There's so much I want to say. It's all going to come out in a rush and there's very little I can do about it, so if this entry is somewhat jumbled, forgive me.
This morning I wanted to write an entry about Elton John. I woke up, turned on my radio, and played the "Helena-knows-classic-rock-better-than-anyone" game. The game goes like this: Helena turns on her radio to 99.1, WAAL-FM, The Whale, and tries to spit out the name of the band within two notes. If the DJ says the name beforehand, it doesn't count. Very simple, really, and I'm amazing at it. This morning, I got three in a row within two or three notes. Elton John's "Tiny Dancer," Eric Clapton's "After Midnight," and some Doors thing I don't know the title of. Oh well. Who cares. It's not a talent that's useful anywhere but at my work, and then it's only useful when 48-year-old men in Budweiser t'shirts come in asking for a classic rock band. Nine times out of ten, if I try to engage them in conversation, they think I'm too young to have any clue what I'm talking about. Too young, and too female. Almos-twenty-year-old girls do NOT, in my experience, listen to classic rock, much less understand it. Fucken, I'm special.
I was going to write about Elton John this morning. I was going to write about fantasies. Stupid ones, but valid, or I wouldn't bother having them... I wanted to write about fantasies of laying at the side of the highway snuggling up to somebody, watching cars and "counting headlights on the highway..." I wanted to write about Spring, and how it's here and it always makes me just a little bit lonely and just a little bit more determined to have an actual relationship in my life. I've never had a relationship in May. Except Erich, but I hated him and basically couldn't bear the thought of touching him through the month of May, so that doesn't count.
I want to make love to somebody in a rainstorm and not be able to tell the sweat-smell from the smell of ozone in the air.
May. May is for lilacs to bloom and Peter to leave me. Two things that happen without fail. This year the lilacs are early. And Peter's departure, albeit a little different from those of years' past, was a little early too.
I visited Jo in the hospital today. I made her laugh. She showed me the scabs on her wrist. She had me touch them. "They tell me I did it to myself," she said, "But I don't remember doing it." Her memory's pretty fucked up. She's undergoing ECT -- Electro-Convulsive Therapy -- and it has a tendency to severely fuck with your short-term memory. She didn't remember Peter coming to visit her, but I know he did. She didn't remember her friend Brandi coming to visit her, but I know she did too. I don't even know if she remembers the last time I visited. It's okay though. She'll be okay. I KNOW she will be okay. I wrote her a letter -- three pages -- and I told her I love her and that there are many, many things we have not done together:
Things Jo and Helena have not done together:
*...Built a tee-pee in the RPU office out of chairs and an old bedsheet and insisted that nobody else was allowed in it except for Maid Peter and Slave Miriam.
*...Seen "S" with his whole torso covered (I have, upon rare occasions, seen him with a shirt on, but it's always been a mesh shirt, so I don't think that really counts...)
...There are a lot of things Jo and I have never done together. I made her laugh right out loud. Good. She's done the same for me in a few of my darkest times. I wish I could visit her every day. She cheers me up. Even sitting in her chair looking drained and forgetting mostly everything she's JUST said to me, showing me her drawings marked up with "Suicide" and "DEATH," she cheers me up. I hope -- I think -- I do the same for her.
I walked to campus. It was raining. I thought of Elton John. I thought of love. Maybe it's something about the time of year.
"Maybe it's the time of the year... Maybe it's the Time of Man..." --Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (told you I know my classic rock...)
I thought about long walks, hot nights, cold orange juice, sunsets, bad poetry, those stupid little tree frogs and the wussy-assed cicada-like things we Northerners get in the summertime... I thought about hotel room air conditioners, the way they smell. I thought about counting headlights on the highway. Maybe I have a sick concept of romance, but that line always catches me as one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard... To hell with fancy dinners with candlelight and soft jazz; I want to watch cars go by. I thought about kissing. It's been a long time since I've been kissed. Months. The last time I was kissed and it meant something for more than a week was... years ago. Years.
It rained on me. Cars beeped. I've been beeped at no less than seven times today; you ever notice that sleazes always notice you when you're sleeveless? I also found a crackpipe at the side of the road and I really wanted to bring it home and clean it up and keep it on my shelf, but I thought that might just be too weird, not to mention it was pretty dirty.
I went to a reading for the Vagina Monologues tonight. It will be good. I think.
Reading it brought up some things for me, things I don't talk about. Things I NEVER talk about; things that hurt. Three times I felt my face turn bright red from holding back the tears. At one point, I had to turn away. Chris saw that something was wrong. He didn't really know what, I don't think, and although he knew it was something more than the power of the piece, he asked me later if I was okay and asked a few pointed questions about my relationship with Peter ("You're in love with him, aren't you? I can see it in your eyes..."), thinking that that must have something to do with something.
Yes, essentially, I was raped. It was May, I think. Erich forced himself on me. And he hurt me. And when I said no, he didn't stop. Big fucken deal. Even recently, I've been skittish about certain things because of it -- Peter touched me in ways that brought it all back to me once or twice -- but I can say it, I can deal with it, I can get over it. I don't feel like I did anything wrong, except for dating Erich in the first place, but that's become such an important part of my history that I don't really think I regret it. I don't like people forcing themselves on me, or even joking around about it, but I'm seriously as healed from that experience as I'm ever going to be.
But there are things I don't talk about. Not to anybody. NEVER to ANYbody. I realized some of those things tonight during the reading. I realized that one of the main themes in the play I'm writing is a sore that won't heal in my own life because I've never talked about it, never with any real emotion. As I walked Peter home this evening after the reading, I realized who my play really should be dedicated to. And now I have a reason to write it, to finish it, to make it perfect, because it is an homage to someone more important to me than anyone, even more than Peter, even more than myself. This week, the play will be finished. I have several days off. I am throwing Jeff and his boyfriend out of the house on those days -- sending them off to take a big long extended walk, like to Michigan or something -- and finishing my play. When it is done, I'll post it here. In a way, in a very unhappy and twisted way, it is a true story. It's taken me too long to see that.
I kissed Peter goodnight in front of his new place. He pulled back and quickly said goodbye. There are things I need to say to you, things I've never been able to tell you; please don't leave, please make me say them so I don't hurt so much...
I walked home. And I cried. And people beeped their horns at me. I thought about May. About making love in rain. About counting headlights on the highway. About rushing home to this computer, about purging myself into it, about homeless men and little boys and best friends and ending my stupid fucken play, and it's 3.09 in the morning and I have to work at noon, which means waking at 10.40, gahd bless.
"...lay me down in sheets of linen..." --Elton John
~Helena Thomas*