Writing is a full-contact sport for me.
It’s a painful exercise. Digging deep into the mines of my pain, sorrow, past trauma, and, most dangerous of all, hope.
Telling a story is a physical process for me. I’m sure there are authors who wake up, drink coffee, and then take a seat at an oak desk with an antique Underwood typewriter.
I respect the hell out of that.
There is a bar in Hollywood called Tramp Stamp Granny’s. It’s the queerest joint I’ve ever experienced. It’s a piano bar with a karaoke twist on the rocks.
The back patio is small and covered in plastic ivy. It was crowded, and the potent scent of reefer rose like incense to god. A woman asked a man if he had cards. He said he wasn’t doing business stuff tonight. She asked if he had a cigarette. He didn’t. She shook her head and sat down.
I used to be cool. There was once upon a time when I could have struck up a conversation with any of these folks, especially her. I lost that guy somewhere along the journey of healing.
“Would you like me to light your cigarette?” I asked.
“I don’t have a cigarette.”
I handed her one and lit it in nearly the same motion. She placed her palm atop my hand to hold the zippo in place. I’m pretty sure this part happened in black and white.
“Do you have cards?”
“Of course I do.”
There you are, Peter!
I produced a deck from my purse, and we played a round of blackjack for two hours.
“Do you think music is a form of necromancy?” She asked casually while tapping her cards, “Hit, please.”
“I’m pretty sure all art can be a form of necromancy. Every story I’ve ever told is just an attempt at raising the dead. I’m picking up the corpses of everyone I’ve loved like a kid making their Barbies kiss.”
My soul is a graveyard where everyone I have ever lost, living or dead, resides. Sometimes I don’t visit them often. There are tombstones I would have rather smashed than erected. These words I write are the improvised spells I cast to bring them back to me for just a moment.
“What mythical creature would you be?” She asks as I shuffle.
“Minotaur.”
“Oh! I’ve never met a minotaur.” She smirked, “I suppose I’m fae.”
“Oh, well, I’ve met many a fairy and pixie and sprite, but those are stories for another day.”
She left, saying, “I look forward to future adventures with you.”
I wish I had told so many people I loved them.
I can now.
I’ve made you immortal in these pages, and everyone who reads the spells I write will have to mourn you too.
When I was playing cards with my new friend, I fell in love. Should we ever have an adventure again, I will fall in love all over. Then, six months from then, I will say, “It’s hard to believe you are that same person. No one feels the same once you get to know them.”
I’ll fall in love a thousand more times before I die, and I’ll break my own heart a thousand and one because I’ll be too afraid to lose them to ever tell them. Which is worse, burying a friend or never making a one? I’m not sure I know.
I’ve tried both.
I have said “I” too many times, and someone will now point out that I am not a good writer or that I’m too narcissistic.
When I write, I listen to music. I dance and I scream and I yell at god and I wrestle with demons and I look monsters in the face and sometimes that monster is me and then I raise the dead and she’s sitting here with me at the table and I did tell her I loved her and she’s still alive and we are laughing about that first time we met at the little dive bar on the Panhandle. It was kind of like that night in Hollywood but with sweet tea and Waffle House.
I wasted my youth on religion, and now I'm high on Hollywood Blvd arguing with the Scientologists.
Baz Luhrmann told me he also listens to music while he writes. We shared those stories over a martini at Tramp Stamp Granny’s a year before I met my new friend on the patio.
I’ll be obsessed with both of those conversations with equal measure until the day that I die. I’ll relitigate every sentence and movement and wonder what I could have done differently.
I’ll dance to Whitney Houston with zero grace or dignity on my front porch, and then I will pass the oak desk to wrestle with the darkness between my sheets and I’ll type this all out on an iPhone because I’m uninterested in the nostalgia of what it means to be a writer and I don’t care about your commas or periods or run on sentences.
I got stuck somewhere at the end of the year. I didn’t know how to tell stories anymore. Maybe I had told them all, and I needed to go collect new ones.
Whatever happened to me, while I danced, it changed something. The last bit of shame was baptized off of me when I shared the sacrament of the wine still left on the lips of a stranger outside of the Bourbon Room.
I anm entering into dangerous territory as we embark on the year of our lord two thousand and twenty-four.
I'm finding the last bit of my voice that the church choked out of me.
And no one is more terrified of that than me.
This is so beautifully written. Gave me the shivers and wishes. I,for one, am grateful you “wasting your youth on religion.” I did too, and for the first time, because of you being you, I’m getting more comfortable with that part of my life.. and with the soul of who I am today. So ummm, Thank you.
I wonder if you’ve ever thought about or have had a pod cast? I think talking with people about your essays with live guests/authors in a call in format could be extraordinary experience for both you and your audience. It might even help with inspiration you are writing about, perspective and lead to more writing. You could have the calls screened too. Anyway, that was my wishing part and also, thank you for being so brave, that’s what gave me the shivers.
This reminds me a lot of the discussions we share on the FB Cult Survivors Network and a few similar pages. I'd venture to say that most people have their spirits choked of them by something or someone at some point in life. It's who you were before that and what you choose to become after that which truly defines you, I believe. Some people choose to stay the corpse, a spiritless body full of reasons to stay otherwise empty. The rest of the choices are relatively endless. Anyway, we like your choices, so yay!