A March of Marys, day fifteen
No one was at home and I am pretty sure we were not supposed to be there.
Today is day 15 of A March of Marys, a literary experience where I share a sequential chunk of American Mary, my first novel, right here online every day throughout the month of March.
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‘Let’s do the verse about going to bakeries all day long,’ Joan says.
Rituals like shared secrets. Rituals we usually perform when we’re together. Rituals you don’t and can’t do with other people.
Joan and I like to sing Modern Lovers songs when it’s nighttime and we have to walk to some destination. Sometimes we sing Hefner songs but only certain songs like ‘Hymn for the Cigarettes’ because Joan doesn’t own their complete discography like I do, or Mirah songs but only Advisory Committee because that is the only album of hers that I own. But the Modern Lovers album is a classic and we both know it pretty well from start to finish. Maybe not every song completely, and we get mixed up on some of the verses sometimes, but it’s fun when it’s late and we want to make the journey more momentous. Filling an empty street, streetlights made romantic watching reflections off asphalt.
‘Alright, one, two, three’ and we start singing loudly, walking down a tree lined sidewalk on a poorly lit street in the suburb where I now live. There’s a lack of sweetness in my life. We’re on our way to downtown Oakland, to see Claudia’s opening at some new gallery.
‘Okay,’ I say, ‘Now let’s do the one where he talks about taking the subway to her suburb sometime. How does it start.’
I think about you, a specific you, a faceless you, all clean and excited taking the train to come see me in my new place, up my garden path to my little cottage, all cozy and tiled, scarves draped over windows, everywhere the smell of nag champa and spliff smoke hanging on the walls, creepy artwork taped up that I like because it protects me.
‘I forget,’ says Joan.
‘You. Live. In. Modern apppartments...’ I say and swing my arms up punching the air for emphasis.
We had two mojitos each earlier in the evening, at my favorite little bar near my office in the city.
‘I don’t know which one of these is better, but I want the better one because I’m an only child’ Joan said to me carrying the strawberry mojitos up from the bar. ‘I don’t care which one I get, they’re probably the same,’ I said. I bought the first round. We each just took the glass sitting closest to us.
They are still with me. Pronounced by my cigarette. It took me a while to figure out that smoking a cigarette doesn’t make me feel less drunk, like I thought it should, but in fact makes me feel more drunk, lightheaded, and sometimes makes me barf.
‘I’ll figure out the things that must have been magic to your little girl mind’ I sing, and Joan sings ‘I’ll figure out the things that must have been magic to your little girl eyes’ and we both stop singing.
‘Is it mind or eyes,’ I say. I sing it in my head. ‘Yeah. I think it’s eyes.’
‘Did we sing the whole album while walking to the station just now,’ Joan says.
‘I think we pretty much did.’
Joan lists all the songs she can think of on the Modern Lovers album.
‘Oh, we didn’t do Pablo Picasso,’ I say.
‘Right. How does that one start.’
I start doing the bassline, making bass noises but it also kind of sounds like I’m making sounds like the letter d in different tones.
We get to the station and catch the train just as we walk up to the platform.
We get a two seater by the window. ‘I want the hummus,’ I say.
Joan gets the hummus we packed from my fridge out of her backpack and I get the crackers out of my bag. It’s late enough that the people riding the train don’t give a fuck or are drunker than we are. We have a little feast with a picnic spread out on our laps.
‘Want some almonds,’ I say.
‘Mmm, maybe later,’ Joan says, peeling one of the bananas we packed.
‘Wow we really brought a lot of snacks.’
I’m always moving and Joan is always moving and sometimes we end up in the same place and sometimes not. Right now I am lucky to be in the same metropolitan area, if not the same city, as her. We are always busy and she is usually hard to get a hold of. We maybe see each other every other week now.
Joan turns to talk me about the graphic novel she is working on and she is excited about it and when she is excited and talks to me she doesn’t look at the floor or at the wall or at her reflection in the mirror or window though sometimes I catch her getting a quick look. Joan looks right at me, right in the eyes and is totally present when she is talking about something that she feels good about. If she’s talking about something that makes her feel some kind of shame, she breaks contact to take interest in the cream swirling in her coffee mug or a worn out part of her jeans.
But when she has that cute dreamy glow around her and gets all glazy and intense and raises the volume of her voice just enough because she can’t help it and it’s not easy to not get caught up in it. And why would I resist. Hearing Joan talk about her creative projects just makes me want to work harder on my own. Take my work seriously.
Joan is gazing into me and going on about wanting to submit a piece from her project to a contest a local press is having for creative storytelling.
‘Is there a cash prize,’ I say.
‘No, I don’t think so. But if I win I’ll become a local celebrity.’
‘Friend, you are already a local celebrity.’
‘Look who’s talking.’
‘Oh whatever.’
*
We were sitting on the floor in someone’s apartment smoking a spliff and playing the musical instruments we found in a closet. No one was at home and I am pretty sure we were not supposed to be there.
