| now is | once was | came from | heard tell |

7:20 p.m. - 2004-11-29

last round

On Friday night a few weeks ago I was assaulted outside my house by a man who had followed me for several blocks. It was a deliberate and planned attack. I'm ok, but I'm angry. And scared. I came inside and called my ex-girlfriend, who came over and made me tea and called the cops. They told me I shouldn't have been on my own, on my own street, at night anyway. It was nothing that, having been put in that situation, I didn't expect.

Last week my older sister was committed to a maximum security psychiatric ward with what was presumed to be a drug-induced psychosis. Turns out in fact that she has serious underlying mental health issues that she's been disguising (or self-medicating) through heavy drug use for years. The doctors think it's bipolar, but they won't know until enough of the recreational drugs are out of her system that she can be properly tested. She's not allowed to wear shoes with shoe laces, and when we took her flowers the nurses took all the plastic wrapping away. My sister looks so tiny and terrified and frail, all huge eyes, skin and bones, long shaggy hair- she's not even allowed rubber bands to tie it back. She cries freely. When the anti-psychotic medicine kicks in she's lucid and conversational and has no memory of her behaviour without the medicine, so she thinks she's fine. She's ok. She just wants to go home. She thinks they'll let her out tomorrow. I think she's going to be there for a long time.

I started a new job today, selling roses in a call-centre to guilty boyfriends and husbands with insanely high disposable incomes. It's alright.

I was fucked so hard last night I almost stopped breathing, flung with my head and shoulders over the edge of the bed with a violent fist inside me. I was screaming and shrieking and she slapped me around, called me names, as she does. It was unexpected (we haven't seen each other in a month) but good. So good. I'm bruised today and that is what makes the sterile office and the bland smiles and sales targets sort of bearable.

It was us and kissing, again. We had gone out to see some strippers (as friends), chatted and joked around all night. And finally on the last beer she put her face on my shoulder and growled in my ear, dug her fingers into the back of my head. Swore at me. I turned my face away, told her not to kiss me, because fucked if I could be bothered taking responsibility. I am not the scarlet woman. And she kissed me anyway, crushed me back against the bar with her hands on my throat and gave the whole bar full of late-night drinkers a show for their beer money. And it has happened before, and I wonder if it will keep happening in these intermittent encounters? That the kissing is as intense as sex, and leaves both of us breathless and shaking and startled.

Her anger at me- her violent hands and abusive words- makes it all ok. For a day. Where I could walk along the street and not cry every time I see a small-boned woman with green eyes and strawberry blonde hair. Who looks like my sister maybe, except healthy, and glowing, and not trapped.

- |+

[Phone Home] - 2005-02-22

[She hurts, even from here, she hurts.] - 2005-02-11

[Two weeks and counting] - 2005-01-31

[Dirty] - 2005-01-20

[Here Now] - 2005-01-18