Jupiter

"And I thought I wouldn't have to be
With you
A magazine"
- Tori Amos, 'Hey Jupiter'

In my emptied apartment there's something that forces me to lie on my back in the sawdust in the middle of the white-walled room's floor. I watch the cracks on the walls and the water-damage on the roof from when the upstairs neighbours left a tab running... Exhaustion creeps somewhere in the back of my thoughts and I can feel the dead weight of my body glue my back against the sawdust and the linoleum, but my spirit is perfectly awake.

The phone has been ringing for a few minutes, growing silent and then flaring into life again. I have no intention on picking it up. The ringing stops my thoughts on their track, so I'm not feeling very bad, until I get fed up with it and get up, walk over to the phone (a poison-green, old-fashioned one), pick it up in mid-ring and close it, then dial your number. Fear dances its way into my throat and a dryness awaiting tears burns my eyes, my heart cradles into itself and tries to hide. ' Somehow I know that whoever answers the phone will immediately know everything I've tried to ignore and will mirror myself back to me, wrapping me into the dough of the last few months. I'm in that kind of a mood.

Nobody answers.

I fall back on the floor, remembering.

Two weeks ago I almost choked with laughter and left unremovable strawberry stains on your kitch pink sweater when you told me that story about the girl and the broken radio. As if beyond the river of another life and time I can still see your smile, but I can't remember if that took place in real life or if it was just a dream. It doesn't feel real. But I can still remember how we washed dishes in your mother's kitchen when we were ten, and your birthday two years ago when I bought you that newest McLean book and you were perfectly happy for the rest of the day. I remember the beach vacation we took last summer. You've been somewhere close to me almost all my life and yet I may have just imagined you.

The world skipped and turned around, and I still don't know which life was true. The Tarot card Chariot.

Part of you is still here, floating in the air I breathe as strong as the scent of musk. Sometimes your spirit became me, tickling me from the inside with your love, and I giggled and tried to tempt you out so I could tickle you back, and embrace you and just stay quietly in your arms. Even your weight was pleasant, and I just wanted to play mother and lover and sister and servant to you. Whatever your stupid brother said, you always knew what that meant. Or so I thought.

I couldn't recognize your face beneath the bath-water. I was always afraid that it would turn into someone else's face if I didn't see it again soon. And now because I can't see you, you are not you. This way I don't have to suffer.

I wish you would come in here now in those big wet boots of yours and step on my stomach and crush it under your heel, because I miss you and I want the empty place in my mid-section to die and I don't care how. I want it crushed and turned into a flat mass of flesh, but somehow I know that that's impossible. If anyone could destroy that emptiness it would be you, unless your presence changed the memories from a foggy mess into firm reality. Perhaps you would become real if I crushed my own heart in my hands and molded little cakes of it like we did with ice cream and sand last summer on the beach. Or maybe I would just die, plummet down a huge big slide straight into the maw of an awaiting demon. There we could sing those old Ruby Clark songs and eat sand cakes and die again and again on the shore of eternal change...

I get up off the floor once more, feeling stupid. I wipe sawdust from my back, but I know I can't get rid of it all. I walk into the kitchen, yawning, and take a couple of warm beers from the hooked-off fridge. I walk to the balcony and empty them both in a a few gulps, then throw them down on the street and sit on the chair of the balcony waiting the dizziness. You probably shouldn't get drunk of a couple of beers, but I've never had much of a head for alcohol.

My thoughts are stuck on you like glue, circling you like a pack of stinging bees. The feeling of your existence in the real world starts to slink back, and I feel almost like I did two weeks ago. I'm pretty sure you're smiling right now. Or maybe crying. I'm not sure. The feeling starts to fade.

We were the best of friends, weren't we? Two girls who loved each other. I don't understand you. How can it be that I never understood you during all this time?

I always had so many toys. You hardly had any toys at all, and I never understood that. I had my plush toys and vibrators and stress balls and boyfriends, but you never had anything like that. You only sometimes watched TV, otherwise you were just doing things with your hands or mouth or body. I always thought you were somehow lacking in that way, and I thought I knew myself and was "normal." I'm not so sure anymore.

I get up off the chair and walk slowly back into the empty apartment. In the kitchen, my sanctuary in this house of dead voices, awaits my bag, and from it I dig out my old leather jacket. I touch the leather, then press it against my face, inhaling its scent in an old and familiar ritual. A tsunami of memories washes over me stronger than any drug or orgasm.

The moment of your leaving was incredible. Hollywood would have killed for the script. Its power struck me and smashed my world. Its pure perfection balanced its cruelty with a certain sense of destiny and justice. I felt drugged when you left, and I still do. Who would've thought that a girl who doesn't remember the difference between a bath and a shower could have put up such a storm of nails and explosions?

I would never have believed that you would have wanted... that you were so tied up to the idiot world of your brother's.

The phone rings. I silence it and dial a new number. I almost start to laugh as the answering machine proclaims him gone for the next couple of months. So the love of your life did take your money and leave for Greece or Hawaii or wherever. I knew it. I knew it when I watched him swear his perfect society page love for you.

Then I grow serious, because I know what this means.

You're never coming back.

I fall on the floor in almost physical pain. I can feel it run through my body as the empty spot within me flashes bright and cold. I enjoy it. I yearn for more pain, I need it, and I raise my skirt to my waist and slip my hand between my legs. My searching fingers find the right spots and an unclean, numbing pleasure mixes in with the pain. I gasp for air as the best orgasm and a reeking terror rip into me, making me thrash and twist on the floor like a worm on a hook.

I lay on the floor, the dead weight of my body against the linoleum, and feel exhaustion lurk into the back of my mind. You were my last sanctuary, and now you're gone, ripped out of my body with the force of will and lust. I'm pretty sure I was your sanctuary as well, but you have thrown me away and you're not taking me back because you're proud, because you're vulnerable, and because you're stupid. See, I do know you after all.

I would never have done anything to you without your permission. I never wanted to tie you down, and I didn't need your tongue between my legs to love you. But you were right, I did really did expect something of you that you weren't willing to give. I really thought you always knew what I meant. I thought you knew what love was. I thought I knew how things worked.

I close my eyes just before the darkness descends, but my spirit is perfectly awake.