I Am Selina Kyle, So Open Your Eyes (Part Three Of Three)

(For Myself)

So you wake up with the taste of Jack Daniels and tobacco swimming in your mouth, having gone to war on your tastebuds while you slept and split open the contents of the dead. You might as well be tasting metaphorical casualties, the battlefield of your tongue is the least of your concerns.

Your head pounds as if the light angrily seeping in through the curtain and your eyeballs connect to make use of your brain as some form of old school alarm, the type where the contacts touch and that little hammer pounds furiously on the bell. Your body is lost in the expanse of sheets and duvets and pillows, your grope around for the rest of you but he walked through the door a week ago.

What's more, you told him to. They never shape up, they always end up choosing something else over you and what you're willing to sacrifice for them becomes irrelevant, almost pathetic. Sometimes it's been drugs, or alcohol, their inability to deal with who they are, and even money. They never leave of their own accord, it always has to be you screaming and hysterical who ends up making the emotional decisions. They never really beg to stay either, they're never strong enough to break a plate across a wall and fight for what you're supposed to have. Which is why the covers meant for two try and smother you in this early afternoon.

There's a passage in Interview With The Vampire where Anne Rice casually describes the woman who helps Lestat and Louis escape the plantation in New Orleans. She manages to capture the rest of her life in practically a sentence, stating that like many strong people, she will find herself alone the rest of her life.

You're supposed to be the epitome of the cat lady, but you refuse to be a rambling, incoherent and bitter old hag who lives only to torture the generalisation of the gender of the people who have hurt her. There is nothing in you willing to live in a house full of stopped clocks and spidery wedding cakes. You read Great Expectations as child, and it terrified you. You almost become Estelle at times, but you always stop yourself before your heart hardens completely.

What lies in your wardrobe stops you from falling. You might not be the shining example of the superhero that flies through the sky. Sometimes you trip and stumble, and you're much too selfish and proud to sacrifice everything for another. There's no need to sit and weep and wonder, when there are so many jewels lying around, so many chances to prove how amazing you are.

Sometimes you fall asleep thinking of what it would be like to be Lois Lane. How it would feel to jump out of a window and know there are big strong arms always there to catch you. Then you wake up and think that perhaps your life is not as clean-cut as the dreams of falling reporters might envision, but the promise of a new day brings with it the chance to get under a steaming hot shower and start over. With Superman always there to catch you, how could you ever learn to fend for yourself?

Lois Lane doesn't have everything. Lois Lane doesn't have claws and the thrill of knowing what it's like to jump across rooftops through the night, celebrating yourself. She hasn't had the hardest life that knows what it is to lose everything, even your heart, and always be able to start over.

When Catwoman jumps out of a window, she always knows how to land on her feet. So you can make all the bad decision you want in life, but once you learn to land on your own feet, you'll always have it. No amount of dreaming about blurs of red and blue can take that away.

Most Definitely, The Dreaming (Part Two Of Two)

(For the man...)


He's laying there on the sofa, his hoody coming off on one arm and he's just laying there like everyone else would watching some mindless television show and somehow he makes it look like high art. You know there's people who are technically by all means beautiful and then there's the ones that catch your attention, those are the ones that don't try.

You have people spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on trying to achieve that look, the look where they don't really care about what they're wearing and they don't really care what their hair looks like or what their skin feels like, but secretly they spend all their days obsessing over this nonchalance.

Then here he comes, wakes up out of bed and does nothing but wash and he's all butter and caramel. The best part is he doesn't even know it, and that makes him even more achingly attractive. He's just another regular man in his head, with his arm over the sofa making plains of heaven across his side, but he's just slumming it up on a Sunday morning watching his favourite shows.

I, however, am of the kind where hours in the bathroom is just not enough. I wash and I scrub and sweat and combine flattering colours like no tomorrow. Yet there's always something in the mirror that talks back at me with the voice of every runway model who bruise their bones whenever they sleep. My comfort lies in him, in the fact that somewhere inside his loving eyes I am that lucky person who doesn't have to do all that much to be beautiful, and he rolls his eyes whenever I'm trying the latest lemonade crash.

I fell in love with him the moment I saw him, he was the moody silent one across the room nervously thumbing his guitar by his table. Then he stood up and got on the minuscule stage, bowed his head and faltered with the cheekiest, warmest grin I have ever seen in my entire life. The rest of that evening was just a choir of angels, and when he aimed that damn charming weapon at me in order to buy me a drink, he swallowed me whole and I've been living in his heart since.

