Talking to Ghosts
Jun. 27th, 2011 11:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonOnce upon a time I lived in a fairy tale, in a two story pink castle perched on a hill that sat on top of another, much longer hill. There, its owner, the Princess, rented out a room to me on the cheap and I shared the roof with her, her man – Jeremiah - along with her best friend in the whole wide world, the Gypsy.
The Gypsy isn’t a long story per say, but rather a patchwork of long stories stitched around a boisterous yet enchanting Brooklyn-Italian bohemian free spirit; one well blessed of curve, courage and wit. The jist of what I knew of her then was that she was an artist – of the jeans splattered into a palette with brush clenched in teeth variety, that she had spent a lot of time on the road traveling with the Ren Fest, from where she had just recently returned, and that when we first met it was hate at first sight.
Our conversations, terse and blunt as our intentions, was similar to watching two old crows circling around the carcass of an idea and cawing and flashing claws and ruffling their feathers over who will claim dominance over it. A battle waged dropping author’s names like carpet bombs, validating our superior taste in music even if it was the same bands we were talking about and proving why our corner of the Scene was real while the other’s wasn’t.
Later, we thawed into a disgruntled diplomacy, alcohol did most of the leg work and the fact that neither of us could really muster the appropriate amount of venom to keep the game fueled did the rest. Eventually we started to get along. We hung out. We grabbed drinks. We caught movies together. Went out dancing and tripping with the roomies. We talked, mainly her, but with me listening along.
Of course I ended up falling for her, despite the common sense, the instincts, the odds and the friends screaming to do otherwise.
And, with the somber earnestness of a gentle, young man after his first exposure to a Rilke poem, a Tom Waits ballad, that first whiff off the dusty graves of philosophy and the gravity call of an awkward first kiss, I fell hard.
And as inevitable as blood will follow the blade across the throat’s page, as Mother Winter will pluck the last petal from Father Garden’s beard and the final drop from the bottle will fail to satiate the thirst that emptied it – she declined my advances over breakfast one morning.
So it goes. No guts, no glory.
I remained a prisoner in the Friend Zone for awhile after. Nodding along good naturedly with each disaster of a man she fell for in rapid succession. We still went out drinking and dancing and she would spend the lull of the ride home cuddled in my arms and I would sit there still, listening to her stories… but now her stories were about her boyfriend and the guy she was dating and the guy she wants to be dating but won’t date her and… each new narrative spun into three divergent narratives that looped into the tapestries of romantic epics, of distant lands where grown men dress like knights and where love is made in the adventurous fashion of the Carnie.
Then one day I had had enough.
I was sitting in the living room, playing a video game that wrapped me in a attention numbing kill zone, three hits deep and finally starting to drift away from the weight of a day spent toiling down at the Cube Farm. That’s when the door slammed open. The Gypsy stomped in, lit cigarette clenched in the corner of a snarl, marching straight for the kitchen towards the bottle of red with her name, literally, on it.
She shot a glug straight off the neck and then poured a goblet’s worth for herself. Taking a seat behind me on the couch, face scrunching up disapprovingly at the game, she lit a fresh cigarette upon punching the last one out.
“So I had that talk with Marlene today about Jace…”
“Let me stop you right there.” I machine gunned a mutant point blank in the face and slid down the gore soaked corridor unstoppable.
“Excuse me?”
“Just hear me out a second,” I switched to flamethrower and barbecued a flock of zombies spilling in out of the dark, “I know, okay. I know, you’ve just had the worst day ever. All over a five minute incident at work with whasherface over whasissname. Since then the whole incident's been looping through your head and you’ve been chewing the replays over the whole ride home and now, now you just need your cigarettes, your glass of wine and most of all, what you really need, is to just vent it all out to someone who knows you. Seriously, I dig where you're coming from. It's like a biological impulse to purge your system via monologue. And right now the Princess isn’t here to hear you out and your friends aren’t answering your calls and you know the guy you’re fucking doesn’t want to know… so you just need a friendly ear. A person willing to be there to give you a little peace of mind.”
