in love with a (strict machine)

[star studded]

Prior: You're not supposed to eat in the...
Harper: I can. I live here. Have we met before?
Prior: No, I don't ... think so. You live here?
Harper (pointing to the father dummy): There's a dummy family in the diorama, you'll see when the curtain opens. The main dummy, the big daddy dummy, looks like my husband Joe. When they push the buttons, he'll start to talk. You can't believe a word he says, but the sound of him is reassuring. It's an incredible resemblance.
Prior: Are you a Mormon?
Harper: Jack Mormon.
Prior: I beg your pardon?
Harper: Jack Mormon. It means I'm flawed. Inferior Mormon product. Probably comes from jack rabbit, you know, I ran.
Prior: Do you believe in angels? In the Angel Mormon?
Harper: Moroni, not Mormon, the Angel Moroni. Ask my mother-in-law, when you leave, the scary lady at the desk, if its name was Moroni, why don't they call themselves Moron. It's from comments like that you can tell I'm jack Mormon. You're not a Mormon.
Prior: No, I...
Harper: Just ... distracted with grief.
Prior: I'm not, I was just walking and ...
Harper: We get a lot of distracted, grief-stricken people here. It's our specialty.
Prior: I'm not distracted, I'm doing research.
Harper: On Mormons?
Prior: On ....Angels. I'm a ... an angelologist.
Harper: I've never met an angelologist.
Prior: It's an obscure discipline.
Harper: I can imagine. Angelology. The field work must be rigorous. You'd have to drop dead before you saw your first specimen.
Prior: One....I saw one. An angel. It crashed through my bedroom ceiling.
Harper: Huh. That sort of thing always happens to me.
Prior: I have a fever. I should be in bed but I'm too anxious to lie in bed. You look very familiar.
Harper: So do you. But it's just not possible. I don't get out. I've only ever been here, or in some place a lot like this, alone, in the dark, waiting for the dummy.


--Tony Kushner, Angels In America: Part Two - Perestroika, Act Three - Boborygmi (The Squirming Facts Exceed the Squamous Mind), Scene Three.

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ March 29, 2005 05:51 PM: Message edited by: pretty things ]</font>

[star studded]

<center>Acid tooth
It's got nothing to do with you
But if you wanna watch me chew
My teeth are cutting you out

Stomachache
Well it must be in your head
It must be something that you did
Food just doesn't seem to work out

Am I rotting out?
Daddy says I got my mama's mouth
I'm all about
A forked tongue and a dirty house

Sleater-Kinney, Youth Decay</center>

Back home.

Things are nowhere near fine. I'm not even sure they're any better. But pieces are back in place, and that's going to have to do for now. The house is disgusting. Maybe not to the point of suburban squalor, but it smells like alcohol in here, and there's plenty of clutter that I need to run around and pick up and fix. I'm tired with my old life and old options. We need changes, but on my terms. And if anyone ever leaves this house again, it will be him, with all of his bags packed and he'll go far enough away that he forgets how to get back.

I can smell her in this house and I swear if I ever find her, I will do inexplicable things to make her the most miserable person on the planet. Until then, I will wait for the pressure to crack down on him and he can tell me just what it is he did and where else he went and what other kinds of trouble he got into that didn't end up in a split lip.

How dare he try to substitute. That idiot. That stupid man.

I'll call Olivia and tell her and she and I will spend a good hour fabricating some woman who is all body and no brains and then we will tear her to shreds like the lionesses we are, all claws and sleek muscle, predators in waiting. We will sink our teeth into the carrion of my suspicion and we will tear it limb from limb until we hear bones snap and the screaming protests stop. We are capable of making any living creature willing to die just so it won't have to feel the things we can do to it anymore.

I am stronger with her. I am iron and steel, unbreakable. I am vicious and complete. I am an endless circle. There is comfort without self-sacrifice. I owe her nothing and everything. I give her nothing and everything.

I am sick of vulnerability and weakness. I will do things for myself. I will get what I want at all costs. I will not compromise and sacrifice. I will win.

