Strike That Halo Down
I often wonder what kinds of things people imagine I keep secret? I often wonder if anyone wonders anything at all about me? I'm such a devious being. I hide nearly all my secrets in broad daylight. Right there in the middle of the street for all to see. I've mentioned this before now. I've admitted it. Out loud. I am a master at camouflage. I have had to be.
I hold so much in my heart and head that no one is ready to hear.
Or at least that's what I tell myself when I feel alone with it all and desperate to spill it but full of the fear of exposure.
I'd like to be a mysterious figure. The kind of woman that other people have a thousand questions about. I want to be unknowable to someone. I want to be an intriguing person, the kind of interesting person that floats through parties raising eyebrows, instantly loved and completely magnetic. Drifting questions behind me like a diaphanous scarf... where has she been? What has she seen? What kind of adventures has she had?
For that I guess I would have to actually attend parties which I prefer to avoid whenever possible.
I want you to wonder if I've ever been friends with boy prostitutes who turned tricks on the corner in front of the "Polk Gulch" in San Francisco. I want you to imagine for yourself what kind of deaths I've mourned? I want you to wonder if I know what erotic asphyxiation is. I want you to wonder if I have icicles in my heart. If I loved Paris. Because if you're wondering all the other things about me I think you will have already decided that I've been to Paris and had thoughts about it.
I have found it necessary to hide secrets in the open by exposing my heart to the elements so that anyone looking will feel they have seen my naked soul but will miss the hot pink elephant eating the hem of my dress. It's been necessary to employ this strange trickery to protect myself from the shadows that have threatened to engulf me. I need the smoke and mirrors.
By using such subterfuge to hide the knife edges that cut away at me, I give the illusion of being so open that there is nothing at all to wonder about. I am afraid that I have done my job so well that I go through the world almost invisible. Which makes me wonder if I will eventually camouflage myself so well that I will permanently disappear into the background of rhododendrons and Japanese maples that litter this landscape in which I exist.
I write to make sure that the stories are told the right way. I write to answer the questions that no one has asked me. I write to make sure that when the time comes for Max to know his mother better than I want him to know me, he will be less scared because I will have told him myself that it's alright to be who we are. As long as we don't abuse or eat other people. It's alright to be different. He needs to know that even if you have grown up in full shade you can bud out like bright roses and bear sweet fruit.
He is proof of that.
I write because if I don't tell my stories, who will? Will you? And if you did, what would you say? What could you say? Could you tell about the parking garages? The many many parking garages I spent time in doing various nefarious activities like guarding drunk friends while they vomit in the corners where the rats have already pissed? There was worse but you wouldn't want to say it. You couldn't say it, because I have not said it.
Everyone has secrets. You can be sure I've already wondered about yours. I don't ever meet a person and not wonder a million things about them. Everyone has secrets but most people are more openly holding theirs tight and I'm sitting here trying to make people believe I don't have any. Because I've already told them all. If it makes me feel safe, is it alright to lie?
Perhaps I figure that by the time I have finished writing, which will be the day I die, I will have told all my secrets and if it will be true in twenty years, isn't it kind of true already? A fait accomplis?
Eventually you will know about Jack the boy prostitute. Yes, I let a teenage boy-whore tell me a really long string of boring lies. We were comfortable with that until I got tired of being comfortable with that. He was gay, though he would never admit it, and we didn't have a romance, in case you were concerned for either of us. If you are my friend, if you are curious, you will probably eventually know all about that. If I remember to tell it.
There is so much to tell.
There is the scariest box I own that must be aired and...somehow I must figure out what to do with it and I believe I will require the help of other mentally ill people to help me know how to deal with it. I am still finding them. My tribe of people who can help me face the box. A box I opened for the first time in years this week. A box I cannot continue to keep. There are some proofs of our broken spirits that must never wait in dark corners to be found by the unwary. To be discovered by tender unsuspecting sane eyes. It's like Pandora's box, only it's mine.
I have been thinking a lot about the kind of questions Max will have. He's already asked some piercing questions that made me want to die because I would rather he had any mother than me at moments when he is asking about things like the scars on my arms. It fills me with incredible sorrow to know that telling my life to my son could make him look at me like I was someone undesirable. I know what potential power my secrets, both told and untold, have to make my own baby look at me like strangers have looked at me. With fear. With judgment.
No parent comes to parenting with a clean life slate. We are none of us wearing platinum halos. Maybe some parents can seal the past in hermetic boxes where children cannot pry without crow bars. But writers don't have that luxury or that capacity. We must open all the boxes. We must unwrap the ivy twine that twists itself around old past lives.
