Adventures In Tarot

Haven't talked about Tarot in a little while, and I thought it might be nice to do so in an actually in-depth way. I just recently came into possession of two new decks: Marie White's Mary-El Tarot and Barbara Moore's Steampunk Tarot. The latter is exactly as goofy and awesome as it sounds, and I actually like it a great deal. It's very indebted to the classic RWS Tarot, making it the most straight-forward deck I've ever owned, so it's nice to do simple readings for a change. Mary-El, meanwhile, is the most breathtaking visual experience I've had yet in Tarot; the cards are gorgeous, each one originally done as an oil painting by Marie White. But it's very very difficult to read, largely because Marie White goes into intense and often flowery descriptions of the veritable clusterfuck of mythological context she put into each and every card - which is FASCINATING, but also makes for an unusually inaccessible deck. It's hard to know what the heck she's talking about sometimes, and what her cards are supposed to mean. She's basically worked out a whole new hierarchy of meanings, blending RWS with the Thoth deck and pulling from just about every spiritual system known to man. I was beginning to get a little frustrated with how hard it was to make heads or tails of her cards, so I decided there was only one way to deal with it, and that was to design my own spread.

I've designed a Tarot spread before, though I've never put anything about it online - it's huge and complex, and I only use it when I need to bring out the big guns. Today I made a much simpler spread, and I like it pretty well, and I decided to share it. I'm calling it, somewhat unimaginatively, the Spiral Spread.

Here is a numbered picture of a trial-run I did with Mary-El, so you can see the layout. Position meanings below.

The positions, which, considering this is a brand new spread, as subject to future adjustments:

1. The Querent's Chief Desire or Problem
2. Other Factors (details needed to understand the situation)
3. Hopes and Fears
4. A Lesson Learned
5. An Obstacle
6. Advice
7. Action
8. The Bridge (what to bear in mind)
9. Outcome

The thing about spreads is, anyone can make them! You just have to know what it is you want to learn from a spread, without getting too specific or crazy. Tarot works best as a nudge in the right direction or just a way to get yourself thinking outside the box, it's not a step-by-step guide to life. I make my own spreads sometimes because I get tired of the traditional layouts, but I've still drawn from position meanings I've seen in various spreads. I just combined them in a different way, which I like better. Let me take you through the positions briefly:

1. Desire/Problem - Pretty straight-forward - this card represents the main question being asked, or the issues at play. It's was the querent most wants, or is having the biggest trouble with.

2. Other Factors - A supplement to position 1, meant to offer further information about the situation, maybe something infuencing the querent or the circumstances.

3. Hopes/Fears - This is a basic traditional position which you'll find in many spreads. The querent's hopes or fears for the future with regard to the situation. Pretty simple, pretty important.

4. A Lesson Learned - This is a thing I've never yet encountered in an existing spread, but I like it. It is meant to represent either something the querent has learned or experienced in the course of their problem, or which they need to learn to get through it. Or I'm sure there's another way to look at it - it's open to interpretation.

5. An Obstacle - Another basic position, it's something keeping the querent from achieving goals or solving problems. 4 and 5 might work in conjunction just like 1 and 2 do - 4 might be the tools needed to overcome the obstacle.

6. Advice - Exactly like it sounds! One of the tricks with this kind of position, I have found, is that you don't always get a good, positive, advice-sounding card. What if you get a really negative card in this position? WELL, don't worry: I usually look at that kind of thing as a reminder to stay vigilant, and not let those negative influences overpower me.

7. Action - A lot of spreads are missing this position, which I think is a pretty important position! I don't want my spreads to be 100% passive observation. I like getting a good shove, too. The action you take, or shouldn't take, of course.

8. The Bridge - This is my favorite position of the spread. I was having trouble getting the design to look suitably like a spiral, when I experimented with turning this card on its side, and it just immediately made sense. This is a bridge connecting 7 and 9, the Action and the Outcome. It isn't always so easy as just doing a thing and then getting a result. You have to remember what you've learned, for example the information from positions 4 and 6. That's what this card is for. This spread has a lot of emphasis on learning lessons and being knowledgeable about what's going on inside your head, and I think that's the most important thing when you're asking for guidance. My hope is that the spread serves to help the reader collect his/her/zir/etc thoughts about the reigning issue, and helps give a little courage if the times are tough. A firm pat on the back or a swift kick in the rear, whichever is appropriate.

