jacktellslies

This week I lose two friends to faraway lands.

Courtney, raised by black southern women and fags, famously sarcastic and misunderstood, came to Philadelphia from New Orleans when there wasn't any New Orleans left. She owes me pornography she promised me ages ago, and she owes me Framboise for her repeated failures to spice some girl she fancies. (Parker and I gave her a bottle to aid in the wooing with the caveat that if she failed, it would be returned.) She's hoping to get a job with GeekSquad, which, our friend Debbie and I are fond of reminding her, is naught but a clever cover for a prostitution ring. (I like to make her sound a bit broken in, but really she's almost innocent.) She's going to Florida, which is terrible. I'll miss her, and I'll miss our getting one another drunk and kissing in public.

Billy is the tiniest fag in the world. He's a stilt walker, a trapeze artist, a brilliant make-up artist, and an absolute hussy. He is untainted by morals and responsibility and depth, and he can't possibly be real. Billy, tequila thief; taker of ecstasy and showers with my boyfriend; host of parties written about in the papers; giver of head to the beautiful, the taken, and the married in the public restrooms of bars; corrupter of all: he must be some awful kind of saint, and I adore him. He's off to LA to wait tables and join the circus. Without him, there will be no stories in this town worth telling.

( Los Angeles, I'm Yours. )

Recently, while sitting by the river where my cousin drowned, Meredith wished for a boat she could row. I wished her one powered by doom like that of the Lady of Shallot. Not immediate doom, of course. It would take her wherever she needed to go without rowing, with the understanding that, as everyone eventually dies, everything you do is carrying you to your unavoidable death. She had only wanted exercise, and was displeased. But I realized the extent to which I need to read good books and have interesting jobs and spend time with friends and learn. A good life is the only thing that will carry me to my death, to my proper death, to the things that even the best, most adventurous and giving life necessarily excludes.

After my father died, my mother believed that he was trying to tell her something in her dreams. She'd dream of doing the dishes, of seeing his reflection looking at her in the window above the sink. But she'd know that he was dead and wake up afraid and concerned. She had the dreams often, and felt them to be urgent, but could not piece together any message, until my sister told her that she was pregnant, and the dreams stopped coming.

I've been having recurring dreams. Always my family is there. Once we all followed my grandfather, a former naval captain, all of us part of a fleet of something like small fishing vessels or rusted boats for tourists. Sometimes it is my father, back from the dead. I tell him I've missed him, or I fight with him, or try to speak with him of things that have happened since he died. Usually he is mute, or passive, but smiling, as if embarrassed that I don't understand the rules of visitation. And in the dreams there is a theft, or I am afraid of being made to pay for something, or someone, usually my three year old niece, turns to piracy. We move through converging places, land and sea. We wade through flooded tunnels under the boardwalk and the ocean. We cross bridges, crumbling wooden ones, land bridges flat and thin made of ancient orange brick in buildings built over and containing bits of the sea. And there is always a guardian of a passage or of some sort of riddle I never hear but seem to answer correctly. And the guardian is always two things at once. It was a weasel that was also a duck, three dimensional at one angle and two dimensional at another, flat so that it could slip between bricks. It told us that we had been flat and we had been silent, so we could pass and we could live. There was a man who was both my friend Bernie and my amazing geology professor, taking me into his office at a dig site and teaching me to dissect a human heart, smaller than it should have been and wrapped in an inch of gauze like a silver spider web. And in the dreams themselves I know that the dream is important, that I must remember it when I wake, that I must make sense of all of it. But I do not understand.

They are underworld myths. I've gotten that far. I'm crossing the water, I'm afraid of paying the ferryman, or we're stealing the boat. I am following my family into a place I always wake before finding. But why?

It occurs to me that my mother's dream contained some of the same elements. There was the presence of the dead, of course, and the dishes provided the water. The mirror that was not a mirror was a convergence, an otherworld of sorts. The realization in the dream of my father's being present despite his death was a riddle in its own right at the same time that it precipitated her knowledge of the dream while dreaming it.

I do three card tarot spreads. They are as simple as I want them to be, a single metaphor in three pictures. And I sometimes test my cards and my reading. I cast asking to be told about the coming day, so I can interpret and then return, correcting my own assumptions, seeing where prediction and interpretation line up with fact. Asking the cards to explain the Day of the Dead, I was given the Wheel of Fortune reversed; the Six of Swords, the ferryman rescuer, reversed; and the Three of Cups, family and friendship and celebration, reversed. Besides all of the other things that they can mean, reversed cards for me often simply mean an alternate realm of consciousness: it means that you are dreaming, it means that they are dead. So, yes. All of that is exactly what the Day of the Dead means. It couldn't have been explained better in words.

