I to you

What was I to you

You were to me 

The buds on the leaves in the winter

The first who maybe could love me

but you didn't

I Hope You Get Fat

varicella

BMI status overweight

broken leg

computer virus

misunderstandings

migraines

burnt meals

flooded bathroom

wrong dates

dead batteries

dog shit on your shoe

power outage

broken tap

bad interest rates

(I never said I was nice)

You Made Me Work FOr That

 You made me work for that, he says

And I say nothing

I've been working on you for weeks

depression

September poetry project week 4 2007

 Poem 22. Global Mala

I dedicate my practice and my poem

to the girl on the mat beside me.

She squirrelled her glasses in a sneaker,

and sat straight and erect beside me,

Her hands clasped in her lap.

Her ribs swelling and collapsing with each breath.

She wore a jap mala on her wrist

which I looked at on every Chaturanga Dandasana,

as if counting the beads,

the 108 beads,

one for every sun salutation.

I didn't count after six, but I tried.

 

Poem 23. Fishbowl

The fish swim outside my window,

big lips kissing the clouds, fins swaying backwards and forwards,

tails navigating left and right.

I live in a castle with a drawbridge that opens and closes,

powered by a motor that lies

beneath the road, beneath the sewer pipes.

The bravest fish swims in my window,

an angelfish,

it doesn't notice me lying on my bed,

but swims out the door,

and out the drawbridge,

back to the air.

Poem 24. Pearl

If you would give me a chance, I would pry open your heart,

And show you that there are pearls inside.

Yellow, pink slightly irregular because they are real,

not cultured, not molded, not made on a wheel.

The sand caught inside your heart scratched

the softest parts and bled you from within.

You refuse to open now, so all I can do is hold you in my hand,

closed as you are.

©Rachel Levine 2007

Poem 25. Reasonable Accomodation

She's walking on St. Catherine street,

wearing the full enchilada,

A black ghost among us,

No skin feels the air except for what breaches at the eye slit.

She's looking at you, studying you,

squinting in there, with two hateful eyes,

judging your shamelss clothing, your disrespect, your ignorance of

Allah,

feeling sorry for your situation because if you knew better,

you'd be more like her.

You can hear her muttering about the hateful, Bush lovers.

Walking around just so she can confirm just how depraved and desparate you are,

thinking about how she'd like to kill the vermin around her,

and you are somewhere lower than rat, but perhaps above Jew.

She'd take the caraving knife she keeps at home to

cut lamb, and filet your muscles from your bone,

and throw you to a dog, so it can crack your bones, and suck the marrow.

She's like to drown your children in the river,

put them in a sack like unwanted kittens,

with a brick, as they bubble below the surface, lungs bursting with water.

That's what she's thinking,

she's thinking the world has too many of them,

and it'd be so much easier if they just killed you all.

You'd be better off anyway,

out of your misery.

Or maybe she's thinking about whether she has a lemon in the fridge and if her children did their homework.

 

___

Poem 26. My angel’s gone to vegas I'm pretty sure my angel's gone to Vegas, and she took West Jet. Vegas, baby, Vegas. She's going to try her luck at black jack, Because everyone knows that slots have the worst odds. She's an angel, so she can't really loses, unless she wants too. But she's way off duty, not comforting anyone around her for a change. Sitting at the table like she means it, like she's got to focus or she might lose. She's between a man and a woman who don't know each other, but my angel will make sure by the end of the night they do. They're going to lose a lot of money, and it can't be all bad, or can it? At any rate, that's what angels do. She can't help working. They're plying my angel with free drinks, Good blue and foggy cocktails, She's getting kind of tipsy, and not so worried about if she wins or loses. Which is why it's so good to have an angel  who whispers in your ear. ___ 27th is gone :( ___   Poem 28. Shadow My sadness is a shadow attached at the feet, that stretches long at dusk, and disappears under the noon sun. I can't shake it off or remove it, can't hide it or run from it. Stretching to the top of my head, waiting to creep up into my soul, waiting to blot out the sun from my heart. Taking my exact shape, my voice, my hands, Becoming me, or the absence of me, since a shadow is where the sun does not hit. When the sun shines on my face, I know the shadow is growing behind me. So all my joys is numbered, weighed, and measured.

september 2007 poetry project week 3

Poem 15. Empty Apartment This apartment is not for rent. Not for you, at any rate. You visited it before, I remember you. I walked you through the rooms, cleaned it through the cupboards before you came, scrubbed the fridge, repainted the walls. I showed you the water pressure, the light switches, the closets. I told you how happy I was here, the neighbours are quiet. You loved it. It was perfect. You said you'd take it and I waited for your call. Waited, waited, waited. Others called and I said I had rented it out. Rented my apartment. But you never called back. The apartment is empty. Don't come back now and ask to see it again.

©Rachel Levine 2007

Poem 16. I can’t sleep he says

and I don't remember my dreams either.

What was the last one?

He runs his finger around the rim of his glass.

I dreamed I couldn't sleep and I was watching late night television.

The sign behind him is for a band that played last week.

It was as real as this. This could be a dream, he says.

He stops the waitress with the Japanese Print tattoo on her shoulder.

He orders a beer and asks me if I want one.

No, I say. I'm living the alternative lifestyle.

Don't take that stuff so seriously, he says. You're airy enough. 

I want to live well, even in this moment.

Hours pass. I am drifting.

Sleep with me, he says.

He doesn't like to sleep alone.

Sleep with me, he says again.

While he sleeps, I look out his window in the windws of the house opposite.

There are no stars.

He kicks in his sleep and I give him my hand to hold until he stops.

___

Sept 17

by Rachel Levine

 

Poem 17. Saint

There is a place in the city

that only I know,

A place in the city

where only I go.

 

My statue is there, Saint Someone.

His eyes to God, his finger to God,

arm holding a Bible,

and someone gave him a bottle of Goldschlager.

 

I visit my Saint

and try to do a headstand for him.

Birds sit on his head.

He never complains.

 

Since he is enduring,

leaves that change colour, leaves that fall,

I ask him questions,

questions that seem important to me.

 

He doesn't answer,

but I know what he means.

 

©Rachel Levine 2007

___

Poem 18. I hate my facebook friends

I hate my facebook friends.

They're all Hamlets and Cassandras anyway.

Phonies and social retards,

Reduced to a portrait square and a status update.

"I is free like a bird" "I is tired." "I is as I does."

People I'd rather not talk to, so we have virtuality instead.

Poke, poke, poke.

Look at 187 pictures of me on vacation.

Here, have a beer, make it an iris for your garden.

I'll write on your wall if you write on mine,

And then we can get in on the foodfight,

Or become zombies.

Let's play at being kids without really playing, without really being kids. 

Let's connect without really connecting.

I would read your about me, but it's boring.

©Rachel Levine 2007

__

Sept 19

by Rachel Levine

 

The stars in my spine

have a tendency

to leak out

when I walk.

Wherever I go

I am followed

by a thousand stars.

 

 

©Rachel Levine 2007

___

Poem 20. three days

Finishing the doctorate

is scarier than getting married.

I have been engaged to my thesis

for ten years.

Now we are going to tie the knot.

In three days.

I can't wait.

I also can't believe it.

I will start a new life,

with a new name.

Titled, bedecked with an honor

of ten years of labor.

And for our honeymoon,

I am going to take the day off

Tuesday.

