemed to slip back into it the moment she gave him quiet. Eyes closed, she settled in and sighed, the plane traveling not just between continents and across an ocean, but between a world where nothing mattered and nothing worried, and a world where there was always something to nip at heels and cause tension across shoulders. New York was a city where demons crept out of the gutters and sewers to chase after them, where memories best forgotten were embedded in brick and concrete like plaques to people they once were.

Maybe that was why she cut her hair off. Maybe that was why she pitched her fit upon leaving and left Charlie's shirt smelling like the juice she lobbed at him. Maybe that was why she crawled and begged and screamed until she was handed over what she wanted -- and then denied it anyway. The pill remained pocketed, and would until Charlie went through laundry and fished it out to be disposed of for good. Another chapter closed. Another bout set behind them.

There was a change. She didn't quite know where it started or where it would end, but for now, it was best to just settle on it and let it take here where it would. For now, it was best to take things as they came. No fighting smiles. No fighting frowns. No denying and becoming hypocritical, no immediate frame of mind shifts, no more fits, no more dramatics until she had a viable, veritable reason.

To take all the new experiences she had and to work with them. To incorporate them into this old world. To push the two together. That was the hard part.

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ January 23, 2005 08:06 PM: Message edited by: pretty things ]</font>

[star studded]

<center>Lucy : Impression
written using the one word/fifteen minutes method</center>


It's cold and that pisses me off. I blame the fact that I've been spoiled with gorgeous Italian weather for a week or so, so now back in this snow, that I fell down in yesterday, I'm wobbly and unprepared. It's weird. Feels foreign, like we're not out in our front yard, but instead, we're in Antarctica, wandering the terrain and studying the mating rituals of penguins or something. How gross, huh? I know, I'm awful.

There's a comfort in being home though. I can pout hard enough and Charlie will make me whatever I want for dinner, or breakfast, or lunch, or a snack. I can ask politely and he'll let me eat the last of his ice cream. Here, things are back to normal. There's no delicate balance anymore. We're back to playing queen and servant, just like it's always been. And I like it this way. Because who wouldn't? Maybe I'm punishing him, though, which I think would be a little unfair. Just because I can't have the one big thing that I want, I kick and scream and make him give me all the little things instead. Ah well. So much is life, I guess.

I'm still a little wary about my behavior in the airport. I could blame it on the fact that my medication schedule was all whacked out because of the time difference. Couple that with how little I slept, and how irritable and tired I was, and it's a bad combination. I was bound to throw a temper tantrum at some point, it was just a slow time coming. So instead, I just let loose in the airport. A good, old fashioned Lucy fit, loud and violent and attention getting.

The entire time, though, something felt off. Everything was genuinely me, everything was those irrational, overmagnified feelings I feel when I'm more nuts than sane, but I couldn't help but feel like I was doing some bad, stand up comic impression of my old self. If there even is an old self to speak of. Who knows. I might just be the same person, just on new, legal drugs, with new, legal effects. What's the difference between taking heroin and taking mood stabilizers? The mood stabilizers give you serious cotton mouth, but your health insurance company covers them for the most part. And, with some finagling, you can get them through airport customs without having to stick them in a hidden compartment in your luggage, or in an even more uncomfortable place. Ba-dum ching!

I should get into self-depricating, depressing comedy. I'm starting to think it's my calling.

If you want to know if I regret it, yes, I do. I regret being a bitch, and drawing attention to us, and throwing my juice at my poor, unsuspecting husband and causing him to smell like peach for the entire flight home. Did I say so? No, I don't think so. I think I just cried, let Charlie tell me he was sorry, and forgot all about it the second I had a glass of wine in my hand on the plane. God, I love my life.

But it's funky to feel yourself in that old state of mind. Your skin doesn't fit, you feel like it's all too tight, and you're a person in a body that isn't doing what you want it to.

I didn't really like feeling like that. I think that's a sign that things are getting better. If it had been a year or so ago, I would have been all for it. Fit in an airport? Shit son, where do I sign up?

