For years, I was all messed up.
I could see the scene inside the plane.
I could see the scene outside.
And I had thoughts of flying.
Then thoughts of falling.
Then thoughts of crashing to the ground.
There was a time I thought of other things.
I could become so gripped by things.
Like for a time I thought of underwater.
I mean I was gripped by thoughts of being underwater.
Because my father once said, when I shouldn’t have been listening, What if all the earth’s water were drained.
Because my father once said, when I was too young to deal with it, It would be wild.
He said there’d be ships and planes and cars and bodies.
It made me afraid for years.
I was afraid to drive across bridges.
I was afraid the bridges would collapse.
Then the car would sink.
The car would slowly fill with water.
And my body would fill until it burst.
For years I would replay this scene.
Until there was another scene.
And then it was this other scene.
And the words they used to describe it.
And the girl I knew who was in it.
She was coming back from study abroad.
I was not allowed to study abroad.
This is not the time to talk about this.
This is not the time to talk about me.
But my father was to blame for this.
My father preferred I went nowhere.
And I went nowhere for many years.
At some point I got over it.
Because at some point I had no choice.
Because one gets older and one has places one needs to be.
So I bought a ticket to be somewhere.
It doesn’t matter where I was going.
What matters is I was on a plane.
I was in the air.
The flight attendant was at my row.
Her skirt made a sound like paper.
She said, Are you all right.
I knew I didn’t seem all right.
And I knew it was wrong not to seem all right.
Because my father was often not all right.
And I took after him in many ways.
No one wanted to see the ways in which I did.
So I pressed my face to the window.
I could see our shadow on the backs of clouds.
It was perfectly plane shaped, our shadow.
And as we went higher,
And when our shadow was smallest,
And when there was no shape, but just a point,
And when there was no point,
The flight attendant said, Are you all right.
She was wearing too much makeup.
It was orange and stopped where the face stopped being a face.
There was a time I wore too much makeup.
It was sophomore year I wore too much.
It was part of my performance then.
I was not a nice girl.
I was a very nice girl.
I was not very nice.
There was a way I was.
There was what I wore.
And I danced wildly for the guys I liked.
I danced obscenely one could say.
I was just a bit obscene back then.
By which I mean my needs were just a bit obscene.
It was something one didn’t fully get over.
It was something that came from being a girl.
So there was no point in her asking, Are you all right.
The right thing to ask was, How can I help you.
The right thing to ask was, What can I get you.
The right thing to ask was, What exactly do you need.
It was hard to know exactly what I needed.
There were too many things going on.
There was my body inside a plane.
There was my mind inside my body.
And the mess of that.
Listen.
Sophomore year was years before.
I hung out with the girl back then.
She had two blond streaks.
Her initials were G.O.D.
I thought at first she would be too cool.
But she was not, as it turned out, too cool.
She was cool, but it turned out I was too.
Because I knew how to be from watching girls.
And I knew, as well, from watching guys.
There was a way they stood there.
And the girls just stood there.
And what they wore.
We knew what to wear.
We wore schoolgirl skirts from the Goodwill.
We wore guy’s sweaters and black tights.
The Goodwill was on the corner of North and Harford, and no one wanted to be there.
People went there because they were either poor or cool.
The poor people bought serious clothing.
We watched a woman buy a wedding dress there.
We weren’t laughing as she held the dress up to herself.
We weren’t laughing that she was by herself and holding up this tattered, yellowed dress.
We were poor too, but we were not the kind of poor that counted as poor.
We were the other kind, the student kind.
We were the kind that bought shit fast, then ran up North.
North was dangerous for girls like us.
There were no trees.
There was endless brick.
There was broken glass.
There were car alarms.
There were guys who wanted to fuck you up.
They wanted to get you hooked on things.
We were already hooked on things.
We weren’t hooked, but we were something like it.
The guys said, Sister.
They said, Let’s see that smile.
They said, Let’s see that ass.
They said, You make me hard.
We said, Fuck you.
We had other guys.
We had guys we liked.
They were students like us.
They lived in small apartments like us.
They took useless classes like us.
We took philosophy because they took it too.
