Benjamin Horne, owner of Twin Peaks’s Great Northern Hotel, accompanied by his brother Jerry, travels north by boat upriver to One Eyed Jack’s, a casino and brothel just across the border, which Ben owns and frequents. Inside, floor-length red curtains cover walls, and in low light, women and girls stand with arms on cocked hips, playing cards tucked into thigh-highs and ribboned around waists.
6-24-17
I’m just across the northern border in Vancouver, British Columbia, at an event focused on decolonizing sex. Most of the performers and attendees are Indigenous. In the foyer, people with fairy wings offer condoms from boxes. I have no need—nobody wants me and I want nobody—but I take a condom with an image of a playing card Jack and the words One Eyed Jack.
6-25-16
After the show, at a twenty-four-hour restaurant, we plan our departure for the islands in the morning. We’re eating eggs and realizing neither of us has made a reservation for the ferry, so we have to leave in an hour to take the only one available for days.
I made a flourless chocolate cake for Carl’s birthday, so we bring it on deck and eat a little for breakfast. He likes me right now. I’ve reserved us a “tent-cabin” that is mostly a tent. It’s barely dawn when we arrive, and we can’t check in, so we walk onto the dock, where the Pacific air feels like a body brush. I kiss him and he kisses back. We need to sleep, but the tent-cabin won’t be ready for hours, so we drive down the shore to a park, turn off the car, and force our bodies to fit horizontally on the back seat. Hours later, I wake up hot and panicked. After this everything changes. He wakes up with a sun-cooked heart, something boiled out of him.
6-25-17
It’s late but I’m wondering how you are doing, Carl texts. It is not late, not for a person with a free condom. I am doing fine. I tell him about the One Eyed Jack condom. He says it’s interesting that a condom would be labeled with the name of a fictional brothel. Yes yes yes, I want to tell him, but don’t you see it’s a synchronicity? Don’t you see the way the narratives are intersecting? Apparently not. His texts are stilted, as though he is choosing his words carefully. Why text at midnight if not to reach across the thin hours, grab the person’s hand, and plunge its fingers into your open heart? I stop responding.
6-25-18
Out of the woods and back into Seattle, I lie in my aunt’s guest bedroom and swipe through Tinder. There is Carl’s grim, hollowed-out face. I want to make sure he knows I’m in town and chose not to see him. I want him to think I’m as indifferent to him now as he has been to me for two years. So I text him to tell him I’ve seen his profile and I think it’s shit.
Twin Peaks: The Return
Agent Cooper is in the lodge and he can’t come out. Twenty-five years have passed since he was doubled in there, but his evil twin is gone now, out in the world. The Arm, a lodge spirit, hisses, “Do you remember your doppelgänger? He. Must. Come. Back. In. Before. You. Can. Go. Out.”
6-26-16
It’s sweltering inside the tent-cabin. This was a mistake. Since we’re on vacation in the islands, we try fucking, but every thrust feels like a cut. Carl is annoyed, even when I separate myself to sit in my car and play with my charging phone and he comes out just to see what I’m doing wrong so he can resent me. Today’s sin: in my sleep-deprived confusion, I’ve turned the engine on, though I could’ve charged with the key turned only partway. Jesus fucking Christ. He doesn’t tell me right away, just gets fed up and quiet; I won’t know until we’re on the ferry home, when he’ll finally tell me he’s not pleased with himself for getting mad at my stupidity.
Today I don’t know what’s wrong, as usual. Today he drives my car so fast around dark cedar-lined road bends I think he’s trying to kill us. Today we take the road up the mountain, and we do not stop at Mountain Lake, though I ask to; we do not stop at Twin Lakes; we drive to the mountaintop and walk to the stone watchtower, where a little girl looks down at me from a high window and screams, “It’s the witch!” And here I thought I was Rapunzel. We climb. From the top, I look at the evergreen-coated islands sitting like mossy rocks in the blue sea. In the story, the knight takes Rapunzel away from the tower. In real life, we step down the narrow stairs, one in front of the other, and I go back to watching him for clues and watching myself for mistakes.