Now, I'm just embarassed it even happened. I'd prefer to forget about it. So, I think I will. That part's easy when you're married to Charlie. Every time you do something awful, he tells you that it's okay, to calm down, wipe the slate clean, and try again.

So it goes, and so it goes. Wipe the slate clean.

Let's try this again.

[star studded]

An answering machine message at two thirty-six in the morning, Sunday, March 19th.

"Ah, yes. I know it's early, I know yew screen your calls. I just wanted to let yew know that Lucy ... ah, showed up here a little while ago. She's rather drunk, and quite upset and she's sleeping on the couch right now. I was told not to call yew, but I think yew should know where your wife is. She showed up in her work clothes, so I don't think she came home at all. She's welcome to stay the night here, but if I were yew I think I'd want to come down and get her. Yes. So.. but it's your decision, so wotever yew would like to do. Ah. So. I'll talk to yew soon. Bye."

[star studded]

<center></center>

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.

From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."


- The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ March 20, 2005 09:19 PM: Message edited by: pretty things ]</font>

[star studded]

I am dressed fabulously, and I make a quick note to get an outfit like this when I wake up.? If I ever get out of bed again, this is what I want to wear the first day.? These pants are perfect, a wonderfully ambiguous fit, and I have a shirt and vest on.? My sleeves are rolled up to my elbows and my hair is in my eyes.? I don't feel sick or achy or clogged up.? My limbs move freely, my lungs expand to full capacity.? I am healthy.? I am well.

I am in a club, but not like the ones I'm used to.? This one is much darker and the lights are less colorful than they are bright and flickering.? It sparks and crackles with life, and I feel like a member of an elite club just being here.? In the back, I see this table with an assorted member of pretty, important people, and I shoulder my way towards them with some sort of cocky, confident intention.? They are in a smoky haze, the table littered with glasses and bottles that people seem to drink from at leisure and without discretion.? On one side, a man I recognize sits with his hair mashed expertly in a fauxhawk design and his blue eyes lined with a perfect black smudge.? He is apathetic and blank faced, balancing a cigarette in one hand.? His other smoothes over the neck of the blonde, who is clearly the center of attention.? She chatters and laughs, flushed with a drunken sort of excitement.? Also familiar.? She is tall and waify, china-pale with colored in features.? She darkened the lines around her eyes, reddened her lips and has a dramatic sweep of pink shadow at the corners of her eyes.? Her eyelashes are too black and thick to be real.? She is dressed with a severe attention to detail.? A white vest over her kitschy band tour-shirt, and a pair of blindingly reflective silver pants.? On anyone else this outfit would be laughable, but something about the way she's tugged it together makes her seem untouchable and above the rest of us.? Perhaps here, she is.? While the man at her side presses fingers at the nape of her neck, she is babbling along to another woman I recognize at her side.? She is this blonde girl's opposite, short, curved and dark, her hair bunched in buoyant curls.? Lucy, the girl in the middle, is tracing fingers over the slant of her shoulder with one hand while the other lifts to smear over the ragged cheek of the man on her other side.? She is straddling worlds, this rock star queen, much like I am.? Though mine might be asleep and awake, hers are reality and fantasy, responsibility and flitting fun.

I'm not used to not being immediately noticed, so it throws me when Lucy doesn't immediately recognize and speak to me.? Instead, she glances over when she damn well feels like it, and I feel the need to prop my hands on my hips and tip my chin up at her.? It's about time, my stance seems to say.? Lashes bat at me and she leans forward, plucking the cigarette from the man's fingers and taking a drag before it's handed back.? Smoke expells and she grins.?

"How'd you get on the list here?"? Her voice is low and weathered from smoke, alcohol, and anything else that manages to ruin your vocal cords.? Screaming, I imagine.

