My First Morning in Brooklyn
Current mood: optimistic
I am lying on my new bed in my new room with my new boyfriend in NEW YORK CITY!! Brooklyn, actually. Bushwick, to be exact.
Today is a beautiful day. Brett's blanket is dappled with sunlight, and an until-recently lost Baby (Teresa's black pussy) is exploring the piles of suitcases, plastic bags and odds & ends that make up our room. Ours is supposed to be a no-cat zone, but, after I woke up and Brett told me he'd discovered her while I was asleep, I couldn't bear to keep her out. Besides, she's in discovery mode right now: sniffing everything she comes into contact with, climbing atop everything she can reach and crawling inside everything into which she can fit.
I slept from yesterday afternoon until 7-something today. My first thoughts were prayers straight to God that Baby would be returned to us safely. Then Brett rolled over and gave me the good news. She'd only been lost a few hours, and our new place was a total warzone with only little paths to get from room to room. Now I know she's fine, and that makes me happy.
I'm feeling a little bit of hunger as I lie here. I'd like to go someplace, have a little food and continue my account of our move.
********
Finally, I made it to the Myrtle-Wykoff Station, literally a few blocks from our house. I'd been wandering up and down streets and eventually realized I'd simply exited our street from the wrong direction. Now I'm stepping onto the L-train, heading into Manhattan. So nice to sit down. Most people on the train are either reading something or listening to their iPod. I am scribbling in a green composition book.
*******
How do I describe our move? My most vivid memory is passing over this enormously tall bridge in the rain. It felt like a nightmare. Brett was driving the final stretch in our 2 day trek in the 26-foot Penske moving truck, and this was the bridge that took us from Jersey to New York.
We were so far off the ground, the rain seemed to be originating around us, being produced and just beginning to fall--sideways and straight into our faces. The windshield was like staring directly into a giant shower head, turned on full blast. We were also in the outside, far right lane, designated TRUCKS ONLY.
I clung to the bench seat with my legs and dared not look right or left. I clenched my jaw and stared straight ahead, willing the vehicle to stay it's course, stay on the road, stay and not careen off the side into a toppling, terrifying death.
Once we were over the bridge, Teresa and I practically screamed our relief. Teresa glanced across me sympathetically at Brett, gripping the wheel and squinting through the rain. It was nerve wracking to ride in the passenger seat, but I think both of us were relieved that we weren't driving. All I can say is, my boyfriend is an big rig-driving stud.
*******
Throughout the drive, the three of us seemed to be tuned in to the same psychic frequency. We were always starting to sing the song that was playing in someone else's head or saying some random thing just before a billboard passed bearing the same message.
We listened to 2 audio books: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (amazing) and The Quickie by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge (total trash). We also sang along with The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and the Soundtrack to the movie Chicago (twice). We had to sing and speak so loud on account of the engine noise, I was nice and hoarse when we rolled into the City, about 2 am Saturday morning.
*******
After squeezing two couches, three beds and loads of other stuff into our adorable new place, Jeff and Dean jumped into the truck, and I drove over to Bradley Brown's 2nd floor apartment in Greenpoint (another little Brooklyn neighborhood). There, we moved all of the remaining cargo into Dean's new residence, a lovely room in Bradley's place (Bradley is--like Dean, Jeff and I--another fantastic musician from Denton).
The place Teresa, Jeff, Brett and I inhabit is on the 1st floor and basement. We have lovely white bedroom doors that stretch all the way to the ceiling, exposed brick walls in the kitchen and lots of sunlight. The bedroom I share with Brett has 2 windows that look out onto the garden in our backyard. Yes, that's right--a garden. And we have a magickal spiral staircase. It leads to The Wonderful Underworld, Jeff's kingdom of Supernatural Sound, a dream studio that houses all manner of musical equipment.
Yesterday, before going to Dean's new home, we all ventured up to the roof. Brett opened the door with the turn of a rusty latch and 1-2-3 thrusts of his shoulder. The entire roof is painted silver, and, from the highest point, you can indeed see the buildings of downtown Manhattan.