9. Outcome - The basic final card of any spread, where you'll be if you continue on the path or alter things as directed. Again: if you get a negative card in this position, I would think of it as a challenge to change that outcome.

So, now let's look at what I got. I wasn't asking a particular question, and it wasn't about me personally - because Mary-El is so heavily steeped in mythology, I decided to look for something I could use to develop the future plot of my novel, Berlin Confidential.

Marie White talks a lot about the collective unconscious with this card, and how her impressions of the Cups suit has shifted from being strictly about relationships to being more about humanity as a whole, which I think is PRETTY INTERESTING, if difficult to apply to one's personal life. You see what I mean? She is very concerned with big sweeping statements and not so much about relating each card to the reader on a personal level. But that's why I'm approaching this from a big mythy perspective. If we look at this spread as having to do with my novel, then yes, a definite Big Issue of the story is the nature of humanity and the way cultural attitudes shift and change. So: an appropriate card for position one.

For the Knight of Disks, we get a story about Siddhartha, growing up sheltered, then being horrified to learn the dirty truth of the world. In this deck more than in any other I've seen, "Disks" are incredibly earthy, concerned with the physical aspects of the world and the universe. As I see it, it can only be about Herr Inspektor, the protagonist of the novel, an ordinary man who is very sheltered in that he believes life and the world to be orderly and simple, until he is confronted by the horrors of this other world, the world of demons and monsters and murderous beasts. It's especially appropriate given the Buddhist background for this card, since Herr Inspektor is very much a middle-of-the-road character, trying to find a solution without going too hard to one extreme or the other.

It's funny - when I saw this card online before buying this deck, I wasn't sure how I felt about it. I thought it was super weird, having a big ol' baboon for the 9 of Cups. But I'm starting to love it. Marie White talks about the baboon as being an aspect of Thoth, who is apparently often represented by a baboon, so-! (someone needs to bone up on her Egyptian mythology). Without going into too much crazy mythology detail, Thoth was basically one of the gods balancing the universe, the other being his wife Ma'at (WHO, interestingly, we also see in this spread) - he seems to have been largely concerned with science, magic, arts, judgment of the dead and being an arbiter between good and evil. She also talks about being in awe of the universe, being able to accept your place within it. That sounds again very Herr Inspektory, and something he struggles with maybe more than anything. So yeah. Onward!

One of faaaaavorite cards, and one of the reasons I decided to get this deck, because LOOK AT IT. The Sun is about exaltation, total self-realization, and unfettered joy. Marie White talks about its place at the conclusion of the Fool's journey (and Herr Inspektor is, of course, our Fool), that he goes through all the experiences of the Major Arcana and comes out with fully realized potential. Difficult to determine what it means here, in this position. It's such a big, final thing for being a lesson that has been learned or needs to be learned - and of course our hero is not very Sunlike! Curious. I shall ruminate.

Here's Ma'at, Thoth's wife. Ma'at is all about the LAW and yes, justice, which is funny because that is exactly what Herr Inspektor is all about. We could see that as an obstacle in that his stubbornness about doing things the "right" way, obeying the sense of order that he knows, is not working out for him, and sort of blinding him to the reality of the situation. This actually could interact with The Sun in an interesting way, like by being so bound to his principles he is not embracing the fullness of his potential. The Sun could also reflect the impact of certain other characters on him. To say more would be to go into too much detail for people who have not been reading, though.

There is an EGREGIOUS grammatical error in the description for this one, and what's worse is it's NOT THE ONLY ONE. I have found several already, and they are all egregious, middle-school-level errors. Here she uses "you're" instead of "your." I am forced to conclude she didn't have an editor for this book, and if she did, SOMEONE DROPPED THE BALL BIG TIME. That along with the general inaccessibility of her interpretations makes it very hard for me to get into this deck, which is a real shame because it's gorgeous and I want it to be my deck forever. BUT ANYWAY.

For this card she talks about Muninn of Odin's two ravens, the one representing Memory. She goes on a big ramble that I can't make heads or tails of, stuff about realizing your potential (a lot of these are about similar huge themes and concepts, which is a problem when you're actually trying to divine distinct meanings from them!), which isn't important because MUNINN, GUYS. For the BC-initiated, Muninn, coupled with the "advice" positioning of this card, is really all you need to know.

