::Thirteenthmas

I want this to be the beginning of another great thing, he says, sweeping broken glass and splinters through the back door and into the alley. I want it to be like old times, like flying by moonlight and hollering down in the dark. I just wonder if my old wings can still do it.

Blowing dust off a bottle of 18-year Scotch that was left behind. A grubby shotglass will do, fished out from the cobwebs beneath the bar, under a towel that still smells of old smoke.

The Scotch is sharp, indignant at being forgotten. Nutty and burning. The streetlight outside is buzzing absently, waiting for him to get started in earnest.

—

Your notes made me smile. All the times I’ve thought of starting over with a new name, somewhere else, now are blurred away by that fleeting connection – those few bits, those electrons.

It’s good to come home again. Have you ever had an experience like that in real life? To walk into a familiar-but-frightening door after years away, and be greeted with open arms? If so, I challenge you to write an entry about it.

I’m in a weird, shadowy place right now. Moments of jubilance lancing through days of frustration. A lot of things around me are awful, which are ameliorated by some things that really kick an inordinate amount of ass. I’m surrounded by prosperity and love – except during all the times I feel lonely, deprived, unwanted.

I’m afraid to even write about it. Like if I put to words what I really think and what I really want, it will all come crumbling down like Alice’s house of cards, and I’ll be left friendless on the side of a dusty road somewhere, with only my own shoe to eat.

The strength to speak the truth – even in relative anonymity, that’s hard to find. Let’s try:

I want adventure. Foolishness. Freedom. Stolen kisses. Moonlight and lies. I want a blowjob. A joint. My creativity back. I want to keep losing weight. To be sexy and sleek.

I want to be needed. More than an afterthought, a roommate, a cog in the machine. An extra pair of hands. A fill-in-the-blank. A ‘yes, I guess we should invite him too.’

I want to be seduced. Dragged thrashing and quivering into things I shouldn’t. To hear that I light you on fire. To see in your eyes the reflection, that I am thunder and lightning.

I want to fight. I want to punch and tear and claw and shoot holes. My dreams are all full of it. Swordplay and running and chasing and bellowing warcries. But I wake up before the end, every time. And in the real world it’s long past time where fighting would get me the things I asked for. That ship has sailed, and it’s far in the West by now.

I want to clink glasses and dance by laserlight, to sing with the others who have seen the wars come and go, and to toast those who fell on the field. To cry over the things that are broken, the things we fumbled away, the things that we have forgotten and fallen away from. The novels I should have written. The music we should have played. The times we didn’t know better and the times we were too afraid.

I want to run backward to the boy I was before, and give him a slap and shake his shoulders and tell him “FOOL! LOOK AT WHAT YOU’LL BECOME!” … and then wisp away to nothing, just a disintegrating paradox, when he turns away to do the things he Should Have.

I want to enjoy the things I have, wholeheartedly and without regret. And stop whining about my wonderful, blessed world. To let melancholy slide from my back forgotten and take my wings with it – and luxuriate in my two-footed, cloudless treadings.

Follow me in this. Bleed with me. Drink of my bottle and carry my bullets. Bear these words I speak with you and echo them back to me when I am distraught: I need you.