Peace Bitch
Monday, April 4, 2016
Hey Die-Die,
I’m fucked. Like royally fucked. Three weeks until the final and still I have no clue in the world as to what my subject will be.
Fuck.
It didn’t help that Steinman was up my ass today like a second day thong. He’s so fucking pretentious with no ground to stand on. Sure, he had one exhibition back in the seventies that was covered in the New York Times. Blah, blah, so the fuck what? That doesn’t make him any good. I read an article in that shit paper once about strategies for discarding your dog’s shit in the “big city.” Being in that paper does not a good artist make. The Grey Lady can suck on my engorged clit. Ha, maybe that could be my subject. Thomas Nast meets Betty Tompkins.
Sorry Die-Die, I’m just angry and you’re the best listener I know. In truth, I have senioritis like crazy and am ready to just be done with all this shit, pack up the Altima with my books, paints, student loan debt and head West. Steinman’s class is the last obstacle in my way and I’m sure better artists, better students would just get it over with so they could get to the Burnett’s quicker, but I also don’t want to screw myself over, you know?
I kind of want my final piece to say something. I want it to be something. I don’t want to just throw something together like Terry Porter, that hack. And Steinman loves him some Terry! God, the last piece where he just flashed different colored lights while we had our eyes closed and claimed we were creating the painting right “behind our eyes” made me want to puke. Still Steinman puts him on a pedestal like he’s fucking Rauschenberg.
I digress, three weeks until the final. I’ll get something, but right now I have some grass to smoke and Bojack Horseman to watch.
Peace Bitch
Thursday, April 7, 2016
Hey Die-Die,
Before anything I should say no, still no subject. Still fucked up the ass with a rusty pogo stick. But the absolute cutest thing happened today. I have to tell you.
I’m driving back from campus with my window rolled down and an American Spirit hanging between my homegirl’s favorite lovers, Courtney Barnett on loud so all of Memphis can hear. I don’t always smoke after class, but yet again, Steinman couldn’t get enough of bending me over and fucking me relentlessly. To be fair, I guess he didn’t call me out directly, but like, everyone in the class knows I’m still struggling to find a subject. Everyone knows because they’ve all been talking about theirs, babbling on about North Korea, Trump, Hillary. I’m the only one that doesn’t have a fucking topic yet and Steinman is being the biggest dick about it. Ha misnomer. Fuck him.
Anyway, as I’m parking, I notice an older woman moving in next door to me. Well, she wasn’t doing the moving, she had some warthogs doing it for her. Big, burly, snorting fellas that seemed like they would be out of breath even if they weren’t lugging a beige Chesterfield loveseat up a flight of stairs. I had to say hello to her and introduce myself. I may be a bull-dyke lesbian to my father, but I’m still a southerner and I still have manners. You get it, Die-die.
But I’m introducing myself and I’m noticing that this woman is not keeping eye contact with me like she’s being extremely rude. It’s whatever, like I’m so used to old ladies looking down on me because of how I dress and whatnot, but this felt weird, like pointed, you know?
But it’s not until I see her answer one of the warthog’s snorts asking where to put her Kennison six-drawer chest that I realize she’s blind! She’s really fucking blind! So I try my best to fix my voice and to make sure she understands that I’m trying to be polite and whatnot and anyway she’s lovely, like fucking adorable and perfect. Her name is Aisling. She said I can call her “Ash,” but like Aisling, is that not the most beautiful name you’ve ever fucking heard?
Anyway, Aisling is awesome, and she is my spirit animal and like we’re having tea (fucking tea!?) on Sunday. I cannot fucking wait.
Peace Bitch
Sunday, April 10, 2016
Hey Die-Die,
I love her. Like unapologetically, head-over-heels, melt my tits into a fucking candle love Aisling. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I started my day at Bedside Baptist, as I do most every Sunday. Devout follower of our lord and savior Snooze-us Christ, whose mother couldn’t get a room at the Sleeping Inn. Tea wasn’t until one anyway. Maybe Aisling goes to church, shit, why did I not ask her?
But I “woke and boke” and listened to Andrew Dice Clay and Joey “Coco” Diaz on the Joe Rogan Experience. And before you give me any slack for listening, I’ve always been a fan of the “Diceman,” fuck you for pigeon-holing me. I’m vibing and trying to figure out what the fuck to wear.
I mean do I go chic, professional, cute, impressive … I have no clue, until I remember that Aisling is blind, so it doesn’t fucking matter what I wear. She is already one of my favorite people in the world. Like the whole fucking world. What a relief it is not to have to worry about what you look like with someone. Is there anything worse than the forced conversation that immediately follows someone pointing out that you have a bit of food lodged between your teeth?