This one is interesting. She talks a lot about different Archangels, which is a bit of a yawnfest for me, but the overarching message is one about spiritual guidance and building bridges/connections. Which is .... super weird considering this is the card that leads to the Bridge. Traditionally, Six of Swords is a travel card. Both these meanings - physical and metaphysical travel - are incredibly apt in terms of "action" for basically every character in BC.

Here we have a lamb caught between two lions. Marie White talks about judgment, the path to immortality, balance, self-sacrifice and martyrdom. This is basically perfect in every way.

Marie White is obsessed with relating Wands to sex. I've read so many of them and she just talks about lust and libido and sexual energy. To which I say, all right, but I need more, you need to be more specific, or what is to distinguish between 3 and 4 and all the other Wands? Hmm? Fortunately, I have something to add: for me, the Four of Wands has always represented freedom/escape/transformation, which isn't exactly traditional, but it's the meaning I got from Archeon and it's a meaning I've liked and kept. And I'm keeping it here.

And there you have it. If any curiosity has been aroused, Berlin Confidential is currently on hiatus, which means now would be a grand time to start getting caught up. It's long, but I'd like to think it's worth it.

The Archangel G. K.

G. K. Chesterton and his glorious prose make me feel inadequate and want to ragequit writing.

But I'm not going to! Take THAT, G. K. Chesterton!

Today's Tarot card was Justice reversed:

(only upside down)

The meaning includes "inequality" and "being taken advantage of."

Today's Rilke quote was a poem about wrestling angels, which reminds me of that bit in Angels in America where Joe talks about seeing the picture of the angel wrestling the man and how it just wasn't fair that a mere human should have to fight something so powerful as an angel. Rilke isn't far from that point (maybe without the homoerotic aspect), talking about how winning need not be the goal:

His growth is this: to be defeated

by even greater forces.

So there's like honor in losing, basically. Or in standing up to a divine force, trying to achieve that same greatness and possibly failing.

G. K. Chesterton is the angel in this metaphor. I'm sure he'd be pleased.

Excuse me I'm gonna go write some imperfect prose.

South Side of the Sky (a fragment)

Part of something larger which may or may not ever come to fruition. Written with this song in mind.

“You can feel it, can’t you?” The old man’s voice was the brush of a butterfly’s wings in that thunderous storm, barely audible, but somehow distinct and capable of great power. “The ship is part of you now. She’s in you; in your bones, in your blood.”

I could feel it, all right. Or rather I could feel everything that was happening to it. The whirl of elements outside buffeted the airship as though it were no more than a butterfly itself, wind with such velocity and vigor as would surely kill a man, rip through him like paper. We were in the upper heavens now, in the relentless void of the mountain range, where the weather was as cruel as it could be. I could feel it so acutely it was as though it were beating against my naked skin. I felt the tremendous cold and the simultaneous warmth as my blood rushed in to save me. My nerves were all fraught with confusion—I was suffering no actual damage, but my entire body was responding as though I was. I was in pain. I was terrified. My grip loosened a little.

“Don’t let go.” Pilot could see what was happening to me, even as subtle as it must have been. Immediately I felt a little surge of resolve—small, but significant. He had that effect on people. His voice was very soothing. It was what made him such a good teacher. “The ship will protect you. Think of her as your armor. Your exoskeleton. She has survived far worse than this, and she will take care of you, so long as you take care of her. You must guide her. Do not fear for your own structural integrity, or hers. You are focusing outwardly, on the storm and the world around you. Your attention is not with the ship, where it needs to be. Focus on her presence within you.” A little smile in his voice. “And don’t forget to breathe.”

In, out. I could feel the tingle in my blood, the faint ache in my bones. It was exhausting, flying a ship like this. I could see why no one wanted to do it anymore, why it had the terrible reputation of driving men to both mental and physical dystrophy. I could see why Pilot had retired, and also how he had such great vitality, even at his age. I suspected he was far stronger, at sixty-three, than I was now, in the prime of my life.

“I feel her,” I murmured, already gasping. “She’s being pulled apart.”

“She will be fine.” Pilot’s old hands were on my arms, which had started to shake.

The shorted telecomm crackled abruptly back to life and was filled with the voice of our understandably distressed navigator.

“—can’t see a bloody thing—Wick? Wickerfield? You there, boy?”

“I’m here.” I could hardly hear my own voice. The external wind filled my ears, battered my body. My fingers felt frozen.