After climbing up and down Bradley Brown's steps about 10 or 15 times, Jeff and I left to get gas and return the truck. Driving in New York is itself a feat, but driving a ginormous 26-foot truck through these tiny, car-lined streets and scores of Saturday pedestrians felt like a trial-by-fire, like a strange dream where you're doing something impossible (for example, unicycling across a tightwire while playing the trombone) but you appear to be pulling it off beautifully.
After we returned, I was so out of it. I texted some folks while Brett ate a turkey sub from a deli down the street (so New York). Then I took a shower and fell into a deep, dark, dreamless sleep. I guess waking life had felt dreamlike enough already.
*******
Now I'm sitting on a park bench in Union Square. I felt like a new being when I woke up early this morning. I tiptoed around the apartment, searching for my phone, my bag, my shoes--quiet as a cat. I was accompanied by Baby, who was herself unusually loud as she lighted onto unstable surfaces, causing a series of small crashes. The absolute model of curiosity.
Turns out she had disappeared into a hole in the back of the cabinet under the kitchen sink. That thing led to only God (and rats and Baby) knows where, the very bowels of the building. While I slept, Teresa found her and gave her a bath (the innards of the building are far from clean I'm sure--I imagine CarolAnn just rescued from the TV people in Poltergeist). Yuck.
Speaking of the supernatural, I felt different as I grabbed a pair of short pants with suspenders and pulled on my split-toe Nikes. I felt like I'd just inhabited this body. The old spirit had been replaced with a new one.
I, of course, possessed all of Dan Paul's memories and most of his features (everything associated with imprints on the body), but the animating energy was fresh. Somehow, during the night, I switched souls and, in the morning, was reborn.
I'm not sure what all this means, but it just solidifies my intuition that this is a huge chapter change in my life. I can't even imagine what is going to happen, but I am setting my sights on high adventure, the Emerald City opening its gates to me and my friends. We are here to stake our claims or claim our steaks or whatever. We're here to be fashioned with diamond jumpsuits and harnesses, ready to become the twinkling stars we've watched winking at us from the night sky.
I am clicking my ruby heels together, and the world around me changes in a flash. We have a basement, a band, a beautiful present and an even more glorious future. We have moved on up to the East Side, to a deluxe apartment on the first floor, and I doubt I could be any happier (but I'll give it a shot).
This video was shot a little less than a year ago by my good friend Jon Collins. It was produced by his girlfriend April Kinser. They created the segment for The Dallas Morning News' website, but the subject matter ended up being a little too racy once it reached Belo's corporate office.
In this short, my friend Matt, my ex-boyfriend Peter and I go from our boy selves to full drag. The sped-up effects and music Jon created combine to create something that is truly transfixing. Enjoy:
I think about all the places I've been as I sit here: the computer room, my room when I was in high school--my hometown:
I've been to Europe twice. I've been to DisneyWorld and DisneyLand and the Smithsonian Museum where the giant blue whale hangs. It was gorgeous. I've been to Carlsbad Caverns and Oklahoma City. I've been to the Gap in the Golden Triangle Mall. I've been to an acid party on Panhandle Avenue.
I've been in love and in transition. I've been strong, and I've been fat. I've been glorious and I've been deceitful. I've been all of that.
I rode a mechanical bull and a 7-foot tall bike. It felt like flying. I could feel the thicket branch of a broom beneath me--a witch has to hold on with her thighs. I saw one young'un with do it with no hands, she was flung this way and that like a ragdoll.
I am moving to New York.
Mickie is pregnant with a third child, a girl. Witch childen to be sure, scattering across the Earth, eyes like pools of oil, skin the color of caramel. They are my godchildren. I feel like Auntie Mame, like the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Ozma is the baby girl--or Colorado, the mermaid.
I am home again, and is it not beautiful? It's made you what you are, forced you into your shell--a shell you'd later break out of transformed, a completely different creature. What a success story, raised on the farm, like Superman, like Kermit the Frog in the swamp.