We are forever striking our own halos down.
I hold so much in my heart and head that no one is ready to hear.
Or at least that's what I tell myself when I feel alone with it all and desperate to spill it but full of the fear of exposure.
I'd like to be a mysterious figure. The kind of woman that other people have a thousand questions about. I want to be unknowable to someone. I want to be an intriguing person, the kind of interesting person that floats through parties raising eyebrows, instantly loved and completely magnetic. Drifting questions behind me like a diaphanous scarf... where has she been? What has she seen? What kind of adventures has she had?
For that I guess I would have to actually attend parties which I prefer to avoid whenever possible.
I want you to wonder if I've ever been friends with boy prostitutes who turned tricks on the corner in front of the "Polk Gulch" in San Francisco. I want you to imagine for yourself what kind of deaths I've mourned? I want you to wonder if I know what erotic asphyxiation is. I want you to wonder if I have icicles in my heart. If I loved Paris. Because if you're wondering all the other things about me I think you will have already decided that I've been to Paris and had thoughts about it.
I have found it necessary to hide secrets in the open by exposing my heart to the elements so that anyone looking will feel they have seen my naked soul but will miss the hot pink elephant eating the hem of my dress. It's been necessary to employ this strange trickery to protect myself from the shadows that have threatened to engulf me. I need the smoke and mirrors.
By using such subterfuge to hide the knife edges that cut away at me, I give the illusion of being so open that there is nothing at all to wonder about. I am afraid that I have done my job so well that I go through the world almost invisible. Which makes me wonder if I will eventually camouflage myself so well that I will permanently disappear into the background of rhododendrons and Japanese maples that litter this landscape in which I exist.
I write to make sure that the stories are told the right way. I write to answer the questions that no one has asked me. I write to make sure that when the time comes for Max to know his mother better than I want him to know me, he will be less scared because I will have told him myself that it's alright to be who we are. As long as we don't abuse or eat other people. It's alright to be different. He needs to know that even if you have grown up in full shade you can bud out like bright roses and bear sweet fruit.
He is proof of that.
I write because if I don't tell my stories, who will? Will you? And if you did, what would you say? What could you say? Could you tell about the parking garages? The many many parking garages I spent time in doing various nefarious activities like guarding drunk friends while they vomit in the corners where the rats have already pissed? There was worse but you wouldn't want to say it. You couldn't say it, because I have not said it.
Everyone has secrets. You can be sure I've already wondered about yours. I don't ever meet a person and not wonder a million things about them. Everyone has secrets but most people are more openly holding theirs tight and I'm sitting here trying to make people believe I don't have any. Because I've already told them all. If it makes me feel safe, is it alright to lie?
Perhaps I figure that by the time I have finished writing, which will be the day I die, I will have told all my secrets and if it will be true in twenty years, isn't it kind of true already? A fait accomplis?
Eventually you will know about Jack the boy prostitute. Yes, I let a teenage boy-whore tell me a really long string of boring lies. We were comfortable with that until I got tired of being comfortable with that. He was gay, though he would never admit it, and we didn't have a romance, in case you were concerned for either of us. If you are my friend, if you are curious, you will probably eventually know all about that. If I remember to tell it.
There is so much to tell.
There is the scariest box I own that must be aired and...somehow I must figure out what to do with it and I believe I will require the help of other mentally ill people to help me know how to deal with it. I am still finding them. My tribe of people who can help me face the box. A box I opened for the first time in years this week. A box I cannot continue to keep. There are some proofs of our broken spirits that must never wait in dark corners to be found by the unwary. To be discovered by tender unsuspecting sane eyes. It's like Pandora's box, only it's mine.
I have been thinking a lot about the kind of questions Max will have. He's already asked some piercing questions that made me want to die because I would rather he had any mother than me at moments when he is asking about things like the scars on my arms. It fills me with incredible sorrow to know that telling my life to my son could make him look at me like I was someone undesirable. I know what potential power my secrets, both told and untold, have to make my own baby look at me like strangers have looked at me. With fear. With judgment.
No parent comes to parenting with a clean life slate. We are none of us wearing platinum halos. Maybe some parents can seal the past in hermetic boxes where children cannot pry without crow bars. But writers don't have that luxury or that capacity. We must open all the boxes. We must unwrap the ivy twine that twists itself around old past lives.
We are forever striking our own halos down.