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The trenchcoat and I were acquaintances for half a year before our relationship began. We met in December, but it wasn't until May I looked close enough to realize it was purple in color rather than black. We had ended up together at Fanime's Masquerade, after an act of chivalry. The event sucked, but that evening allowed us to become a little closer. It sat folded neatly in my lap, though I did quickly examine the pockets first. They held simple possessions: pencils and pens, receipts, broken crayons, a ketchup packet--and a tarot deck inside a clean sock.
Having completed our evening, I returned it to its home and didn't much think about the deep purple trenchcoat for a week or two.
I held a party and the coat attended, despite it being summer. It was one of the first guests to arrive and I noticed there were a number of wear-and-tear wounds I could darn. So I pulled out the sewing box, retrieved needle, scissors and deep indigo thread. The mending went long into the party and likely attracted a fair amount of gossip, but I was so absorbed I didn't notice.
The loop on the left sleeve was reattached by turning the entire thing inside-out so as to not catch the satin lining. The holes in the armpits vanished in much the same manner. What remained of the tattered left hem was reinforced and rehemmed. The bit to keep the shell attached to the lining, the only one remaining, on the right, was reattached. Finally, the splitting seam on the right sleeve was pulled back together with carefully gauged, even stitches, as they would show; there was no getting around it.
While mending, I discovered splashed spots of pink-terracotta paint. It became a part of the coat after it had assisted in painting a set for a theatre production. It was house paint; it wouldn't come out.
After that, the coat and I could often be found together, especially after the night I had to get it out of its house. We went to a nearby park. It trailed in the tanbark chips, which stuck to it, and became damp with the dew off the grass. It was there when we were parked at a gas station until 5AM, talking though our hardships. It was there when I broke up with my boyfriend, I was there when it fought with its father. It showed up at my work; a pleasant surprise.
In August, it was left in my possession for a social outing, another chivalrous act to keep the coming fall's chill off. The contents of the pockets had changed: the pencils and pens remained, but there were a few packets of sugar and a sage smudge stick with a small abalone shell to accompany the tarot deck. It spent that night by accident, out of mind with its warmth wrapped around me. This became a common occurrence. A few months later, I discovered it had a removable winter lining. It added considerable weight, but wasn't something I objected to.
We were comfortable with each other; distinctive memories mellowed and flowed into one. Recently, one of the buttons on the sleeves broke and was hanging on by a single thread. I pulled out the sewing box again, found needle, scissors and indigo thread. I cut free the spare button, removed the broken one and sewed the new one in place. It had four holes. I crossed, I boxed, I wound and knotted off.
No amount of repair can return the dark purple trenchcoat to its original state, but the wounds of life can be shared and patched with the help of others.
When he sunk into the tan couch I didn't take my eyes off the screen. Maybe I should have closed my windows when I heard the front door open. Maybe I should have given him my undivided attention when he silently stormed into the room. Maybe I should have continued being the doormat I'd been the past year. I finally surrendered my gaze when he spoke.
"We need to talk." That calm and steady, no-nonsense tone of his.
I swiveled the creaky computer chair to face him and shrugged. "I'm not the one who walks off or hangs up or logs off when I'm unhappy."
The right side of his mouth was briefly pulled into a snarl as his muscles twitched involuntarily. He'd never been physically abusive, telling me again and again about how his father would beat him and his older brother and how he didn't want to be that broken man. "I don't see us going anywhere."
My palms were clammy with sweat. "Oh. Why's that?"
"You never talk to me any more. You ignore me," he accused.
It was accurate, if one looked at the past couple of months. Late nights typing his spoken words into passable five-page essays to get him through a required English course. Late nights starting with silent anger on his part and ending with bloody rawness on mine. Extensive phone calls to encourage him into reveal the cause for his most recent anger--phone calls that caused me to "skip" my first class ever. Most recently, my speaking with his mother or a male friend about my own stresses because he wouldn't listen, or would listen and offer the sound "fuck 'em" or "forget 'em" advice.
I bit my lip, all of these memories rushing through my consciousness. Maybe I should have pointed some of that out. Maybe I should have tried harder at that moment. Maybe I should have continued forcing issues into the open.
I shrugged. "You haven't exactly been open to what I have to say."