There was a picture of an actress, the daughter of a director, wearing one of my gowns at a foreign premiere. Beneath the tiny photo (which was on a page with a bunch of photos just like it), the caption read: Cara Holland wearing Lucia, a new line by up and coming urban designer Lucille Cavanaugh.

I thought that description fit me, up and coming. I am up. I am coming.

[star studded]

I feel halved. Split down the middle. Everything conflicts. Everything breaks easily. Everything is a new fight, or a new problem, or a new secret I'm supposed to keep. I've got no more room for secrets. As empty as I feel, the truth is that I'm filled up with confusion and want and need and so much stuff that there's no space for anything else. I can't fit another secret in me. I can't harbor and weather another loss. I can't be broken down again. I can't watch all of this end.

With the removal of my medication comes a new sort of hyperawareness. I see and feel everything. I manage to understand things quicker, I can intuit. Once, I remember this strange dream I had. For some reason, Michael's boyfriend Harlen was there, and I don't even know him very well. But out of nowhere, he took my hands and kissed my cheek and said three words to me.

"Threshold of revelation."

I don't really know what that means. I do know that in the dream I had a jagged scar from the top of my neck all the way down to my tailbone. Harlen had one as well. Everyone in the dream had one. Lani, Asher, Michael, Jude, Charlie, Liv. Some of ours were the same, and some of ours were different. Some of the scars twisted the same way, but they all meant the same thing. Something had been amputated. Something had been ripped away from us.

I don't really understand that, for all of my awareness and hypersensitivity right now. I haven't had a cigarette in a week. A drink in even more than that. I wonder if this was how Lani felt long ago, in some way. There's a sense of worry that you've beaten your body so much that it has a hard enough time holding you up never mind supporting anything else. Maybe this wasn't meant to be. Maybe I'm the only one gunning for this. Maybe I'm losing.

I want to take everyone I know firmly by the shoulders and shake them and scream at them. Do you love me!? Do you love me!?

I drank Sprite while Michael babbled on and lost himself in some beer I couldn't pronounce. And through it all, I wanted to grab his face and play twenty questions. Do you even like me that much, Chachi? Would you prefer another drinking partner to me? Do I scare you? Do you secretly groan when I walk over? Is that how everyone feels when I move towards them?

I am not a lioness. I am not a predator.

I could be. I could be a huntress, stealth on my feet and ready to strike, claiming victims and swallowing them down for sustanance. And everytime I ate one, it meant that was one more person who loved me enough to let me gobble them down whole.

Do you love me?

Can I have a piece of you?

Will someone just please answer me with the truth for once?

Will someone stay still long enough for me to feel capable?

Where am I going to go from here?

[star studded]

She poises the pen over paper and is not sure where to begin.

There is a flood of memory that comes to her, all of the things she kept back when she was staring at him like a mirror image without the glass between. Inverted, all that she felt inside had been projected on his skin and her apathy and ignorance was what he held closest and hidden away. She remembers a piece of paper with inked flowers drawn on and fake ones to wear in her hair. She remembers the top of the Empire State Building and the hand that pulled her back from edges like that over and over again, a kiss in an elevator with her spine flush to the side, and her knee tapping at the side of his leg. She remembers awkward dancing and first meetings, she remembers an ugly time with scars and needlepoints, the tile of an old, old bathroom floor, red sheets and a bathtub filled with glass. She remembers her only armor being someone else's skin, fights that could crumble walls and break down barriers, fists that were thrown into anything solid, a toppled bookcase and phone calls to the police. She remembers wine spilled down the front of a dress shirt, a black Valentino dress and screaming in the rain, a subway locker, a pair of earrings and a necklace, birthday presents that overflowed and overcame. She remembers a hand to hold, French recitations and never once reading the morning paper to herself, or preparing a meal, or washing a load of laundry. She remembers wilted Christmas trees and a heart that was easily shattered like the shimmery skin of a decoration. She remembers everything, from beginning to end, and now knows that she should have clung more tightly to the moments in between.

She remembers every single one of her mistakes.

"Oh God." She mumbles under her breath as the pen scratches itself away across the paper. "You are the only man I will ever love."