6-26-17
Tonight I fuck a man who asks me what I want and what I don’t want. He tells me about his primary partner and the terms of their relationship. He would be happy to show me the results of his most recent STI tests. He asks about my boundaries and I tell him. I ask him not to stay afterward. What is wrong with me? Carl was the last man to sleep in this bed. Why do we say ghosting when we talk about people who disappear from us? Still he haunts me, a phantom in the bed half I will not sleep in.
Gurdjieff, via brainyquote.com
“A man will renounce any pleasures you like but he will not give up his suffering.”
6-27-18
Carl won’t come out and say it, but he is desperate to meet. He says we could meet if I want to. He had some time open up midday. But I have plans. No worries, he says. A few minutes later, he says he’s free all morning, actually. Fine. I do want to meet up. We get coffee and it’s the same as ever: he’s sad and I’m frustrated. He says he’s working on himself, making positive changes. I remind him that two years ago today, we were coming back from the island and he was mad at me. He says, “I don’t really remember that time.”
By the time I have to go, I’ve upset him by saying he was careless with my heart and keeps coming back, like a scavenger picking meat off a carcass. He’ll be fine. But now I have touched him, just to hug him, a hand light against his shoulders, so I won’t be.
Twin Peaks: The Return
In the basement of the Great Northern Hotel, Cooper approaches a door. He has a key. This comes after everything: his return to Twin Peaks from the Black Lodge, the killing of the doppelgänger, the destruction of the evil spirit BOB, the reunion with Diane (Cooper’s assistant known in the original series as a receiver of voice notes but never as an embodied character until The Return). She accompanies him, along with FBI Deputy Director Gordon Cole. At the door, Cooper pauses.
COOPER: Now listen. I’m going through this door. Don’t try to follow me. Either of you.
COLE: Be thinking of you, Coop.
Cooper opens the door and pauses on the threshold, looking back.
COOPER: See you at the curtain call.
In the darkness, MIKE appears and speaks his incantation:
Through the darkness of future past, the magician longs to see. One chants out between two worlds, Fire walk with me.
6-28-18
Just after midnight, I’m leaving the Baranof, a karaoke bar in Carl’s neighborhood. I feel him nearby. It is happening again, I think. I want, suddenly, to see him. I text him:
ELISSA: Are you at your house?
ELISSA: I’m in the neighborhood
CARL: I’m at North Star
ELISSA: Can I come or are you on a date or something
CARL: Come over here!
At the bar, the scene is familiar: just like the last time I was here, six months ago, his School of Rock friends are gathering to send off someone who quit. Everything feels different from twelve hours ago: an electric current runs between our knees. “This is auspicious,” he says: the fact that we are back on this block, in this room, with these people. “It is happening again,” I say. “Do you want to go make out?”
The moon goes full. Goes strawberry. In his living room, I marvel at how his house hasn’t changed. “It’s not the same,” he keeps saying, but I insist. The seahorse print I got him for his birthday two years ago still hangs over his bed. The bed and desk haven’t moved. And he’s here, and I’m here, unbuckling his belt with my left hand, pushing down the zipper with my middle finger, performing ritual movements. Sex with him has always hurt me; our shapes fit poorly. Two years ago, we fucked so much the doctor put me on vaginal rest for two weeks so the tear
ing would heal. I lasted one day. Let me be clear: I wanted him inside me every day, despite the pain, because I needed him to wedge himself into the space and open my heart. I’ve never wanted anything like I’ve wanted the pain he makes in me.
It is sunrise. I have been looking for a way out of the three dimensions my body can offer. Watching for synchronicities, I see the fourth dimension wrinkling; signs of the fifth are tucked into the creases. That is why I am here in his bed. I am here to be broken again so the universe can get in.
Twin Peaks: The Return
Cooper steps out of the Black Lodge. Diane stands before him.
DIANE: Is it you? Is it really you?
COOPER: Yes. It’s really me, Diane. Is it really you?
DIANE: Yeah.
She searches his face with her eyes. She has to figure it out for herself. Because they are about to go somewhere.