"Yes I have! I keep asking you what's wrong and you never tell me!" He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees and laid into me with his intensely blue eyes.
I resisted shaking my head or looking away. "So what do you propose we do?"
"End it." Without skipping a beat.
Over a year and the best solution he had was simply to end it. Maybe that's how it happens when you're 24 years old. Maybe relationships are fleeting things to be captured and released. Maybe I shouldn't have continued to be optimistic.
"You're being rash. Why don't we try a break for a week."
"Fine," he spat, and immediately rose from the couch and stalked to the front room. I found myself suddenly lightheaded, not from pressure or worry but from a sudden lack of tension. Freedom.
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It wasn't an hour later he was on the verge of tears in his mother's car as she drove me to a social gathering. "I'm afraid," he whispered.
I said nothing. Maybe you should have thought about that before making our relationship your bluff.
2/4/10 Detail Free Write
He got up slowly and creeped down the exotic-print comforter to the foot of the bed. I watched him, having put my Fruits Basket graphic novel aside. He looked over the cold black railing to the wooden dresser only a foot's drop down, usually an easy jump that allowed him access to the window ledge and hence the lower dresser on the adjacent wall. He looked over that railing and sunk back into an awkward laying position. It would be too strenuous, too painful to make that jump and the following trip to his final destination.
I wrestled my way from under the covers and to the floor from the top bunk, knowing exacly what Zena, my eight-year-old tortoise shell cat wanted. I'd had him since he was a kitten, after all. I carefully picked him up and took him to the back bathroom where the dusty blue and light grey litterbox was and set him in it. I sat on the lid of the toilet with its light blue terrycloth cover. He took his time and left just a quarter-sized dark mark on the sand, painstakingly buried it and slowly made his way toward the door, just three feet away.
He gave up before he made it and all but collapsed against the wall. He looked up at me, his once curious yellow-green eyes cloudy and dispondant, and I realized without realizing that his time was at an end.
It had started with a sluggishness, a lack of urination, a lack of interest in food. We had taken him to the vet and they told us he had diabetes and would need two shots of insulin a day. We said okay, got set up and educated for it, bought some Karo syrup for emergencies and headed home. And it seemed to do the trick for a few months. Until his eyes started to cloud over. The vet took one look at him and called it cataracts. There were a few other visits for various abnormal behavior.
It was early June, five months later, when the vets finally let us know about their mistake. X-rays revealed his pancreas was completely encased in cancer, casting the illusion of diabetes. All those months, he didn't really need the insulin. All those months, the cells were multipling unchecked. Assumptions prevented a correct diagnosis.
When he looked at me with those cloudy eyes, I realized without realizing and it made me desperate. I ran to the kitchen for a teaspoon and the Karo syrup and returned to him. I forced his mouth open and made him to swallow a glob of the clearish stuff, making a mess of his fur. I picked him up and held him and called my mother, who was at work.
And I told her that we needed to take him in.
And we didn't bother with the cat carrier. I held him the whole way.
And he shrunk into himself, terrified on the cold metal table when they let us say goodbye.
And the last time I saw him was limp in the arms of the nurse as she took him into the back of the clinic to wherever it is they pile the bodies of euthanized pets that mean nothing to them.
June 14, 2004 was the first time a death affected me. My grandmother died when I was four or five; I don't remember it. My grandfather had passed on a few years later and I didn't shed a tear. Recalling just these few moments of his last day still makes me cry. I can't reread what I've just written without tears rolling down my cheeks.
Cheers,
~Katie
A "My First _____," Take Two: Skinny-Dipping
Josh and I were seated on opposing benches on my back patio, an iron gate between us and my father's pride and joy. It was summer, my parents had left me in charge of the house for two weeks and I had declared a pool party. The others were late and Josh didn't want to be the only one in the pool. As the host, I was always the last to enter the water.
"Can I throw them in?" He asked.
"If you can manage. Make sure it's over the deep end." Josh thinks highly of himself, but the others were larger and stronger than my half-Japanese, half-Puerto Rican ex-boyfriend.
"Can I strip them first?" My bisexual ex-boyfriend.
