Part 3

Phoenix Feathers

It’s the most beautiful thing, to see the leaves on trees burn gold and stiff and drift down to their death. Among the glistening green, there they are, wilted but more perfect than the others, because they are ready to fall.

I stroll along the road, ‘The Reflex’ by Duran Duran bouncing in my eardrums, in my sheepskin jacket, feeling like a prick. In life, all I seem to do, all these years consist of, is reinvention. I reinvent myself like I’m walking through a psychedelic time machine of young adulthood, sped up. And every time I kind of forget the person underneath more and more. The two tramps in front of me on the bus stink of ale, and keep turning round squinting and there are strings of paint or dandruff in their hair. I envy them.

Perhaps I will always reflect this way. I worked out the thing about my face, the secret. My nose and my eyes are constantly competing for dominance. My chin sits quietly below, not wishing to cause a disturbance. That’s the ratio. 5:5:1.

I simply think he’s tried to forget me, and it’s worked. Maybe one of the enormous books fell on top of him and crushed him. Or knocked the arrogant nonsense out of him... no, no, that’s physically impossible. He’s swanning around and they’re all kissing his a*s and they’re lapping up his hilarious grouchy thing. Maybe he thinks of me and how it could have been, but only for a second or two. He doesn’t allow himself more than that. Not that boy. I’m sure he’ll still be that boy in ten years, after losing his virginity awkwardly to a pretty little thing with blonde curls who does not dance. He’ll still be that boy when I go to one of his book signings. Oh, he wishes. He wishes.

Lawrence is at Bristol and looking dazzling on the arm of someone who looks like Myra but can’t be because she’s in Durham living in a castle. I wish I could fizzle away like them off and escape; maybe I will, I can’t quite believe I will though. Let me make my stamp on the world, but make it quietly, without making a smudge. I’ve emailed him a couple of times now, the words marching copiously into the box on my computer screen. Shot off into the night like a paper aeroplane.

Let me say a little something about the shadows. They follow me home. I think they’re hiding things from me. They are left over from a time when I would draw people on school work, people without faces, just hair than hung down like a foul curtain. Their fingers were rotten blades. An excess of death, or what might lurk underneath it. And they follow me. Foxes and wolves dressed like men are stalking my dreams, stealing my chair and glaring at me doggedly. And all I see are the back of men’s heads.

I will shake them off. 

Touch

I look down on myself, but really it’s because I feel free. Can’t get his dank taste out. At least he kissed me right, or clamped my jaw like a primeval beast anyway, very sexual indeed, yes, he kissed me alright. His eyelashes, what did they look like? I barely remember one of the faces. They slip away when I’m done, and the night comes again. Society has made us boring and afraid... but the night is full of noise and stars.

The warm feeling of being part of it all, I love it. The vibrations. I would resurrect Byron and take him with me in his breeches and his ballooning sleeves, and show him how to dance. For there they are, the written word and the nightclub. Both sublime. 

***

This is all a part of being who I must become, isn’t it? This is me finding me. And yet, totally alone. Being completely alone is becoming my fate. It tastes delicious.