<center>Signature: <u>Lucille Hart Cavanaugh </u> Date: <u>June 1st, 2005 </u></center>

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ June 01, 2005 03:53 AM: Message edited by: science vs. romance ]</font>

[star studded]

Left on the Stanton machine at an ungodly hour.

"Lani. Charlie came home. We haven't talked, but everything will be okay. I think." Long pause. "I'm pregnant. I love you. Call me in the morning."

[star studded]

Charlie,

I haven't written you one of these since we lived in the old house, at least not that I can remember. I know most of the letters I've written you over the years were all lost when the last place was torched, but I'm sure you've got a couple left over, some things, some artifacts, something you keep tucked away in a box somewhere, unless you've thrown them all away in a fit of anger, which you are entitled to. As much as I hate to admit it, all of your anger at me is justifiable. Understandable. Reasonable, even.

But that doesn't mean I like it. I hate it, in fact. I hate that I wake up every morning wondering who I'm going to have to battle for your attention at the bar, or if I'll have to see you look at all those other girls there with that grin you used to get when I walked through the door. I don't know what it is that's drawn you to them -- maybe I pushed you in their direction. Maybe all of this is my fault and this is my attempt at making amends, but I honestly don't know what I've got to do to make anything better. So I write letters to you. I've written at least one a day since you came home, and I never had the guts to give any of them to you, but this one I will. I think maybe this time, I can say things the right way.

What I did, hurt you. What I did, I probably deserve to have done to me, though I know you're not the kind of person to ever hurt me out of spite. It's simply not how you function. Instead, my punishment comes in the form of long silences where there used to be dialogue, or an absent brush of air when I'm used to an arm around my shoulders. I miss the things I was used to, and I'm well aware that I probably don't deserve them back, but that doesn't change the fact that I want them. Maybe I don't deserve to get anything I want. I'm living in maybes. I'm fucking confused as hell.

All that I know for sure, Charlie, is that as much as you may think otherwise, I do love you. It's the one thing I've never compromised, or felt flinch, or subside or anything. I love you. Marrying you was the best choice I've ever made, and I'm notoriously bad at choices. I screw things up. When things are perfect, I feel the need to make something go wrong, because I have a thing for needing a problem to solve, or an obstacle ahead. But I know that I never want to be without you, even at the cost of all my problem solving skills and need for a mess. You are the one thing I want to keep clean, and sorted, and close. I know I've fucked things up for awhile, but what I want to know is where we go next. What do we do better? Where do we make changes?

Dr. Larson says silence is death for us. We have a pattern of walking around and letting things fester, and they rot us from the inside out, like a piece of bad fruit, and suddenly everything stinks. I don't want that this time. This time, I want our problem to be solved instead of pushed under the carpet. I'm supposed to tell you what I expect from everything now, and it feels so invalid, like I don't deserve to be wanting anything. But I want a second chance. I want your confidence, and your trust, and your attention. I want to be your most important thing. I want you to spend more time with me and less time out at that bar with your friends. I want you to talk to me about work and about anger, and about all of that stuff that you're dealing with. I want you to stop telling me how you find other women attractive. I want us to stop trying to take shots at each other with words. I want our snide-comment wars to end with this letter, and we'll call it a draw. I want you to, most importantly, love me like you did before all of this happened, where you'd bend over backwards to make me happy, because that's what I want to start doing for you. I need to know what makes you happy, first, however.

So that's where your assignment comes in. Dr. Larson says that if we're not comfortable talking face to face about these things, that letters will get us to the point where we can sit down and talk about the hard stuff. I want you to write me back and tell me everything. If you're hurt, say so. If you're furious and angry and betrayed, say so. Tear me apart if you have to, but under the one condition that after you've said everything you have to say, you make a list of what you want from me, and from us, so we work on fixing things instead of yelling and fighting and feeling like shit day in and day out. We can fight, apparently. It's healthy, I guess, but only if afterwards we discuss solutions to prevent a fight from that happening again.

And maybe, if you want, you can come to see Dr. Larson with me this week. Maybe we can all talk together, but only if you want to. I think it would be good for us.