“What's cooking?” he turns his head away from the flashing box and I turn my attention from the hob to see two mischievous eyes swimming about the horizon of the sofa's back. I smile and turn back to the frying pan in my hand, give an elegant flip of the wrist that thankfully turns out well, and lift my voice to the ceiling.
“Pancakes!”

He claps his hands and makes them into fists, pulling himself up to seating position and bringing his arms to his sides. “Yes!”, he exclaims like a six year old who's just been told he can play outside.

I walk across and stand in front of the sofa, covering his view of the television. He pretends to get angry. “Get out the way, boo!”.
I arch my eyebrow and wave a towering plate of fluffy thick pancakes, drizzled in honey and crowned by fresh strawberries right in his face. I'm holding a fork in my other hand, and I pretend to stick it into his thigh.

His expression softens instantly. He's so good at being an angry young man it used to scare me at the beginning of our relationship, until I realised he was just lost in deep thoughts. I imagine his mindscape to be a purple canvas of constantly evolving terrain, with such profound kingdoms I will never get to know. Part of me is sad at that, but I am mostly awed. I feel empathised, the first time in a while, I have such kingdoms to reign over too, and he sees that in me,

He grins and I melt like the honey over the edges of our universe. I might as well grow wings and fly out of that window to embrace the sun, but my everything is here in this tiny little apartment we've managed to build out of our shared hard work. I used to think it should be this simple, and suddenly one day every broken piece of glass came together and stuck, and it all became the way it should be.

He parts his legs and reaches out his arms, and I smile warmly and sit right on him, one knee of each side of his hip. The television is long gone, it minimised itself into a blip we don't even notice. We fit together perfectly, and when I feel his warmth there could be an army of demons breaking down the door for all I care.

I take a big chunk of pancake with the fork and fly it around him, he pretends to whine like a little puppy as I make aeroplane noises. He laughs, I laugh, I shut him up by rapidly shoving it into his mouth. He doesn't expect it and little flecks of honey stick to his mouth. I wipe them with a finger and taste it. He moans. “That's good pancake!”. I moan back at him and nod and laugh. He starts rocking me around on his lap. I take a strawberry from the top of the pile with my mouth and put it into his. It crushes between our teeth and he parts my lips with his tongue, holding my face with his hands.

I let out a small squeal as the plate of pancakes goes crashing to the floor, we both look down and laugh. He shrugs. “My pancakes!” I wail in mock melancholy, and turn my attention right back to this man, this dream.

When I'm Falling Asleep, I Pretend I'm Lois Lane. (Part One Of One)

(For Randall Ham)

In that murky inbetween world between being fully awake and giving in totally to your subconscious, when your mouth starts to melt into molasses but your mind still reigns over everything. That's when I start to think about falling off a building, in my pillbox hat and immaculate skirt.

It's the only thing that guarantees a good night sleep. When the outside world is so eager to rape, kill and maim you, what better way to guarantee safety than to dream of being a dame with her very own superhero. It can't be the post-modern Lois Lane either, I have to stretch it way back to at least the sixties. Nowadays Lois still has too much on her plate, when she's not playing mommy to some alien child Clark decided to just pick up, she forever doing research on the internet or screaming in to her cellphone.

I also bet she's on Atkins or South Beach or plain old starving. She's worrying about her Kurt Geiger pumps and if constantly wearing jeans and a leather jacket made her look too butch. The Lois Lane of today has too much stress. The Lois Lane of today does not just fall off a building, that would be seen as completely misogynistic.

I am a person of principles, of equality and standards. But this is my one moment of freedom, and I need it in order to sleep. So much like Anais Nin gave up all her feminine spiel for the sake of any man who would make her feel comforted, I gladly become the Lois Lane of yore and take a dive for it.

We all want the independence, to not be just some pretty face in need of saving by the red cape. But we all want to be saved at the same time too. How wonderful a feeling, to know that every time you fall there's someone there to catch you. That there's big strong arms completely at the ready to hold you at night. That the one you love and wave goodbye to in the mornings isn't just out there working for some anonymous conglomerate ready to devour the universe, he's helping to make everyone safe.