This was my first tea, and I didn’t know what to expect. In my head I had always thought tea was a very fancy thing. And I guess in some circles it is, but Aisling, sorry — Ash — she was really adamant that I call her Ash and not Aisling. I just love Aisling so much, but I should probably respect her wishes, even with you Die-die. Ash said she does it every Sunday, a sort of tradition she tries to keep up with from growing up in Ireland. And it really wasn’t that fancy at all. We had tea and she laid some cookies out, she called them digestives, which really wasn’t appetizing at all to me, but they tasted great. She took hers with milk and I followed suit. Again, I don’t usually drink tea, so I was just going by what I saw. Follow the master.
But it was so lovely, she told me about growing up in Dublin and all the other smaller towns in Ireland, Doolin, Galway, she showed me pictures of her as a girl at the Cliffs of Moher and oh my god if it wasn’t the most precious thing I have ever seen. She looked afuckingdorable! Though it did strike me, the irony (is it ironic?) of growing up in such a beautiful place, a country people dream their entire lives of visiting, and not being able to see it. I was glad she couldn’t see as I wiped away an unexpected tear, thinking of the idea of home. Shut up Die.
She asked about me, I told her about art school and my secret obsession with interior design. Oh! Die, the funniest thing. I didn’t even say anything bad about Steinman, like at all. I promise, scout’s honor, cross my heart and hope to die in a fiery car crash I didn’t say anything against the man. But even so, when I mentioned my thesis, she asked, swear to you, plain as day, she said, “Your professor a bit of a dick, is he?” all toity like that! It was so funny. I blushed though she couldn’t tell or couldn’t see at least. I asked how she knew, and she reminded me that she was born blind and that she has developed a knack for picking up subtext. I asked her if it was a sixth sense of sorts and she said no that she believes that I would be able to pick up on these things if I wanted to, but that I probably depend on my eyes too much. Without sight, she has trained herself to hear things in people, white noise to the rest of us. She’s fucking Tiresias, an oracle. She’s my Ash, and she’s my fucking neighbor. She’s the coolest.
Anyhoosiers, I told her that if she ever needed anything to just call and ask. She told me about this app she uses to make sure she’s buying the right thing at the store, you know detergent, deodorant, cat food (oh right, she has a little cat named Ewan — I ‘think’ she is a bit of a Star Wars fan …oh what was that fever dream movie he was in?) and I told her that she could just call me instead. She seemed pretty pleased at that, and though I am sure the folks who download that app to help the blind really do have the best intentions, I bet it feels better calling someone you know. And now she knows me!
All in all, Ash is my absolute favorite person and when I grow up I want to be just like her. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
Peace Bitch
Sunday, April 17, 2016
Hey Die-Die,
I don’t think I’ve gone a week without writing here in years, let’s make sure that doesn’t happen again, okay?
Updates: still up shit-on-my-chest creek without anyone to paddle me in regard to a subject for my thesis. What? I have over a week, in college years, that’s like what, two weeks? I lost my conversion chart.
My mom sent me a text a couple days ago. My dad’s mom isn’t doing too well apparently, something about her breathing being labored. I think she’s in the hospital or else they’re coming by her house? I don’t know, I never really knew my grandma. So, it’s not like … it’s not like anything. I mean I learned this news in a text for god’s sake. People die. It’s pretty much the only guarantee.
And without further ado, enter Ash stage left. I have been helping her with everything. It’s been amazing. It’s a weird sensation because like obviously I would help even if she weren’t fucking incredible, I mean she’s my neighbor and blind I kind of feel like I have to, but the thing is she is fucking incredible, so it makes me want to help her that much more. So far, I have helped her buy groceries, I read to her a little (She’s a big Louis L’Amour fan, go figure) and I even helped her rearrange her furniture. This was a very pertinent task.
So apparently, (I should say obviously, but I just never had to think about this before but) the way the furniture is laid out in a blind person’s home is of extreme importance. I mean it makes perfect fucking sense; she needs to know where everything is. It’s her fucking home after all. Ash told me she specifically chose this apartment complex because the floor plan was almost identical to where she used to live (being torn down and they’re putting up some church) and the warthogs didn’t put everything where she asked them to, the snorting fucks. Her shins look awful. Purple and yellow bruises run up and down her legs like leopard tube socks.