Mack and I took bong hits at this place today. The kitten was scared of me. He's getting a divorce, and he's into black girls now. He has the Devil Man archetype, a Gemini with the most intense eyes.
We made a video the summer before I was a freshman in high school that I haven't seen in 15 years. He pulled the VHS out of a bottom drawer. It was labeled 'Toys of Our Lives'. It appalled me. It was wonderful. I am the same in many ways. I love it.
I tried to convince Mack to come with us, hop on our tie-dyed moving van and drive to the city where dreams are made into global sensations. There's always the red eye of the public darting overhead, the connection so intense. I cannot wait to live there.
Jessie might come too, and, if she does, we'll do Portia and Jolene again. The world won't know what to do with itself. Dreams are coming true. Belief is coming due, and I'm coming to in a blue, iron bed. My tracks are laid, and it's an L-train into Bushwick. I'm a sensation overnight. This scene is written.
My cousin Caroline and I have been dying to see the newest action movie starring Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy, Wanted. Neither one of us is what you would call a blow-em-up, ultra violent movie buff, but this one just appealed to us. Perhaps it's our Libran aesthetic. Between the statuesque Jolie and the Matrix-like effects, the trailer promised a visual feast--plus that really cute McAvoy guy without his shirt on.
And, for the most part, it delivered. The action sequences were riveting. The theater was packed, so I had to sit on the row behind Caroline. It was either that or break our necks on the outskirts of one of the front rows. I was a little disappointed I couldn't grab her hand as cars flipped over one another and random actors got assassinated.
That's the whole premise of the movie. McAvoy gets yanked out of his dead-end job working as an accountant in a cubicle in New York City by a gun-toting Jolie who reveals to him that he's the descendant of a line of divinely inspired killers. Again, much like the Matrix--but with more cubicle life. Like Office Space meets The Matrix with gaping plot holes.
The assassins, headed by Morgan Freeman, have been around for (wow) a thousand years, and they get their assignments from a giant loom in a textile factory outside the city. That's what I said. Apparently, the loom weaves a mystical fabric which contains a code spelling out the name of the next person who needs to get shot in the head (or chest). The chosen ones who get to become these killers-without-a-cause are told simply that the names the loom spits out are messages from "fate" in order to "restore balance in a chaotic world". The members of what is known simply as 'The Fraternity' possess the abilities to shoot bullets around corners and heal exceptionally quickly (thanks to a green-tea wax bath--much like that pink wax they stick your hands in when you get a manicure..who knew?)
So there is a lot of shooting and falling and jumping and exploding. In that respect, the movie is right on. However, things get a little weird toward the end. Diverting from the action movie mold, suddenly Wanted turns into Hamlet and everybody dies. The bone-thin Angelina Jolie kills all of her comrades and herself in with a single curved bullet that makes it all the way around the room, through everyone's temples and into her own head amid a spray of computer-generated blood.
Even with all of this, I was still on board. I got my rocks off. My heart was racing. McAvoy and Jolie never did have sex, but you did get to see Angelina's butt (if you're into that kind of thing). There were multiple father-oriented plot twists a la Star Wars, and then, at the end, Morgan Freeman ends up being the only surviving bad guy.
So then McAvoy is doing this voice-over epilogue while Freeman makes his way to the cubicle where McAvoy used to work. The guy, who you assume is McAvoy, turns around in his seat, and you realize it's a decoy. Freeman says simply, "Oh FUCK" as a bullet slow-mo pokes the skin then bursts out of his forehead--somehow, magically shot by McAvoy from a gun with an unusually long barrel from across town. McAvoy's voice-over is still going on, talking about how he used to be a pathetic nobody, "just like you," but he announces that he is taking control of his life. Then, he looks full-on into the camera and says, "What the fuck have you done lately?"
And that's the end of the movie.
Now, watching someone shoot a room full of 'bad guys' through someone's brainless skull--sure. I can handle that. Being verbally assaulted by a movie's main character? Ooh NUH-UH. I don't think so. What the fuck have I done lately?? Maybe I was feeling touchy on this particular subject, but is blowing Morgan Freeman's head off so much better than what I spend my time doing?