It doesn't work with anyone else. Only being the wife of Superman guarantees me some decent slumber. Everyone else has too much conflict, too much sacrifice. With Lois, it's all plain sailing. He never gets old, he never gets hurt, when he dies he comes back to life. She's not chained to the kitchen stove.

I fall asleep as Lois Lane, and I wake up as Catwoman.

A Lovelorn Play In Three Voices (Fragment Two)

I was pissed off at myself more than I was at him really, I just didn't want to admit to it. I'd hardly done any research, I've landed in on a whim and prayer and my lack of preparation had made me look painfully awkward. Yet my thought flied elsewhere, I was probably not the kind of guy he was looking for. As if I was going to let him make me into some kind of porn star anyway. I was there to make a documentary, not take my clothes off.

I wasn't some kind of prude, I mean, I was going into this trying to make a documentary about the porn industry. It wasn't about moral indignation. It was...I don't know. There was a reason I had chosen one end of the lens, a disguised need for acceptance based on anything other than my body blended together with some form of chronic shyness, but at the same time a total willingness to be completely exposed in total honesty to the world.

When I was nine years old, I was the epitome of a good boy. I went to church regularly and sung in the school choir, completely at awe and equally terrified of this emaciated tortured divinity. I was a chubby, awkward, pale and freckled thing, completely at the mercy of every boy with future anger management issues and a mullet.
I never considered myself the kind of child who excelled at anything in volume, I was good at what I did and it showed through my actions, but there was no pedestal. I don't know if that had to do with my own character or the fact my parents had decided not to make a fuss over such matters. In some ways, I am very grateful for this. In other ways, it took a long time for me to realise I had any light within me at all.

I'd somehow been picked to sing a solo at church during a school choral recital at our local church. I spent weeks rehearsing with my music teacher, but I never told my parents a thing. Looking back the memory is vague as to why. I guess it's a combination of all my artistic temperaments, or the fact they'd never made such a big deal out of anything I didn't see it as a big deal. I somehow weirdly took this thing in my stride, and where every other parent turned up camera in hand and a passive aggressive launch for the front pew, my parents were missing.

I don't know how, but my grandfather was supposed to pick me up from school that day and he'd turned up early, probably to catch what he thought was a normal mass. I never saw him in the crowd, but I did my piece and the rest of the event is a small blur. I don't remember the applause, isn't that weird? When I hear performers talk about being up on stage, it's all about the applause, The act itself is a blur, a trance of some kind where the payoff comes at the end. For me it was all about the technicalities, the song itself to perfection.
Film-making isn't about the applause at the end. You have to be constantly aware of every moment, because you're not actually creating anything. You're simply bringing a bunch of variables together that already exist and putting them in some form of order. I don't start with a blank page or an empty canvas, I simply take things which are already full and I make them interact in a way that interests me. I have to be constantly awake, and by the time the applause starts I feel too tired to care.

My grandfather walked me home with a look of amusement and slight shock on his face. Some old lady stopped him in the middle of the street, and gave me a sharp pinch on the cheek.
“Voice of an angel!” she sighed, and my grandfather thanked her.
He turned back to me. “You were great! Why didn't you tell anyone, silly?”
I looked at the floor and shrugged my shoulders. He sighed and squeezed my hand.

I Love You Kafka Tamura!

The boy shuddered and drew closer ever closer to reality
like some fantasy
Had betrayed the very prefix of his being
And there was nothing left there
Not do do anything but wait for the buses
And the trains
And all those things that take you places
Otherwise.

It was still and silent and gasping for air
On the rocks of a beach made of strawberries
Like some ancient candy had taken away
A vast amount of sandpaper
And turned it into glass,
Fragile and aching and needing
Of something it didn't quite know how to describe.

We all edged in ever closer to the child
Who jumped around in endless gardens
And fed rain to the snails
While the cats went around searching
For their lost hearts and eyes
Everything was golden, everything was sunlight
And we paraded in joy,
Every morning.

A Lovelorn Play In Three Voices (Fragment One)

You think you'll step out of the bus and into the world and the adventure begins. You're wrong. Sort of. It's almost like you left your soul back in Iowa and it takes a couple of months to get here, and in the meantime you have a little identity crisis. Ever heard of culture shock? It's not what you think it might be. It's not about learning the customs and social graces of a strange land, it's more than that. When you move somewhere else, you have to move with it, and that takes time.

