Chocolate. Hundreds of small kisses taped to pieces of paper declaring that the reciever is loved. I handed them out, smiling and dancing, a veritable whirlwind of positive energy. "Valentines," the word lost its meaning to me when I realized that we barely know anything about St. Valentine. I called them "Dinosaur Rememberance Day" chocolates, the terrible lizards substituting for the consumerist conglomerate of hearts and flowers.
People laughed, but I think they were secretly terrified. There's an instinctual level of our brains hardwired to fear even prehistoric threats to our safety. I shouldn't be frightening people, but unsatisfied, I continue with my haunting reminders.
A crowd, mostly in red, gathers around a view of the sky.
They dance with me, a wild, crazy dance that asks a question. What is love? There's something almost pagan about it to me. A flash flood of bodies brought on by the wind, by the rain, by the date. We converge from seemingly nowhere, cameras materializing out of the aether to capture us in this abandon. Four and a half minutes we are in solidarity. At the drop of a hat we disperse.
I find myself alone save this clinging February cold. So I embrace it, pull it toward me with a half step and a twirl, my arms flung high then low, convulsing in almost epileptic fury. I feel the eyes of passersby on me, but ignore them. I am not theirs. In this moment I belong to the music, I am another medium through which it expresses itself, my body possessed.
An eternity later I'm grounded again by the weight of a ticking clock, the music exorcised by the metronomic repetition of the face perpetually attached to the wall.
Brought back to reality, I find myself drawn once again down to the ROPs. The VU, my third home away from home, populated with dedicated, smiling bodies. We're slaves to the system seeking solace in each other as we attempt subversion, an infection of ideals put in stasis by the bureaucratic powers that remove our politico. Our opinions exist outside, but so long as we represent this space and act as agents of the organization.
So we left. Off hours of course, but mobilizing a small crowd and preparing the makings of a speech in under two hours we set out for the courthouse, intending to be denied an application for a marriage license. Two consenting, unrelated adults over the age of 18: check. Fifty-eight dollar application fee: check. Dressed nice: for me at least check. Camera crew to record expected refusal of application: check.
Our entourage captured the entire thing: me standing kind of thunderstruck with no room to get a word in edgewise as Outspoken statements fly. An article covering our activism appeared only to dematerialize with nary a word more.
We have to address the legislator, not the county auditor in order to change the laws concerning marriage of "same-sex" partnerships in Washington State.
Afterwards in the quiet of the drive home, I listened to the sounds of a broken stereo, its noise the music of rotating wheels and 30-40 mph velocities in a metal box. Dinner, fried rice that I carried with me all day, back in the ROPs as I finished my office hours.
The next few hours escape my memory, the word spelled correctly but somehow looking wrong (a trick perhaps of the liminal gods who rule my fate), though I know they existed online. Was I perhaps upstairs, in my usual perch overlooking the lobby? No, I joined a Cirque down in the Underground Coffeehouse. The name has always bugged me. The building is built into the side of a hill, there is no underground to be in.
He read House of Leaves, I among other things, started this post. Johnny Truant is a child, a child who dropped out of high school and has sex with pretty much every woman he meets, but he lacks passion. He talks about these many encounters in detail, but the details are dry, sanitized in their crassness. They have no meaning. Jesse laughs, winces at the deepening shadows.
Duty calls and I am off again, this time for a night of dancing, a night constituted of a chunky mixture of tomato and spices roiling around an open room for two hours. I sacrificed my vest to the gods of Latin rhythm, baptizing myself in sweat to be reborn. Salsero.
Home, I concluded with sent messages and open inboxes across many miles. Self-satisfied and a kind of happy. Something about this day felt right.
The tip of my right, index finger is numb from accidentally getting slammed in a door on Sunday.
1 comment:
I would like to see this so-called video!
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