Dorian arrived first and, as expected, Josh lacked the courage to either strip and toss him in. They did eventually end up in the water and after a bit, I joined them, knowing Dana wouldn't get off work for a few more hours. Josh's second idea remained in the air, an "I'll do it if you do it" type thing. As the only girl, I wasn't going to be the first one.
Dana was, though. The rest of us were true to our words.
At first we acted like gaseous atoms, spreading to our own parts of the pool, an uncomfortable silence falling over the backyard. Orange, yellow, green and blue inner tubes were our armor, shielding our naughty bits from others' sight. Dana was the only one brave enough to venture out of the water (yellow and green tubes strategically placed). The sun was beginning to get low, its rays falling behind houses and fences.
After a half hour or so, the atmosphere shifted. Josh's phone rang and he got out to answer it. Instead of shyly returning to the water afterward, he said "fuck it" and took a running start into a cannonball right in the middle of the rest of us. Then we just didn't care. We probably had another half hour of awesome pool fun before deciding it was time for dinner.
Which we made. Without bothering to re-don our clothes.
I never would looked into my future and seen myself openly nude with four of my best guy friends (Preston showed up for dinner). It's really amazing how far a bit of trust goes between people, what freedom allows a trusting group to do. Having friends like that means the world to me. I wouldn't trade the Tuesday that never happened for anything.
Cheers,
~Katie
Hmm. There's a lot of firsts in one's life. I recently watched the Godfather for the first time (and had cannolis to go with). Choosing just one of those firsts is a bit of a doozy--and I know that there's a number of firsts that popped into everyone's head that they're not going to write about. Maybe because they'd consider it inappropriate, maybe because they'd consider it too personal. I'm a rather open person, but I'm not one to make others uncomfortable, so I'll save those things for those who show an interest in them.
I came up with a relatively short list consisting of my first stitches, cosplay (costume play, for those unfamiliar with the term), LARP (live-action role-play), friend and publishing. The main question is which would I most want to write on or (as we are egotistical human beings), which would be most interesting for y'all to read about.
Then it hit me. There we all were, sitting in the computer lab coming up with usernames and display names for these blogs. At some point in our lives, each of us has come up with our first username, screenname, etc--our first "handle."
Mine was for my first email account, ari_sky15@[censored by clan Tremere].
I had a friend make the account for me in middle school (seventh grade) because it was the new thing and my parents (aged 68 and 56 this year) wouldn't consider getting us wired to the web at home. Now, seventh grade was my "fanfiction" stage of life, my most creative stage to date, I would think. My friends and I made our Mary-Sues and had our cross-overs and whatnot. We'd refer to each other by the assumed names. At one point, code names were the first three letters of the first and last names of said characters.
If memory serves, Arianna Skydancer came from two different series; Arianna from Mary Stanton's Unicorns of Balinor series and Skydancer from Bruce Coville's Unicorn Chronicles. (Yes, I was a unicorn girl, get over it. We all had one or another "embarrassing" stage in life.)
Why the 15? My lucky number, of course.
"arisky" became my most common internet handle. Go ahead and do a Google search. The first page results I got today were from deviantart.com, facebook.com, TV.com, movietome.com, ip-adress.com, myanimelist.net, gamespot.com, 123people.com, peekstats.com and twitter.com. Of those 10, five would take you to me. It doesn't hurt that tv, movietome and gamespot.com are linked via c|net. These names tend to stick with us because they mean something to us. I still use that email account made eight years ago.
We do tend to branch out, though. If the URL for this blog is any indication, we don't always go by just one handle. If you search "flaymsbane," which is much more obscure than "arisky," you get much more accurate results. The first 10 hits on Google will take you to my Gaia account seven times over and will link me to myanimelist.net, livejournal.com and greed7.proboards57.com (a forum RPG for Fullmetal Alchemist).
I digress. I've used "arisky" for so long because even after all these years, it means something to me. It reminds me of a time when I was more carefree, less jaded and possibly less subconscious about sharing ideas that sound ridiculous. Using it is a constant reminder of what used to be and in a way helps me retain some of the mindset from those years.
What about y'all? Surely you've got a handle (or handles) of your own. What stories are associated with them?
Cheers,
~Katie
Side note: If y'all want to know about my brainstorm ideas, just say so in a comment. I wouldn't have thought of them if I wasn't willing to talk about them.
