the singing knives

I was just thinking about this place (the Old Town Ale House) last night. Specifically about that time in August of 2006. After the Tom Waits concert, S. and K. and B. and I went there for a few rounds. Another patron noticed our outifts–we were all wearing vests and porkpies or trilbies or fedoras (this was before fedoras were ruined by Nice Guys)–and asked if we were in a play at Second City. “No,” I said. “We just came from a Tom Waits concert.” “Oh,” she said, “is that how one dresses to go to a Tom Waits concert?” “I don’t know,” I replied, “but this is how we dress to go to a Tom Waits concert.”

There have been scares with both of my parents, recently. First, my dad got in a terrible car accident. Thank the universe that he is okay, and so is the woman who was in the other car. But if he had been driving just a little faster, or if the cars had impacted at just slightly different spots, he would be dead. And then, about a week later, my mom went in for a routine mammogram. They called her back in, saying they had to do more tests. It was a nerve-wracking few days, while we waited for the results. It turned out she had a cyst, nothing at all, but I was so, so afraid. These events have made me think hard about my relationship with my parents. I know they won’t be around forever. And, despite all the issues I’ve had with them in my life and all the pain and sorrow involved – I love them very much, and I know they love me.

I didn’t tell the full story of what happened in Cleveland, in that other entry. I fell in love, in Cleveland. With J. And as it always is when I fall in love – it is terrifying, and wonderful. We made an instant connection, a very strong one. Spending time with him was like looking into a mirror. Not a physical one, but a soul-mirror. Even P.K., who is a sworn atheist, said: If I ever believed in anything like kindred spirits, you and J. are it. He, he taught me the Carny Code. He kissed me, and got clown make-up all over my face, and I never wanted to wash it off. He calls me every couple of days, just to say things like: I was listening to Tom Waits, and I thought of you or I just pulled the final piece of glass out of my foot, from when we danced on that broken wineglass. In a strange way, it’s as though I fell in love with him before I ever met him; I fell in love before there was even anyone to attach that love to. It is his circus I am performing with in Philadelphia; I am staying at his house when I go there. And I am terrified.

This whole situation is very complicated. Things are strange, between Levi and I. We’re no longer engaged, but we’re still together. I said yes when he proposed to me, because I was caught up in the moment. And then, a few months later, I freaked out. I tried to keep it to myself for a while, hoping that it was just cold feet, that I’d get over it. When I didn’t get over it, when it just got worse, I decided to tell him. I don’t think he quite understands why engagement and marriage make me panic, why being engaged made me feel so trapped, especially since we’ve had an open relationship pretty much from the get-go. I’ve tried to explain to him that it really has nothing to do with him, or the nature of our relationship. I couldn’t marry anyone, legally, anyway – I don’t believe that religion or law has any place in the bonds of love. And then that word itself, “bonds.” Love shouldn’t be about tying someone to you. It should be like the orbit of the planets; like in that beautiful cartoon The Story of the Cat and The Moon. There is a cat that is in love with the moon. At first, he tries to chase after her – but the more he chases her, the further away she gets. So he decides to wait. She comes to me when she can, he says, or when she wants to. And I don’t believe there is only one right person for me, for anyone, even for Levi. Our relationship is technically open, but doesn’t feel very open to me. Because I am always finding many right people, and he has decided that I am the only one for him. Like Ani DiFranco says: You’ve decided to love me for eternity, and I’m still deciding who I want to be today. Levi is one of my very best friends, and I do love him, very much. But it is with a kind of calm, content love. I need the kind of blinding love that knocks me off my feet, and I have never had that with him. However, I also know, that when I do find the love that knocks me off my feet, it will be a fleeting thing. Nothing like that ever lasts for very long.

Speaking of fleeting loves… I keep seeing my ex-girlfriend Haley, at the pub. I should correct that statement. We never officially labeled ourselves as girlfriends. We were lovers. There was a period of several months when she didn’t show up there at all; but over the last month and a half, she has been there a lot. She’s gotten new tattoos since our affair ended – sparrows flying across her chest. Her hair has grown out, and it’s all black now, no more streaks of bleach-blond. She looks more beautiful than ever, and sadder than ever. She was always so sad. I always fall for the sad girls, and it never works out, because I am a sad girl, too. When we ended things, we said we would remain friends. That did not happen. It hurt too much; because we had fallen in love. We never said that word, but it was there. We fell in love and neither of us really wanted to end it, but we did, because we were scared. No, we didn’t remain friends. When I see her at the pub, we don’t even talk; we don’t even make eye contact. It breaks my heart.