I sneak up behind a ninja sentry, switch from flamethrower to knife and slit his throat effortlessly: “ I know, because as bad as you need to talk to me about your day right now, is exactly how bad I need to sleep with you. In fact the way you need to lecture to me for hours on end over the nunaces, the drama, the pathos of this five minute incident, is almost proportionate to the hours I’m willing to spend listening to your bitching for five minutes worth of satisfaction.”
I watched her reflection across the screen rise in protest from the corpse of a slain cyber-demon: “Hold up, I’m almost done here.”
Her ghost lowered back down and I began to indiscriminately mow down a hoard of the living dead with a chain gun severed from the cyber-demon's arm. “S’okay. I’m not your type. I get that. Fair enough. But what you have to get is that I don’t want to hear about your day anymore than you want to strip down naked and have mad monkey sex with me.”
Her reflection just sat there across the screen, peering at me through the spires of an ancient civilization burnt to ruin and crawling with nests of eldritch horrors.
“So, look… here’s the thing… give this guy your sleeping with a call. Tell him what happened and how it made you feel and how glad you are that he’s there for you right now. Even if only in spirit. Because sometimes… well, sometimes the guy you’re willing to bore also has to be the one you're willing to fuck. And vice versa. Any other way and it's just not fair.”
A mummified squid beast burst out of the shadows, through the bandages of the head, tentacles writhed menacingly and tore at me. Last life spent. Dead. In my kill crazy rampage tirade I forgot to use one of my health kits or to stop and save my progress. My character pops back to square one.
“Shit!” I hissed and almost threw the controller through the screen.
“… are you even listening to me?” The Gypsy sneered at my resurrected avatar and downed the rest of her glass with a head back gulp.
“Yeah, sorry." I shook off the dream rant and focused on her briefly as she made her way to the kitchen for a refill. "So, um, what did Jace have to say about Marlene’s accusations?”
“Well, you know… that’s a funny story. See the thing you have to realize about Jace is that he used to work for Crazy Phil up in Syracuse and Crazy Phil told him about this time growing up on the farm. A pig went missing…”
Meanwhile, I ventured forth into the jungle again from the beginning, the last three hours wasted. All I had was my knife and a pistol with ten rounds. Out there in a better world, my enemies waited for my approach, listening keenly for every step and shot that would gradually reveal my location.
The Gypsy isn’t a long story per say, but rather a patchwork of long stories stitched around a boisterous yet enchanting Brooklyn-Italian bohemian free spirit; one well blessed of curve, courage and wit. The jist of what I knew of her then was that she was an artist – of the jeans splattered into a palette with brush clenched in teeth variety, that she had spent a lot of time on the road traveling with the Ren Fest, from where she had just recently returned, and that when we first met it was hate at first sight.
Our conversations, terse and blunt as our intentions, was similar to watching two old crows circling around the carcass of an idea and cawing and flashing claws and ruffling their feathers over who will claim dominance over it. A battle waged dropping author’s names like carpet bombs, validating our superior taste in music even if it was the same bands we were talking about and proving why our corner of the Scene was real while the other’s wasn’t.
Later, we thawed into a disgruntled diplomacy, alcohol did most of the leg work and the fact that neither of us could really muster the appropriate amount of venom to keep the game fueled did the rest. Eventually we started to get along. We hung out. We grabbed drinks. We caught movies together. Went out dancing and tripping with the roomies. We talked, mainly her, but with me listening along.
Of course I ended up falling for her, despite the common sense, the instincts, the odds and the friends screaming to do otherwise.
And, with the somber earnestness of a gentle, young man after his first exposure to a Rilke poem, a Tom Waits ballad, that first whiff off the dusty graves of philosophy and the gravity call of an awkward first kiss, I fell hard.
And as inevitable as blood will follow the blade across the throat’s page, as Mother Winter will pluck the last petal from Father Garden’s beard and the final drop from the bottle will fail to satiate the thirst that emptied it – she declined my advances over breakfast one morning.
So it goes. No guts, no glory.
