The Itch watches them, and thinks to itself: Vacations are a funny thing- meant to relax, but the root of a stressful legacy. Even the pictures look awkward. Family leaning away from each other, arms draped in ungainly angles on one another’s shoulders, smiles looking as if they were pasted on. The Itch doesn’t understand this need to huddle so closely and document time spend together, even when it is awkward, as these Polaroids will document. The Itch does not act though, but sidles back into the darkness, and observes.
But this is not about family vacation. This is about love lost, somewhere in San Francisco. Not only did you leave your heart in San Francisco; it was jostled, shattered, bruised and broken, and then swept up with a shabby broom and placed back in your chest, and left to debate a drive eight and a half hour drive back home to sunny southern California with its victim. There is no real debate. You have that rash again.
The Itch.
Some things are best left alone. Some things are unutterable. Some things hurt in ways that are unspeakable. Some things invade you like a dark blackness, and when you close your eyes, they wash over your body like a wave of despondency so deep, you feel the tightness everywhere, and you are amazed that you still blink, and breathe, and do the simple things, like place one foot in front of the other, and go the grocery store, even though you forget things like toilet paper and milk.
It started out light hearted enough. You’d been together eight years- not one vacation. Not one weekend away from it all, just you two. It was time. Alert the employers- vacation time! San Francisco, here you come! Touristy things- the bay, Alcatraz, China town, clam chowder… You will hold hands, and look at sunsets, and be a clichéd love-y couple, a Hallmark card, and oh, how wonderful will that be.
But then… That bastard… That beautiful shaggy haired, fire-amber-eyed, tall and solid, sensitive bastard. He had to ruin it all. You were happy. You two dressed up; he wanted dinner. All out, he said. You put on your vintage dress, tight and black- red polka dots, cat eyed lines around your eyes, red lips, high heels, red flower in your hair. Him, a vision of manliness in his cabana shirt, and he tucked all of his long mahogany, shiny brown river hair behind a fedora. You stepped out of a 50’s gangster movie- Bonnie and Clyde. Such a pair.
Dinner was great. He let you order whatever you order whatever you wanted, kept the wine coming. An adorable little fish house on the pier. Candles, dim lights, the whole enchilada. But then it happened. The catastrophe. The tombstone. The bereavement. The demise….
The itch- it laughs- it revels in its dark hiding place. It only wants the finest for you, you know that right?
You woke up last night amid Taco Bell wrappers and the stench of stale cigarettes. The sun was burning a hole in your window, and you squinted your eyes while you tried to connect your surroundings with where the hell you were, what is that noise, and what the hell is jammed into your back? The answers, like little image files flying around your brain, floated around awhile before settling themselves into the allotted files in your gray matter. Just off Lyon Street, San Francisco. That incessant clamor assaulting your ears was the horns blaring as tourists prattle around, confused by the one way streets, pissing of locals who are late for work in the boutiques and head shops that depended on the business from the shitty drivers; it's a symbiotic relationship. You were in your car, being molested by the stick shift. That pain in your head was the remnant of too many prairie fires at the Lost Cause Bar last night. You couldn’t deal. You had done it again. You turned to your most stable friend- booze. You had left Brad last night, threw some things into one army surplus bag and stepped out your mutual hotel door. You felt guilty for the lightness of your feet, and as you walked, you were overcome by an undeniable premonition that your name was written on a bathroom wall somewhere, and that you probably deserved it.
He was sleeping, naked and crying, when you left. The sleeping naked part was standard. The crying was not. It was eerily beautiful. As you stared at the long line and jutting curves that formed his long lanky body, you could not control the tears of appreciation from welling up in your eyes. You ran your fingers though the hair that poured itself onto the pillow and the rough cheek. Long and shiny, it is a tangled brown river, snaking its way across the bed and flowing over a muscular shoulder. His body- a striking landscape, better than anything that has ever touched your canvas. The tears on that cheek are like dew on an exotic flower, an iris or a bromeliad. You wondered briefly if you could capture that image- his face a tropical flower sitting on muscular shoulders, moist with the morning air and sad defeated tears. You would do it in oils so it looks permanently damp, lots of blues. You file that thought away in the creative painting file in your brain, and wonder if you could ever go through with putting him on display like that. What would you call it?
"Someone I Hurt, by Celeste".