And this zine I’m working on. It is quite possibly the most difficult thing I have ever written. I am not giving up, because I know I can’t move past all this until I get it out, but it is not easy. It is the story of Carmine, of Hertz, and of my almost-son, Dante. While writing it, I am reliving all the feelings – how I felt when I first met Hertz and Carmine, and everything that happened afterward. The two of them changed my life, changed me irrevocably, for better or worse. My body is reliving its memories, as well. It is amazing the way the human body stores memories, and they are all rising to the surface, now, like it is two years ago all over again: there is the constant nausea, the sore breasts, the backaches. Then again, both my last two periods started a few days early, as though my body is reminding me that it is nothing like it was two years ago. I would not want to go through any of that again, but there are things that I miss. The world was full of so many more possibilities, before everything went to hell.

And I know I am going to see Carmine and Hertz when I am in Philadelphia. Both of them have a way of popping up at random, whether by choice or by accident, just when I think I’ll finally be able to move on. They’re always sending me blue valentines, to mark the anniversary of someone that I used to be.

As excited as I am for my upcoming trip to Philly, I am also afraid. Rather, I am afraid of what will happen when I return home. Because every time I am there, I find new reasons to not want to leave, and it gets harder every time I have to do it. I am afraid this will be the time that breaks me. There will be so many reasons for me to stay, and only a few reasons for me to come home. But I will come home, because I have obligations and commitments, here. I will come home, and I will be depressed, and resentful, and angry with myself for not finally taking the plunge and staying.

Lately, I have to touch myself, to hold on to myself, to remind myself that I am a real person; I am flesh and blood, not just an ephemeral mass of words and emotions and memories.

A freaky force of nature. That sounds about right. I will send a hailstorm raining down on the world; but it will be a hailstorm of clown noses & chickenbones, wineglasses & pinecones.

These last few days have been coffee and cigarette mornings; nights of whiskey and words. There is a touch of autumn in the air. Summer is not over. August is a hot month, sticky, and I know for certain there will be quite a few more weeks of porch-sitting, of adventures, of late late nights spent drunk and running around. But I can feel autumn behind it all. It blew in last Wednesday. There was a huge storm, the kind that washes the heat off the pavement and sucks it out of the air. The storm brought a bit of autumn with it. The mornings are chilly and dew-damp. At night, way beyond the car fumes and charcoal from cookouts, I can almost smell smoke from burn barrels, the pages of fresh notebooks, apple cider.

I have never been able to relate to January 1st as being the New Year. My birthday is on New Year’s Eve. Still, to me, the New Year comes in autumn. It doesn’t start on any specific date, it changes year to year, but I always know it when I feel it. Sometimes, it’s when the first leaves start turning colors and drifting to the ground. Sometimes, it comes on the day that the clocks switch back an hour. And sometimes, it’s on the first day that it is cold enough to wear a sweater all day; the day I first see a rime of frost on my car windshield. Summer is such a gasping, breathless season. It always goes out with a bang and a blaze. Then autumn brings its quiet shuffle, and that feels like the New Year to me. The New Year starts in autumn, when the world is slowing down. It ices over in winter, and builds up again in spring – builds up to summer, which has to be the final season of the year, the year climaxes in summer; one last showdown before it dies to make way for the next.

As often happens to me when the first chilly mornings come, I have been listening to and reading a lot of Leonard Cohen. I have been waking up early, sitting in front of the open window, feeling the breeze waft through the screen, listening to the trains go by, and reading the newest Leonard Cohen tome, Book of Longing, which I checked out from the library a couple of weeks ago. It is so sad, and beautiful; sleazy and sweet, sexy and funny. I love the way words unite; the way that, because of L. Cohen’s words, a twenty-four-year-old woman can relate to a seventy-two-year-old man.