By Wednesday,

life will go on

and I will be back at work

and still need to lose five pounds

and still have to walk the dog

every morning at 6:30 a.m.

and still feel uncomfortable

around strangers

and argue with my mother

over my clothes and hair,

and I will still not have a boyfriend

in three days.

 

 

___

If I could give you anything,

I would leave a statue of a Buddah on your steps,

with a red balloon tied to his foot,

and a note that says,

"You're going to make it."

I would like to bedeck your door with an oak crown

and laurel leaves,

and a golden shield that says,

"Don't postpone joy."

I would like to release a thousand Monarch butterflies from your roof,

grow amarlysis bulbs in all the dresser drawers,

and let lightning bugs be the stars in the living room,

and whisper in your ear, "You are good exactly as you are."

I will fill the bathtub with starfish,

and blow bubbles until they float out the window,

and write on the mirror in candy apple red lipstick,

"You are never alone."

I will bake ovens of cupcakes with thick pink and green and chocolate frosting,

and we can feed them to all the hungry dogs

and all the homeless people,

and anyone who likes cupcakes

and everyone everywhere.

the new math Danny

 

The New Math part III . The unknown   I met Danny on-line.   I met Danny because I liked his myspace pictures. In one, he was holding an axe, with one foot resting on a tree stump. He was wearing a bright blue shirt, glasses, and a toque. He looked like an extremely scrawny lumberjack. In another picture shot from above, he was looking up while sawing a log. He was squinting into the camera and his teeth stuck out like a rabbit’s. He struck me as unintentionally manly.   I emailed him, “Nice axe .” He emailed me back. After about a month of periodic correspondence on myspace, Danny told me he was going to Boston for several months on an internship. We didn’t email. In fact, we lost touch altogether. In the interim, I met a man and had a tragic romance.   I emailed Danny again when my tragic romance ended. He said, “I thought we broke up as myspace friends.” I wrote back, “True love forever.”   We kept in touch regularly after that. Danny began to email me every day. Sometimes twice a day. He asked for my regular email. I gave it to him, but continued to use the myspace email. Then, he asked for my msn. I told him I don’t turn it on. Then, he asked me to meet up in person. When I didn’t respond to that, he asked me again. After a third request, I finally relented. I told him a concert I was going to. He showed up. At the time, I was in love with someone else, the start of another tragic romance. We didn’t stand near each other or even talk very much to each other. The whole night, I was waiting for the man I liked to show up, but he never came. When the show was over, I drove Danny home. He didn’t ask me to come up to his place nor did I ask to go up.   Although we corresponded frequently, it was only a few minutes in my day. I didn’t go out of my way to contact him. I didn’t have to do anything because he was always taking the initiative. I didn’t even think about him until he went away to Vancouver for two weeks. He didn’t contact me and I missed him. “I think I have a crush on Danny,” I said to my roommate. “I miss him.” “I think he likes you,” she said. “I don’t know,” I said, “What makes you say that?” She wasn’t sure. On his last night there, he sent me an email from a youth hostel in Vancouver . He wrote, “I am writing you while drunk in a youth hostel. I better stop before I start talking dirty.” If I was uncertain about my crush, I was certain now. The thought that he liked me sustained my happiness for the next three days, when he was expected to return. “He’s going to be my boyfriend,” I told my roommate.   The morning of Danny’s return, I received an email from my ex-husband that was mailed at 5:36 a.m. The subject line said, “Good news” to which I thought, “Must be bad.” I opened the email. “How are you? I have good news. Jill is pregnant.” Jill was his girlfriend of maybe a few years. They started going out the week I told Jacob I wanted a divorce. Now they were pregnant. I was not jealous, but I instantly thought of the way people drowned kittens by putting them in a sack with a stone and throwing the sack off a bridge into a river. How had he come so far, while I had bad hair? I couldn’t believe someone wanted to have a baby with the lying, cheating, irresponsible wretch. She already had two children from a former marriage – perhaps she saw Jacob as her only salvation. Perhaps they were on the rocks and she got pregnant to secure his affection and commitment. They weren’t married, at least not yet. This must be some duplicitous ploy on her part to keep him. I wrote back to him, “I am happy for you. You will make a great father.” What I didn’t write was, “I am sad for me.” Danny called me when the night he came back from Vancouver . “Let’s get a drink,” he said. “I could use one,” I said, since it was true, but I didn’t like to drink. I preferred to wallow instead. We met at a bar in the Old Port. Danny was already there, drinking a Guinness. I sat opposite him. The waitress came by and asked me what I want. “This place has really great martinis,” Danny said. “I need a moment,” I said to the waitress. “Do you have a drinks menu?” The waitress got me a drink menu. I began to study it. I didn’t know one drink from the next. What would be sweet? What would be sour? If I drank six times a year, it was a fairly alcoholic year for me. “I could get a beer,” I said. “The Guinness is great,” Danny said. “Or I could get a martini.” I kept reading the menu. I was silently deliberating because I didn’t know one drink from the next. “You’re reading that menu like you’re reading Sanskrit,” Danny said. “I want something sweet, but not too sweet,” I said, “I’m not much of a drinker.” The waitress came by. I told her what I was looking for and she said she’d make me a special drink. “A special drink for a special lady,” Danny said. His foot grazed my calf. “That’s so cheesy,” I said. “Tell me about how you are going to talk dirty to me.” “I don’t think I can do it to your face,” he said. “Are you normally this shy?” I asked. He looked down at his lap or maybe his hands. “I like shy,” I said, “Maybe after a few drinks, you can just say the first word of every dirty sentence.” He put his hand on mine and looked into my eyes. Danny was going to be my next boyfriend. I was sure of it. “I. Don’t. Can. I. That. Don’t. Don’t. Yes.” “Not bad,” I said. “Sounds promising.” My drink arrived. It was large and green. The waitress said, “This is a Green Fairy.” I sipped it. It tasted like lime sugar. Too sweet, very strong. Not remotely what I had in mind. I smiled at the waitress to let her know it was perfect. Halfway through the drink, I was drunk. Danny kept rubbing his foot against my leg. He’d even take off his sandal. He was wearing socks and sandals and I found that very attractive too. “Let’s make out in the bar,” I said, “Or in the bathroom.” “I’m too shy,” Danny said. “Then keep drinking,” I said. “Here, have the rest of this. I’m already drunk. I don’t think I can walk a straight line to the bathroom.” I got up to demonstrate and walked to the bathroom. When I came back, I sat next to Danny. I slurred. “You know, I’m pretty drunk, but I really do like you.” Danny put his hand on my cheek and we began to kiss. I threw one leg over his lap and we made out in the bar like that, drunkenly kissing each other, until it was last call. There was no one in the bar anyway except the waitress and the bartender and a man sitting by himself near the back. “Do you want to go home?” Danny asked. “I’m not going to let you up to my place,” I said, “I’m not that kind of girl.” Which was a lie. “Well, I’m going to walk you home anyway,” he said. “I want you to get home safely.” “That is so nice,” I said. I waved my hand and it took its own haphazard course through the air. I said it again, “That is so nice.” My words were slurred. I was so drunk. “I’m a nice guy,” Danny said. “You’re so nice that I might even change my mind if you say you’ll talk dirty,” I said. Some of the shit that comes out of my mouth! By the time we got to my place, we were still completely drunk so he came upstairs. Then, we fell asleep.   I woke up and opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling. Jacob was going to be a father. I was angry. Fucking Jacob, a dad. Then I remembered Danny and the martini. I had no headache, but how much of a headache can you get from one and a half strong martinis? Danny was still asleep in the bed next to me. I thought to myself, “I’d say a Hail Mary, only I don’t do that since I’m Jewish.” Danny through his arm over me. “Sleep,” he mumbled. I was pleased. Maybe all recent events were part of some cosmic plan that the day Jacob and I let go of each other, someone new would come into my life. There he was, asleep in my bed with his face mashed against the pillow and his glasses on my nightstand. I hadn’t changed out of my clothing from last night. I smelled of martini and sweat.   “Hey, Danny,” I said. “Unnnnnnn,” he responded. “Do you have to go to work?” I asked him. Danny had a job at a computer company. “I have to go to work,” he groaned, “And I want to shower. What time is it?” “I dunno. Um. 6 a.m. I think.” “I gotta go home,” he said. “I want to shower too.” “You can shower here,” I offered. “I think I have a towel.” “I have to change too,” he said. “I can’t go to work like this.” “Well, my shower sucks,” I said, “You’re better off showering at home.” It was evident that he planned to shower at home anyway. He propped himself up on his elbows and said, “Come here.” I sat down on the bed next to him. “No, no, no,” he said, “Come on top of me.” I straddled him. “Yes?” He kissed me and as he did, he put his tongue in my mouth. I started to laugh, because it surprised me. “You’re beautiful,” he said. Oh. Total. Joy. A man, a man I was attracted to no less, just called me beautiful. “Thank you,” I said, resisting the urge to deny it. “I gotta go,” he said, “But I’ll call you later.” “Okay, I said.” He got up and meandered to the door. “Have a good day,” I said. He kissed me again and said, “You too.” Then he headed down the hall to the elevator. “Bye,” I said. “Bye,” he said, “You’re beautiful.” I shut the door. I walked away to get a glass of water. I peeped out the peephole, hoping he would be looking back at the door, but he wasn’t. He was staring up at the lights that indicated what floor the elevator was on. He had his hands on his hips and one foot forward of the other. He was still manly.   I checked my computer first thing for a message from Jacob. I was hoping he would write that Jill miscarried or that she got her period late. There was no message from him at all. I opened his email of the previous day and re-read it over and over. I wanted the letters to change. I wanted it to say anything but what it said. Somehow, his having a girlfriend hadn’t bothered me, but having a baby was a point of no return. Divorce was a formality. A new life status was not.   The good thing about sex is that you feel it on you the next day. It was Monday and I was still collecting unemployment. I had an interview the next day, and the only thing in my calendar was to research the company before the interview. I could take my time. I sat in my shower and let the hot water spray all over me, pretending it was Danny’s hands. I rubbed my own breasts and arms and thighs. I opened my legs to let the water hit me on the labia. I was going to have sex on a regular basis. I was going to have a new boyfriend! I put on my airiest dress and floated through the day. I smiled at strangers on the street and said hello to people. Most of them smiled and said hello back. I spent my afternoon in a coffee shop, using my laptop to research potential new teaching jobs. I started writing cover letters. I was halfway through my unemployment term. I needed to find a job.     I checked the computer before I checked the phone when I came home. Nothing from Jacob or Danny. I checked my sent mail folder to see if I had indeed responded to Jacob’s email. I had. I started to write a second email to him. I wrote, “You must be so excited” but then cancelled it. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to say, “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.” Then I checked the phone. I had expected Danny to call and say he had a good time. There were no messages. I scrolled through the caller ID to see if anyone had called all day. No one. “He’s at work,” I told myself. “Of course he didn’t have time to call.”   He didn’t call that night or the next day. I figured two days if he was playing cool, though a few friends advised I should give it a full week. Considering the pace of our earlier correspondence, a same day response seemed correct, but I waited. When two days had passed, I was obsessive and anguished. I checked my myspace page until 4 in the morning, every ten minutes or so, waiting to see if he came online. Either he only checked his page briefly inbetween those ten minute intervals or he did not go online. I wondered if he had a statcounter, to see who had visited his page. I considered googling his name, to find out more about him. Perhaps he had a blog or a web page and I could find out more about him. I read through our old correspondence, looking for clues that he was only interested in sex. I could not understand how a person’s interest could change as quickly as the wind. I wanted to kick myself for not asking him all the pertinent questions when I was able to. .   Of course, no answer would suffice. No call meant he really didn’t like me that much. A person’s interest can be measured by how quickly they call. If they call immediately, they are in love. If they call after a day, it’s definite chemistry. If they call after two days, it’s someone trying to be cool, but interested. If it takes longer than that, they are only maybe interested and likely have a few other things on the go.   After a few days of isolating myself at the computer in every spare moment, I realized that it was futile to wait or research anymore. I had to return to life and accept defeat and realize that this obsessiveness was borderline deranged. I wanted to know what happened – I didn’t want to stalk him. I didn’t really want to know all kinds of things about him. I just wanted to know why he didn’t call and if this was typical for him, or if I did something wrong. But, it didn’t look like my answer would come. So, I went out. I walked down to the French part of the city, thinking I might find a good croissant. After walking in and out of ten different bakeries, I realized I didn’t want a croissant. I felt sad and disappointed. Worse, I felt completely rejected and used. About a block from my house, I decided to stop in a local coffee shop and get a chocolate chip cookie since the croissants weren’t to standard. As I studied the pastries in the case before me, I heard a voice calling my name behind me.   I turned around. It was Danny.   “Hello, stranger,” he said. “Hey, Danny,” I said. If I was angry, I was not able to muster it. I was excited to see him. I felt my heart ballooning in my chest, floating up and up and up… “ Funny meeting a girl like you in a place like this,” he said. “What have you been up to?” I asked. “Oh, busy with work,” he said, “Someone cancelled and I had to fill in. I had to do some paperwork. Boring things. How are you doing?” “I’m okay. I kind of got some serious news from a friend.” I didn’t want to mention Jacob by name. I wanted to pretend I had no history, no past with Danny. “Everything okay?” he asked. “No, not really. I thought I’d hear from you,” I said and surprised myself. “It’s just a lot going on,” he said. “I understand,” I said. But I knew that it wasn’t going to work the way I wanted it to. Danny was probably not going to be my boyfriend. A surge of anxiety welled up in me. “I have to go,” I said. “You didn’t get anything,” Danny said. “I really have to go,” I said. Danny went to kiss me on the lips, which surprised me, and I stepped back, knocked over a chair, turned, and fled.   Why was he in the coffee shop near my apartment? He didn’t even live in this part of town.   There was much to think about now. Danny was obviously in this part of town because he wanted to see me. But why hadn’t he emailed or called? Why was he giving me lame excuses about being busy. We’re all busy. We’re never too busy to contact someone we just had sex with. Was he waiting for me to contact him? There were so many unknowns in the equation.   Danny called me up. He said, “I think I owe you an explanation.” We met at a bar down the block. I ordered diet coke. No martinis. Danny sat with his hands stiffly at his sides. “There were some things I didn’t tell you,” he said. “I think I figured that part out on my own,” I said. “Well, I had a girlfriend and we broke up. She cheated on me,” he said. “Okay.” “You emailed me when we were still kind of together, but then we broke up and I went on that internship.” “Right.” “When I came back, I wanted to start a new life. And I liked you. I had a crush on you. But I started to see my ex-girlfriend again.” What could I say? “Does that mean you are going to get back together?” “I’m not sure,” he said. “I understand,” I said. And I knew what I was then and it was okay because everything seemed balanced on both sides, at least for the moment.