6-29-18
I want to do it again, I text, and he replies with a crystal ball emoji, which usually means he can’t be bothered to spend words on me. He said he would show up at my reading, but now I don’t expect it. So I’m surprised when I see him. Rita Bullwinkel, whom I had never met, reads her story “Concerned Humans.” It begins, “Karl was a snake who coiled himself into the shape of a pear and bit the children who tried to eat him.” I wonder whether Carl is mad that he got called out like that—not by Rita, who doesn’t know about him, but by the universe, giving me another sign. But Carl isn’t mad. He’s so pleased he buys the book. After the reading, everyone goes out to karaoke. He and I stare into each other too deeply and for too long, just like we used to. It’s time to go. At his house, we sit on his couch and do not fuck, a secret relief. The energy is sour, the cord tangled. He says he feels as though he has moved into a different room from wherever he was before. I’m in the same room as always, reaching hands through heavy curtains, looking for the door.
6-30-18
In the airport, I beg the universe and the internet for signs or, even better, release from this. On the terminal wall, the magician and his assistant are still making a body disappear. I disappear, I tweet with a photo. But really, I’m the spectator, trying to understand what I just saw.
Twin Peaks
THE ARM, TO DALE COOPER, IN THE BLACK LODGE: When you see me again, it won’t be me … This is the waiting room.
7-3-18
Today, a woman hand-feeds a shark; it pulls her into the water. Four fishermen looking for mako off the New Jersey coast accidentally hook a great white. I sit in a patio furniture display at Lowe’s and tweet photos of me and the furniture. I would go on a date here, I write. I don’t want to go back to my real, empty house. I’ve texted Carl the schedule for my brief trip back to Seattle for a wedding. Just days ago, on his couch, he told me he was happy he’d get to see me again so soon; now, he says he’s busy when I’m free. I send back five texts trying to offer slivers of time when I might be free, but he doesn’t reply. I’m crying on a piece of patio furniture, hiding my face behind plants, invisible to shoppers.
7-4-16
Ninety-nine years ago on this day, the city celebrated the opening of the ship canal. At my bridge tower office, I retch when trying to swallow my lunch, because my gut tells me Carl doesn’t love me. I ask to come over, and he says he wouldn’t mind. After letting me in, he resumes his Craigslist search for RVs he cannot afford and should not buy but might if he gets stressed enough. For what seems like the first time, he asks what I’m writing about, which is spirits. He wants to know, “Are we spirits or do we have spirits inside us?” I sense he has a correct answer in mind.
Twain, The Mysterious Stranger
Satan says, “Usually when I go I merely vanish; but now I will dissolve myself and let you see me do it.”
7-12-16
I show up for our date dressed in my caftan that makes me look like the Virgin Mary. Carl texts me to ask whether I’d be mad if he doesn’t show. He needs some self-care. I say what I’m supposed to say. I stay for the show. Later, he texts, You are on my mind.
7-12-17
In five days, I won’t live in Seattle. Tonight, I’m singing karaoke at the Baranof one last time before moving. My voice soaks the walls; I look down from the stage at the blank slips on tables, the mossy pool table, the regulars crouched over the bar. I’m not ready to go. But my friend Hanna and I have sung until our throats hurt, and anyway, it’s nearly midnight, so we call it a night.
When I approach my car, I see Carl’s Volvo parked right behind it. Auspicious, I think. I wasn’t going to see him again, but maybe the universe has a different idea. I text him, I’m in your neighborhood and I think I’m by your car is that weird.
Twin Peaks: The Return
Everyone is in the sheriff’s station. Diane was stuck in a body that wasn’t hers, but she’s back to herself. Cooper asks her, “Do you remember everything?”
“Yes,” she says, then sees the clock going back over the same second over and over.
7-13-16
There is no reason for dread, but I feel it. I rise from my bed-sweat oval and touch his face. He always seems dead in the morning. I grind espresso. I cook eggs the way he taught me, because he seems to need to be able to teach me something. Twitter says the new Pokémon phone game is good for anxiety, so I begin to play. Pokémon appear against the backdrop of my world. There is a ghost in the kitchen. There is a dead body in my bed.
7-13-17
I’m not sure how long I should wait for his reply, since it’s midnight and I’m standing on the sidewalk next to my car, but a few minutes after I text, he replies. The car isn’t his. His is in the grocery store lot across the street, where he’s buying ice cream. He walks over and confirms that this Volvo is identical to his. “Auspicious,” I say. “Should we get a drink?” Instead of North Star, our old spot across the street, I suggest the bar down the block I’ve been going to infrequently for ten years, where candles drip onto heavy wood tables.