And, later, Meredith read for me. I asked to be told about me as I am now, and was given the Knight of Pentacles reversed, the Seven of Rods, and the Three of Swords reversed. Reading for me (with clarity and insight I never would have found reading for myself) she told me that I was meant to go on a quest, a physical one or a spiritual one or one through the other. The three of swords is what confused us. It is, of course, the heartbreak card, a red and bleeding heart pierced by three swords. She asked if there was any reason that the dead might be upset with me. This was interesting: I'd written almost all of this before that time, but I'd not yet posted it.

I realize now, though, a second option. The card was in the dream. I was taught to dissect a human heart. Bernie/my teacher cut twice. I cut once. But was the card showing the dream, or was the dream showing the card?

Weeks ago, Meredith suggested asking for a key to my dreams before going to bed. I tried. I even asked a fountain, which promised success, but lied. (Of course, I didn't pay the fountain.) I'm thinking of taking the key in with me: an old key under my pillow, and two coins for the toll, and the cards of the day and the dreams, and the cards of the quest.

I talked to Alex. There was music, and a big salad with strawberries in it. I have a secret diary on the answering machine of my friend Liz's mobile phone, and fountains are lit at night and children splash in them, and the sky roared and the universe was aligned perfectly: the safe little bombs, and the only break in the trees, and then me. My niece and my sister and her boyfriend came for a visit, and we went to one of the science museums. We played with magnets and electricity and with a glass armonica. Allyson is three, and afraid of lots of things. We offered to take her on the real train that would have taken her on a ride of four feet very, very slowly. She told us that it was too big, and that she likes small things. She claimed to have a small and pink train at grandmom's house called the Allyson Rose. She then explained that she flies by holding on to balloons. While flying, she catches birds in her hands. Upon catching the birds, she turns into one herself. She wanted to watch the kids splash in the fountain, too. Debbie came to the house, and later Courtney came, too. We watched movies: Josephine Baker in Princess Tam Tam, a weird little exercise in colonialism that I'd like to read more about, and In the Realms of the Unreal, an orphan-turned-reclusive-menial-worker's room and fifteen-thousand page novel and autobiography and photographs and tracings and collages and dreams.

It has happened, and I'm pierced again, four little nail heads in my hips on the place where my boylines would be, if I had them. I think that eventually they may grow into little chevrons. The NoKaOi people are growing on me, although I am still uncomfortable with the fact that I had to fall into the Cool Kids' Club in order for this to happen. I dislike social groups that operate like this, but I regularly seem to be a part of them. I still blame the fact that none of my friends had friends as children.

I helped Debbie move and I have broken my back, although not badly. I sat in the back of a truck in Kensington. I laughed at a cat.

I walked past the art museum and back. In between I ate sushi, including eel for the first time, and met a boy and began to enact various scenarios that mostly involved assortments of things on trays and the suggestion that I should be beaten. I met a lightning bug on the way home. In the summer I always think that I am seeing them, but they are always bits of streetlamp stuck in broken glass, or the end of someone's cigarette. This one was real, though, and I caught her, and she bumped into my shirt. What were you doing in my neighborhood, little bug?

I am getting to be so good at cutting fish. My lines are smooth as one could want them, and no meat is lost. I cut an Alaskan king salmon today, a thing that is valued exactly as much as it should be. They are big: its gills were out before I got to it, but had they remained, they'd each have been the size of your hand, or bigger. I spoke with a customer who felt that, because of its rarity and everything else, it was a holy food. Yes, yes, I said, it is. As I scaled it, I thought of Antony and Eros, of the removal of armour, of moments of reverence and tenderness. I took the knife to it, as it asked of me, and I did my part well. I ate the scraps. One should waste nothing, especially of something that once lived.

I poked through Parker's glass today. She used to make it. I'm wearing a little green and almost blue thing now on a silver chain around my neck, and we have a gift for my sister's birthday: a fat hobbit's bowl with a delicate pipe. Thin bits of gold are pulled through it. These are the worst things she's made, the dregs that didn't sell, and they are perfect.