 

©Rachel Levine 2007

robot psychologist

 

The New Math IV?   Robot Psychology   For a few weeks, I liked a robot psychologist. He didn't reciprocate the sentiment. He sent me an email: I can not give you what you want. I re-read it six times and finally began to cry. I suppose things ended much better in my imagination. In my imagination, things did not end but began.   I wrote the above story for the robot psychologist in question. I told him I would write him a story because he was enthusiastic and encouraging about my art, far more than he was about me. But, now when I read it back to myself, I realize that it is not a story at all, but a poem. So, I am writing a new story for him because he told me I could if I changed his name. But I also wanted him to have the story because it was something I could give to him even though we no longer had contact. The poem is brief and I wanted to write a story about my rage, which was large.   For a few weeks. Let us start with that lie. Because as a writer, I lie. I lie all the time and I steal. I steal moments from people. I steal their personalities, their histories. I steal their gestures and mannerisms, their facial tics, their secret shames, their unknown weaknesses. They rarely know because I take them in pieces, in fragments of flesh and memory. And then I take my hoard of picked bones and dump them into the page. I spread out my collection with my hands like I’m finger painting. I push blood through their veins and reconstruct their faces, recompose them, remake them, turning them into men who walk and think and speak for themselves while I am their omniscient God who cares nothing for the truth, only for the beauty of my creation. So, about that first lie. Let me take that rib and show you the carcass from which it came. For a few weeks. I liked the robot psychologist more than a few weeks. It was for a few months. In fact, it was closer to a whole year. From May to May. I knew him before May, but I suppose I didn’t really like him then. We stopped speaking in March, and so in the end, he didn’t really like me either. In all things there is balance. I do not know if the time in which he was a nonentity to me is equivalent to the time he purposefully abandoned me. Why didn’t I care about him at first? Cherchez l’homme. When I met the robot psychologist, and for quite a period of time afterwards, I was intermittently swapping saliva with young Jonathan, who betrayed his real thoughts when he squeezed my breast and purred Heidi. Coitus interuptus! I yanked on the string hard to find a chain of desire, in which I was by no means at the bottom or top. From my vantage, I could squint and see Eric at the top, who was the disinterested boss of Heidi, who in her turn took periodic interest in Jonathan when Eric failed to ask her for a coffee in the morning, who in turn took middling interest in me relative to the attention (or lack thereof) he received from Heidi, while I barely noticed the robot psychologist at all. Perhaps there were others below him, but I could not see below me, only above. Squished by the weight of circumstances, the robot psychologist leaked love for me from every pore. Somewhere in this primordial sticky sap of his love was the gamete that crawled up my legs and made its way inside my soul, the male contribution to the embryo that developed into the child of my love for him. It was an unexpected pregnancy. One day in May, I woke up and he was the first thought that kicked. Bam! “I would like to kiss the robot psychologist.” It was absolutely clear to me then, as if I had never thought of him otherwise (though in fact, I had never thought of him at all). “If he were here, I could kiss him,” I thought. And whether him or someone else, I really wanted to kiss someone. I was sprawled on my bed, a clear indication of the lack of flesh and breath beside me. So, I embraced my pillow and buried my face into its down and kissed it with my eyes closed. The pillow was too pliant to kiss. The flat pillow, a better kissing pillow, was on the ground. I folded my hand into a fist and kissed it instead, which was marginally more satisfying, at least firm, warm and slightly salty and simultaneously sweet. These naïve, simple affections might seem the most innocent of sexual thoughts, but all potency of feeling in me could be conveyed to basic gestures. When the alarm rang, I washed my hand and left the pillow sideways on the bed where it had served as my makeshift partner. Thoughts, once inside me, are not easy to abort once they begin to grow. Throughout the day, and the week, my thoughts returned to the robot psychologist. I wanted to tell him immediately how I felt. I sat at my computer composing and decomposing a letter that expressed my feelings. I changed my mind, thinking that such a blatant and aggressive stance would chase him away. He seemed sensitive and not very resilient. But, a request to do something we had always done – see a movie – seemed too long to wait to tell him. I agonized under these psychological contractions, whether to say something or nothing. Though ultimately, there was only one direction for this fetus to go, and that was out of my mouth. And once released, confessions have their own lives and they do not always fulfill their parents’ desires. My feelings persisted long after I confessed to him how I felt, long after he told me he could not give me what I wanted, long after I wrote the poem of rage, long after he was gone. The imaginary robot psychologist who dogged me was a distillate of the real person who I had only seen a few times in my life. The real robot psychologist invited me to a show at the Casa del Popolo, a local café/bar. No, that is a lie too. He didn’t invite me to the show. He told me he was going to it, and I decided to go too. For safety, I called upon my unreliable friends to back me up, but they all wiggled out of the obligation when they heard that the band playing was a noise band. I was not so easily deterred, figuring I might have checked out the show on my own anyway. I even bought my ticket a day early and arrived ahead of time. Instead of going into the venue, though, I was plagued with panic. I hid for two hours in a coffee shop across the street, drinking and waiting, pretending to read the free weekly paper. When at last a crowd came outside for a set change smoke after the first band played, I summoned my courage and went inside. Cowardice is a stronger force than desire. I hid in the back of the room at the bar, chatting with a stranger in order to avoid looking at the sea of heads between me and the stage. I knew his head was there, somewhere, and I could probably spot it, but I didn’t want to see it. Worse, I didn’t want him to turn around and see me. I decided then and there that going to the show was a stupid stupid stupid idea. I ordered a coffee for myself and sat at the bar. The Casa makes excellent coffee. I drank the coffee with a spoon, so I would drink it slowly, trying to find more ways to avoid any interaction. Actually, the Casa makes lattes and not coffee, but that is beside the point. I was about halfway through the latte when he was suddenly beside me. He stood next to me, too close, and whispered in my ear. “I’m happy to see you here.” I heard nothing he said after that because all I could think about was how happy I was that he was whispering in my ear that he was happy to see me. I think he was talking about the band playing and his friends who were there. He pointed people out to me, but I didn’t remember their names. His whisper shook me and heat and anxiety built in my stomach. I walked away, trying to avoid him, but he would follow me with his big eyes, grinning and watching. I wanted to puddle into the floor of the Casa. I liked him so much and I was waiting for him to reciprocate. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to escape. I couldn’t leave the show and I didn’t want to stay. Each time I walked away, making a show of listening to the bands, trying to step away, he would come stand next to me, shepherding me, breathing on me, brushing against me. “Do you want a drink?” he would ask. The entire night, my anticipation built. I thought that perhaps it would be a good time to ask him if he liked me. I drove him home and he spent two hours talking to me in my car before he left. I felt so burned. I drove home and went immediately to sleep.     ************ I liked. The second lie. I didn’t just like him. That should be self-evident.   **************** the third lie. a robot psychologist. He called himself a robot psychologist. At first, I thought that meant he built robots. My brother and I once tried to build a robot in our basement. We took out a book from the Malverne Public Library about building a robot. The robot we wanted to build could amble around on wheels and learn where things were located. We thought it would be funny to move things and confuse the robot. It was very complicated to assemble, but the book was very clear and it also gave the program one had to enter to make the robot work. My brother was an expert with a sottering iron and had built at least 25 radio controlled cars and boats. We figured that if we had the right parts, we could build the robot. However, all we had at our disposal was our old Vic20 computer and our old Colecovision. We dissembled these in hopes that we would find the right components to build the robot. When we discovered that the parts needed cost upwards of $2000, the robot project was abandoned. At any rate, because of this childhood failure, I was quite impressed when the Robot Psychologist told me he built robots. And I liked how he spoke about his robots. He talked about them like they were his children and they were alive. He wrote to me once, “My baby robot threw up all over the floor.” I did not know what that meant in terms of robots or electronics, but it was a poetry that could speak to me. However, later I found out that he did not build robots. I was very disappointed by this. In fact, I almost felt as though he had lied to me about what he did for a living in order to make himself seem more interesting. Perhaps he had, since in the early days, the situation was such that he wanted to impress me and not the other way around. Ultimately, though, his job something related to robots and no less interesting. He wrote computer programs, including those for ATM machines. ATMS are robots – not the kind in George Jetson’s world, but they are robots. So he said, he works on robot brains, he worked on robot psychology. When I think about things that made me fall in love, it was what he said about his job. He talked about how he felt like a father as his robot children crunched and processed numbers while he slept, that they were greater creations than he was. And when I heard him speak that way, I wondered how he felt about his own life – had he exceeded his own father’s expectations or fallen short? It was such an odd thought to have about one’s work. I thought of my students as my children, but not as their mother. They were my sheep, maybe, temporarily in my presence, and they existed before and after me. But he created things and felt like a father, or perhaps like a God. I wanted to think we saw the world through the same lens. I always looked at things through a lens of possibility. While I walked around, I would focus on things and begin to see what could happen. On highways I saw accidents and drove defensively. In crowds, I saw panic and would have anxiety attacks. In white vans, I saw bands or serial killers and watched from afar. In faces I saw friends to be made and smiled. I could create and destroy whole lives in my head. But he saw the world through a less carnal lens, a more poetic lens, a more intellectual lens. He was a robot psychologist. He saw himself as something more beautiful. Whereas, I saw him as he was a person without the potential to love me.

