Sinister: you are not you are not who you are not who you used to be

[lindsey baker]

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

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