day two continued: sleep to dream

“we all have secrets.”

troy made it sound like a brilliant trick of light, that these untold words and fears were what colored us in. our secrets became our stories that turned into our screenplays. with full movie soundtrack muted occasionally, but orchestrated and well-developed. we both agreed that it would be not much of a life, at all, without music.

i know he had his tales to tell in all that silence. that this was his way of saying he understood, even if he didn’t.

“i don’t sleep. well, i do. eventually. when the tide of exhaustion pulls me under. but, i fight it. i fight closing my eyes and letting the dreams take over. for a long time that was enough to stop him. but, not anymore.” i was whispering now, turning up the volume of ‘shock the monkey’.

“there are ways to never sleep at all.” and I knew of some of them, late night movies painting over the shadows with light, dancing on the wall. the reflection of the window, the street lights, and the moon. all of them blending in together. caffeine, not eating, smoking out the window. letting the night air chill my skin, keeping me alert.

he had other ways. he handed his solutions to me in mouse size baggies, tucked into a new mixed tape. cocteau twins, marilyn, ‘walking in l.a.’, ‘karma chameleon’. i listened to them while i wrote pages and pages, filling stacks of composition books that i would later shove under my bed. i told myself the stories i put down were made-up, the frameworks and foundations of another girl. troy wrote then, too. we would hand each other the night before results. trade, read them alone, call each other and sit in silence; no words passing, just breathing between the lines. i think we just needed to know that the other knew, that we held each other's re-told lies for safe-keeping.

every morning i’d meet troy and robert under the bleachers. the air thick with new morning, the fog still rolled in. they would paint my face; kohl eyes, dark lips, pinned up hair. we would use base make-up to cover troy’s new bruises. robert would catch my look, this passing of gratitude, acknowledgement. that we were all there bearing witness. that we were all still living.

sam was bored by our “darkness”. she would climb in my window some nights and try to pull me out of my pen to paper swirls, my standing watch by the phone. her clothes smelled of pot and patchouli, of musty sheets and even mustier boys. love residue marks on her neck, by her ears. she wore bright colored skirts flowing as she walked, like wind, like she was flying. she was re-living our mother’s heyday. falling hard for jim morrisson, belting it out with janis and jimi. yrying to hang on tight to some re-hash of free love.

“i don’t want to be someone’s damn hag, janie. come on. this isn’t you.”

but it was me. at this moment it was me just as much me as the flower child flashback was her at right now. it was one of those eventual moments where you have to agree to just not agree, to walk in different lights, waving hello to each other now and then. we would both shake our heads in disapproval, if that’s how we had to do it. but it was never as cruel as we made it out to be. even though i know we held on tight to the scuffed skinned feelings of betrayal and loss. our own brands of self-loathing coming out in the i can’t believe you are doing this. acting this way, or that way. being this person you are so not. because i know you, i know you; i knew you.