Sinister: what is it i must do to pay for all my crimes?

[lindsey baker]

hello sinister.

i hate sundays.

i suppose the quiet slowness to them should make me happier; twenty-four 
hours of pure sleepiness, nothing to do because the world shuts down for a 
bit of rest and something.

but the afternoon has been long, and lent it self to loneliness, and i am 
sitting back here again longing for something to come along and fill the 
void i am only ever acutely aware of on the seventh day.



my shoes have rubbed a blister on the back of my heel; i have been walking 
in tight, repetitive circles through the downtown area, looking 
simultaneously in windows and at my reflection in the stretching panes of 
glass. is that vain? maybe. danny always said i was quite a vain thing. and 
maybe i am after all, reading the things i write and preening in front of 
mirrors and spending an insane amount of time and money and energy to make 
myself presentable on my own terms daily.

but like conor, i wonder if when i look in the mirror these days, someone 
new is there. and i don't know if i know her.

more horrifying: i don't know if i want to know her.

***

not that i think i have undergone any great personality change, adopting new 
outlandish morals. modes of dress are one thing, as are different ways of 
combing and twisting hair around a head like a misshapen halo.

no, what i speak of is something i have known before, but this time, bigger 
and longer and more shy, a weeping of the spirit.

i am sad.

and this week, i have to pack the sadness away in boxes and bags with my 
clothes and food and furniture and move it twelve blocks down the road to a 
new home, where it will live alone in rapture.

***

i wanted to have a story to tell, to give this rambling some purpose. and 
so. i thought of one.

at the coffee house last night. i had been there for a while, by myself, and 
i had forgotten my book. i read the paper instead as i drank my tea and 
began a disgusting frenzy of chain smoking until cara got there, and the 
boys working, thankfully, often interrupted my immersion in current affairs. 
they sat across from me and smoked, talked to me about life and love and 
music and writing and all the things you are supposed to talk of at coffee 
shops.

and eventually cara came with jill, who gave me a photograph.

in the photograph was me, sitting next to a boy on a pool table at the daily 
nebraskan spring banquet. we were smoking and he was looking at the camera, 
while i, paying no attention to anything but the boy (as is always the case 
with me, i fear), was laughing up into his face. i suppose some people might 
think i look charming in the picture, slightly taken with the boy, opening 
my mouth in a widened arc of sheer chemistry.

i didn't like it. i didn't like the way my face looked, and i didn't like 
the way niko, the resident foreign coffee shop old guy (fifty; venezuelan or 
some such origin) looked at me in the photo while placing his hand on my 
back. rubbing slightly and telling me i was a beuatiful girl, it was a 
beautiful picture.

but that i was better in person.

dan came over and i looked up expectantly, my mouth surely widening in the 
same way as pictured. he smiled as he picked up the glossy piece of paper, 
looked at me at length. he handed it back to me after a while, and said

'you aren't wearing your wedding dress.'

it was a dn party. i told him i wore wedding dresses to some of the dn 
parties earlier that night.

i pointed to the picture.

'but i'm wearing handcuffs at this party. (a silly prize for a silly award.) 
surely handcuffs are better than a wedding dress any day.'

he laughed.

'well, lindsey, they're kind of the same.'

i agreed, and watched him as he walked away, turning to look at me once more 
before going back behind the counter.

***

i am a terrible girl.



xxx with love,
lou

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