 

©Rachel Levine 2007

the new math III

 

The New Math IV?   Rainer Franz Mendel’s name was composed of three first names. I am always suspicious of people who change their first names, as if they were too flippant about identity, or too fearful to commit to being themselves. With a name change, one could become an entirely new persona in the life of someone already established and steer it in a new direction. Rainer, by accident of his parents’ choices, could alter his identity simply by changing the part of the name with which people addressed him. This fact alone should have clued me in immediately that I would not be dealing with one person, but three, or perhaps even more. It should have clued me in to steer clear, since I am not equipped for storms anymore. But, I often overlook what I need to in pursuit of my ends. Besides, Rainer’s evasions were subtle, and they returned me to a time in my life when I blamed myself for everything, especially the crimes of others.   Rainer was in the hospital when we met. He fell on his bicycle after breaking up with his girlfriend. Or maybe they just argued. Maybe she wasn’t even a girlfriend. The story changed as I heard it from different times. I forget little. I knew the story changed and yet each time Rainer told it, there was no reason to deceive. I think he believed the story exactly as he told it, each time he told it. In every version, his story was true. In every version, his story was never solid.   The second time we met, Rainer showed me his X-ray of his broken hip and the plates and screws that fixed bone to bone. We lay side by side on his bed, his arm over me while the other worked the mouse. I’d never felt more intimate in my entire life as I did when I looked at an X-ray into someone else’s body. I could see the white, ghostly bones of his legs, his pelvis, his sacrum, his lower spine. Just past in slightly greyer tones the X ray showed the flesh of his thighs and abdominal area. In unmistakable stark white I could see the alien metal within the bones of his leg. One large screw went through the ball of hip bone and was attached at the other end to a plate that ran down his femur. The remaining four screws held the plate to his femur. We studied his X-ray together lying on the bed side by side, his once broken hip pressed up against mine. Hours earlier, that hip had helped him plough into me with piston engine force. Now, we were languid on the same bed, and he was showing me something that no one else had ever seen (except himself and a doctor), and that no one would see unless they saw his X-Ray. “Totally cool,” he said. I repeated after him, “Totally.” Totally was his favourite American word and the quality of the “o” betrayed his Austrian beginnings.   Just as Rainer had three names, multiple personae, he could easily be replaced by any other of the men I knew during this time period. They had French names, Irish names, Spanish names, Biblical names, Latin names, British names, even Danish names. They were musicans, poets, chemists, bank clerks, firemen, constables, security guards, filmmakers, lawyers, barbacks, actors. No doctors, though, well, not medical doctors. The details around each man changed – where he grew up, where he went to school, if he believed in God, if he played lotto and what he would do if he won. The specifics of his emotional absenteeism were explained in different scenarios – his girlfriend is a missing person, his father murdered his mother, he was starting AA for the fifth time. But, oddly enough, the story always seemed the same. He came on reeking of love and desire, longing for romance. I loved him in an instant, as I always do, but tabled it since my love means nothing. I withheld, jaded, uninterested, but at last capitulated because I longed for romance too. He wooed me effortlessly with dinner, a book, a story, a philosophy, a piece played just for me, a song written for me. I told my friends. The spell broke the minute I carried the story to an open ear. The whole thing collapsed and he didn’t want a relationship, or, more bluntly, didn’t want one with me. I wrote pleading letters that I did or did not send. Then the silence and the disappearance followed. By the time I met Rainer, I was so familiar with this pattern that the whole sequence could be executed in less than a month.   By the time I met Rainer, I wanted to put an end to the repetitive cycle.

 

©Rachel Levine 2007

vase

 Vase

by Rachel Levine

 

I am taking what I thought would be a short cut through a forested part of the city, only it isn’t working as planned. I follow the fence, trying to locate a breach as I walk further and further from my intention. I reflect on the hints and allegations of my life, ruminating on its randomness and my limited abilities to steer and predict outcomes. Everyone has an answer. They closet themselves in the study of scholarly esoterica, enforce a brute Ukranian do or die approach, surrender to cosmic flow, check the position of the retrograde planets, put faith in the orchestration of the higher powers, or refuse to acknowledge anything beyond the most immediate. Their mantras are a temporary litany: Become the most positive person you know, Envision the outcome you want and it will happen, Equanimity, This too shall pass. But I belong to the Church of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and their comfort eventually slides off; I remain stormy and anxious, attached to unreliabilities and probability. All I can do is adjust my perspective to the situation. One transient gave me words I understood. He said, “If you break a vase, it shatters in a million pieces and everything seems random. But when you see the same thing happen in reverse, it makes perfect sense.” At least I prefer laughter.

 

©Rachel Levine 2006

the tribe

 The Tribe

by Rachel Levine

 

A cat slinks along the ground in the bushes near the ball park, its belly milimeters off the earth as it moves forward with the precision of a machine. The focus of a cat is absolute. Every muscle carries its intent, every fibre of its being pointed gracefully towards a specific end. I watch it stalk down a smaller creature, while my dog pisses on a tree and misses. My dog and I come from a different tribe. We consider ourselves the protagonists of our own buddy flick, though he is always the Sancho Panza to my Don Quixote. We stand ankle deep in the summer clover, focused on our respective temporary sensory enticements. I watch the morning light beam through a stained glass window formed by overlapping green leaves, while he munches a found bone. My mind unpacks a series of considerations about the nature of existence and morality, about inaccuracy in the struggle towards the ideal. Bored, he stretches out in the grass, waiting for me to cease my admiration for universal mystery and wonder.