“By my estimates we’ve still got a bit of a buffer between us and the mountain range,” she was saying, “but it probably ain’t very much. You’re gonna have to pull us way the hell up, boy, if we want out of this in one piece.”

“Do you have coordinates?”

“I got nothing. I am completely blind. This bloody storm’s knocked out just about everything I have.”

“We’ll be all right, Ofelia,” said Pilot, his voice clear and steady. “Sit tight and tell everyone to buckle down. And I mean that literally. Things are going to get wild before they get smooth again.”

Pilot cut the communication out before Ofelia could say anything more, and he said to me, “Move forward.”

“Ofelia said—”

“Ofelia is a blind navigator,” said Pilot. “She is in a panic because she does not have your advantage: she cannot feel what is happening. Go in deeper. Listen to what she’s telling you. Be calm and trust her. You’re a smart boy, and she’s an old, powerful machine. Together you can take us through.”

I closed my eyes, but my breath was coming in short, fluttering fragments. I felt fatigued, pulled apart. “I can’t do this,” I gasped. “I can’t do this.”

“You can.” Pilot tightened his grip on my arms, fortifying me gently. “You can.” Then he let me go.

I felt the sting of the cold. The rush of air. The hard knife-slices of snow and ice. But we could push, she and I. Pilot was right, this ship was old and strong. She was stubborn. I nudged her forward, and she was rocked with such force that I felt like my back was breaking.

“Don’t go gentle,” Pilot murmured. “Be aggressive. There’s no time to waste.”

We pushed forward harder, and I suddenly felt all the wind knocked from my lungs in a sudden, violent burst of clarity. The turbulence was astounding, and I am sure Ofelia called down again to unleash a stream of profanity, but I didn’t hear it, didn’t feel any of it. We rode the chaos with exhilaration and ease. We broke through it even as the storm pulled us in a thousand directions, trying to shatter us. We were too fast. We pushed ourselves headfirst into the onslaught and used its momentum to fire ourselves forward.

And then we were out. In the little center of calm. I felt a sudden, exhausting flood of warmth fill my throbbing, strained limbs. I felt like I was dying.

Ofelia’s disembodied voice joined us again. “Pilot? Wick? You boys still alive?”

“Very much so,” said Pilot. I could hear him smiling.

“Well that was absolutely mad, but we made it into the eye. I can see the mountains below us, and they are scary-close. Now can we  pull up?”

“Right you are,” said Pilot, and he helped me pull down as hard as I could, hauling the full weight of that monstrous beautiful craft upward. I could feel my own center of gravity shifting, pulling at my insides. When we were aimed at the clear, distant sky, I kicked the ship forward and we shot up to easily that I almost passed out right then and there.

We broke out above the clouds, where everything was still.

“Better take over from here, love,” said Pilot to Ofelia. “Mr. Wickerfield needs a bit of a rest.”

“Roger that,” said Ofelia. “Good work, little ‘un.”

I couldn’t reply. Pilot unlocked the mechanisms from my arms and my legs and helped me drop down to my knees. He stroked my hair briefly, a kind, grandfatherly sort of gesture. My emotions were all over the place.

“Told you so,” he said.

I had just enough energy for a smirk, even though he couldn’t see it.

Dirt Penny, or, Mr. Congleton Said He Would Buy The Ice Cream Himself

A friend asked me to write a story about John Congleton finding a disgusting penny and buying ice cream with it. So I did. I've made worse decisions.

This is a companion piece of sorts to my latest vlog post, The Crisis of the Omniphobic Horror Writer. I'll have more to say about all that soon, I'm sure.

Little brown circle like a cigarette burn. God knows how filthy, what kind of cancers you’re carrying. I’ve really gone and done it now, gone and picked you up off the ashtray ground. I hope you’re proud of yourself. I can feel your diseases grape-vining inside me now, they’ll wreck my head like the president on your face. Dirty little piece of nothing. Obsolete, that’s what they called you, and if you can’t fight back then how can you prove it’s not what you are?

Goddamn these hands. I let them touch you.

And isn’t it perfect how I need you anyway, to meet the cost of vanilla. Diseased and dirty point-one-oh, you have brought me brain freeze and tooth decay. Thank you very much, pathetic little penny.

10 Weird Things I Do As A Writer

This is a list of quirks, habits and storytelling devices I tend to exhibit/employ in my writing, all of which can be either extremely interesting or sort of distracting/cumbersome depending on how well I manage to carry them off.