"I have connections."? Oh God, we're always so much more clever in dreams.? We always know just the thing to say.? We're always witty and perfect and we calculate our response times, our delivery is flawless.? We are flawless, healthy, loved, supported.? We are not alone.? We are not sick.? We do not have death and a wasted life shadowing over us and waiting to strike.? Her palms press to the table, and with a kiss to both the man and the woman, she is marching away and over to me.? Instinctively, I snag her hand and we wander to the dancefloor.? It's already packed with anonymous faces.? I can't see any of them, I don't recognize them.? Immediately, my hands are braced on the skinny bones of her hips and we're dancing to thrashing guitars and a wailing female voice.? I don't usually like this kind of music.? I don't usually dance to this kind of music.? But for some reason I feel compelled, infused.? Everyone is watching.? In this dream, I am dancing with a celebrity, an underground artist, a star, a known name.? It's not the first time I've danced with pop-media royalty in dreams or the waking world, but it is the first time that I have done so with this much intensity and closeness.? I know this woman, even though I've actually barely said more than a handful of words to her.?

"How long!?"? She shouts over the music at me.? Corin Tucker is screaming louder than either of us, but it doesn't seem to matter.? For some reason, even though I've never heard this song, I know all the words.? Nobody lingers like your hands on my heart and..

"What!?"

"I said how long!?"? Nobody figures like you figure me out and...

"Oh!? Six days!"?

She pulls away and we're prancing around and dancing like we're absolute veterans at this.? Like we've been dancing together all our lives.? The song fades away and another one picks up.? It's like the music has been picked out for us.? This one is slower, so Lucy has drawn back in, her skinny arms around my neck as we dance in some odd hug.?

14 Rue de Savoy, that's where the flat was let, we shacked up in Paris two days after we had met..

"Oh my God.."? I mumble against her ear.

"I know.? I can't stop it.? You're here now, so it's playing for you too.? It's weird how accurate it gets."

Eighteen bars of the sonata and you were mine... darling, come home, I can't take the apartment alone...

"Jesus Christ, Lucy."? I push away and she drags me back.? We sway together again.? "And you?? How long?"

"About a week.? A day or two longer than you.? I've stopped counting.? It makes me crazy.? Are you up and moving yet?"

"No."

"Me neither, really.? I just go to work.? And that's it."

"Did you leave?"? I ask her as a warbling, badly pronounced form of French comes over the speakers in time with the music.

"Yeah.? But I didn't want to.? I want to come home.? It was just easier to go.? I'm waiting now.? Just waiting for him to.."? She trails off, and in a way, it's like handing the sentence over to me.

"..show up.? Fix things."? I offer, not because I know her, but because I know me, and she and I are waiting for the same thing though we are in completely different circumstances.

"Yes. Waiting." Her hands clasp over my shoulders and we come to a stand still on the dance floor. The people around us, however, speed up. Their chattering grows shrill and screaming, their movements flail and fly and whir until they're blurred and I can't make out arms from legs from faces from hands. It's too loud. It's too much. I clap my hands over my ears and close my eyes, but Lucy keeps staring, watching all of it.

"Stop!" I shout over the noise. "Enough!" My ears are in pain from the sound of things speeding up while I remain on the same, real-time plane. Half the dance floor does. They stop completely, in mid move. My half of the room has stopped.

"Why did that happen." I ask flatly. Lucy reaches a hand out and points across the way. At the entrance, someone hyperfamiliar stands waiting, moving in real time with Lucy and I, lingering, peering over heads and through arms to stare at me with a quick expression of recognition. It is Michael. And all I can think about is crawling over this forest of frozen people towards him.

"But what about you?" I find myself asking. I turn over my shoulder to look back at Lucy, whose side of the room is fluttering with movement and half of the shrill sound I was covering my ears over. Her skinny shoulders shrug and she jerks a thumb over her shoulder.

"I'm still waiting."

"How long?"

"Who knows?"

"Why don't you make it stop?"

"Can't. The music plays on. The people still dance. And I'm stuck in the middle of the floor until it's over. But you can get out, you've just got to get around.."

At her prompting, I'm pushing through stiff, immobile people like I would through any other obstacle. Reckless, without shame. I break arms and legs, I step on shoes, I topple some over, I tear designer clothing with disregard. I push and push and I come out the other side.

Behind me, things are moving again, and Lucy is lost among them, drowning in bodies, waiting.