 

©Rachel Levine 2006

size six in a size two world

 A Size Six in a Size Two World

by Rachel Levine

My best friend just bought a skirt that is so tight you can read her lips. Yes, those lips. Why did she buy it? She wasn’t auditioning for the role of prostitute, after all. It was a size 1-2. She has at last entered the magically, golden world of the size twos. Her rotten day, her errant boyfriend, her insane boss – none of them mattered because she was a size two. When you are a size two, don’t you know that doors spring open and rain drops fall around you? That taxis don’t charge you and that suddenly your shit has a nice apricot scent? There’s no need to iron clothing because it no longer wrinkles. And steps turn to slides when you’re walking down them and escalators when you’re walking up them. The prices on everything are now 10% less.

Who knew that such a simple change of clothing size could completely transform one’s life from imperfect to perfect, from flawed to flawless.

Apparently it can.

 

 

 

©Rachel Levine 2006

little gem records

 The Rise and Fall of Little Gem Records

by Rachel Levine

These were the happiest days of my life and it didn’t matter how certainly, how securely I fell, coming down hard, coming down fast, coming down with the shakes or paranoia like trying to slough off a three month long bender or maybe it was more than a three month long bender at that point because there was a lot of liquor and other odd recreational pharmaceutical things, but hitting that wall, slamming face first into the bricks, taking some punches, swallowing my pill, isn’t it ironic – wait, no not that song, but it ended being in the shitter or the crapper and reaching rock bottom would probably be reaching up the way things were at that point, and yes it was bound to end, coming to its inevitable, humbling conclusive decrescendo, the furious march of time trampling me along to obscurity and my inevitable disappearance, yes my time came, and I lay down with dogs came up with fleas, and all great things rise and fall including Rome that wasn’t built in a day but little gem was built in a few months so perhaps not as great as Rome, but ruined like the old stones of Rome because everything crumbles my dentist tells me, everything has its season, everything has its time, everything changes I am guaranteed of that and death and taxes, time heals all wounds so I hope, bidding so long, sayonara, ciao bella ciao, fare thee well, au revoir, goodnight you sweet princes of Maine, take your bow, curtain, exit stage right, this tragic ending, Elvis has left the building, the sweet smell of defeat, and all human fortune is a wheel says Herodotus and sometimes you’re at the bottom I suppose. So yes, those were the happiest days of my life coming down as assuredly as any Babel Tower because I was trying to overshoot the limits imposed by external forces. In this world, in this situation, though, you’d hardly pick God to be the responsible party, unless you’re an insurance company and acts of God are written into your policy, but not in this case. No, in this world, you’d say it was either bad luck or something tangible and blame bad marketing or the press or the rise or fall of the dollar or maybe the evil eye or some bad Feng Shui arrows or misjudging the target audience or a bad day for the PR person or because you had to spend money to make money or you weren’t cautious enough about the bottom line and that’s what business is isn’t it? Or you could blame the failure of the peace process in the middle east or the fact you could now download music and no one bought CDs anymore except me and most everyone else I know and you could blame Hollywood or the fact that Saturn just moved into a conjunction with Capricorn or the fact they changed the USDA food recommendations last week or the fact we were out of touch with youth culture or maybe we were in touch with them or that they turned against us or maybe they never with us to begin with or bad karma or the fact the loan didn’t come through in time or the check was in the mail and the rising price of rent on Main Street or the industry or the industry watch dogs or those stupid labels that rate records 18 plus if there’s any words like poontang or a lack of talent or perhaps too much talent and too many cooks and cocks spoil the stew or maybe we didn’t try hard enough or maybe we were painting our faces with lead and suffered brain damage or maybe it was asbestos in the ceiling or maybe it was never meant to be or maybe we didn’t tap into the cosmic flow of things or nothing comes from nothing or it was a pipe dream really or a dream deferred or a raisin in the sun or dogs eating dogs or any platitude you can pick to explain or mitigate the randomness of almost all events or I’d like to blame my lack of judgment and experience that made me reckless, but it also made me take the kinds of risks that, to quote Mr. Matt Leger, “let 30% carry the other 70%.”

 

Cry me a river, you know. Little Gem Records closed its doors and those were the happiest days of my life.

 

 

 

©Rachel Levine 2006

flipping out

 Flipping Out

by Rachel Levine

“Why don’t you write happy stories?” my mother asks me. She’s worried about me. Everyone is worried about me. “I’m worried about you,” she says.

“Because my life is my life,” I say. Sometimes, at some of the extremely low times, not entirely unlike now, I think I want to change it. But, mostly I don’t. Of course I would like to be a happier person, a more together person. But improvement comes at a cost. It entails making lists, being on a strict schedule or trying to impose structure and regularity. At present, walking the dog three times a day, brushing my teeth, showering, and teaching my ¾ course load at a local college represent the limit of commitment I can handle before I start forgetting to turn off the stove when I leave the house or hopping on the subway before I realized I’ve left my car at the supermarket two days ago. When burdened with obligations, I go to pieces in ways that other people would at first call charming until they must pay for the five fire trucks that came to the building or discover that their car has been towed and it will cost over $500, over a week’s salary, to get it back. The economics of doing more usually results in greater expenditures. So, rather than put myself into a position of doing more, to earn more, in order to spend more, I have taken the alternate route. I do without many things I would probably buy for myself and shop at the dollar store for knock off versions of things my brother buys at Williams and Sonoma. I have yet to give up some of my costly habits: coffee in the mornings from Starbucks. But the real reason I keep my commitments to a minimum is that it claims my personality; instead of being dysthemic, I become dead and mundane.

“I feel that as a mother, if you had a boyfriend, you would be happy. It hurts me when you talk like this.”

Ah, the magic boyfriend panacea. There should be a jingle that goes along with this statement. The magic booooooooyfriend. The magic boooooooooooooooyfriend. Dooh-dah-duh-du-du-du. Dooh-dah-duh-du-du-du. I mean, come on, does she think I enjoy the solitude and loneliness of being single? Here again, I too would like a serving of boyfriend. Granted, my mother envisions a doctor or an accountant or a lawyer in a black suit waving around a cell phone in one hand the keys to his Beemer lying across my plate, with a sauce of green dollars spooned around him. The kind of dish that you eat and belch up twins, an SUV, the PTA, trips to the BWI, and an IRA. When I think of an ideal boyfriend, I am more along the lines of drunkenly and passionately making out in a washroom during a concert. But, we both want the same thing at heart, which is for me to be loved by someone. Ah, mother, I will tell you the truth – that great magic boyfriend panacea is a lie, a sham, a myth perpetuated by greeting card companies and prime time television. Because, all the boys I know -- every boyfriend I have ever had -- has left me an abandoned Ariadne. No, that is not true. I have broken enough hearts in my anhedonia to pave a long road home. The prospect of a serious emotional commitment weakens most bonds. Scientists discovered this peculiar property of proto-love when working on the Atom bomb. The secret is carefully guarded, like the aliens of Area 51.

“I date a lot of people,” I say. Kind of not really true. I did go on a date with someone from the internet a month ago. That has to count. And I had a conversation with the attractive coffee shop employee about the finer points of Sulawesi.

“Why not someone at work. How is the person who shares your office?”