1. Identifying each character by a consistent pronoun and nothing else. See I Am He You Are He You Are Me, where "I," "you" and "he" are three specific people, none of whom have actual names.

2. Using tense shifts to denote alternating timelines/perspectives/atmospheres.

3. Debasing cliched lines for my own purposes. Examples: "this is the start of a beautiful et cetera", "in all the gin joints of all my relationships in all the world", "they call us Mad As Hell, and don't you sometimes want to threaten not to take it anymore".

4. Crafting a whole narrative universe around nameless figures who straddle the line between distinct characters and abstract archetypes. They always come in pairs, and are identified by symbolic titles rather than names. Examples include: Spider and Fly, Snake and Flightless Bird, Pea and Pomegranate Seed, Carrion and Crow. These universes are also often characterized by a complete lack of linear continuity.

5. Gradual deterioration of grammar/syntax over time. Usually corresponds to downward spiral of narrator's sanity.

6. Direct address, wherein the narrator and the reader become locked into an intimate and often destructive relationship. See also: incredibly unreliable narrators.

7. Similarly: the narrator is possibly everyone. Or rather, I have become obsessed with the solitary mindset, and also with multiple personalities as a storytelling device. More and more I find myself introducing the ambiguous possibility that the narrator is imagining all events and all other characters, only to never confirm or deny it ever.

8. By the same token: ambiguous devices/developments so ambiguous that even I, the authorial god figure, do not actually know for certain know what is going on.

9. Increasingly obscure tangents and references.

10. Eschewing actual genres to the point of complete incoherence, instead using random phrases to separate different categories of story. Examples: "Mad As Hell", "Escapist Variations", "chaotic fragments".

I Am He You Are He You Are Me

This was written for a friend, who prompted me with the words "boys in lipstick, a threesome, superstitions, albino crows, bootblacking" and with the most excellent pick-up line ever courtesy of e e cummings:

listen: there's a hell

of a good universe next door; let's go

I don't know how well I answered the prompt, but I ended up with something more than a little strange. I feel like it's teetering on the precipice of being something bigger and less disjointed, but I think it's best to let it sit. I didn't have a great deal of control over this narrator.

So here it is, as is: a chaotic fragment.

“Listen,” he said. “Listen.”

You weren’t listening.

“The fuck is an albino crow?” you persisted.

What a pair: the pea and the pomegranate seed. You’re so natural, so green behind the ears (if that is the saying I want), a little hint of overturned earth. You came right off the farm and you’d break a man’s nose for anything less than a full-hearted embrace of your lack of college education and your heathen temper. I like you. I’ve always liked you. You never learned but you’re always learning. I knew we were meant to be before you even threw your first punch.

The pomegranate, now; he’s something else. You’re old and young and he’s young and old, if you know what I mean. You’re a fixture, a reliable structure, been here since the dawn of time, where time is my willingness to talk about any of this. Who’s this guy? He comes in here with his tall leather boots and his pierced ears and piercing gaze, mouth full of bright red lipstick just itching to leave a bloody imprint on a napkin, or your cheek. He’s wild like the center of a storm, every muscle relaxed, coiled. He’s a predator. I had to have him. I’m not one for petty superstitions but this is twice in one lifetime, love at first sight, and doesn’t that have to mean something? I love you, aggressive, thoughtful, ignorant you, and I want him, I need him, I have to be his. He won me the moment he stepped into that place. Where were we again? Oh yeah.

“Listen,” he said.

“You listen,” you retort. “You said you worked for Albino Crow. And I’m asking, what the fuck’s an albino crow? I mean ain’t that just a dove? Cause it sounds like it’d just be a dove.”

And he smiled at you, a calm, tiger smile. “A crow is a crow, and not a dove at all,” he said. “That’d be like saying every white man is the same white man.”

“No it ain’t, it ain’t that at all.”

“In any case, the Albino Crow I’m talking about is just a record label.” He leaned forward over the table. “You like music?”

“I like music, everyone likes music,” you said, and you looked at me, maybe for help, though you’d be damned to hell and uncertain torment before you’d admit it. “You know who the fuck this is?”

I know I want to be a part of his narrative, if that’s what you mean (it isn’t).

“Listen,” he said again. “There’s a hell—”

“What kind of music?” you wanted to know.

“—of a good universe next door,” he continued. He smiled. I wanted those lips. I wanted those teeth. “Let’s go.”

