"I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with the nonhuman world and somehow survives...Paradox and bedrock."-Edward Abbey

13 February 2012

'Member When?

If someone had told me, years and lifetimes ago, that I'd be sitting in an Adirondack lawnchair sipping cocktail-hour wine kept chilling in a snowbank on mild midwinter's day, all after a walkabout with a striking woman of regal bearing, I'd have probably told said cat they were smoking crack through a light bulb. Being an aberration, I don't usually get picked for this sort of thing. To this day, I'm still amazed I didn't have to drug her.

I can remember the night we first met vividly. Actually, I was looking for another girl at the time. Sabina, who I would half-jokingly refer to as the Vampire Queen-even sometimes to her face-was holding court with her then boyfriend and smoking a clove. One of my friends was talking to one of her courtiers.

"Can I get one of those?" I asked her, in reference to the clove.

"Oh, sure," and she handed me one. I lit up.

"Thank you, Ma'am," I said politely and with a slight inclination of my head.

"No problem."

"Cool shirt, by the way," I said to her boyfriend at the time, noting his Motley Crue shirt.

"Thanks," he said, somewhat dismissively.

Vampire snobs. The gothic aristocracy. What are you going to do?

And I slinked off into the juke joint shadows to monkey watch and maybe find that girl I was looking for. It was probably another six months before Sabina, who wasn't much of anything to me way back then-we weren't even rightly acquaintances, let alone friends yet-and I exchanged a single word or acknowledgment of presence. So it goes.

That was almost ten years ago. Quite amazing what came to pass in nearly ten orbits around the sun. How much has changed. Where we were then compared to where we are now.

I remember finding her one night in a vampire den looking tired and burned. Her relationship with the musician was in its death-throes. I'd spent the better part of a year trying to help her salvage it, despite the fact the whole relationship was built upon facades.

"You need to get away from here," I said.

"Why?"

"Because you look like a fucking burnout," I growled. "You're going to die like this; if not here than somewhere just like it."

I remember the first time she kissed me. It seemed as though it was done on a dare. I was giving her a hug goodnight when she planted a peck on my cheek. We both looked at each other in utter shock, as though a taboo had just been broken. That final line between friendship and something else entirely being brushed away.

"We all have free will," she said to me as she climbed into her vehicle, her eyes never leaving mine. "What are you going to do with yours?"

I remember our first kiss. Our faces were not very far apart. Her scent was that of fear, anticipation, and pheromones.

"What are we going to do?" She asked me, and I used dialog for a story I would tell years later.

"I don't know, but I think we're both doomed."

I was lips and she was tongue. Her breath tasted like wine. I liked that a lot. Especially when I kissed her.

I remember when she picked me up after I got back from North Carolina after I'd help my father put his mother in the dirt. That day in the artifacts boutique. The time she told me I made her feel more alive than she had in a very, very long time. When she told me she feared elves and the fey might steal me away and that was why she insisted on holding my hand. That first time she played a song on the radio for me. The first cocktail hour as well as our first breakfast on the porch of the House of Owls and Bats. I fell in love with her all over again when she was standing at the front gate, taking in the view and the house chanting;

"Mine! Mine! Mine!"

I remember when she was first moving to what we called Nostalgic New Orleans up on the Hill, and we were speaking of all the things that lead up to that. By now, her relationship with the musician was ashes and ghosts, and, like a phoenix, she was rising from the ruin. We spoke of light and dark and what needed to be done. I almost growled at her at one point.

"I will not be thanked or blamed for any of this you realize," I said. "That's the deal."

"The only thing you ever did was tap me on the shoulder and say; 'wake up,' " she said. To this day, I'm not sure if I want to believe that.

Once, mentioning that, she had the audacity to say I rescued her. Me. The aberration; being too tall, too skinny, with eyes too big for the rest of my face. Nothing. I am not saint or a superhero, but, I guess to her, I must be something.

14 comments:

  1. when you mean something to someone
    you can't just be ok. somehow you walk a little taller,
    look ever so changed and see the same, new.

    great piece Robbie.
    gives me a little hope.

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  2. You are the one who is good for her.

    And she is the one who is smart enough to know this.

    All Envy,

    Pearl

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    Replies
    1. Depending on her mood, she might agree with you, or say I drive her to drink...for which she thanks me.

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  3. I'm quite sure--audacious woman she is--that you are much, much more than just "something" to her. Saint, sinner, superhero?? She knows.

    Great story, but yet again, I'm forced to point this out: You most certainly ARE romantic..!!!!

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    Replies
    1. Thank you, even if I completely disagree with you about the romantic part.

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  4. happy for you and envious.
    Lovely piece

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  5. There's a girl I know who is sometimes called the Vampire Girl. She's the sweetest, kindest, quietest person I know. She's a belly-dancer, artist and poet. She lives with a vampire, hence the nick-name.
    I'm jealous of her because her vampire loves her with a wild, unmatched passion.
    Now, I'm jealous of Sabina too.

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    Replies
    1. Every-so-often, she reminds me of when I used to call her the Vampire Queen, because she's long since sloughed that skin.

      I am sorry to have stirred up a negative emotion like that for you.

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    2. It's okay. I hope one day to be loved by a man in such a fantastic way that it makes other women jealous. I hadn't really thought of it as being a negative feeling. It's more like...incentive to get up off my butt and find my man...(too corny?)

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