As you watched the drops that drizzled down from his worn and swollen eyes; you began to understand that those tears belonged to you. They are your sorrow. They belong to you. They fall from you. They are yours. You created them. They are the result of pain you have inflicted on someone who gave you more than you were willing to take; someone who gave you too much. Strangely enough, that makes you okay with what you have done and what you must do. You know what you are going to do; it is what you are always compelled to do. A tear cautiously makes its way down Brad's jaw line, and seeing its target, speeds towards his stubble and spills itself onto the sheets into a dark puddle of its fallen comrades. The sheet is much darker there, almost black, as though Brad is lying on his own liquid shadow. You want to reach out and claim one of those tears you wreaked. You are fascinated by their diligence, flowing strong even after the victim has worn himself out on his ache. You touch one with you finger. You yearn to bring it to your mouth, taste its saltiness, and find satisfaction in swallowing a little part of him to hold inside you forever; you want to feel the stainlessness of the tear trickle down your black spine. You want to arch your back to slow its progress; feel its cool course down every vertebra. You can almost feel it- almost. But for the first time in your life, you restrain yourself. Instead you pull out the army bag, pack your things, and hope that this ends it. How? It doesn’t matter. Your best friend from college lives around here. You’ll stay there. No more sleeping in the car. Before you left- you gave into a small impulse and snapped a quick picture of him- important documentation of what you've learned. You slip the camera into your bag, and lightly kiss Brad's forehead. He moans your name, "Celeste…". Closing the door quietly, you dial Mary-Kate.
"I want to fly. I want to sip life thorough a straw, so I can leave the chunks behind. I want to break myself into a smattering of pieces and throw those pieces halfway around the world, so I can feel everything at once. MK, am I losing my mind? Am I a horrible person?" You are talking too fast, and crying now, not quite the picture of composure you were a few minutes ago. Angry hot tears, you disdain their presence, giving you away. They scream that you are not made of stone. You are not Immune. You are not a statue of Poise. You control nothing. They blaze their way down your cheeks, taunting you with their sizzling trail for thinking you are strong.
"Did you leave Brad?" Hearing the answer in your silence, MK gives you commands.
"Turn on the radio, loud. Do not think. Come over, now." MK reads your mind, does the Mom thing, handed you instructions. When you are holding yourself tight, trying to make the hamster in your brain stop running, trying to make that damned snake in your mind desist the whispering, trying to put a harness on the chaotic zoo of emotions and thought processes, Mary-Kate is there handing you a worn owner's manual to your body. You glance in the rearview mirror- hives on your chest, blotchy, red, irritated. You crank the radio up in the Nova and let the Red Hot Chili Pepper's take you away with "Suck My Kiss". MK knows you better than you do. You try not to scratch as you cut the corners too fast.
MK is lounged across her back patio, the gleam of a streetlight getting caught in her long blonde hair and lending her face a heavenly glow. She stands up, her billowy skirt caught in the ocean breeze as she greets you with a long bear hug; her hair seems as involved as her arms. She offers you a cigarette as we sat down. For awhile you sit and smoke, letting your silence join the waves lapping up the shores below. With the full moon, the bay is bathed in a silver light. You can see the ocean, ever playful, dragging a twisted rope of seaweed back and forth across the sand, trying to incite the beach to take part in a game of tug o' war.
"Was it hard?" She didn't look at you.
"No. I didn't like hurting him. The look on his face was something I never want to see again. I don't know why I am unable to give myself completely. Brad is smart, and passionate, and beautiful. He loved me for my mind. Why couldn't I just give in to abandon?" You knew you were giving her the puppy dog pleading face.
"Because my dear," she said with such frankness you felt like she should be smoking a pipe and wearing a monocle, "that would be changing the leopard's spot. You are a wanderer. You left Rancho because you were stifled by the mundane. You left Brad because he wanted too much. You felt like there was nothing left for you." MK is looked at you, probably to check her statement for the accuracy score she can see on your face. In your mind, she looked at your leopard spots. You can see them; as soon as the words jumped out of her mouth they appeared on your arms, your legs, any and all visible flesh. You looked at them as you clutched the butt of your spent cigarette. They challenged you, dared you to erase them. There were no spots, other than your fading by the minute hives, and you knew this- but you saw them anyway. Mind games, you play mind games with yourself. Needless to say, you have a troublesome imagination. You shook it off.
"Actually," You stood up and flicked the cigarette butt towards an ashtray, " I blame pink."
" You mean the color?" MK has a baffled expression that does not suit her on her ethereal face.
" Yeah. I was going through my bag- and I came across a pair of pink ruffled panties. Their obscene pinkness made me think: I hate pink. I hate ruffles. I hate that pair of chonies. So why did I buy them? Why did I buy a lot of this shit that doesn't seem like anything I'd buy of wear?" You were angry with this pair of underwear. You paced a little on the patio, looking over your shoulder for spies. You see none, and continue.
"Thinking about it I realized what I'd lost. What happened to that girl I thought was sexy?"
MK looks at you. She is waiting for the real story. Nonsense about underwear isn’t doing it for her.
“He asked me to marry him.”
After dinner, you wandered the pier, looking at the moonlight tickling the water. He was particularly attentive, playing with your hair, running his hands down your sides. Together you admired little children whining because they had been in the sun too long, and now their parents were agitated. Kids pulling parents’ arms, sitting in the middle of the boardwalk, or just plain kicking and screaming, their little sunburned faces all scrunched up like they are all full of lemons. Brad sits down in the middle of the boardwalk and pulls your arm.