He drinks whiskey; I drink soda. Heading to the bathroom, I see what I’ve never noticed: in the small back room, the floor is decorated with black and white tiles arranged in zigzags and the wall is curtained with red velvet. A tiny statue of Venus hangs caged in the corner; a couch sits between opposing bathroom doors.
“You need to see this,” I tell Carl.
He confirms that he recognizes this as a reproduction of the Black Lodge, but he doesn’t seem to get why it matters. I can’t explain it. It just feels extra-dimensional. I demand we photograph each other sitting on the couches. In the photos, his grin looks wicked, as if he’s got a bad lodge spirit inside him.
We stay until closing. We plan to meet later.
In the evening, at a bar two blocks from my apartment, I touch my thigh to his. He says he’s going to miss me; I’m surprised. I say he should come over, but most of my furniture is gone, so it’ll be a “Norwegian Wood” situation. I see him shutter himself, so I don’t push it.
But he does walk me home. He does come in. He gets into my bed for sleep. I tell him I’m worried I’ll touch him in my sleep. He says he would welcome it.
I remember sex with him as the feeling of true union, our bodies made whole by the tight fit. No. As soon as he’s inside me, I recognize it: the pain I can’t take for long, but want more of, because it gets me close to him.
I’m in the Black Lodge again. I don’t know how I’ll get out.
7-13-18
A few days ago, I finally watched The Prestige, which my friend Hanif had recommended. The film opens with a man in voice-over asking, “Are you watching closely?” No, I was watching Twitter. On the plane to Seattle, I rewatch it. This film is about magicians who hate each other: one wrongs the other, then they have scores to settle. Much of the plot centers upon Borden the magician’s illusion The Transported Man, in which he enters one man-sized cabinet and exits another. The magician Angier wants to copy it. The timeline is deliberately obscured, folded. There’s a vexing subplot about Nikola Tesla and the “real magic”
of his wireless electricity.
Borden has an affair; he loves his wife some days but not others. The magician’s wife says, “I want you to be honest with me. No tricks. No lies. And no secrets. Do you … do you love me?” He replies, “Not today, no.” She hangs herself.
Three times, we hear this magician ask, “Are you watching closely?”
Yes.
Soon after landing, I watch Carl’s tiny music-school students play Nirvana songs to an audience of parents who probably bought Nevermind tapes from Sam Goody. Yesterday, an eclipse; today, he is busy working, but he comes to the bar, touches my back, and smiles. Once the show begins, I try to watch his nervous body on the stage without seeing his fear. It’s me he’s afraid of; it always has been. He knows I face the unrelenting terrors in my mind without escape. He knows I see the way his terrors wrap around him, and he knows I think he’s weak.
Later, we walk the beach. We eat tacos at Cactus. We go to the West Seattle Summer Fest and, on the way to the main stage, stop into the back room of the Maharaja, where the drink specials aren’t fucking around and all the hostile TVs show athletes’ limbs moving fast. We run into my friend Emily outside. They both tell me to meditate, to be more in my body, but I remind them that’s the one place I haven’t been able to get out of. And then Carl and I go north, because I want something to happen.
7-14-17
I make morning eggs and espresso. “I’m sorry I’m so weird,” he says before he leaves. “Goodbye forever.”
Minutes later, he calls because his car was towed. I drive him to impound and we stand in the parking lot, the ship canal behind us, the I-5 bridge looming overhead. He says it’s a fitting goodbye, and I don’t ask why.
About nine hours later, Emily and I go to the West Seattle Summer Fest and, on the way to the main stage, stop into the back room of the Maharaja, where the drink specials aren’t fucking around and all the hostile TVs show athletes’ limbs moving fast. I won’t know for a year that Carl was in this room before I arrived, and maybe it’s the scar of his absence on the air that makes me feel like I need to get out of here. When we return to my car, I notice it’s parked in front of the music school he works at now. “Auspicious,” I tell Emily. Goodbye forever, I tell Carl.
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