I've been re-reading certain tracts of our communications (For Reasons), and as I was going over this particular thread just now one paragraph took me back to a non-sequential series of memories, a fork in the narrative alluded to, but left unexplored, because it wasn't relevant at the time, but which I will relive so I can retell it now.
I've been listening to Metric on high-rotation of late, For (other) Reasons. Oddly, the song it's caused me listen on repeat for the last 2 hours is in no way relevant lyrically - it caught my ear because it seemed so oddly appropriate to my friendship with Ricky (
Waiting for Karnivool
Peter Raven reckons there has to be some benefit to waking up before dawn... — with Richelle A*****
who dragged me out to a party this afternoon full of people I didn't know, which was lovely on both counts), but somehow the wistful sadness (the lines
By candlelight I couldn't hide
Those battles I could once survive
Now seemed to be destroying me
You shook your head, laughed when I said
"What a waste of an education"
keep beating relentlessly on my mind like waves on a wretched yacht beached on the rocks of an unforgiving forgotten shore) hooked my head-meat as I got to one particular flowing long-form sentence (copied for context) out of which came what follows.
"But take all that, pour it into a mould shaped from "a barely-adult male who's second-ever girlfriend loves Rocky Horror SO MUCH that when he Hates It Utterly she enlists the assistance of his close friend who loves it EVEN MORE and they determine that he Obviously Needs To Experience It Right so make him watch it again with a trained Alabama-accented soprano and a tone-deaf mezzosoprano doing the Audience Participation and all the emotional conflict derived from simultaneously adoring them and wanting them to die messily because oh fuck it hurts it hurts I’m clawing at the inside of my own skull to get out please make it stop" and you get the sort of anguished soul-scream which would have Deanna Troi calmly announcing that she's "sensing a great deal of torment shrouded behind clumsy humour and a façade of belligerent aggression”."
I got my own back, in a way, for Rocky Horror by making her watch The Wall.
Call it a quid pro quo?
We got to the end and I looked at her with a "wasn't that amazing?" arch of my eyebrows only to have her bury her tear-stained face in my shoulder.
"He... he was such an arsehole. To her."
"Yeah, I guess so.
But that's where I live."
She looked at me, eyes full of horrified sympathy/pity wrapped in a face warped by second-hand misery/emptiness; unable to contain the dissonant dichotomy this caring, loving emotionally empty sociopath represented.
Part of me knew that I'd destroyed something beautiful, but none of me knew what I should do, or how to fix it. I'd shown her what I was, and what I was broke her.
She kissed me feverishly, then wept uncontrollably, then kissed me, then wept some more, and I sat there holding her on my shitty found-on-the-side-of-the-road-
She peeled her face off my tear-soaked shirt, pressed her head to mine, looked into my cold-if-concerned eyes, and said "I love you".
(and since I'm in Facebook sourcing photos to illustrate this, will include this which was taken several lives (and ~13 years) later at The Civic Hotel (yes, THAT Civic Hotel):
Those battles I could once survive
Now seemed to be destroying me
You shook your head, laughed when I said
"What a waste of an education"
keep beating relentlessly on my mind like waves on a wretched yacht beached on the rocks of an unforgiving forgotten shore) hooked my head-meat as I got to one particular flowing long-form sentence (copied for context) out of which came what follows.
"But take all that, pour it into a mould shaped from "a barely-adult male who's second-ever girlfriend loves Rocky Horror SO MUCH that when he Hates It Utterly she enlists the assistance of his close friend who loves it EVEN MORE and they determine that he Obviously Needs To Experience It Right so make him watch it again with a trained Alabama-accented soprano and a tone-deaf mezzosoprano doing the Audience Participation and all the emotional conflict derived from simultaneously adoring them and wanting them to die messily because oh fuck it hurts it hurts I’m clawing at the inside of my own skull to get out please make it stop" and you get the sort of anguished soul-scream which would have Deanna Troi calmly announcing that she's "sensing a great deal of torment shrouded behind clumsy humour and a façade of belligerent aggression”."
I got my own back, in a way, for Rocky Horror by making her watch The Wall.
Call it a quid pro quo?
We got to the end and I looked at her with a "wasn't that amazing?" arch of my eyebrows only to have her bury her tear-stained face in my shoulder.
"He... he was such an arsehole. To her."
"Yeah, I guess so.
But that's where I live."
She looked at me, eyes full of horrified sympathy/pity wrapped in a face warped by second-hand misery/emptiness; unable to contain the dissonant dichotomy this caring, loving emotionally empty sociopath represented.
Part of me knew that I'd destroyed something beautiful, but none of me knew what I should do, or how to fix it. I'd shown her what I was, and what I was broke her.
She kissed me feverishly, then wept uncontrollably, then kissed me, then wept some more, and I sat there holding her on my shitty found-on-the-side-of-the-road-
She peeled her face off my tear-soaked shirt, pressed her head to mine, looked into my cold-if-concerned eyes, and said "I love you".
(and since I'm in Facebook sourcing photos to illustrate this, will include this which was taken several lives (and ~13 years) later at The Civic Hotel (yes, THAT Civic Hotel):
Paths in the sky, paths in the sky...)
But I'm in a huge amount of (several different kinds of) pain, and it's time for bed.
Regards, Peter.
------------------
To: Becky
Re: Musicals Are Garbage (more recycling)...: another coda...
Re: Musicals Are Garbage (more recycling)...: another coda...
I hit Send, Hibernated my laptop with its dying battery, and went inside to find Beckett waiting for me. I picked him up with one arm and put the laptop on charge with the other, then sat in my armchair to give him scritches, and wept
for who I was
and for what I've done
and for who I'm about to leave behind
and for what I'll always be.
After a while I opened gummed-up eyes and the purring void in my arms reached out and put a paw gently on my nose,
and then I wept some more.
Eventually he left to see if any more bikkets had miraculously appeared in his food bowl whilst I was bawling my eyes out, I took my headphones off, and went to bed (after grabbing my Hot Spare laptop so I could finish the story)..
Regards,
Peter.
No comments:
Post a Comment