But summer is not over, yet. The next week and a half is going to be crazy. Tonight, Levi and I are driving down to Chicago to see Tom Waits. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited about a concert. After the show, Levi and myself, and Maggie and B., are going to get drinks at a bar which is just exactly the type of bar I can imagine Tom frequenting. I am going to drink bourbon until I can’t stand up. Then, I will have to get food and sober up, because I have to drive all the way back to Milwaukee.

Tomorrow morning, at 11:00 a.m., I am getting on an airplane and flying to Philadelphia. Philly already promises to be a marvelous, adventurous time. Just a few hours after I arrive in Philly, and drop my stuff off at the place I am staying, I am going to meet S. and A. We’re going to Pointless Fest. Most of the bands on the line-up are crusty punk shit that doesn’t do anything for me, anymore (I no longer enjoy listening to music that makes me feel like I am being screamed at, where I can’t understand the words because it’s so distorted – I wonder if that means I’ve gotten old?); but it is worth putting up with those bands because the World/Inferno Friendship Society will be there! I love going to shows where W/IFS is playing with more traditional punk bands; you can always tell the Inferno fans from the non-Inferno fans. The non-fans, they don’t get it. They look at us strangely: Why are you wearing suits and party dresses to a punk show? Because, my friends, it is entirely possible to look good whilst fucking shit up. I feel like I should thank the universe for allowing me the rare privilege to see my favorite singer and my favorite band within the same week.

On Friday, in Philadelphia, Jess the girl becomes Edna Million the Clown. I will be waltzing on glass while I play my accordion, and doing the human pincushion, amongst other things. I have my make-up and costume all decided on, Edna Million the Clown is sexy yet melancholy; I don’t think I’m wrong to say that I will quite possibly be the cutest clown, ever.

I’ll be in Philly for a week – sometime while I’m there, I believe I’m doing a reading at an art gallery; other than that, my days will be spent sitting in coffeeshops, wandering around the city that owns my heart, maybe drinking at Tattooed Mom’s a couple of times. There is so much left for me to do before I go to Chicago tonight: dye my hair, do laundry, sell some records to make some extra cash. I need to practice my accordion. I need to put the finishing touches on issue #11 of my zine, and make photocopies. While I’m in Philly, I plan on starting on issue #12. And I will probably write several letters while I’m there, while I’m sitting at a coffeeshop or bar. I love to write letters when I travel; something in me gets loosened up by distance from home. So, some of my friends will be receiving blue valentines, all the way from Philadelphia.

I am often reminded, lately, of how very much I love my friends; of how very kind they are, how much they care about me. At the pub a few nights ago, Beagan shoved a ten-dollar bill into my hand.

I know you’re going to protest, she said, but take it.

What for?

Consider it a sort-of going away present. Only sort-of, because you’re coming back. You are coming back, right?

I laughed. Yes, yes, I’m coming back. I just signed a one-year lease! But really, you don’t have to give me money.

I know I don’t have to, but I wanted to. I got way more tip money tonight than I expected. Just bring me back something from Philadelphia; like a cool rock from your favorite street.

I told her I would bring her something, but not a rock. Maybe I can chip a piece off one of those mosaic buildings that line South Street. Or maybe it should be something Zipperhead-related; back in the days when Beagan was my girlfriend, “Punk Rock Girl” was our song.

Two nights ago, a little after midnight, I ran out of cigarettes. I was writing; I tend to chainsmoke when I write. I ran out of cigarettes, and I had to walk to the twenty-four-hour Citgo down the block, to buy more. The moon was nearly full, though I don’t know if it’s waxing or waning, right now; it would hide behind clouds, then peek out. I noticed a sign I’ve never seen before, hanging high up on a lamppost. United Church of Christ, it read, 7 Blocks; an arrow pointing west, and underneath that, Welcome. If only Christ could actually help me, I thought. I was in a very melancholy mood, the zine I’m working on has not been an easy one for me to write – I’ve had to relive a lot of things I’d blocked out.

As I neared the gas station, a carful of guys speeding past on Kinnickinnic leaned out their windows to whistle at me. I jumped, startled, I was not expecting it or even aware of the outside world, I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts. It made me angry, like it does every time a random guy shouts things at me, whistles, hoots. I didn’t understand, that night. I wasn’t wearing anything sexy or revealing – just some old jeans, a tanktop under a hooded sweater; I had no make-up on, and my hair was all messy and hanging in my face. But I guess, to guys like that, it doesn’t even matter what I look like. Just the simple fact of me being a woman, who is walking down the street alone at night, makes me a target for their attention.