Debbie and I spoke of evolution today, and of hope. There was art, and autism, and maybe the interconnectedness of everything, and perhaps the nobility of self-destruction. I made dinner for the three of us: pompano! and apples and cranberries and spices, and broccoli with tangerine and garlic and dried peppers and white wine. I keep meaning to tell her that she is my girlfriend, the one I don't touch, but I forget and it does not matter. When she is rich she'll steal me away and I'll cook for her. I like this game.

There are terrible things in my closet.

I celebrated, although I hadn't known that I would until it was upon us. I wore Fallen, Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's tribute to Lucifer, and I read quite a lot, including the first bit of Paradise Lost, and we barbecued and cleaned the refrigerator and watched more porn with friends. Cleaning the refrigerator was the most hellish bit of all, clearly. Girls like porn less than we do, but it led to interesting conversations about the other sort of acting in pornography, and spitting, and the sort of sex that I've never had with straight boys. (They really hit you on the back of your head to make you gag? That is adorable. I'd no idea.) A straight girl from the bakery who is both interesting and cute revealed her crush on Parker while they walked at night. Parker has been bashful and boastful and happy since. I am so very pleased, but tease that she should go arrange and straighten the multitude of action figures in her bedroom so that her new friend will be impressed. Today I drink monk's blend tea from a cup that bares a rainbow and, in fine script, the words, God keeps His promises. If you cannot see the humour in this, you're dead to me.

After all that, I'm bedridden. I never made it to my mum's dinner.

My sincerest apologies to the kids in Pittsburgh for disappearing unannounced, particularly those of you I'd wanted to see at the Shadyhouse party. I was ill, and Greyhound is bad, and I really had intended to see my family today.

I drove to Pittsburgh with Robin who is brave and wise. Her mixes are perfection.

My friends all called me genderfreak. I've promised to make it a tee shirt. Ben resigned, and I became the alpha-male. A single photograph was taken of Lou, our own paparazzi, and the world momentarily blinked out of existence.

Alex and Meredith got married, and while, in photographs, it may look something like an ordinary wedding, it really wasn't. They left room in it for other things. It was, and they were, beautiful. And the food was amazing.

Happy mother's day.

I never made it to the zombie pub crawl, but friends and I who had to work the evening had an orphan's barbecue at my house. We had veggie burgers and chicken and trout and asparagus and peppers, and I made mashed potatoes so that it would be like a real family dinner. Debbie is new and amazing, and she brings food and accepts offers to crash at our house. Jen in grocery is crazier than we knew, possibly on drugs as well as a drunk, and insults our guests. But she is amusing, and leaves bits of bad poetry on scraps of our paper in her wake. And I suppose that thirty-some year old lesbians can't really help it. The meatpuppet is resentful and happier in all of the right places. It looks pretty on her.

Terrance and I went on a date. We watched It, which was far better than either of us expected it to be. Clara Bow is perfect. I made him dinner, and we listened to the new Placebo album and some other things. He has fantastic taste in music, and we were both impressed with one another. I introduced him to Recoil, as he is quite the Depeche Mode fan and because he and Bill enjoy choking one another, and I gave him a copy of the mix I just made, and have promised to make him a mix of his own soon. Parker and I attempted to meet Aiden and Meredith at Sisters for Whipped and Stripped, which apparently involves dyke strippers and whipped cream (we both felt that they could have done better) but I am a fool and left my passport at home. We abandoned this plan at the door and went, instead, to Gay Pizza, Parker celebrating because she hates going out and because our inability to do so was because of my failing and not hers. As this happens rarely enough, I allowed her the small victory. However, I was promised three blowjobs from three different boys, and received none. I vow retribution.