“ I don’t wanna!” You smile. It’s funny. He’s really a child at heart- always climbing trees and taking things apart only to put them together again. You pull on him to get him to stand up. He is big and bulky and refuses. He wants you to sit down with him. He pretends to throws a tantrum, like a child. You recede. He reaches into his pocket. A ring- the original leash. He smiles. You blanche.
It all flashes before your eyes.
A picket fence.
Little children taking over your body, leeching it from the inside, then taking over your world.
Staying at home, keeping house, losing your freedom…
You’re not ready.
You may never be.
You cannot tie a leash on a bird.
You are wrapped in wool.
You have rolled around naked in freshly cut grass.
You itch all over.
You are infected.
Here we go again my friend.
MK looks at you, runs her fingers over your forehead. She will allow you her home, and her healing grace until you settle yourself and your thoughts. She’s good like that.
“Oh my little leopard…” she sighs.
This was supposed to be a vacation, you keep thinking. Maybe you weren’t meant to spend that much time alone with one another. Maybe it’s better this way. Maybe you are unable to hold a man. Your touch is destruction. Maybe you’re not a leopard, but a black widow. Maybe a bird- longing for wings. You feel like an animal.
You’ve caught that itch again…
You know now that it is time to face what you fear the most- Loneliness. Yes, dear heart. You fear, that the only one who ever cared to know you, you have left, crying beautifully in a hotel room. Have you lost your only chance at love. Love, that evasive hateful beast? You wonder if this is a self-inflicted, masochistic punishment for some sin even you’re not even aware of.
Your heart, a bruised and cumbersome fruit.
His eyes seemed to always be searching, almost defeated, for an answer to a question you were grateful he was too afraid to ask, and then one day- the flood of courage sweeps you both away, and now you are stuck with the debris.
What were you planning on doing anyway?
This was eventually going to happen.
You knew it.
Were you going to tell him you had lied?
That long ago you were contaminated,
And had replaced the flesh he loved with steel,
Stainless and strong to withstand his advances,
And that you are now a fortress of resistance?
That, no, even after so many years, he cannot come in?
Love= Destruction= Ruins= Work= Blood= Strife
And that you, for one, are not strong enough to love right now.
Maybe never?
How can you form the words to say
That for the first time in your life,
You are going to be
What you need to be:
Selfish.
You can't keep trying to give of yourself anymore.
Babe, you don’t have it in you.
Live for you, and for the day.
But the pain…
You've got that itch again...
It is a curse. You are never content. You cannot be caged and seek abandon from lashes, and yet you long for the touch, the love and companionship. Each time- too close- too prickly. Away with you. You have that itch. The hives. The rash. The claustrophobia…
That one that no matter how far you reach, no matter what scratchy appendage you use, you just can't scratch.
You want out.
You want freedom. You want life. You want touch. You want feeling. You want sunshine bleeding through your pores. You want lust. You want gluttony. You want the seven deadly sins. You want to live, dammit.
His naked sweaty limbs brought you peace. That gratification on his face brought you release. You gave that to him. His heaven was a gift from you. But it was only temporary. It was not enough. The warmth is only fleeting- like spring. You smile, secretly. You know you have issues. You feel alive only momentarily. But those flashes are gorgeous- like two-second sunrises- like lightening- like mini orgasms. Your body tingles, your brains twitches, you are AWARE. From your teal painted toenails to your fizzy mess you call hair. You feel every neuron in your cranium - they are ready, they are waiting. Your heart is beating, a primeval rhythm- it speaks to you. As quickly as the awareness hits you, it is gone.
He was naked beside you. He was satiated. He looked so peaceful, shiny with sweat, flaccid, tired, and spent.
You were always antsy. You were perpetually looking for that spotless sunrise energy. You once touched it. For a moment, he made you feel it. But it is long gone now. You want it. It burns. You are full of desire. You itch. You cannot scratch.
I have infected you, you know. I am a part of you now- more than what shows in the occasional rash on your olive skin. I chose you, out of so many. I am the double-edged sword- the one that makes you feel safe and in danger at the same time. Your weapon and your malice. You- you with your love of life- something most people don’t fathom with their nine to five and the daily grind and the plop on the couch and whining about bills and popping out babies and complaining about the neighbors and idolizing celebrities- you understood life. Those 2 second sunrises- that is what life is. I too, live to be aware, and hunger for brain-twitching sunrises, even if they last but two-seconds. That is enlightenment, that is the secret. You were special. It is a curse; it is a gift. Your spark. That is what singled you out and got you into this mess. Must you scratch me away? Doesn’t the tingle remind you are alive? Is it worth it?
Oh, insatiable itch…
You feel alone in a swarm of people. You feel as if somewhere in you, something was not installed correctly. You think perhaps you were born broken. I understand. You are not alone on this. Sometimes I feel your darkness, that hollow spot we hide from the world, and for just a few seconds, that luminous spark--sputters--.
Some things are unutterable. Some things hurt in ways that are unspeakable.
MK floats into the room, she’s making a complicated braid in her hair. “I think you need to go dancing.”
“I think you’re right.” You smile, the rash tingles.
We’ll be alright.
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