I had picked Joan up earlier at her place to go to a party. It was at some house by the ocean. Some guy who came into the bookstore where I worked on the weekends invited me. We walked to the party and Joan took a plastic bottle that used to be a volvic water bottle but was now filled with vodka out of her backpack and offered it to me. I took a sip and passed it back but Joan periodically drank from it on the walk, taking small swigs and wincing.
Joan and Carlo were on a break. An extended break which included Carlo moving back in with his parents for an undetermined amount of time. I didn’t know the details but Joan made it seem like the whole situation was completely casual. I was still planning my escape from my own difficult relationship/living situation so I didn’t ask too many questions.
‘Is everything alright,’ I asked her, ‘I haven’t seen you in a few days.’
This was not unusual, and it’s usually nothing. I don’t know if Joan doesn’t check her phone or her email very often or if she does and just waits hella long to get back when she’s responding.
‘I’m fine, it’s just been a long week. I’ve been really busy at work.’
‘Yeah, I bet.’
Joan was working part-time at a daycare center and spent the rest of her time doing freelance graphic design work, as well as her own personal creative work.
We walked into the party and Joan disappeared when a writer I know from the poetry scene came up to say hello and tell me about a tour they were planning. I talked to them for a while and gave them some tips for booking venues, who to hit up in each city they were thinking of going to, until we got to that natural awkward part of a conversation between two people who aren’t super close but know each other from social things where we ran out of neutral things to say besides ‘so everything is good?’
I got a drink from the kitchen and found Joan on the makeshift dancefloor in the living room, holding a coffee cup half full of straight vodka, twerking on some guy.
When she saw me she grabbed me and we went to the bathroom to pee. The bathroom was dark and soft seeming, the bathtub was full of water with lit tea lights floating on the surface. Hanging on the wall above the foot of the tub was a framed photograph of Jim Morrison. A couple of dried roses stuck out from behind the frame like a crown, static blooming above Morrison’s head.
Joan laughed. I sat on the toilet and peed and watched her splash the water around in the tub and collect small palmfuls of water and offer them in sacrifice to the Morrison photo.
‘I’m cleaning you, you filthy boy!’ Joan laughed.
We washed our hands in the sink and played with our hair a little. Someone knocked on the bathroom door and I asked Joan if she wanted to go outside to get some fresh air. She nodded her head and we walked out of the bathroom and stopped in the kitchen to drink some water and while Joan was looking in the cupboards for tortilla chips or anything to eat I emptied the vodka from her water bottle and replaced it with water from the spigot.
We took a walk to a park a few blocks away smoking a cigarette, Joan reaching out and taking puffs and starting conversations with people at the corner waiting for the light to turn.
‘Are you in a band,’ Joan said to some teenaged looking kid in a leather jacket.
‘Um, yeah, but we don’t play shows.’
‘That’s too bad,’ I said, grabbing Joan’s hand and turning the corner into the park.
We found a bench and sat down and looked at the skyline.
‘I have such mixed feelings about this place,’ I said.
‘It doesn’t even matter. Wherever you go.’
‘Why do we keep moving then.’
‘Because we always think it will be different,’ Joan said.
‘It never really is. It’s always the same and we miss whatever we had. Or it is different and then we miss where we were.’
‘Yeah, it’s all pointless.’
‘I never feel different. Like I honestly don’t think I’ve changed much since high-school. I feel like the exact same person but the things around me are slightly different. I’m still making the same mistakes.’
‘Where’s my water bottle,’ Joan asked.
‘Here,’ I say and watch Joan take a few sips, spilling some on her lap.
‘All right, let’s go,’ Joan said.
‘Let’s go back to my place,’ I said. ‘We can camp out in the living room.’
We headed toward my apartment up and down hills through neighborhoods we will never afford to live in. The damp air a homely friend clinging to our brows, sweaty breaths in a cold hallway.
‘Shit,’ I said when we got close to my building. The light in my bedroom was on. ‘He’s awake.’
‘Come this way,’ Joan said, and grabbed my hand and ushered me up a rickety outdoor staircase to someone’s apartment a few doors down. She turned the doorknob and the door was unlocked so we went inside. I didn’t know what to think but it felt like a good combination of weird and funny and potentially dangerous.
‘We can wait in here,’ Joan said, pulling an electric guitar out of the case she found in the hall closet.
‘Okay, but now I need a bass,’ I said. ‘Who lives here.’
*
‘I think this project could be really huge.’
I break to look out the window as the lighting inside the train shifts from the blank grey blur of underground tunnel to dark blue with orange streetlight stripes and soft shapes of buildings overshadowed by trees.
‘Have you ever considered applying for a grant,’ I say. ‘I feel like your premise could be an entire college course.’
‘Yeah, I thought about it. I just need to flesh it out some more. There is so much to explore, and everyone should.’
‘I feel really happy for you right now.’
‘Thanks. It’s been hard to write, but it’s kind of freeing.
‘I feel like when I write something super personal like that, it’s hard, but afterward I feel like now I don’t have to think about it as much. Writing it explains it to me and takes the power out of it.’
‘Yeah, it’s seriously been cathartic.’
‘Yeah. cathartic.’
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