Walking out of the theater, I kept asking myself, 'What was that movie really about?' At least The Matrix carried this message of "Wake up from your desk job and realize that anything is possible." Wanted seemed to carry the subtext, "Wake up from your desk job and start taking people out with a 9mm." It was pure masturbation for repressed corporate rage. Had the movie not ended with "What the fuck have you done lately?", I might have given it 4 stars. However, after that little stunt, it got a whole 2 and a half out of me.
The TV people, they're here to take your picture, here to take you to your hotel room.
'All that milk, what a mess!' she says. Breakfast calls, and it's hard to resist.
That fat lizard in me has taken hold, is making mold of the undersink. I'll make a rule: No Gremlins after 9 pm, not even with the summer sin.
'Honey, you'll ruin your eyes,' she says. 'The chairs are all out of line.' And, you know we'd go to jail for the thoughts we had back then. We'd lose our minds if we had to stay there.
And, again, I would have. But you did-- stay there, that is. You did. And I moved away to the not-so-big city. I moved to the Moving Place.
You lived there, too. For a time. It was there you pulled me aside and told me about your marriage to a homosexual, your addiction to a Withhold of Love.
He pulled you back, back to that small-minded town. And suddenly you're having babies, babies falling through rooves, babies rolling down the street, snowballing into new grown ups. New people here in the world. Someone else to take up the story.
I played it superior for a while, me with my big loft apartment and superstar boyfriend, big muscles, too good for reality tv. I don't have to tell you how that turned out.
Can I help? I don't know what to do, but I can play that sly uncle with the funny smile, a cartoon character to wish on.
I could usher those who wish to travel down the magick aisle. I have special keys for travel.
That secret smile it keeps me alive, keeps me on the brink of mine and ours. I've sent messages round the world, buoyant Coke bottles, air-tight, Chinese cookie messages, but never had such a response.
God is unlearning them for me, those stagnant ponds of worry: "It's too late." "What's the use?" "I can't." I've heard them all,
but I know this bright globe; it maintains its spin and shows me more springs I haven't met, more scenes than I'd guessed or planned myself in.
I do get surprises, as long as I'm open.
Last night we had a party. Friends were there. He was there, and you were there. I drank cider with a thick foam, sneaking you vodka tonics when I remembered, drifting from group to group. Who was there before you arrived?
Teresa gestured at the bunnies she'd made, patches of bright fabric sewn together with thick loops. Art bunnies. They vibrated in a small suitcase full of buttons. I wore one on my lapel.
Did you get a button?
I want to take you to New York with me. We could grow love like rock crystals, faceted reflections of the things that make us happy, reminders of who we truly are. I like that idea.
I like loving you right now too, the easy way we're together. You are such a gentleman. I don't fear for my life like before, and, when there are horses-- and there will always be horses-- you touch the muzzle light, whisper reassuringly. Your heart is as gentle as theirs.
I carry you all day, the secret smile that remains through cops and robbers, aches and pains, topiary of the everyday. Nothing is like this moment or that moment when I will see you again.
Sometimes God comes along and unfurls you like a sail, untangles you like headphone cords, sets you in line like wind combing wheat Sometimes stars align, and you connect momentarily with the everpresent Heaven of Now.
It all started at a rock show with Bambi and Trina. I could barely make out the Czech screeches filtered through foamy, orange earplugs. The bass rattled my ribs, and the crowd swayed like sea moss in a storm. We were high on expensive drinks and togetherness.
At the fallout shelter, kids stood against the wall tapping their feet, one early-90s song after another. Trina and I couldn't control ourselves. We jiggled and wiggled like snakes in a bag, ghosts with momentary flesh, delighted by the feel of arms and feet.
I was catching all kinds of eyes that night, sauntering from one end of the dingy room to the other, making conversation, making people laugh, making others uncomfortable. I smiled a row of razor teeth, delighted in the spell-- and then something happened.
I met somebody. A boy at the bar, the cutest boy in the room. And soon we were kissing on Trina's couch, sparks between our mouths, auras rising off our bodies like plumes of colored smoke.