“He has a girlfriend, mom.”

“I forgot,” she says. And when I don’t respond, she says what she was really thinking, “Maybe they broke up.”

“I wouldn’t like him anyway.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I know. I don’t like him.”

“You’ve never been out with him.”

“I wouldn’t want to go out with him anyway.”

“Maybe you should try to go out with the kind of person you wouldn’t go out with.”

“I think this conversation needs to end.”

“Why?”

“I’ve had enough of the abuse. Good bye. I love you. Good bye.”

I hang up the phone. I hate talking to my mother. I also hate talking to my father, who brings up a similarly painful issue: why haven’t I finished my doctoral thesis. There is always some area of my life that is failing where they like to stick the pins in. It used to be about why I haven’t filed the papers for the divorce or why I didn’t have a full time job. Fortunately, these things did come to pass and are no longer mentioned. Growing up, I remember it was my weight, my hair, my clothes. Now I live far away and they can not evaluate my shabbiness with the same microscopic fascination. I lost weight and pass for skinny on some days, average on the rest.

When people always ask me why, in spite of a myriad of accomplishments, I have such poor self esteem and such low expectations from others, I say, “It’s because I don’t have a boyfriend.” To me, it is something of a joke, but no one gets it and they feel sorry for me.

So everyone is worried about me. And maybe they should be. I wrote a story about a bad relationship. Anyone can write about a bad relationship, but to me, I used it as a metaphor for the relationship between Anglophones and Francophones in Montreal. It was inspired by a series of frustrating relationships with alcoholic, self-important artists, a summation of the more meaningful relationships I had in the last few years. So, I wrote this story and it was published within a few months in a Can-Lit magazine. People loved it and hated it at the same time. They wrote letters in to the magazine, demanding to know the ending (I thought it was pretty obvious that we broke up, but it had one of those fade to black kind of endings), demanding to know my position on Quebec sovereignty (I tried to find away to call it the disparate platform of the xenophobic, racist drivel passing as nationalism, favouring a lifestyle of self-absorbed artistic slacking but with the one merit of social awareness), telling me that the story helped them leave their sad lives, telling me that their story was about their boyfriends or girlfriends, telling me that I was self absorbed. It was pretty cool, all in all, for awhile. But, of course, the story was raw and emotive and everyone who knew that it had one foot in reality was concerned about me.

After this cheerless morning, the draw and quartering session by phone, I sit down at the computer to work, and begin by checking and responding to emails. Two hours later, I realize that I need to get started at my work. But one last thing. I Google search an old boyfriend who went on to achieve some modicum of recognition as an actor. I want to know if he is dating someone, or if he is still single, still bad in bed, still offensive and irritating. When I realize what I am doing, I am a little disgusted with myself. I don’t know why I think he would be any different.

I have to get out. Maybe go for a walk. Just get out and get some air. Maybe I will be able to work after.

I walk along St. Catherine as pedestrian shoppers walk straight into me, as though targeted for it. I am shouldered to the left, to the right, honked at by a biker riding on the sidewalk. I drift to the space between the curb and the lamp posts where the foot traffic is thinnest. A pitbull snarls at me and I turn off the main street.

I am flipping out.

Then I find it, my guitar, in an alley way.

She looks in pretty bad shape. Two of the tuning pegs are broken off. The strings are mostly missing apart from two. The bridge is popped out. Obviously, she’s kind of scratched up. This was a guitar that someone loved and cast aside. It’s name is utterly unknown to me: El Degas. She’s got the body of a Telecaster, though, with two single and a double humbucker. Two tone buttons, a volume, a tremolo. The fretboard is worn and you can see where the previous owner had a thing for frets 7-10.

“I can fix this,” I think. “I can fix this guitar.”

I bring it home. I try to tune the two strings that are still attached. I play a little bit of a bass line on the guitar, even though I can barely play.

I am going to fix this guitar.

The next day, I bring her to the shop.

The luthier, who is clearly inundated with Fenders and Gibsons and every name brand under the sun, is not especially interested in fixing my guitar. He names a price over $200 and advises me to buy a new one downstairs instead. Not only will it be cheaper, but I can trade it in when I am ready.

Fuck that.

 

 

©Rachel Levine 2006

interstate

 Interstate

by Rachel Levine

 

Driving, driving, driving. Seven hours now. Past the mailboxes of America the beautiful. Small proud towns and trailer parks with flowers planted in empty cans. I can be steady in my thoughts, steady on the road. I can also be lost on the road, lost in my thoughts. The town is Peru and the Interstate must be somewhere to my right. She asked me, “What are you driving now?” and looked at my car, “Do you remember Matt drove a Subaru? It was silver.” I didn’t remember. I didn’t even remember his face. “He hated me,” I told her, and that is my concise but complete summary of four years. “He didn’t hate you,” she said, laughing, “He never hated you.” She picked up her baby who was tugging at her shorts. She has a baby now. Most of them have babies now. In Peru , I try to call him up. The only thing that comes back to me is his voice, its gravel and pitch, low and coaxing in my ear, but I cannot recollect words. “I’ve lived so many lives since then,” I told her. “I forget everyone I ever loved.”

 

©Rachel Levine 2006

untitled

 Girls

by Rachel Levine

You’d have thought St. Theresa herself had been beaten from the way the school climate changed after Allison Panofsky ended up in the hospital. Girls who couldn’t pick her out in a police line up were crying as they walked through the halls and there were all kinds of rumors that spread through class about how she was found and who did it. Things one would expect, obviously. Everything after school was halted at exactly 4:00, so we could all get home in broad daylight. Police stood at every entrance, two at the gym entrance, complete with guns and hats and styrofoam cups of coffee. Local therapists descended on us like a flock of angels ready and willing to administer soothing words and a free pass out of class. We had three auditorium meetings to discuss topics like acceptance and bullying. Even the teachers spoke more softly, more kindly.

The reporters from TV stations and newspapers stood outside the school fence, ready to pounce on the first few girls as they left for the day, looking for a few words about Allison. Janine Deere, who wanted to be an actress and had appeared in a commercial for Noxema or something, came up with some crazy story about walking by the creek with her when they were both in second grade, just so she could get on TV. My father shook his head at the newscast of Janine and her crocodile tears, bawling, “We were so much the same then. It could have happened to me just as easily.” My brother mumbled, “Bullshit,” under his breath, and my mother smacked him with a tea towel on the back of his head. I kept my mouth shut. Janine used to put bugs in Allison’s desk after lunch in second grade.

Allison was all over the paper and TV too. She didn’t look so mean with her swollen face, purple across her broken jaw, nose bandaged over, stitches holding together the slashed skin across her eye. Like Frankenstein. Minors generally didn’t appear in the paper because the law said so, but the Panofsky family wasn’t exactly the kind of people who gave a damn about that. They probably just wanted everyone to feel sorry for them and send money because they are like that. But it wasn’t her face that mattered – they say or rather the papers and TV reportings didn’t say – that she was lucky that the knife in her skull hadn’t gone any deeper or she wouldn’t be alive.

Danielle got the worst of it, but I think in a way, just getting rid of Allison meant her life would be better no matter what, jail or no jail. I think she ultimately was going to end up at the place for the crazies, because that’s what happens when Allison is after you.

I was lucky, right. Allison called me, “Books,” because I was studious, a nerd really. And it wasn’t unusual for me to carry five or six books out of the library on top of a text book. One time she saw me walking home with my arms loaded with a stack and I heard her calling to me, “Hey, Books.” I was scared, obviously, because it was Allison and because she was talking to me and also because she never did anything without her two hideously no better than her henchwomen.