Pittsburgh was lovely. There were blessings: I'd almost put my money in a stolen bag, but I didn't. I'd almost brought my love, my computer, and I'd almost travelled with toys. There is that. I saw some beautiful and some disturbing examples of taxidermy. It is a thing I would very much like to learn to do. I learned that there are Inuits who believe that Raven is responsible for giving them fish, and for the order in which the fish run. The whole thing is based on the order in which he let them out of boxes or opened gates. I approve. I saw many friends, if I failed to see others. Drama was reenacted, although the stories have changed little. I read all of Sin City in one day, save the first graphic novel, which I'd read before, and the last graphic novel, which I saved for the next day. I had not read any comic books at all in such a long time; it was a nice return, and Pittsburgh was the right place for it. I watched some films, and I walked nearly everywhere, and didn't spend much money. I attended Meredith's bachelorette party, where I helped to decorate my first ever breast-shaped cake (my contributions included drawing the aureola, selecting grapes as the appropriate substance for representing nipples, and adding a labrys tattoo. However, Rebbecca, the creator of the cake, won by piercing one of the grapes. She has many talents. We ate fantastic food and watched horrific seventies porn (softer yet wackier than the variety to which I've been subjecting my friends in Philadelphia) and we all got quite drunk. Everyone kissed everyone else, even, at times, when fate did not deem it necessary. (Perhaps that was only me?) It was quite a bit more debauched than the parties to which I am accustomed, or mayhaps I was only more successfully seduced by this party than I usually manage to be. I returned to Philadelphia quite bruised and happy, even though I learned that Amtrak will not be refunding my ticket, and I cried at the woman who told me this and took my second ticket, and I meant it. Upon my return to the house, however, I found that Parker had taken up a collection among friends to replace some of the things that had been stolen. My friends are too good. I do not begin to deserve them. They thought I'd be stolen away by Pittsburgh, that I wouldn't want to return, but I am glad to be home. I love the people I have here, and, although I dearly miss the people I have left behind, they are scattering, and Pittsburgh is no longer really where I belong. I hadn't quite known that until this week. (If Meredith and Alex were to move to Philadelphia for a while, of course, my joy would be complete.) And today was full of surprises, good food and an accusation or two. I did not mind at all.

on new year's day i watched a bit of the parade, or, rather, i watched people drunk in the morning or early afternoon and happy and making noise and dancing and teaching one another to strut and generally being lords of misrule. and it was funny: you see, i do not turn heads in this neighborhood. i am nothing unusual here, and so i mostly forget that sometimes i rank somewhere around the gayest ever. but the people who come to watch the parade are not from here; they come from elsewhere in the city. what i mean is, there is something strange and ridiculous and wonderful about being stared at by a bunch of people who came here specifically to watch half of the men in philadelphia run around in ugly dresses.

as punishment for making terrible choices (terrible choices is here translated as, "out with megan." i still maintain that i was a drunk, drunk kitten, and that being drunk does count as an excuse if i was apparently drunk enough that i didn't notice that she hadn't showered in three days. i also contend that the knowledge of this is more than punishment enough.) aiden kidnapped me and took me to delaware, of all places, where we mostly failed to witness traditional delawarean language, dress, and culture, and to taste unique, exotic dealwarean food. we also mostly didn't cruise quaint suburban neighborhoods with the windows down and the bitch and animal song about dildos playing more than loudly enough to break a few children. but we kind of did. crossing the border back into pennsylvania, the joking suggestion that we should totally go to hooters resulted in our actually going to hooters when i admitted that i'd never been. my favourite part was that for as big as aiden and i both talk, neither of us seemed to be able to speak to our waitress like human beings. we were both shy and so nervous. i said thank you so many times. but it was everything it should have been: we ate mediocre food and the waitress touched our arms when she talked to us and sat next to us when she took our order and pretended to have gone out of her way to get aiden a lighter and told us that we weren't like those other guys; they were lame and drunk and had just been here yesterday, but she could tell that we were cool. we wondered what the very young children whose fathers had taken them to hooters would grow up to be like, and i hoped that if a customer should become awful, the hooters girls would all reveal themselves to be amazon warriors and gang up on him to defend one another's honour. i came home and aiden left and patrick, the most amazing boy in all the world, came over for tea and puppetry and a nice walk. he is brilliant, and has touched and made things most of us never even bother imagining.

today i worked, and while i did that, aiden took the keys to my house and hung out there by herself because apparently some people don't like to listen to their roommates having loud sex if they aren't directly involved in it. i don't pretend to understand. when i finally joined her we watched a good deal of the first season of what i would argue might actually be the best television show ever made, the adventures of pete and pete. the nineties were so much better than what we are now. she left and meredith introduced me to my first ever bollywood film, bride and prejudice. it was wonderful, managing both jane austen and transnationalism perfectly. i want to learn more about the genre. bernie came over, too, and gave me a nuns-doing-cool-shit calender that i love, and a crazy cd, and pirates. everyone left, and there was a house meeting. it seems that i might be a little bit closer to one day having a room again, or so i pray. the past few days have been so full. i am blessed. there are rain noises outside my window, too.