In part it's about learning where things are and making friends, but there's also a part of you that's completely new. You're a blank slate to everyone, and you get to choose the parts you keep and the parts you hold back. Believe me when I tell you, sometimes it's worth holding back a few things. Otherwise you end up vulnerable.

You have to adjust to to the rules of the city, and all it's many games. You might think you don't want to play games, but then you're just feeding yourself to the lions. You try and retaliate against it and think yourself innocent and honest and full of morals. That's all very beautiful, but you end up hurt. Life isn't the storybook you might think, and you think this doesn't apply to you but it does. Look around at all the people bumping into each other. Tell me who has long stable lasting relationships out of everyone you know? Practically nobody.

Don't look to your parents and your grandparents. They don't count. It was a different generation where divorce was frowned upon and the sexual liberation almost hadn't happened. A world devoid of internet dating sites and nightclubs. They practically didn't have a choice. If your parents had been given a choice there's a strong possibility you might not even exist.

It is a game, and there's nothing depressing about it. I admit, it made me depressed when I started learning these hard truths, but nothing felt better than realising what lay before me. Without this blurred view of romance, all that lay ahead of me was freedom. Everything felt less precious, and it dawned on me that making things precious stemmed from a fear of losing them. When possibility stretches out in front of you like an endless highway, you make things less precious, because you have nothing to lose.

I remember when my grandfather died, and I was out walking with my grandmother while she told me about my cousin's latest boy trouble. She told me “You know what? When your grandfather died I was angry. I was angry because he left me behind”.
That's the price of love, someone's always the first to go.
“Look at your cousin” she said, “so ready to give up, jumping from one boy to another. In my time we worked at marriage, we didn't just give up and leave”.
I shrugged. “Maybe things are more honest now, grandma. People can do what they want, and they realise they deserve better.”
She looked down at the floor. “Maybe you're right. Maybe I wouldn't have put up with half of his shit.”

When you haven't been touched, truly touched by anyone, the globe surrounding the mystery of it becomes larger. Your skin becomes fine porcelain and your lips are ripe exquisite fruit, and you wrap them up in muslin. You dream of princes and white horses and rose petals on the bed.
Then you enter the club scene and end up giving it all away on a dirty mattress in someone's dank apartment. You convince yourself you love them, and they chew you up, spit you back out in pieces and keep the part of you that held together your innocence. They break you, and then they run. It becomes your fault for not knowing any better. It's a rite of passage for anyone, and it messes you up for a while. The freckles on your nose disappear, and the smell of jasmine on summer nights makes it out of your hair.

To My Bad Romance...

I was wondering whether to write this or not. Part of me felt like silence would be more "dignified" somehow. My friends have told me to just forget you, that I deserve better. I agree. But I also feel like if I don't write this to you, my mind won't start to rest easy. Somehow, I feel more grown up these days, and in proof that I am a better human being than you, I won't curse you with the immature silence you have provided me. At the very least, in this capacity, you will never be able to accuse me of simply taking off without a word of explanation. I'll even try to write as clearly as possible.

For starters I am well aware there is the chance you will never answer this letter. I've made my peace with this. Even if you do reply, I don't expect it to be with a lucidity I rarely see from you. I know the answer will no doubt be cryptic, offhand and dismissive. I'm fine with that. I was hoping to speak to you in person, all these words would be given face to face, but you won't grant me that luxury. This isn't the ideal, but it's the only thing I have. I've written you handwritten letters if you must know, letters I knew I would never be able to give to you with their original intentions. They now exist torn up and broken, in the bin in the staff room at work. Overemotional maybe, but definitely honest.

What do I want to say to you? Many things. I'd like to ask you many questions, questions I know you will never answer. There will always be conflicts and defence in the answers too. I'd like to know why your attitude suddenly changed on Friday, I'd like to know why you feel the need to bear such a huge grudge, why you say you don't want revenge when every action you made seemed intent on making me pay for something. There's things I want you to know, things you don't seem aware of, or don't seem to care about. It makes me wonder how you can be so cold about it, it makes me wonder who else has hurt you so badly in the past you feel the need to shut down in this manner rather than try a conversation that could bring us both some healing. I want you to know I am well aware I hurt you in the past, and as you know I have fully apologised for this.

