Let me tell you a story

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Angel | A work in Progress

ANGEL

His name was Angel, and he was. His name giggled with lust from all of us, in year seven, eight and nine. For one girl, spoken words mustn't have been enough, because she sprayed it, blazon white on the side of the smoker’s shed: "I love Angel." Laura pointed him out to me once and I remember wondering what all the fuss was about. He looked like anyone else. Trying to find something special in him, I said to Laura, beside me:

"He seems to have nice eyes."

"They’re deep blue !" She cried, her restless breath hitting my cheek.

A couple of years later, at a party, I found myself, rambling in a drunken haze, to a bunch of older guys. There was some presence, quiet and staring behind me. I realized it was him.

He held a flinching awe towards me. His arm somehow fell steady over my shoulders. We both agreed that Bob Marley was cool and when he told me he was a Scorpio, the spell was complete. He was an Angel. There was no doubt in my mind. Those blue eyes burnt a hole inside me, that only he could fill. He would be driving and I would wonder how someone could have such perfectly structured hands.

He was the first guy who ever kissed me without his tongue. I was fifteen and he was twenty-one - nineteen to my parents. It seemed to make a difference to them. Mum said "As long as he doesn’t try to have sex with you." Dad said "As long as he doesn’t have any fuckin’ tattoos."

He had three. All sexy, stating some undivided something, I never knew. Once he laid me down in front of his television that was blaring out Linda Blair’s obscene satanic cries, in the "Exorcist." We kissed away to the sound. I thought about all my moves, soft. . . slow. . .Suddenly it seemed, although I had been fearing it for a long time - he placed my hand methodically on his penis. I supposed that rubbing it was the next step, and so I did, over his tight jeans, pretending I had some sort of intention. I didn’t want to fuck him. When one of his friends informed me that one day it would have to happen, because after all Angel wouldn’t wait forever, I pictured it. It seemed something like trying to speak a language I’d never heard and all the while pretending I understood it. After I had moved my hand back to his hair, I rose: feeling drunk from it all, and in a tone that sounded foreign to me, I told him: "The first 'Exorcist' is better than the second."

The most interesting thing he ever said to me, was when he was really stoned. This time it was just the two of us, and he pulled bongs beside me, over and over. I wished that he would stop. It was like a nightmare in the corner of my eye. I didn’t have any, because I hated the silence that people take on when they smoke pot. "I don’t like the smell." I told him.

He looked up, at me stroking his hair. All squinty eyed he said to me:

"In school, when we were in history class, we were all stoned and the teacher said "Angel, you're a business man". We were all fuckin’ laughing hysterically. Business man! It was true. I sold drugs to everyone in that class. And you know why they were all laughing, cause they were all so fuckin’ stoned." I laughed and laughed, and for a flickering moment, I wondered if I would remember this.

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A work in Progress (One)

If you could fly, over sleeping roof tops, you would see secretive lamp lights caught in windows, cats crawling, discovering the night - the night that seems quiet at first, but if you listened carefully, you would hear the sounds of drunk men slurring half words in their cars, and police sirens and half awake bickering. If you could fly, you would see the whole picture.

And if you landed on her doorstep, you would hear the music she plays late at night, jingling in a little box, that is her flat. It sounds strange, nostalgic - but you probably wouldn't recognize it - she doesn't even know what it is. A record she found in a shop, just as strange and nostalgic, for a dollar. She brings it out at this solitary time, and has not tried to make sense of it, but simply listens and waits. Waits, for the friendly phantoms that fill her hungry and lonely mind.

The music reminds her of her Grandmother. There is no real reason for this, other than that, like her Grandmother, this music is old and gone. It is one of the few reminders that she has of her, as well as an old photograph, which like the music, seems so distant, that she is able to make her Grandmother anybody, in her head. Somehow, she has come to adore this woman, whom she never knew. And she pines for the life, that she never lived, feels a deep nostalgia for memories she has created with the music, and feels such a longing that keeps her awake - to relive these moments. These moments: when everything was simple and colours shone like technicolour film: the way her Grandmother's cheeks were plump with humble blush in that photograph: her smile - accepting and expectant at once. It was taken on her wedding day - the same photo they had chosen to put on the cards that were handed out at her funeral. The program to her life, stating the essential knowledge, consisting of the dates. The day of her birth and the day of her death.

And if you opened the door and entered, you would hear the music, louder, words about lost love, the steady rhythm of drums and trumpet, piano now and then twinkling in, making you forget that all this, is coming from a spinning record player, and instead, now seems like it is a part of the room. You wouldn't have to look hard to find secrets.

In her occasional moods of organization, she would place love letters she'd received, lovingly in little bags. Little bags decorated, some with flowers, some with santas and Christmas trees, the bags that were given to her with less thoughtfulness and passion than the letters, but the bags she kept because they were given to her. These bags are put wherever they will fit, in cupboards, shelves, on top of the fridge. Each lover's letters were placed in separate bags - mixing them would feel strange. She feared that if she did, she might one day have trouble differentiating between them, and it would seem like they were all from the one person, repeating the same sentiments in varying sentences. There were many little bags.

She did not open them often.
They were cold reminders, that things change.
Despite their dedication and indulgence in affection, these men were not here now and remained faint ghosts in the side of the bed she never slept on.

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