The two of you are made for each other. You might not realize it yet (he, of course, realized it right away), but this is the start of a beautiful et cetera. There’s a part of you that knows, or senses, or at any rate won’t turn down an opportunity, and it’s the part of you that moves, gets up, and the rest of your body follows. You throw me a look that says “You’d better be coming.” You don’t want to be left alone with the Devil, the madman, the albino crow. You’ll want it soon enough. I just pray you’ll take me with you.

The hell of a good universe is exactly the paradox it sounds like. Everything is bright. Everything is faded. It doesn’t matter. It does.

It was an enclosure of open space. Speciously spacious. Spuriously so. If I’ve got to describe it, then that’s how. Bookshelves of buildings. Staircases leading nowhere, or maybe everywhere. Towers of stairs. Down we went, down and down, of course down. Mephisto and his pair of Fausts. Maybe one of us is Gretchen. I’ll be Gretchen. I don’t mind. Down to the valley. Into the street.

Losing grip on reality is something we’ve become very good at, you and I. It comes from the unholy marriage of your casual disregard for it all and the slow tick tick tick of the bomb of my brain. I don’t have time for it, I mean. It’s such a waste of energy, believing in the world, when there are beautiful boys in lipstick and tall, leather boots. We said so many things during that walk without speaking a single word. I felt you simmering, settling, felt him drawing you in. You know what I see in him now. I think you’re ready. What’s more, I think he waits until you’re ready.

And then, oh: a door.

“Here,” he said. And I saw the crow, I’m sure it was a crow even though it looked quite like a dove, white-feathered and red-eyed. There was this mad moment where I was certain it was him, the crow I mean. In the land of living metaphor the contradiction is king.

Look at us: what an odd contraption. He’s already done the impossible, made it through the patchwork of your defenses and the tangle of your clothes, and my attention’s elsewhere. There is something perversely beautiful, you know, about watching the two of you. It’s more than I can bear. I have to look away. I focus on the boots. I’ll be Gretchen, I’ll be the shoeshine boy. I don’t care. I don’t care.

Don’t forget me.

Cacophony

Sometimes you want everyone to just be quiet. This world is so full of voices, nothing but voices and words and viewpoints, and none of them will ever be exactly the same. We search and we search for someone to be our equal, the long-sought doppelganger, knowing deep in our hearts this person does not exist. Why is that want so natural, when there is no existent salve? Why are we wired to hunger for something that will never be?

Sometimes the noise swells up and becomes far too much to bear. There are so many ways to speak against you, and each one has its own particular sting. Even the voices with whom you feel kinship can become too loud, and listening is too difficult, and answering too futile. When everyone is talking, the words are meaningless, and why talk at all? When everyone is talking, the silent man is the invisible king. That's what humanity is. That's what loneliness means.

With all this talking, it is difficult to hear what anyone is saying. If everyone could just be quiet, please. Just for a moment.

November

I wrote this over a year ago, and just revised it today. I was really, really thrilled with it a year ago, and now my love for it has waned a little. I think the metaphors are a little bewildering and a little muddled. But there are things I still like about it, so here it is.

This is an erotic story about two men. Nothing explicit, but not exactly tame either.

Here we are, and who are you?

I saw you from across the room, like they do in movies, only the room didn’t stop, I had to excuse myself from the one-sided conversation with the heiress who’d held me captive with her senseless rambling drivel, I fear I was quite rude you know, only now does that occur to me, and what a time to realize. Too late now, too late then as I made my silent way across the room, leaving my half-finished drink on the tray of a passing waiter for fear that I would need both my hands free, and I wonder at the back of my mind just when it is you first noticed me. I’d never seen you before, I could never forget a face like yours, nor the curve of your back, nor the sharp cut of your jaw touched with yesterday’s five o’clock shadow, and perhaps you’re a guest or perhaps you’re one of the many uninvited who drop in with the almighty influence of affluence, but I don’t care about that, not right now. Champagne always hits me fast and I’ve had three and a half glasses full and nothing to eat since two o’clock this afternoon, and has anyone told you that the darkness of your hair and your eyes gives you this unnatural severity, I felt like I was being looked dead in the face by the entire month of October, only that isn’t right, I don’t know what I’m saying. You’re a November if you’re anything.

And here we are in this elevator, this elevator tainted with sordid three-minute affairs, people just like you and me except I am sure that you are not like them at all; that might be a shallow observation but as my hands grip the rail that digs inconveniently into me and my neck stretches up until my head hits the perversely mirrored wall I find myself unable to care, unable to think. Your lips are perfect, has anyone ever told you?

