jacktellslies

Beth and I have taken to laughing, "I get everything I want!" for those moments that manage to be irrationally perfect, more than you'd ever ask for piling around you all at once. And yesterday was better than that, a consistently and unreasonably lovely day. I'd stayed up late the night before dancing around a cauldron of glue in my oven room, a bulb burning directly over my head, my halo, my moon. And I woke up early, no reason but a hunch, and done with dreams. My suspicions were correct, and someone I'd been wanting was tangled in the aether cables. I hadn't known what it would call. There were crows above me, instantly, calling in a grey and writhing sky. There were three or five of them, when I've not seen crows in this part of the city in years, if ever. Obscenities, my only prayers, fell from my tongue like fairy gold turning to feathers.

I did yoga; I did not, so far as I can tell, shatter my spine. I'll proceed with caution. I'd quite like to return to it in earnest.

By the time I'd dressed it was nearly time to leave, but being occasionally irrational, I decided that I couldn't possibly be seen in public that day without a new hat. I found the streets of Philadelphia, my lover, boot to brick, moving in her in a fury of winds. Other people's sigils were burnt in the alleyways, mirrored cave paintings replaying my perfect morning and laughing, certainly correctly. I pouted and preened for myself in the shops and returned with something I liked.

I got to the park laden with fruits and red and white wine. I found friends there, beautiful ones, and we ate grapes from one another's chests and trousers like silly foul mouthed children. The trees insisted on joining in, covering us in spores and other spunk of the natural world. Tom, being even more of a true city-dweller than most of us, was unfamiliar with such obscenities and was terrified.

It is, I think, the nature of us veterans of the Fort to threaten as much as to flirt. But this being the first of spring, I think we may have outdone ourselves. It was filthy. We accused one another of vile things and promised one another worse. A running tally of my failings was kept by Winston Churchill (here represented by a delightful young bulldog, clearly drunk and a scrapper) and my dead father, drinking deep of the whiskeys of hell yet still unable to forget their unnumbered sins and disappointments made flesh and left to wander the streets in the form of yours truly. In our defence, for the first of spring it was a bit cold and the wind was cruel; we were fighting and flirting to stay warm. Eventually we were forced indoors for mystery beer, a charming custom of paying next to nothing for a surprise in a paper bag and a bottle. Sometimes it was quite good, but there was always the risk of falling victim to some of that mainstream American beer that tastes like a mixture of spit and the underside of the furniture in a fraternity. The waitress, being wise and just, only inflicted such indignities upon Tom.

I feel like I've left out some of the goodness, but I'm not sure I'd know how to convince all of it to fit. I don't know how one day managed it, still. But the winter is dead at last, and I'm hopeful that this day won't be the last of its kind.

Ben got older, so I took a train to his house, which was made entirely of women and nearly empty bottles. His new ladyfriend, a curvy thing with red hair and perfect lips and exquisite taste in hats, was introduced to society. I took up a new sport, and every time Ben left the room convinced new combinations of girls to take over his bed. The boys who stumbled into the room stood around looking nervous, but Ben and I, being gentlemen, were usually invited. I wandered the night with Beth. We got lost and were followed by packs of dogs. I sliced up my hand, anointing suburban streets with my own holy blood, terrifying the uninitiated. We kissed in the rain, under a bridge, against a church. The next morning the three of us were listening to music in his living room, singing to one another, hugging, dancing. It was saccharine but perfect. I'm in love with all of us, with these moments. We do nothing but bathe and praise the Fort, inventing and reinventing self-referential mythologies, building Babylon in a former Chinese restaurant in South Philadelphia. We have an anthem now, Psalms, a flag, auxiliary troops, and our parties are all exactly like this:

( Elephant Gun )