hello sinister. ***i am not, nor will i ever, apologize for the post that is to follow. and on that same note, i heretofore take back any apologies i may have made for any posts i have written, am writing, or will write. i love each and every one of my posts, even if you lot don't. so deal with it. thank you.*** whew. secondly, i would like to dedicate the post to follow to my favorite avid reader of all things lou. you know who you are, and i love you. :) your parcel is coming along. (an additional side note to send a shout-out to all the friendly, amazing peeps who have crush-voted me of late. you give a girl hope in a bleak, desolate wasteland of sodden and sorry boys, and that makes me happy. also: caitlin, you rock.) now. to get to business. i went to a laundromat in lincoln for the first time tonight as the washing machine in the basement of my apartment complex has mysteriously been broken. for some time. i rounded up someone to go with me, and settled in for a nice bit of television watching and chain-smoking amidst the inherent humidity of anywhere with a wall of drying machines, hoping (secretly) that josh hartnett would walk through the doors and bring me forty days and forty nights of sweet, sweet lovin'. josh never came. but a phone call did. i hadn't been expecting to get it any more. i stopped waiting for it a week ago, and now that it's been almost two weeks since the event and promises of calls and face-to-face visits to sort the horrifying matter out, i find i am still just as, if not more, completely and utterly pissed off with the person on the other end of the line. i sat there, taking a few moments to realize who it was, looking, i'm sure, like some kind of weird vision, mopping up my little spill of detergent with a cigarette jammed between my teeth, ear pressed to the phone to make out the voice over the hum of the washers and dryers. "i'm at the laundromat....yeah, well, it's about as fun as one might expect....why are you calling? and when should i tell you to fuck off?" the conversation lasted longer than i expected it to when i started, and i said more than i ever intended to say. i told him about the idealistic girl fairy-tale scenarios i had created while he was away, and how i watched the demise of it all come crashing, slowly and steadily, around my precious feet for a month. and the culmination was a stain on my rug from where he spilled his drink and two weeks of panic attacks after the fact. my bed now always houses two, especially when i am alone. and he is sorry, blah blah blah same old bullshit. and i gave him a second chance to prove to me that i should not be scared of him, that he might, in fact, be able to be my friend after all. and i shouldn't have done it, but today, i happen to feel generous. i bought my friend veronica a stuffed cat, after weeks of her lamenting that her fiancee nixed the pet kitty idea. she opened the floral wrapper and took the calico bit of stuffing and fur out of the box, and kept it on her lap for the rest of the night at the paper. i love doing things like that. maybe that's why i did what i did. maybe that's why, when i came back to the paper at midnight to type a poem i stopped for a moment and watched the small congregation of homeless men sround the union, listened to their scattered and half-insane conversations. you see them walking through the union and around campus daily, always separated and manic, some good-humored and willing to talk about anything any time, especially their individual mistakes. it was the first time i had really seen them all together, and it made me oddly, if not happy, at least a little comforted. tonight, every lyric has a weighted meaning. we trade liquor for blood in an attempt to tip the scales, i think you lost what you loved in that mess of details. yes, yes, i did. for a little while, i lost myself, and i think i am on my way back to finding her, through the chewing out of a half-assed boy, a bit of self-assertion, a poem, a big, black nebraska sky, a bright eyes album, a laundromat and a few homeless men. we spend far too much time worrying about the how and why of things, the what and when and where, when we should be worrying about the who. i told him that my friends would kill me if they knew i spent time with him at this point in the game, and he said 'they say your friends know you better than yourself.' and i told him no one knew me, not even me. i told him i was different then, at that moment, than i had been ten minutes before, and that is the beauty and bitch of life. (even of sinister.) the poem is here, in front of me, and i am proud of it. i am proud of myself for writing it, and for what it says and doesn't say, for what i say and don't say still, and for who i am and who i am not. this poem. is a 'monologue.' at least that's what the assignment calls it, and this is the second one i have written. and it is not about me specifically, but it is based on me, and what might have happened, what could have been and what could have resulted. maybe it gives me perspective, or maybe it helps with my insane neuroticism of what-iffing. but it is mine, and it is me, and i am i am i am *daisy, daisy* of what is it have i been robbed, exactly, for love was never part of the game, only an alcoholic promise of meaningful ecstasy. the boy is expendable, and, after the fall of coquettish eyes and second-date hand-holding, apparently so am i. if i stare long enough at the tiles today, the grout lines dissolve, and the expanse of floor becomes gridless, moving, almost oblique and unforgiving. i do not fit any more, am only vomiting upthrowing prose, staggering counterclockwise through various stages of false completion. i am not a drawing, a pencil sketch with moveable parts to erase and redraw, smudge out and finalize as the actualization of a fantasy, two breasts and a garden-of-eden triangle, exposed and gaping, breathing a gaudy yes from every shadowed pore. addiction is not the same as passion, and blacking out is an easy excuse for elementary attempt. the repetition of a cardigan and round, twelve-dollar salvations, i know, does not equate to until death (do us part). so am i to be a quasi-heroine, then, a stamp across my lucky forehead that reads "saved from him." good girl at the bottom of the top said no and rallied weak hands to resist, sank a circle of self-defense teeth into the flesh of his neck and waited for sleep. i have stalled, fumbling now through every day faking poised deviance and disillusionment. every man is a rate of capability, and i measure only the span of their hands, estimating the breadth and shape of the bruises they will brand on my quivering expanse of vulnerable temptation. they say they are not violent, but i and my tangle of bed sheets know otherwise. now, through an horrific stretching of my intelligence, i wrap myself in a scarf and sheath of clean line breaks, taut protection from march and the ides of a boy and his absence. question irrational wonderings and try a blank, therapeutic composition of simple lips and sunshine, the doctors say. "remember you are one of the guiltless many subjected to the cowardly more." but i am weary of sympathetic audiences, dewy-eyed nods and recognition of pain. they do not know what i have not told, and the wasted weeks are crushed and compacted into one night made publice by outcry. i am the stupid one. i am of the chargeable few who pitched willingly into the arms, the drawing, a composite of blonde hair and bidden lust. we have both lost, and i force my voice into the form of thirty-eight days and their heady peak: the rape victim. and it is unoriginal, dull, a tongue without taste, a taste without direction, a direction without progression. of a million easy beggars, i am the chosen, the token, an experience told to preserve the pasty-faced feminine prevention. chastity ends with but an adopted surname, and i am still still still i am not that girl any more. i am not that girl. thank you. (i am not a victim.) thank you. (i am not guilty.) thank you. (i am both.) thank you. xxxx lou _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+