At first, we were going to put it how she had it at her old place, but then she asked for my input remembering my interest in interior decor. She so graciously said she would love my artist’s eye. Ash is the fucking best! So, I did her whole place. It looks fucking good. I had to walk her through it a few times, but she says she’s getting the hang of it and likes it even more than her old setup. Have my secretary hold all of my calls, I’m fucking famous. And from his purrs, it seems Ewan digs the new setup too.
Life is good. I’ll figure out my subject before too long, right?
Peace Bitch
Monday, April 18, 2016
Hey Die-Die,
I lost it today. A bitch tried me, and a bitch got what was coming to her. Picture it, McDonald’s drive-thru, four o’clock-ish, two spicy McChickens and a black coffee, easiest order in the history of easy fucking orders. So, riddle me this, I am handed a coffee (cream and sugar) and two Filets o’ fucking Fish. I politely inform the lady in the window that I received the incorrect order and she just shut the window in my face and tugged at her headset. I waited at the window until the car behind me started honking. I parked and went inside and showed them what was in my bag. They looked at the receipt and sure enough that bitch in the window put down my order wrong. So now it looks like I’m the crazy one. I don’t know why, but it really fucking upset me. Like a Christmas tree housefire, up in flames in an instant. All said, yeah I yelled at the lady who works the drive thru. She really pissed me off, the bitch. I threw one of the sandwiches at her and now I’m not allowed at the McDonald’s on Highland anymore. Fuck it, what a loss. Boo fucking hoo.
Oh, and I woke up with a voice message from my mom. She never does that, usually a missed call just means call back. But today she left a message. Grandma died. She’s sending flowers from us and wanted me to know. Lilies.
One week until my shit is due. Nothing. Empty handed, empty headed. I’ll figure it out. I mean I fucking have to, right? I work better under pressure anyway.
Bring it on.
Peace Bitch
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Hey Die-Die,
Went to Ash’s today just to do a quick chore for her. She had an appointment (Chiropractor? Dentist? I honestly can’t remember) and had forgotten to feed Ewan. I went over and used my key to get in (yeah motherfucker, my key, I have a key! If that’s not an admission of friendship, then I have no fucking clue what would be). Ewan seemed happy to see me, or else he was happy because I was putting food into his bowl, who knows? Enigmas, cats. He was purring and rubbing his arched back across my jeans.
I sat on her Chesterfield loveseat and watched Ewan eat for a bit. It’s funny watching animals eat. Something timeless and primal in watching how their tails stand up. It’s very relaxing. I closed my eyes and listened to him lap at the wet, recently canned “chicken” mush.
Slowly, I started to imagine what it must be like to live like Ash. I ran my hands against the sofa back and forth really feeling it for the first time, Ewan’s masticating growing in intensity as my ears perked up and noticed the ticking of her antique clock hanging in the kitchen. A car rumbled down the street, it’s third-rate subwoofer slightly jostling the windowpanes. I stood up and started to walk from room to room. I walked through the kitchen and into the hallway. My feet traveled into the bathroom carrying my ears and my nose with them. I could smell the lavender Glade air-freshener and hear water pouring through pipes, a neighbor washing a baby or taking a shit maybe. Water, the only certain thing.
I kept moving into her bedroom, voices calling at each other outside, made my way into her closet surrounded by textures, cotton, nylon, silk, I could feel them all reaching for me. Sound was dampened in their presence. The smell of mothballs, the smell of dust, of years spent in the dark. Here, I felt comfortable, here I felt safe. The feeling of homemade potato soup. I stood there and outstretched my own fingers, tracing the fabrics, hearing my fingertips graze them, the different sounds of different frictions. The stories these clothes could tell, if only I could understand them. I continued to touch them, and they continued to touch me, an orgy of sightless ecstasy. I didn’t know until I felt the warm liquid on my cheek that I was crying. I fell to my knees in slow motion surrounded by empty clothing sweetly tickling my neck and shoulders. I stayed there crying silently in the dark closet for I don’t know how long. When I left Ewan was lounging in the window, the long arms of the late afternoon sun shielding him like an heirloom quilt.
No witty sign-off tonight, Die-die. Calling it. Afraid to smudge the ink.
Peace
Saturday, April 23, 2016
Hey Die-Die,
Okay, okay, so I know I shouldn’t have. I know I know. But I went to Ash’s tonight uninvited. I know it was wrong so save the scolding for another time. I knew she was out, she had mentioned something the other day in passing about a friend coming through town and that they were going to dinner tonight. I knew she wouldn’t be home and I knew I shouldn’t have, but I went to her apartment and let myself in while she wasn’t home.