I love you. Please don't throw this away.

Lucia.

[star studded]

<center>

Take your payroll
And your lottery
There's a place I know
There's a robbery

And I swear I'll never tell
If you swear you'll never tell
And we'll all make out so well
We will all make out so well

Head on with my hate
Into the lights ahead
I'm amazed that I'm still standing
And I demand that we all blend in
I'm amounted

Just the same old
Glitter story
From the sea floor
Metamorphosis
And I can't change back for you
I will not change back for you
I must live in skin that's new
I'm a livid skin that's new

Turn your insides out to the outside
Turn the outside in to the inside
Trade your outside in for the inside
Turn it around again

I'm amounted

And I can't change back for you
No I can't change back for you

I'm amounted

Foo Fighters - Live-In Skin</center>

[star studded]

<center>I don't think war is noble
And I don't like to think that love is like war
But I got a big, hot cherry bomb
And I want to slip it through the mail slot
Of your front door

You can't leave me here
I got your back now
You better have mine
Cause you say the coast is clear
But you say that all the time

So many sheep I quit counting
Sleepless and embarassed
About the way that I feel
Trying to make mole hills out of mountains
Building a base camp at the bottom
Of a really big deal
Did I ever tell you how I stopped eating
When you stopped calling me
I was cramped up
Shitting rivers for weeks
And pretending I was finally free</center>


There is a poetic justice to the villain getting theirs. I am the villain. I am the werewolf who prowls your streets and tears your children to shreds. I am the thing you bar your doors against at night. I am the ghost in your hallway, knocking things over and forcing you out of your home. I am the homewrecker, the heartbreaker, the hellraiser. I can clean my veins out and bleed new blood, I can drain my body dry of every last drop of alcohol, I can stub out my cigarettes and fill my belly with new life and I will still have a blackened little heart the size of my fist, twisted up and hard as coal, fragile as ash. I am a pristine monument to a lack of feeling, and I vow, from this moment on, to never feel anything like this again.

You were never mine. Or maybe you were always mine and I was only crazy thinking otherwise. I was always crazy, that's for sure. I tore up the tile of our bathroom floors looking for secrets and needles. I scratched myself into you and then clawed you out of me. I can't love you because I can't love anything but the things I create, and I did not make you. You made me. I came from your rib. I was birthed from your side, stitched up once and then undone to spin around you like a satellite until I crashed head on. And now here I am, lost without gravity, trying to spin desperately on my own. I'm packing bags, I'm sailing, I'm flying the coop. And I'm not crying. No more tears wasted. No more drying, dead streaks down my face because I don't understand, I don't know what went wrong.

When my heart opens, all the doors close. You turn the locks. I cannot love unless I am loving you, and I would rather just not love at all. I cannot be full unless I am filled with you, and even then, I am drowning, begging for air until my lungs feel like they are going to burst wide open. So instead, I will be empty. You are the element that nothing can be added to.

If you live your life with a rope tied around your neck, tight, squeezing the life out of you, chafing your skin and burning every minute, you don't register all that feeling as pain. It's just the sensations that have always been there, and your first glimpses of life without all that hurt and choking and scraping and burning are miserable because you miss it so badly. I don't know how to live without my hand on your throat, digging in my nails and picking up skin, sucking the life out of you because I want it. I want to give that back to you, because maybe then I will feel like I had a hand in making you.

Instead of unmaking you.

I want to drive our car into a wall. I want to grip the wheel and press the pedal to the floor and just not stop until something stops me. I'll just go straight, through stop signs and red lights and intersections, through medians and streets. I won't curve with the road, I'll drive through houses and dining rooms, I'll go down in a streak of eleven o'clock news glory and I will take innocents with me. And then you'll see, then you'll be sorry.

Or maybe I'll have this baby, and be happy for a month here in New York, smiling and graciously thanking everyone for their presents and their congratulations and their lack of genuine caring and love, and then one day I'll disappear. Someone will call my number, and the line will be disconnected and there will be nothing they can do. I will leave no forwarding address. I will send Michael the last rent check with my name scrawled on the bottom, and a cryptic message on a paper folded around it. Some other time. Do I dare disturb the universe? And that is all you will ever hear from me, ever again.