I remained a prisoner in the Friend Zone for awhile after. Nodding along good naturedly with each disaster of a man she fell for in rapid succession. We still went out drinking and dancing and she would spend the lull of the ride home cuddled in my arms and I would sit there still, listening to her stories… but now her stories were about her boyfriend and the guy she was dating and the guy she wants to be dating but won’t date her and… each new narrative spun into three divergent narratives that looped into the tapestries of romantic epics, of distant lands where grown men dress like knights and where love is made in the adventurous fashion of the Carnie.
Then one day I had had enough.
I was sitting in the living room, playing a video game that wrapped me in a attention numbing kill zone, three hits deep and finally starting to drift away from the weight of a day spent toiling down at the Cube Farm. That’s when the door slammed open. The Gypsy stomped in, lit cigarette clenched in the corner of a snarl, marching straight for the kitchen towards the bottle of red with her name, literally, on it.
She shot a glug straight off the neck and then poured a goblet’s worth for herself. Taking a seat behind me on the couch, face scrunching up disapprovingly at the game, she lit a fresh cigarette upon punching the last one out.
“So I had that talk with Marlene today about Jace…”
“Let me stop you right there.” I machine gunned a mutant point blank in the face and slid down the gore soaked corridor unstoppable.
“Excuse me?”
“Just hear me out a second,” I switched to flamethrower and barbecued a flock of zombies spilling in out of the dark, “I know, okay. I know, you’ve just had the worst day ever. All over a five minute incident at work with whasherface over whasissname. Since then the whole incident's been looping through your head and you’ve been chewing the replays over the whole ride home and now, now you just need your cigarettes, your glass of wine and most of all, what you really need, is to just vent it all out to someone who knows you. Seriously, I dig where you're coming from. It's like a biological impulse to purge your system via monologue. And right now the Princess isn’t here to hear you out and your friends aren’t answering your calls and you know the guy you’re fucking doesn’t want to know… so you just need a friendly ear. A person willing to be there to give you a little peace of mind.”
I sneak up behind a ninja sentry, switch from flamethrower to knife and slit his throat effortlessly: “ I know, because as bad as you need to talk to me about your day right now, is exactly how bad I need to sleep with you. In fact the way you need to lecture to me for hours on end over the nunaces, the drama, the pathos of this five minute incident, is almost proportionate to the hours I’m willing to spend listening to your bitching for five minutes worth of satisfaction.”
I watched her reflection across the screen rise in protest from the corpse of a slain cyber-demon: “Hold up, I’m almost done here.”
Her ghost lowered back down and I began to indiscriminately mow down a hoard of the living dead with a chain gun severed from the cyber-demon's arm. “S’okay. I’m not your type. I get that. Fair enough. But what you have to get is that I don’t want to hear about your day anymore than you want to strip down naked and have mad monkey sex with me.”
Her reflection just sat there across the screen, peering at me through the spires of an ancient civilization burnt to ruin and crawling with nests of eldritch horrors.
“So, look… here’s the thing… give this guy your sleeping with a call. Tell him what happened and how it made you feel and how glad you are that he’s there for you right now. Even if only in spirit. Because sometimes… well, sometimes the guy you’re willing to bore also has to be the one you're willing to fuck. And vice versa. Any other way and it's just not fair.”
A mummified squid beast burst out of the shadows, through the bandages of the head, tentacles writhed menacingly and tore at me. Last life spent. Dead. In my kill crazy rampage tirade I forgot to use one of my health kits or to stop and save my progress. My character pops back to square one.
“Shit!” I hissed and almost threw the controller through the screen.
“… are you even listening to me?” The Gypsy sneered at my resurrected avatar and downed the rest of her glass with a head back gulp.
“Yeah, sorry." I shook off the dream rant and focused on her briefly as she made her way to the kitchen for a refill. "So, um, what did Jace have to say about Marlene’s accusations?”
“Well, you know… that’s a funny story. See the thing you have to realize about Jace is that he used to work for Crazy Phil up in Syracuse and Crazy Phil told him about this time growing up on the farm. A pig went missing…”
Meanwhile, I ventured forth into the jungle again from the beginning, the last three hours wasted. All I had was my knife and a pistol with ten rounds. Out there in a better world, my enemies waited for my approach, listening keenly for every step and shot that would gradually reveal my location.