I don’t know what it was — okay, that’s a lie. I know exactly why I did it. I just hate admitting it and putting it down in writing feels even more incriminating and makes me feel very ridiculous. But I have to get it out. It’s bursting, it needs air.
Since the other night, I have been dying to return to her closet. Something happened in there that I couldn’t even fully describe to you. Words can’t come close to the feeling I felt. It’s been all I can think about. I don’t want to use the word, but it’s been in my dreams, in my waking thoughts. Hell, it’s stupid — I know it’s stupid — but I have been obsessing over returning. Tonight was my chance.
Before I left, I pulled some of the airplane bottles of whiskey from the freezer that I had saved from my last birthday. I needed the Jack to calm my nerves. Once I was sure she was gone, I grabbed my keys and headed over.
When I opened the door, it was dark just as it had been the other day when my eyes were closed. This time, I didn’t need to shut my eyes, the light was so faint. I made my way through the apartment as I had before. I touched the surfaces trying to reawaken my other senses. I ventured through the living room, the kitchen, the hallway and finally entered her bedroom.
I stood there for a second at the edge of the doorway. I could make out only the outlines of things. The bed, the side table, the lamp, her chair and dresser, all reduced to shapes. Like they had ever been anything more. Then I looked to the side of the room where the door to her closet lived. Step by slow step I moved closer. Hearing my Doc Martens brush along the carpet. I wrapped my hand around the cold metal, twisted and opened it. Then I stepped inside.
I shut the door behind me and crouched there holding my knees to my chest. Now I did shut my eyes tight trying to relive the moment from the other night. I shut my eyes and thought of nothing. Tried, like the cliché, to focus on my breathing. In and out. In and out is what they always suggest. I tried it. In and out. In and out. My eyes were shut, and my mind was wandering. The fabrics still surrounded me, but they weren’t reaching. As if they didn’t want me, as if they knew I hadn’t been invited. Still, I tried, still I breathed in and out focusing on the fabric.
I have no idea how much time passed until I heard it. Her front door was opening. Ash was home and I was here, in her closet crouched like a fucking crazy person. Who had I become? The outburst at McDonald’s and now this? What was happening to me? I heard her speak with Ewan. She told him all about the dinner and how it had gone and what they had ordered. My heart was leaking out of my fucking asshole. I had to get out of there but had no idea how to do it. So, I did nothing. I decided to wait.
I heard her get ready for bed. I heard her brush her teeth and sing to herself, or Ewan I guess (“Fly Me to the Moon”), then I heard her footsteps come into the bedroom. My heart was beating so hard I thought it might pop out of my creepo chest. I put both hands over my mouth in an effort to mute my breathing.
Footsteps, coming closer, then the closet door opened. I was ice, chilled, frozen. Staring up at the figure of Aisling. There still wasn’t a light on in the room. Some light spilled in from the doorway of her room though, I assumed she had switched it on for Ewan.
I watched as she undressed in front of me. She took off her shoes, fitting them into the hanging shoe rack on the back of the door. She craned her arm behind her back and unzipped her dress, pulled it off shoulder by shoulder. It fell to her ankles, and she picked it up off the floor and hung it up. The sound of the hangers on the metal rack sent shivers down my spine. The sound of a master swordsman sharpening his blade. Still, I watched.
She was wearing tights, she sat on the edge of the bed to take them off. She flung them to the corner of the room where her hamper sat. She craned her arm again and unhooked the practical, beige bra she wore (I thought of her Chesterfield loveseat). Both arms slipped out fast and her round, white breasts fell out. Brown nipples, marshmallows dipped in chocolate. Her bra joined her tights as she sat at the edge of her bed, the light from the hallway framing her, highlighting her form. She looked beautiful. She sat for a moment, a long moment breathing, staring out at nothing. Absolutely fucking perfect.
Except for the vicious bruises spotting her shins. She leaned forward and began to massage them, her white fingers rubbing the raised welts of yellows and indigo. Her breasts pressed against her knees as she leaned forward. They spilled over them. I couldn’t stop looking. The white of her hands, the white of her breasts, the white of her hair. A blank canvas. The black of the room. The deep shadows of context and history. Dull orange spilling into the room like nostalgic daydreams. Then the bruises she nursed, their colors swirling into the scene, cancer and asbestos.
I couldn’t look away. The scene was dazzling, breathtaking. She got into bed and under the covers. I waited and listened as she breathed. In and out. In and out. After some time, she fell asleep. Her body twitched and her breathing changed.
Ewan traipsed into the room and saw me curled up in the closet with the door still open. He approached me and I let one of my hands extend to scratch his back. And I smiled.
I finally had a subject.
Peace Bitch
