The car was hydroplaning because of the snow. He kept telling me it was black ice and I kept telling him I was going to cry-- not because of the weather but because of Ohio. I waited for his hand to extend to where I was sitting but instead he changed the track on the CD. I was eighteen so I didn't understand that time was going to pass the way it would but I knew that these songs were going to be forever. That I could always have them. So I imagined his face all wrong. I imagined his face like a monsters face, because after you've seen a real one, you can do it any time. The people that got made up in some kind of movies say to imagine everyone naked and you won't be nervous, but when I am trying not to laugh I just imagine funerals. I imagine what bodies look like and smell like. I can't tell the difference between formaldyide, fetal pigs or my dead grandmother, so I deliver all the speeches without laughing. I take turns making eye contact and looking at the back of the room. And all of you are sitting proud because i'm the one with my tits sticking out, you've kept all your clothes on.
----------------------------------------
II. In Florida, you were mistaking busy signals for seasons.
They used to shoot us with bullets but baby said they got bored. Told me I didn't know history, didn't have the right kind of books--- the right kind of reading. Baby, always said I had the right kind of writing. Bang, bang, bang but all we wanted was to be anyone. Do you know what dress up is or are you just happy to see me?
He said he'd break my sentences down and correct all the words that I mixed up. He'd name the disorder.
It wouldn't be like any hotel room.
Honey says I gotta stop making lists to safe myself. She puts the coffee on in the morning and when I cry it's under the covers, when I cry it's in the shower.
"Dignity," someone says. You know the voice-- that one from years ago coming from down the hallway. Someone's mother talking through plates and shards and covers. I knew they wouldn't ask me why. I knew they wouldnt ask me how. I understood damn well after years that you just try and leave it with as much dignity as you once had.
I try and remember their faces but I can't. The director on the phone says it's a minor detail. I ask him what the difference is between a hotel room in D.C and a hotel room in Long Island and he pauses, corrects me-- tells me I'm reading the wrong script. Really I'm just tricking my brain. Telling my brain it's all tempurpedic mattresses and soft hands.
It's all sleep number beds and fresh towels.
You learn how to call 911. I know you're thinking that everyone knows how to do this, but it's not true. When there is blood on the ground, when there are the men with guns or the cars flipped over or your best friend cut up in front of you-- a lot of people forget. Me, I can remember. I can remove myself from myself. When something really goes wrong, you should want me there.
I will cry over spilled milk the same one someone would cry if you had spent days cutting them open. If you need me to get you an ambulance, I won't shed a tear because then I don't waste minutes.
I kept reading about the tragic heroes. We got so good at them-- remember? We got find them anywhere. In the epic poems and in the Lifetime movies.
I don't know who those hands belong to but I am not even awake for this part.
I can stare down that hallway and hear his mother talking and it doesnt matter what she is saying because I am bleeding into what is basically a diaper. I have spent six hours in a room with other girls, other women and because we all knew better and did not do better we are placed here and we are bleeding in our diapers. I am screaming to be let out of the waiting room. A nurse explains that it is a "holding area" but I take this as a "holding cell". I know he is in the next room and he was good enough to hand over the three hundred bucks like that could be the same as loving someone for that long. For once I wish it was the day after Christmas because I think I've been waiting since the fourth grade to relate directly to this song.
I put it on a mix cd and I play it in the car but he doesn't get it. For some reason he is trying to be stoic and it's too cold for Florida. You may get it, I'm a brick and he's drowning slowly. See, we're off the coast and we're heading no where.
And then a long time goes by and I am in my diaper and I hear his mother talking and I let her say all those things about me. What else should I do? I don't want to defend myself anymore.
You can bring better attorneys in and I still remember how to do CPR but I don't have a defense anymore. I'm a fucking free for all. I'm a wedding cake-- my favorite kind-- and I want you to take a big slice and have it. And I hope you don't throw up. I hope the sugar high is just right, that the digestion process goes well and that you remember somewhere inside me there was icing.
But I have no defense.
"What's the difference between Washington D.C and Long Island"
He tells me I have the wrong script.
They don't know about seven inch maxi pads or the gods we pray to. I try and tell him that Homer was a woman, that he gives me 15 minutes or 10 pages I'll prove it. But then I remember I am done with proving anything.
---------
III. Lover boy threw meat at me cursed the day we met/street freaks, bedbugs/ New York City's what You Get
Once when we'd gone driving we continued to pass the same large stretch of grass. and I looked at you from the passenger seat and thought that this was infinity. I could see the end. It was at a fence. But I thought it was America and I thought it was forever. I thought it was right. I thought it was all I'd ever wanted. I turn to you and I said I'd write about it. And the sun was warm on your face so you nodded at me. You nodded at me because even though I had broken fingers, even though I lost half my jaw, you know I'd manage to masticate my favorite baked goods, to grab your hand and squeeze it tight.
When we were half blind and dying I knew you'd go on forever.
