Sinister: spirals

[chippy eileen]

(written on monday, but i haven't had chance to post it until today.  linda 
said things come around again, and i wondered if she'd been watching 
me,reading my mind)

---

life moves in spirals.

a gypsy told me that once.  at least, she was pretending to be a gypsy.
when i saw her later, behind her tent, smoking a lambert and butler and
without the glamour of her headscarf, she seemed less exotic.
most people do, when you get to know them better.

she also told me a wonderful man was going to sweep me off my feet.  she was 
half-right.

i wondered what that meant, about spirals, at the time.  i thought it might 
just be something clever that she said when she wasn't sure about her 
client.

a battered fish floats in the vat before me, pushed round in a circle by the 
current.  for a moment, it swims again, and then it is plucked out, 
drained,and placed in paper with potato products.

life takes you where you don't expect it to.  you come back, re-visit old 
experiences, but it is never the same.

sinister-list, i remember you from 2 years ago.  we didn't talk as much as i 
wanted to.  i lost touch with you on The Day Of The Smashed Computer and i 
haven't seen you since.
we've both changed.  you look younger, if anything,
and me - well, take a look at my face.  if you remember me, you'll know i've 
grown.

now, i see you again.  you have the same easy grace, which i always admired.
  i stumble less now, and have learned to hold my head up.  if we didn't
notice these things, we would think life was the same.

the spiral turns again.  a car pulls up outside the chip-shop window.  its 
andy.  i haven't seen andy since he moved away.  shortly before i left this 
little village with a pub, a chip shop, and a lady that still, after all 
these years, goes from house to house cutting old ladies' hair.

i flick off the little cassette player i keep in the chip shop.  he wouldn't 
want to hear what is playing.  i didn't want to hear it for a long time, 
either.

2 years ago, andy told me he was gay.  we both cried.  him, because it was a 
big secret and he was scared of how i'd react.  me, because i was in bed 
with him at the time.  and then he went to london.  i wanted to find him and 
tell him i'd be there, that i'd try and be supportive, but it was too late.
he left, and left me intact, if you catch my meaning.  and i'm glad for
that, now.

i remember waiting for margaret and frank to close the chippy downstairs, 
and running out into his car.  he kissed me, then he flicked the stereo on, 
and drove us back to angela's place.

angela had been around.  angela, it seems, is still going around, only these 
days she has a baby in tow. angela had an older boyfriend, angela smoked 
pot, talked about my bloody valentine and had had anal intercourse.  angela 
told me it was about time i grew up and gave andy what he deserved.

and so, that night, as i felt the exhileration that goes with utter terror, 
as the rain hit the windows of andy's dad's cortina and we raced up the 
roads between east langerston and the next village, five miles through the 
darkness, i tried to think about something else.  i tried to listen to the 
music, to the ballad of ray suzuki as it rushed through my arms and up and 
down my chest, as it made my mind buzz.  i told myself it was stuart david 
that threatened to send my spine into spasms and not the boy i'd been to 
school with.  the sensitive, quiet and kind boy who had grown into a 
sensitive, quiet and kind larger boy, but still had some way to go before he 
would become a man.

angela had disappeared with a boy from leeds who had a motorbike and worked 
in a garage.  she had left her cds scattered around the bedroom, and lit a 
joss-stick, and she'd left a note telling me that anything... should we need 
it... was in her bedside table.

and, so, we played the cds, and we touched each other awkwardly, and i made 
andy put on 'bug rain' because it calmed me.  we drank the vodka we'd been 
left, and we lay underneath the carpet blanket on angela's bed.  and we 
laughed, for a while, because neither of us knew what else to do.

i get up high, above the lake.... look at me up a tree again..

and now, andy climbs out of his car, sees me, climbs back in again and is 
gone.  i had been trying to give him my welcoming smile.  i must work on my 
welcoming smile.  and my mind goes back to lying under that blanket and 
hearing his car pulling away up the road, knowing he was drunk but, just for 
a moment, not caring, peeling the label off the vodka bottle, wondering if i 
should have worn black underwear, like angela told me to, instead of the 
knickers margaret had bought me from littlewoods.

look at me, up a tree again
look at me, up a tree again

humming it over and over to myself, and falling asleep.  waking, at five in 
the morning, to hear banging in the room nextdoor and quietly phoning a taxi 
to take me home.

music... i used to love the way it got inside me.  i used to invite it
inside me, feel its energy, taking me into myself, around myself and into 
the world in a way few other experiences could.  the problem is, when the 
essence is part of your blood, you are that much easier to poison.

a year ago, when i left for leeds, i didn't take my looper albums.  i hadn't 
listened to them in over a year.  last month, when the spiral turned again, 
i came home, and i put the album on, and i noticed it was still there, 
within me.  not poisonous, not yet pure, but potent, all the same.

a woman is asking me about battered mushrooms, and i pull myself away from 
the noise of car engines.  she says it is nice to see me back, and i smile, 
and sprinkle salt and vinegar.  no vodka, this time.  no self-recrimination. 
no staring at the rain as it hit the window, and pulling a blanket closer. 
oh, i can still do all these things, but not today.

i forward the cassette player, and wait for the those three little words...
'yer a looper'.  i find myself dancing around behind the vat, waving a
spatula and shouting 'yer a BUNCH OF LOOPERS' to the empty shop.  the song 
feels like it once did, all those years ago, potent, energising, and full of 
possibilities.  it is mine again.  we have found each other.

eileen




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