Though we didn’t understand philosophy.
We passed notes in class on how bored we were.
And how hungry we were.
How over it we always were.
Nights, we all went to the bar.
We got fucked up and stood around.
There was a guy at the bar we didn’t like.
He called himself the mystic.
He wore a hat made of old socks sewn together.
He was an asshole, this guy, and only he called himself the mystic.
We called the guy the misfit.
He would put himself into a trance.
We called the trance the so-called trance.
We tried to ignore him when he rolled his eyes back into his head.
We said, So what, when he predicted things that didn’t matter.
Like what song would come on.
Or who would walk through the door.
And the misfit would say some shit to us.
Like fuck you or something.
And the girl and I would laugh.
But this was years before and who cares about this asshole.
Let me get back to the subject.
Let me get the subject back.
The flight attendant.
I have lost her orange face.
I have lost the papery sound of her skirt.
And the look she gave.
She needed me to seem all right.
And I wanted to seem all right.
But I was thinking the scene I often thought.
And thinking the words they used.
They described
it as a fireball.
They described it as a spectacle.
I didn’t know how to deal with it then.
I tried to deal with it then.
I tried to deal with it by going nowhere.
That was my father’s joke.
I would stop by on my way to class.
I would bring him things to eat.
I would watch him lying on the couch.
I would stand there waiting for something.
I was always waiting for something.
And my father would say, Get over it.
You need to get over it, he would say.
You need to get over her, he would say.
Then, Where are you going, he would say, as I turned to leave.
Nowhere fast, he would say, as I opened the door.
He would laugh his ass off from the couch.
He loved his joke.
But the real joke was I would return to him.
And I would return again.
I would return again.
Until there was nothing to return to.
Just my father’s empty house.
It was then I bought a ticket.
I got my body onto a plane.
I got my mind into my body.
I was trying to prove something, I suppose.
But earlier, in the airport, I thought to turn back.
I was afraid and thought to go back.
So when a guy said, Do you need help, I said, Yes.
He was missing a tooth, and I never liked to see this.
It reminded me of something from when I was a kid, a guy or something I shouldn’t have seen, and then, as a kid, it made me sad.
Though it should have been funny when I was a kid, some guy on North just lying there all fucked up.
It should have been funny, some broken guy on a flattened box, a guy my father and I saw on our way to the house.
My father thought it was funny.
Some guy more broken than we could ever be.
More messed up than we could ever be.
My father and I stepped over this guy.
My father laughed.
We walked into the house.
And when the guy in the airport said, How can I help, I said, I don’t know.
He said, I can carry your bag, and I said, I can carry my bag.
He said, What do you need, and I said, I need a lot of things.
I need help, I said.
I’m in need, I said.
I reached for his arm.
He said, I can carry your bag.
There are too many guys in this story.
For a story about a girl, that is.
For a story about being a girl, that is.
This guy was missing a tooth, and nobody cares.
The guy on North, nobody cares.
My father, please.
And the guy from the bar.
He was not a mystic.
There are no mystics.
There are people who know shit and people who don’t.
And the people who know shit only know shit because they’re watching.
And the people who don’t only don’t because they’re not.
The night before she left we’d gone to the bar.
And the girl and I were dancing.
And the mystic was watching us dance.
And a guy I liked was watching us dance.
I can remember feeling a certain way.
I felt like a star.
Like an actual star.
Like just before the supernova.
And I wanted time to stop right there.
It was obscene, I know, to want time to stop.
Obscene to love this hard a specific point in time.
But it was more obscene that one couldn’t stop it.
That no one really was in charge.
The flight attendant couldn’t save me.
She couldn’t even save herself.
Not in the event of a spectacle.
We would all just be the spectacle.
So the right thing to ask was, How could one possibly be all right.
I had no answer.
I have no answer now.
When I asked if I could study abroad, my father laughed and said, No way.
He said, Get lost.
And how terrible not getting what I wanted.
Terrible the cigarette stuck to my father’s lip.
The windows like a mean face behind him.
He was still fucked up from the night before.
And I stood there for a while thinking he might change his mind.
But eventually he put out his cigarette.