I have practically crawled in the dirt for you. There's not much else I can do. You felt the need to hurt me for this though. You say it's not revenge but I was on my knees on Saturday night, trying to wonder why you wouldn't answer your phone. You looked me in the eye, and said words I will never forget. You said “Now you know how it feels”. You then said it wasn't revenge, but what are those words then? You say you're too busy to answer the phone, to send me a simple message when I tell you I'm hurting. When you truly have feelings for someone, there's no such thing as busy. You find two minutes of the day to make someone stop hurting. You give them time. You look them in the eye and you stop playing around with your phone and watching X-Factor when they're pouring your heart out to you. You take a moment to step outside with them and talk about it rationally, like two adults who want to fight to make things better. You don't take two weeks to “make up your mind”.

If you cared about me the way I cared about you, you wouldn't spend a moment trying to avoid them, ignoring them, keeping away from them and resisting the temptation to get in touch with them. If you felt what I felt on Thursday night, you'd want that feeling forever. You'd try and look to the future, you'd want some happiness, you'd try and start anew so you could spend every night curled in the arms like we were. Every word you said to me that night, that brilliant wonderful night is in doubt now. You had me so convinced, and then with your actions you took it all away. Why would someone cut off their nose to spite their face?

Because by making me hurt, you're making yourself hurt too. You're losing out on the chance to have someone who could really care for you, who could really make you happy. Someone you feel comfortable and wonderful with. And don't lie and say you don't feel comfortable and wonderful. How many people do you know carry on where they left off three years ago? And for it to feel so right, to not feel so awkward.

You keep judging me on the person I was three years ago, without even giving me the hint of a chance to prove myself. You're so wrapped up in your own hurt you fail to see mine, and if you do see it you certainly don't care, or maybe it makes you feel avenged or satisfied in some capacity. I may have hurt you three years ago, but I spent the rest of those three years genuinely trying to start afresh with you, to make amends and wipe the slate clean. And you would proclaim to want to, and then ignore me all over again, preferring to hear what other people had to say about me than what I had to prove about myself. You made me hurt for those three years, you should know this now.

You said something quite deep on Friday morning, about how we keep going about in circles. You joked about us, you said we'd keep going about in circles. Maybe you weren't joking. I think you know the effect you have on me, like no other man ever has. You know I love you. You know even know, in my deepest hurt and my messed head over you, if you said “come to me” I would gladly go at any hour of the day. Maybe this is what drives you, I don't think I will ever know.

I'm going to break this cycle, because as much as I love you I love myself more, and I need to look after myself. I have never felt so low as I have in the past week, unable to take you out of my head and wondering what your real intentions were. You may know this, it may make you happy. If your intent was to hurt me, you succeeded. If it wasn't, I don't know what the hell goes through your head.

I don't feel the need to make extravagant claims and block you. I could say I'll try and forget you but I know I never will. You're like a thorn in my paw I'll just have to live with, eventually some skin will grow around it and the pain will die down. You could make the thorn come out if you wanted to, maybe some day you will. I know it won't take days or weeks, it will probably take years or maybe never even happen. Maybe you'll never realise what you're losing by simply not sitting down and talking to me. A friendship. A relationship. A deep love. A comfort. All because you want to spite me, punish me, because you're too scared of taking a chance. Life, life lived well, is always about taking chances. I was fully prepared to take that chance with you.

I'm not writing this for you, I'm mainly writing it for myself. For my own peace of mind. To let it out and know that you still laid claim to silence, you still decided to reject me after I gave it my absolute everything. This time it was you who walked away. Ironically, because you were so scared of losing me you've pushed me away totally. Maybe one day you'll see me dancing with another man and realise that could have been you, because I truly believe the satisfaction you get from what you've done won't keep you warm for very long.

So what I'm telling you, in brief, is that I am not going to ignore you. But I refuse you as a friend, and as a lover, and as a part of my life. I refuse this vicious cycle. I refuse to let you dismiss my feelings as not being genuine, or hysterical. I refuse to let you keep punishing me for something I have claimed full repentance for. I refuse to let you see me as a monster. I deserve better.

I never leave a door closed though, but I won't open it for just anyone. Maybe one day I'll let you come back in, when I feel like you've really understood everything I have written here. Maybe you don't want to come back in, that's fine, the door is always open. I will say hello to you, I'm not going to be dramatic and ignore you. But that connection we shared? You've broken it because you've wanted to, and until you say the right words and make the right actions and want to repair it, it won't even start.

I feel a lot better after writing this, I hope at least part of it gets through.

Love always (because love is just more than the sunny days),

Jonathan.