I could see the gas station clerk from half a block away, through the brightly-lit windows. He is a young man, I think younger than I am, twenty or twenty-one, I’m guessing. Every time I see him in there, he is always talking on his cellphone, smiling, laughing. I envied him, at that moment, that night. He seemed so content, safe inside the warm glow of the store, talking to a friend. I am not built for contentment.

I bought my smokes, I walked back home. Sat on the front porch to smoke one. I looked at the moon; looked at the moon reflecting off of spiderweb firmaments hanging from the trees. I listened to the cicadas, the trains, the night-birds, the rustling of baby rabbits in the bushes. And I cried my eyes out.

My list of “things I need to do/get” right now reads as such: Go to Closet Classics and buy a new corset. (Something appropriate for a sexy, yet melancholy clown-girl.) Go to a flower shop and buy corsage pins. (Not for corsages, but for sticking through my flesh.) Go to the costume warehouse and buy clown make-up. Go to the library and rent Fellini’s movie The Clowns. (Study the funeral scene in particular.) The circus is my life. My life is a circus. I couldn’t be happier.

I have been saying that I am at a loss for words for the recent events of my life. That statement is not entirely true. The words are all there inside me, so many of them, it is like I am made of words. But they are refusing to come out. They are holing up inside me and it is making me ill. I wake up with my shoulders stiff and my stomach roiling; the words have burrowed themselves into my muscles and they are swimming around in my stomach like fishes with consonant eyes and vowel tails. I just wish I could get them to stop being afraid of the open air, to come out into the light where they could be of some use instead of just making me achy and nauseous. When did my words become fearful? They used to be so brave. When did the truth start to scare me? My beautiful Underwood is broken, and though I’ve fixed typewriters before, I can’t figure out how to fix it. That is not helping with my wordproblem - I have always been able to write more freely on that Underwood than on any other typewriter, or any computer, or with any pen or notebook. I have to buckle down and write - fear and broken typewriters be damned. I only have a few days left to do my twenty-four-hour zine; and I got perhaps overly ambitious this year and decided to do not one, but two of them. And this is the last month and a half of my life, right here, told with the only words I can coax out.

a circus goat.

are you a satyr? i asked.

he responded only with a smile, but i swear that through the shadows and the emeraldsilver light i saw a glint of bone-horns sticking out from the thicket of chestnut curls on his head.

you are, i whispered. and then, louder, so he could hear - i’m not anything.

what? he gasped, leaning in to run his fingers through my hair. you are lots of things. amazing things. you are a glass-walking, accordion-playing, burlesque tattooed zinester…trickster. and you, you captured my imagination from the moment you first opened your mouth last night, to read the first line of that first story. you wove a circus tent with your words.

he kissed me, then, one of his hands warm against the back of my neck, the other hand under my chin, tilting it upward so my lips would meet his. we kissed and kissed, breathed each other in, exhaled our stories into one another’s lungs. my head was reeling and i was near the point of passing out, but i did not want to pull away; so afraid i was that the spell would be broken the moment we stopped touching.

he pulled away, first, but the enchantment still hung in the air. also, he said. if i am a satyr, then you must be an eshu. because you certainly did appear in the right place at the right time.

then he pulled me toward him again, my breath and his breath intertwining. this time, one of his hands wandered up toward my breasts. he ran his thumb over my nipples, lightly, and his fingers traced the outlines of my breasts. this time, i was the one that pulled away. not because i didn’t want it, but because i wanted it too much, and thought it better to prolong the heavy, wet ache of unfulfilled desire - this way, the next time we meet, it will be electric. and things were complicated, there, in that house where we were staying. better, also, to wait until we are more alone.

should we go inside? i asked.

probably, he said, and then laughed again, his up-from-the-toes laugh - you’ve got clown make-up all over your face.

leave it there, please, i said.

i wanted to keep it there as long as possible. his face imprinted on mine, a strange sort of alchemy. the way he helped me to see who i am; the way he gave me courage to be who i’ve always dreamt of being.

edna31 by Sam Lozoff

i am pacing, and chainsmoking, because at least cigarettes are a kind of burning that i know how to handle.