I don’t know what it was about you, perhaps I shall never know, perhaps this is one of those instances of which we shall never speak, perhaps, even, we shall not see each other again. I know that as I approached you the room seemed to vanish even though it didn’t, and I know you felt it too as you gave me your little smile, the upturned edges of those lips I wanted all over my body, I barely said two words to you, something vague and floundering like “I wonder if I might—” and how is it that you knew so perfectly exactly what I meant, that you should take me subtly by the wrist and lead me away from that mundane reality, that you should be such a grand escape artist in your own perfect right.

We made it as far as this elevator and I whispered “I can’t remember what floor I’m on and I don’t know that I can wait,” and you told me not to worry, chose a number that was a long ways off, dropped to your knees and deftly took me with you. Here we are, my fingers in your hair gently pressing you closer. You accept my impatience with absolute calm, and perhaps you are even smiling as you shatter my tightly knit resolve; this I cannot know.

Why have I broken every rule to do this now, here, with you, you whom I have never seen but who destroyed me utterly in that instant from across the room?

Who are you?

The bell shoots me straight through the heart as the doors open, and like nothing’s happened you’re up and resetting my clothes like you do it every day, and you take me around the waist and guide me out into the elegant spread of a hallway, to hell with whoever might be there, might be watching us, I can see only your shoes and this hideous carpet, the quick punches of your feet against these flattened colors which mock your whole autumnal nature, muddied and dulled with time and the feet of a thousand people just like us.

Not like us.

Men like me are a dime a dozen and I am sure there are a million of them. I am no one, but there is no one like you, no one on this earth, I become convinced of this as I struggle to lift my head and study the sliver of your face which is so fixed on the door to which you have us careening, and I wonder just how drunk I am.

The door is opened and closed again with us on the other side, and you hold me there against it and this time you are not quick, you are not efficient, your mouth wanders lazily up the path of my throat seeking out something intangible like a moan or a sigh, and I will give you all of it, only do not stop. Your hands tighten around my arms and it’s as though you know me, know my every unspoken desire, the fluttering secrets that beat within the folds of my heart. Your hands slip down to my wrists, dragging my arms down behind me, pulling me back into a small arc, gaining purchase at the base of my throat. I am gasping, defenseless. November I am yours.

How is it that I am here on this bed, with this sunlight playing against your features? How is it that I can remember every inexpressible detail of the night without being able to linger on a single one, like a dream that is impossible to explain even as you grasp and try to hold it still. I am hung-over and for several seconds it is the happiest hangover of my life.

“And you would be?” I say, drifting, lost at sea in these twisted bed sheets.

You smile and your fingers brush along my face. Are your hair and your eyes as dark as I remember them, or am I dreaming still?

“You’re not what I expected,” you say, and the wide-awake depth of your voice does not disappoint me, how could it, when it is so different here in the morning light and yet it is unavoidably the same voice that told me so gently to be quiet, to keep still, to give in, to love you for exactly one hour and thirty-three minutes.

I turn and stretch, working my body in and out of half-remembered positions. “Am I not?” I say. “I suppose I’m happy to hear that.”

You tilt your head and look at me with a curious smile, a smile that I want to see for the rest of my life.

Oh, November, what fool gave you a day less for us to share? Thirty is not enough, my dear beautiful. Stay with me always, you who has such power within seconds, who commands my every bodily sensation from across a room crowded with the empty-headed and the illustrious. Oh stay with me, stay.

Your fingers curl around me and spread across my back, to show me that you’ve heard.

“Do you want to go?” you ask, I can’t imagine why.

“No, no, no,” I say quietly. “No, no, no, no, no.”

You smile again. “What do you want?”

I draw myself closer to you, because to answer is to become tiresome.

You press your lips into the hollow of my temple, and you ask it again. “What do you want?”

To know everything about you. To know nothing. I do not answer because I don’t know how. I fear that I have fallen in love with you, and the fading perceptions of last night, the fading champagne, the everything and the all of it fading into the dreadfully real sensations of the bed sheets and the light and the ache in my head and my stomach, it leaves me flustered and embarrassed at the idea of it, at having become so lost in a contestable emotion at the very first sight of you. I am a storybook character, a stereotype risen from a weakly versed poem, and here you are, real and perfect and smiling, and me with the great and terrible audacity at thinking I know a thing about you. How dare I? Who gave me permission to speak?