I'll change my name. I'll stop making clothes. I'll abandon everything I ever built.

Or maybe I will find this new hole and crawl into it, make it my own. I'll burrow and dig deep, settle in and sleep. Hibernate. I will give birth there, alone. I'll nurse until the child can walk and find food on its own and then, having served my purposes, curl up and wither. I'll send a tiny part of me into the world. Leave the bad stuff behind.

Hearts don't break when you lose love, Charlie. They burst into flame and burn to their simplest element.

Every last part of me is on fire. I will love you every waking moment until the smoke suffocates me.

[star studded]

Harper: You were going to save me, but the whole time you were just spinning a lie. I don't understand that. This is so scary. I want this to stop, to go back ...
Joe: Harper...
Harper: Mr. Lies, I want to get away from here. Far away. Right now. Before he starts talking again. Please, please...
Joe: As long as I've known you, Harper, you've been afraid of men hiding under the bed, men under the sofa, men with knives. Who are these men? I never understood it. Now I know.
Harper: What?
Joe: It's me.
Harper: It is?
Joe: I'm the man with the knives.
Harper: You are? Oh God...
Joe: I'm sorry.
Harper: It is you. I recognize you now.

--Tony Kushner, Angels In America, Part One: Millennium Approaches. Act Two: In Vitro, Scene nine.

[star studded]

<center>Wallowing In Her Own Filth

You've envied her style for the whole year that you've spent drooling on the window of Filth, the East Village boutique she runs. Now, The Village Voice asks Lucy Hart the questions you've wanted to ask her forever...

</center>


Talk us through what you're wearing.

Uhhh, Marc Jacob's pleated tweed skirt with blue fringe and a cheap tank top I bought at Old Navy. They were selling them for like, two for fifteen bucks, so I think I bought their whole color palette

So why clothes? Why not interior design?

I think clothes are more personal, and more reflective of who you are. They're like little pieces of art that you can take all around town with you, and use to show off parts of your own personality. That and I was just so sick and tired of what was selling in stores, I couldn't find anything that I liked, so I just started making my own, and I guess I was pretty good at it. I took off from there.

You're pregnant, any chance at making maternity? Or a kid's line?

Definitely! I made a few pieces for my friend (ex-socialite and CEO of Satellite Records) Lani Stanton and now I'm working on just some personal stuff, but yeah. If there's a market for it, definitely, I'd go for it. There's a huge market for kiddie couture lately, I should hop on that bandwagon, huh?

What's the best Sex Pistols song?

Anarchy in the UK, obviously. Stupid question, next?

Who, in the history of fashion, is overrated?

Michael Kors, definitely. He was on that Project Runway show that I was addicted to for the entire season, and I spent the whole time yelling at him through my television screen. Seriously, he's a balding gay man with no idea of what makes a woman look sexy, or else he wouldn't make everything out of fucking burlap.

Well, since we know who you don't like, who influences you?

I don't want to list any fashion influences, because then you'll all be like.. looking for them in my next pieces, and I won't be original. But I get a lot of my influence from sculpture and architecture. I have a lot of pieces in my fall line that are Neoclassically-based, a few that I took from some old Frank Lloyd Wright sketches and ... oh my God, Seven Thatcher. I saw a feature of his a couple years ago, and everything was just so big and awe inspiring that a lot of my initial pieces were just ripping off his sculptures and turning them into clothes. So, sorry, Mr. Thatcher, don't worry, I didn't sell any of them. But, I think his stuff is just great. Absolutely amazing.

What's in your CD player right now?

I've got five discs on shuffle. Liv Liddell and Harlen Prior's demo cuts from their new albums, which are amazing, and everyone should go buy them when they come out, the new Sleater-Kinney album, Hole's Live Through This and Garbage's latest, Bleed Like Me.

Any final words of wisdom for our readers?

Uhh, keep your receipts and don't go out of the house without looking in the mirror first. And remember, socks with sandals is never, ever okay.