Two Pensive Black Dogs

stand guard beside the gorgeous pines.

I see the landscape spread out like an Americana glitter bag, spilling its guts

                                                Spilling its glory,

Spilling everything.

Paul swerves a little to the left to avoid a small pothole in the middle of the gravel path.

I hear the gravel path extend with luxurious delicious gravel sounds that seem to go on forever. I’m so cold inside my heavy fur coat. I look outside the window while the gravel extends, while my skin won’t warm up, I seem to be waiting forever, I’m anxious that this is the end, this is the end and I can’t see it coming for miles.

“Well hello hello” a handsome chap of about 29 exclaims with hands full of champagne and an argyle sweater of purple and maroon from about 1925.

I raise my eyebrows and make the face I know Paul doesn’t get. My alter ego, my brother, my lover of body and soul, and all things obscure, you will never quite understand me. This is a footnote, darling, I hope you will never read this, you were perfect all along, I never had the strength to wait it out. Isn’t that what this is all about? I am immediately pulled out from a troubling melancholia by her.

She stands at the middle of it all like nectar. She stands at the middle of it all.

Nectar.

She is nectar.

With strawberry blonde hair dyed and re-dyed like Byzantine cotton, she smiles in contra pose to the other side of the room. I face the back of her. Like a museum goer, I witness the machinations fueling the fascinating phenomenon of holding her own. She, the statue, tall, bigger than life and gorgeous.

She turns around and I now see her in portrait. A kaleidoscope of facets shown to me, free of charge, so early on, with such candid spirit, in the middle of a gathering of impoverished contemporary minds.

I think I could smell Paul’s involvement miles away. I felt his hurt while we were still making headway on the highway of gravel, unknowing, undreaming of this moment. Innocent flashbacks, we were, of this place in time where it would all unfold like a rose blossoming too soon.

Brown eye, porcelain skin, and a small freckle at the bottom of the staircase that leads to her left eye, it is all miraculous. A gazebo of flattery, an asylum for the weak-hearted, I kneel with baited breath at the altars of flesh.

She is wearing a white dress, backless and dazzling. Who am I, what is my name, what is my purpose but to sweep my black hair back in waves and wait out the climax. She comes towards me with the warmth of an Icelandic spring and reaches to kiss me on both cheeks.

“Jocey, I have heard so much about you”

I stare in shock with eyes wide open and await the synopsis of my life to be recited carefully by this beautiful red mouth.

I say nothing.

She looks surprised and worried, and says “Well obviously only the best bits of course!”

There is only tension on my part of course, because I am enamoured with her. She is Muse, capital M fucking Muse, and I am in love with her.

“That’s so nice” I say and I hate how squeaky I can sound when I’m nervous.

 “I loooooooove what you’re wearing” she says. She twirls me around like I am a show pony and exposes my backless dress to a few more guests, she touches my lace dress, my diamond earrings, she exclaims about my fur and falls in love with the green in my eyes. She says nothing of my height, which matches hers and nothing at all of my pedigree which I dare say ranks higher than she can hope to achieve. By the time she is fidgeting with my wavy undulating warm brown hair, it is too much. Paul comes in and exclaims,

“Patricia!”
He holds his champagne glass high and contemplates her for a long while before he descends among us again, with the mortals on Earth. They are locked in some transcendental poem of sideways glancing for a very long time and I can’t watch it anymore.

I get a drink, then another then another. I do a line and begin feeling transcendental myself.

By the time I face myself in the mirror at 2am it’s time to go and I can’t imagine the cold feeling in the car on the gravel path again and again and again.

I close my eyes and imagine Warmth.

The feeling is this:

I imagine warmth.

I want to cry but I just picture my granddaddy taming a horse. I do another line. The episode I am ashamed to write is this:

I come up the hallway like some mythical creature, crawling on all fours yet luxuriating in the sacrifice. I imagine flower wreaths, blood, the works, everything. I can barely stand at this point and I’m so cold but I have to face it because, really, it’s now or never.

And I witness it. It felt like waterfalls, falling from the other side of the universe, flowing in muted hues of blue and green and black, enchanting the passer-by in this moment alone, capturing the essence of timelessness yet never falling prey to the gripping fangs of the cliché, flowing, ever-flowing, gorgeously effervescent into beauty beauty beauty.

He holds her back delicately and I am bowled over.

“I just agree that Fitzgerald is the next American writer, don’t you Joce” some short-haired girl from Tampa keeps asking me even though I’m obviously as high as anything right now.

“Yeah totally but I was more into Faulkner and Woolf” I am so out of it and need to get out of here.

“Woolf isn’t American, Joce, come on. Wanna go by the lake?”

She takes me by the hand and leads me to the lake. I can’t help but imagine Orpheus Orpheus ripped apart by the beasts near fresh water. I can’t escape.

The feeling is this:

I imagine Cold.

I hear footsteps. Paul is coming down the extended gravel path. He sees me and his Irish eyes go soft. He is so utterly beautiful.

“Joce, come on we’re going home”

What is home? What is life but searching for home?

On the way back to the hotel, I sulk the entire time and know that in the morning we will be packing for New York again. I loved Vermont. I felt like I could write here and really embrace who I am now that I know my future is certain with Paul.

Nothing is certain, nothing at all.

By the time dawn descends violently, I am fast asleep holding onto him.

This is a first goodbye and it feels like the end of a first act. Paul packs and I watch him go while chain-smoking on the easy chair on the balcony. I’m still cold and wearing fur.

The feeling is this:

New.