amber_waves
12-21-2003, 01:09 PM
Eddie has a feline quality. He sits with his legs tucked under him, he sleeps in a ball, his hands safe beneath his cheek. He's all lazy intelligence, rattling off comebacks, his tone slow, langorious. He's shamelessly vain about his hair. Sometimes he rolls his r's, one of his cherished quirks. He strethes and purrs, rages and claws.
Last night Eddie and Christina had their anniversery. Three years. Of trying to reconcile their previous lives with that of their so-called new ones. Their daughters from previous relationships, their finances, their realisation that their slacker attitude has passed its sell by date and no longer works for them the way it did before.
'Okay, something you don't know about me', he says to her as they lie on their bed. 'I hate the endings of films. I never understood how the director or the writer came to that concluesion to just close it off like that. No matter how much I love or hate the film, I'm always left wanting more. It's never enough. I unsed to stop my favourite film in the middle becuase I couldn't bear to let the story go. What I need is a never ending film that just goes on and on so I never have to say goodbye. That only ends when I end.'
He curls up to her, they make soft playful love. She watches him sleep, sinking into his nine lives.
Christina-
He will never know me completly.
I feel it most in waiting rooms, in long lines at the supermarket, anywhere I have to stay still. That's when it stirs in me, all these undiscovered parts of myself that will go with me to the grave.
He was only the third person I ever slept with. He doesn't know that. I never told anyone. I hate that whole pure virgin thing. I was never pure to begin with, it doesn't take a man to make me impure. I am what I am.
I take the underground to East London. It's a quick and easy journey, getting flung through space in a bubble, listening to other people talk a hole into the wall. I wonder if they know what a joke their lives is, how they find the energy to talk about it. If they really knew they wouldn't be able to speak a word. They'd be lying on the ground, dying of heartache.
I get to my work as a cashier at 'Sainsbury's' and serve a blurred population for eight hours. I never see faces, just an endless conveyour belt of frozen food, fruit, ice-cream, wine, toilet paper, tampons. You can tell a lot about people this way. Alcoholics, diet freaks, people living alone or with families. You get this insight into their lives while they know nothing about you. You belong to the store like part of the machinery.
But I'm digressing. I need to put my focus on Eddie, cut through the fog of endless days and catch him. That is how it feels to be with him. I'm always reaching out to grab him every time he careens towards the edge. That either makes me his saviour or his jailer.
This doesn't stop the hoping. I believe in the emptyness, I believe that it will take us through to better times. Everything else is surplus, extra weight.
An almond-coloured day, Eddie. You and me in another life...
Eddie-
I'm not sure when it's okay to call myself a writer. What do you have to do, how much do you have to publish, how many people have to read what you publish, how may people have to like what you publish? Is it about keeping score, winning popularity contests or is it about your own feelings about what is on that paper? I don't deserve to be called a writer. All I do is pose questions.
I care about this, I want so much to suceed, it kills me that I haven't yet. When I say this to Christina lights go out in her eyes. She thinks that that means that her love isn't enough for me. It's not that. It's just not possible for one person to complete another. There's more to it than that.
I can't say its not hard. Entwining our lives, our daughters, playing at happy families. While all the time I feel like we're missing something that would make it feel real.
When I met Christina she had an old Metallica t-shirt on and she was balancing a baby in one hand and shopping bags in the other. She was all spit and spite, punk-rock edginess, like she was about to explode. She doesn't do that anymore. She implodes all over her own heart.
If I could I'd change the both of us back. It's not about love. We have that coming in from all directions. No, its not about that. That doesn't stop the scabs we carry around with us, unable to stop picking at them.
Maybe I've just become one of those digusting alpha males that wants to go back to caveman times. A cliche, a broken record.
It's hailing outside. Nice and angry. I open up the window and catch one of those hailstones. In a previous life they could have been rain. Now they're hard, banging on the windows, wanting to be let in.
It's not a crime to want something different. It's a change of pace.
CHRISTINA: I hate my job. I swear one day I'll just snap and kill them all with my scanner.
EDDIE: It's not any better here. Sarah's been giving me hell all day.
CHRISTINA: She's going through puberty. Give her a break.
EDDIE: I wish I could have used that excuse when I was thirteen. It would have helped. I'm making chips, okay?