He had a Heavenly name, just like the others. Plus, he danced through the parking garage, did cartwheels on the lawn. We saw a Spanish movie, and he wept like somebody had died.
Stretched trombones, Oh the sensations of brass taffy, the incredible music! We make the love, make the rain come down, strolling Zeus, lights igniting in the store windows, smells from the Mexican food restaurant. It all belongs to us.
We watch people in the park, a sense of calm so great. I will sneak out of a window and drive across town to see his eyes. I feel my insides coming out, so I grab at the reins and stuff them back in: Streamers, inflatable furniture, sweaters and plush animals. What a funny struggle.
Sometimes God comes along and drops off a package that you were totally not expecting, and you're alive again.
i am odorless, colorless, tasteless. i disappear without a trace. you’ll know my face after it’s disappeared, dissolved in time and watershapes. you’ll feel you know me then.
i got sad. i tried to stay afloat, keep adrift on the drumrolls and eddies, but the undercurrents call me. i see the trinity. though i’m reading the signs, everyday wears on me. i’m dreamwalking.
love. i had that one before. it was a bad trip, but i swallow the reds scattered across the dashboard anyway. the car careens around the mountain. air’s getting thin.
when i get through this one, i’ll dance. cause this one, he balances on toes, stone thighs and calves, the finest marble i’ve known. what comes after Heaven? if i knew, i’d head there and avoid the drama.
i won’t call again today. it’s easy to let go now. like holding your breath.
I has the talk of the highway. I has it down, the flowflow of the cars as they pour liquid-like through veins and arteries and into the flesh. The cars get lonely at home, never any time to stop and talk. The family slips into hypnosis every time we turn on the sun.
I am your friend, my friend. I’m listening. I feel breezes, I feel sneezes full-force. I have a black cat demon, seedy sermons coming out in my actions. I’m dancin in my panties on a box.
I have furry animals seeping through my skin as I wake up in the morning, 7 am, Mary Poppins channel on the radio. I sleep aloft and Live! Live! Live! And I never have to tell you where the pennies go. You know.
I has a fire cutter. I cut fire with my words, up into paper dolls. They hold hands and radiate. They burn my fingers sometimes.
I’ve been burnt. I has a ginger heart. It tastes so good to bite. And now it’s in a bowl again, amorphous goo. Still quite nice to lick the spoon. I’ve been spying on my future room again, but it’s all right, anticipating what cake will taste like.
I don’t have to tell you I’m a radish. Something about that boy is not right. He’s a serpent, doesn’t react like human beings. And everyone touches me lightly.
Except for the girls who hold me tightly. If it were not for the girls-- God knows what I’d do. I’d be something else entirely.
I sort of have a boyfriend. A creature, too; my young apprentice, lady in waiting. We kiss, closed mouths like black and white tv. It’s okay. Amorphous goo only feels the heat. Gaining form, it would do anything to get baked.
I can’t quite define the stage, but it’s always that way when you’re in it. However, I’m quite sure my check is coming through for a body exchange, new eyes looking through my eyes, a buttery blue to face the world.
I’m quite sure I’ve rearranged completely since another year. Off center in the driver’s license picture. That’s my face. That’s me.
I’m sure I’ve rounded this corner, but the stairs looked different before, so I say, "We can do this, you and I-- sink grooves in a beautiful shape until the world is cut into a musical lattice, too beautiful not to notice." And you agree. And we’re off.
That's right. I'm teaching yoga again, thank GOD! I don't precisely know what effects this will have on my life, but I know they're gonna be good.
It starts tonight! It's at Hal Samples' amazing space, called... SPACE. It's this gorgeous gallery/studio over in Deep Ellum. For those of you from Dallas, it's right across from The Art Bar on Main St.
The exact address is:
SPACE Studio 2814 Main St. ste 201 Dallas 75226
And my schedule will be:
Tuesdays and Sundays at 6:30
Hal even put up a MySpace page for info on the classes. Check it out here.
Come share in this great experience. Let's grow together!
optimistic
energetic
inspired
bitchy