“Hey, Books, I’m talking to you,” she said again.

I didn’t turn around but kept walking because I knew the more I gave her, the more she would give back.

“You listen to me, Books,” she said, coming up behind me and breathing on my neck. “Literacy is for life,” she said, quoting a popular phrase on a library poster and swatting the pile out of my hands.

Her henchwomen laughed. Mona Potts and Wanda McClintock. Ugly, hulking girls. I stood there, a bit uncertain what to do. My immediate thought was to pick up the books and my alternative thought was to run. But I stood there and played out my moment of Russian Roulette to the end.

“This fucking sucks,” Allison said. “Fucking lame-ass literacy is for life, Books,” she sneered at me, and walked away. Wanda gave me the finger and Mona kicked one of the books (the Colony of Unrequited Dreams, though I never read it) and they tailed off after their leader.

I thought myself lucky. I picked up the books and walked home. I looked behind me twice on the way and no one followed me. I thought myself very lucky. I called Reuben Smith on the phone and we decided to meet at the 7-11 to play some video games.

Danielle was not so lucky as I was. There were others too at various points – Slugs McEaton who she made eat a slug, Susan Applegate who she pulled the skirt off of, and Fat Ass Fanny who she kicked a few times. But Danielle, well, Allison called her “Lesbo,” mainly. But I also recall other phrases like “Lesbian bitch,” “Muff licker,” and “Carpet cruncher.” I almost think it started in gym too. Allison and Danielle had lockers in the same row and we had to change for gym into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, even though a lot of the girls wore heels or pumps or dance slippers to school. But anyway, Danielle was kind of out of it anyway and she just sort of stood there with this lost, dopey expression on her face. Any second, I kind of expected drool to run down her chin and her to utter one long “Duh,” not that she ever did. But she looked like that, like she was kind of stupid. And she stared a lot. My mother would grab my pony tail when she caught me staring at a hooker or a bum on the street and say, “Don’t snare.” I guess Danielle’s mother never did that. So I assume Allison must have been changing into something an Danielle doing that stare of hers and Allison decided she was checking her out or something like that.

“Don’t look at me you lesbian cunt,” Allison said to her, “I wouldn’t fuck an ugly carpet muncher like you.”

And Mona and Wanda laughing, you know.

“I wasn’t looking at you,” Danielle would answer.

“I saw you looking you fucking lesbo and if I see you looking at me again, I’m going to pour crazy glue in your cunt so it won’t open every again.”

And I thought myself lucky because I was in a different row. I shared with drama queen Janine and Susan Applegate and her best friend Janet.

Sometimes we heard Danielle being pushed into the lockers by Allison. Or pushed over the bench. And she’d cry and cry and cry and then they’d send her to the nurse. Danielle would come back for math, though. She was never hurt that bad.

Susan Applegate passes me a note in English class. It’s from Janet. It’s the first note I’ve gotten in class in days. Everyone is so busy paying attention or crying.

I open the note. Macbeth is so boring anyway. It’s a picture of a girl with a gigantic head. There’s a bubble coming out of her mouth saying “Creek. Lies. Boo hoo.” At the bottom is inscribed, “You too can find your way to televised fame.” Janet nods at me. She is proud of her incredible wit and drawing skill. I write back, “She probably wishes she did the beating herself.” Susan deftly sends my note back to Janet. Life seems a little more normal from that one note.

But Ruben knows what’s really on my mind. He was there when it happened and he heard it all too. Reuben goes to the boy’s school across the road. We’ve known each other only this last year because he moved here from Germany. He even speaks German which is really sexy. If I knew what he was saying. He taught me a few phrases like, “Ick leeb dick,” which means “I love you,” only I really can’t believe that “dick” means “you” in German. He also taught me, “Ick vull mit dick schlafen” which means I want to sleep with you. And “Do hast ein schnozzer” for you’ve got a big nose. There are some funny curses too, but they sound like English anyway. “Shlang.”

Reuben and I are kind of going out but kind of not. Well, we play video games at the 7-11 and sometimes we do homework together. We also bike a lot of places too. Okay, what it really is is that I have a crush on him but I don’t want to let him know how much I like him. But he has a crush on me and we made out that one time.

And that’s when we saw something happen with Allison and Danielle.

It was inside the school, after school, because back then you could be in the building pretty late because there was sports and drama club and all kinds of crud. I wanted to take Reuben on a tour of Brigit Stratchen South, so I snuck him in through the caffeteria entrance, which had no guard and opened right onto the playing fields. I showed him my locker and the library ( Reuben likes to read too) and the backstage of the auditorium. And that was where he leaned into me as I was talking about one of Janine’s dumb plays and he just kissed me. And I kept on talking, right, because I didn’t know he was going to do that. So then I continued my tour and I was about to show him the bathroom when I decided to kiss him. So while he was just standing there, I pushed him into a stall and said, “Close your eyes.” So he did. Then I went into the stall and locked the door and I went for his lips because they were there. He kissed back too and I had his tongue in my mouth and everything.

Then I heard voices. We heard voices, in fact.

“Quick,” I said, “Stand on the toilet so they can’t see our feet.”

So we both stood on the toilet. The stall dividers went to the ceiling so I wasn’t worried about anyone seeing us from the top.

“You little lesbo.” It was Allison. I knew her voice.

“Leave me alone,” said the voice back, which I immediately recongized as Dierdre, a 7 th grader who had a huge head and a skinny, skinny body. She looked deformed, really.

“I’m going to make you lick the toilet water, you little lesbo, because that’s the only water you’re fit to drink.”

Mona said, “The whole bowl full.”

This made Dierdre bawl harder.

“What do we do?” Reuben mouthed at me.

“I don’t know,” I mouthed back. “Wait.”

The bathroom door opened and I heard another pair of feet.

“Oh, it’s the real lesbo, come to defend the little lesbo.”

“Shut up, Allison,” said Danielle.

“Don’t fucking talk to me like that you lesbian bitch.”

“Why don’t we make them show us what lesbians do,” said Wanda.

“Leave me alone,” said Danielle.

I could just peer through the crack of the stall door and could see Mona pushing Danielle to the ground.

“You’re going to lick her pussy,” said Allison. “Lift your skirt.”

“Holy fuck!” said Danielle, “I’m not a fucking lesbian.”

“Shut up,” said Allison. I heard Danielle get kicked.

“My nose,” she screamed.

“Shut up,” Allison said again.

“Lift your skirt or I’ll rip it off you,” Allison said. There was scuffling and I could see Allison grabbing Dierdre from around the waist. I assumed she was grabbing her skirt up.

Dierdre whimpered. I could barely make out what was going on, but it seemed to involve Wanda and Mona holding Danielle on the floor and Allison pushing Dierdre to her.

“Now bring it here, you little lesbian bitch.”

And then I heard, “Now fucking lick her or we’ll cut you wide open. Show her the knife so she stops squirming.”

Silence. Then Dierdre screaming and screaming and pushing and lots of scuffling. Dierdre sprinted out of the bathroom screaming and bawling. Danielle ran after her. Mona and Wanda were laughing and Allison too.

“Lesbian bitches probably loved it,” Allison said.

“Fuck,” said Mona.

(to be continued as well…)

©Rachel Levine 2003