He fell asleep on the couch.
I left and walked to class.
And the guys on North said, Sister.
They said, Come back here.
They said, Come back.
They said, Come back.
And so what if I had.
Class that day was so boring.
I didn’t understand philosophy.
There was no point in understanding.
I just sat there thinking what I often thought.
The bridge collapsing.
The car sinking.
Water rushing in through cracks.
I was going nowhere.
The girl was on her own.
I would tell her after class.
You’re on your own, I would say.
And the look on her face.
There are better things to think about.
Like dancing the night before she left.
We were all fucked up, and I felt like a star.
And the guy I liked would spin me around.
And we would leave the bar and go for a ride.
I would tell him, Drive fast, and he would.
Then one thing, another.
My head in his lap.
His hand on my head.
I was too nice a girl.
I was not a nice girl.
I was my father’s daughter.
And what does that even mean.
For a long time after, I watched the sky.
It was the sun and it was the moon.
It was birds flying in the shape of a V.
It was clouds in the shapes of everything else.
And nothing happened, except once.
That day I was in class.
I was sitting alone by a window.
I heard the plane before I saw it.
I heard the roar it made.
I heard the roar get louder.
It sounded like something broken.
Or like something breaking down.
Then I saw the plane emerge from the clouds.
It was flying sideways.
It was flying too low.
It was coming straight for the window.
I knew no one else was watching.
That I was the only one who cared.
And so I thought some words.
It was like I was praying.
Like I was praying to someone.
Or praying to something.
I was thinking, Please, and, Please, and, Please.
But then the plane just shot across the sky.
The roar died out.
And I was sitting in the classroom.
I was looking out the window.
On some days I imagine the moment just before.
I imagine seeing a flash.
And on some days, I imagine the moment just after.
I imagine the plane as a rain cloud.
I imagine it spinning until it bursts.
Then I imagine flying through clouds.
Then falling through clouds.
And the ground coming closer.
A town growing clearer.
Then the town.
And then.
It doesn’t matter.
All that matters is it was night.
And it was cold.
It was night.
And it was co
ld.
It was night.
And it was cold.
Just stop.
Outside the window now were stars.
And there were lights below, as well.
The flight attendant was waiting for me.
She was waiting for me to be all right.
But I would never be what she needed.
So I had to perform.
I had to lie.
I had to say, I’m all right.
And I forced myself to look all right.
And I forced it harder.
And forced it harder.
Until she went away.
And I’m sorry, but I lied to you too.
When I asked if I could study abroad, my father said, Go.
He said, Get lost.
But I stood there thinking he’d change his mind.
Because I knew I couldn’t go.
Because I couldn’t leave my father.
I mean I couldn’t leave him lying there.
He was more broken than you could ever be.
More messed up than you will ever be.
But there was a time he was all right.
I was a kid, and he took me on a trip.
He took me to the beach.
It was the only trip we ever took.
Days, I swam in the water.
My father sat on the sand.
And on our last day, we watched a sunset.
And my father looked out at the water.
And he said, What if all the earth’s water were drained.
And at first I laughed.
But then I thought.
And then I thought.
Listen.
The girl’s initials were not G.O.D.
They were just G.D.
I never knew her middle name.
But whatever.
G.D.
G. fucking D.
I am not a mystic.
There are no mystics.
There are people who watch.
And there are people like me.
But that night at the bar, the misfit was on.
He went into his so-called trance.
And he was right about who walked in.
And he was right about every song.
And when he said the girl’s name,
And when he reached for her arm,
And when he said, Don’t go,
And when I looked at her face,
I should have said something.
I should have done something.
But I was not very nice.
I was not a nice girl.
I just left the bar with the guy I liked.
I told him, Drive fast, and he did.
I’m sorry, but I was my father’s daughter.
I did not know how to save you.
SIGNIFIED
Because words are about desire and desire is about the guy who filled my two front tires when one was low. And desire is about the guy who cleaned my windshield as the other, below me, filled.
And there’s the guy who pours foam onto my coffee in the shape of a heart and I, each time he pours, so slow, think, Jesus.
Spectacle: Stories Page 8