Oh November, enfold me once in your cold, dry embrace, the brown of the dead and dying cutting stark shapes against the too, too pale sky. November do not leave me to the afterimage of white that will cover and drown me for months to come, after which it will be too late. November, we have mere moments to speak and to finish, moments before I have lost you to the seasonal funeral, the end before the endless rebirth. November, keep.

You rise and I watch you as you move about this room, which is the same as mine, might as well be mine, ought to be mine. The wallpaper and the paintings and the furniture all the same, all the trappings identical, who is to say your room is not mine, or that I am not some small and inadequate reflection of you? I watch you, and I am convinced you are not as real as I am, you are not as brittle. You are an abstract and an idea, a metaphor I have created for that which I am lacking. No, no! What am I saying? To be so conceited as to think I could create something such as you—no, no. Come back, come back to me, these thoughts are tedious and this bed is cold without you in it.

“I have to work,” you say, dressing yourself, and I am overcome with the strange notion of watching a film strip in reverse as all the tattered bits and pieces that make up your external wrappings seem to fly unnaturally back into place, covering the slim perfection that is you.

“Don’t go,” I murmur from my prison amidst the remnants of our dirty work.

You look at me, I am taken by your shape, more solid than me, greater than me. The days are slipping by too fast for me to know what to do but I must keep you here.

“You really aren’t what I expected at all,” you say, hands frozen in their grim places, lifting your shirt back into its grotesque position as a barrier between my fingers and your skin.

“I try not to be what people expect,” I say. “I’m not sure what it was you were expecting.”

“Drunk rich boy,” you say with a brutal shrug. You smile the whole remark away. “Do you want me to stay?”

Answering you is the final admission. I cannot bring myself to speak without your prompts, and this is as close as I can get.

“Yes,” I say. It is a beautiful word, yes. No one knows that. James Joyce knows that. You know it.

There is a breath of hesitation, and I am suspended on wire, but you catch me before I fall. “All right,” you say. You right yourself, replacing unnecessary fabrics in their rightful tangled heaps, and you slide back in next to me.

People are frightened to make this surrender, to accept this fortune. People come in from the cold and drown themselves in artificial light and warmth, and the assurance that they have made the right choice. We know better, you and I. We will stay here as long as it takes for one of us to know what this means, and I still don’t know who you are. There isn’t much time. I want to speak, to ask you, tell you. Sometime we shall ruin it all and dash it against the rocks of questions and answers and our too-solid identities. Sometime before the thirtieth day I shall have to break this beloved silence. Soon, soon, soon.

The Story of the Snake & the Flightless Bird

God, sometimes don’t you ever want to open up your top floor window and stick your head out and scream? I’d help you onto the balcony, and we’d shatter your neighbor’s flower pots so she’ll think twice about calling the cops on us during our tasteful misadventures of the later night. We’ll smoke our regretted cigarettes and let the ashes drop down to the sidewalk, that vertiginous drop that neither of us are brave or cowardly enough to take. Would you stand in the middle of the road with nothing but a late-80s boombox and dance to your mix tapes from the days of yore? Would you wax schizophrenic about the shortening of the days and rattle like a snake about the things we should be doing and the places we should be, instead of this & here & now? They call us Lost, they call us Y, they call us Mad As Hell, and don’t you sometimes want to threaten not to take it anymore, because why should you, when all that’s left of your hopes and dreams and all your wild-eyed worldly ambitions is an unmentionable degree and a box full of books half-read and dog-eared by the 2am light of library lamps? You would never settle for second best; you will be satisfied only when they speak your name with reverence and sometimes controversy, and they know it was you, you did this, left your mark, you made it, you won, and maybe not even then. Come with me to the balcony, to the precarious window ledge, where we’ll look over the rotting city like a pair of tattered sultans, and let the sour wind carry you somewhere else, away from the godforsaken years of the misbegotten twentysomething, into the future where we won’t care, where the ambition will be atrophied by wisdom and responsibility and weary practicality. Nothing will ever be this important again, my dear, and we’re wasting it all on rotten luck and blank walls and under financed wanderlust. Curl around me like you do, and hold on tight, and we’ll let them hear us howl, let them shudder at our anger, and they’ll notice, and they’ll know. I’d take you anywhere, my love, if I only had wings.