CHRISTINA: I'm not eating. I'm going to bed, I'm exhusted.
(she looks at him and wonders what he's thinking. he looks back at her as she walks away. they continue living in hope, in sadness, in their belief in almond-coloured days).
Last night Eddie and Christina had their anniversery. Three years. Of trying to reconcile their previous lives with that of their so-called new ones. Their daughters from previous relationships, their finances, their realisation that their slacker attitude has passed its sell by date and no longer works for them the way it did before.
'Okay, something you don't know about me', he says to her as they lie on their bed. 'I hate the endings of films. I never understood how the director or the writer came to that concluesion to just close it off like that. No matter how much I love or hate the film, I'm always left wanting more. It's never enough. I unsed to stop my favourite film in the middle becuase I couldn't bear to let the story go. What I need is a never ending film that just goes on and on so I never have to say goodbye. That only ends when I end.'
He curls up to her, they make soft playful love. She watches him sleep, sinking into his nine lives.
Christina-
He will never know me completly.
I feel it most in waiting rooms, in long lines at the supermarket, anywhere I have to stay still. That's when it stirs in me, all these undiscovered parts of myself that will go with me to the grave.
He was only the third person I ever slept with. He doesn't know that. I never told anyone. I hate that whole pure virgin thing. I was never pure to begin with, it doesn't take a man to make me impure. I am what I am.
I take the underground to East London. It's a quick and easy journey, getting flung through space in a bubble, listening to other people talk a hole into the wall. I wonder if they know what a joke their lives is, how they find the energy to talk about it. If they really knew they wouldn't be able to speak a word. They'd be lying on the ground, dying of heartache.
I get to my work as a cashier at 'Sainsbury's' and serve a blurred population for eight hours. I never see faces, just an endless conveyour belt of frozen food, fruit, ice-cream, wine, toilet paper, tampons. You can tell a lot about people this way. Alcoholics, diet freaks, people living alone or with families. You get this insight into their lives while they know nothing about you. You belong to the store like part of the machinery.
But I'm digressing. I need to put my focus on Eddie, cut through the fog of endless days and catch him. That is how it feels to be with him. I'm always reaching out to grab him every time he careens towards the edge. That either makes me his saviour or his jailer.
This doesn't stop the hoping. I believe in the emptyness, I believe that it will take us through to better times. Everything else is surplus, extra weight.
An almond-coloured day, Eddie. You and me in another life...
Eddie-
I'm not sure when it's okay to call myself a writer. What do you have to do, how much do you have to publish, how many people have to read what you publish, how may people have to like what you publish? Is it about keeping score, winning popularity contests or is it about your own feelings about what is on that paper? I don't deserve to be called a writer. All I do is pose questions.
I care about this, I want so much to suceed, it kills me that I haven't yet. When I say this to Christina lights go out in her eyes. She thinks that that means that her love isn't enough for me. It's not that. It's just not possible for one person to complete another. There's more to it than that.
I can't say its not hard. Entwining our lives, our daughters, playing at happy families. While all the time I feel like we're missing something that would make it feel real.
When I met Christina she had an old Metallica t-shirt on and she was balancing a baby in one hand and shopping bags in the other. She was all spit and spite, punk-rock edginess, like she was about to explode. She doesn't do that anymore. She implodes all over her own heart.
If I could I'd change the both of us back. It's not about love. We have that coming in from all directions. No, its not about that. That doesn't stop the scabs we carry around with us, unable to stop picking at them.
Maybe I've just become one of those digusting alpha males that wants to go back to caveman times. A cliche, a broken record.
It's hailing outside. Nice and angry. I open up the window and catch one of those hailstones. In a previous life they could have been rain. Now they're hard, banging on the windows, wanting to be let in.
It's not a crime to want something different. It's a change of pace.
CHRISTINA: I hate my job. I swear one day I'll just snap and kill them all with my scanner.
EDDIE: It's not any better here. Sarah's been giving me hell all day.
CHRISTINA: She's going through puberty. Give her a break.
EDDIE: I wish I could have used that excuse when I was thirteen. It would have helped. I'm making chips, okay?
CHRISTINA: I'm not eating. I'm going to bed, I'm exhusted.
(she looks at him and wonders what he's thinking. he looks back at her as she walks away. they continue living in hope, in sadness, in their belief in almond-coloured days).