Ernest Hemmingway

It is fall.

He sits at his desk, eyes glazed in some far-off thought, face drawn as dark things best left buried begin to stir in the late hour; begin to open their coffins and rise from their beds of grave dirt to haunt the hollow hallways of his mind. His hands are stilled, in their usual position: thin white fingers curled over a black keyboard. They are silent and waiting. They are nervous soldiers, standing at attention for orders that may never come.

And the commander lets out a latent sigh, no longer seeing his walls; this weary creature struggles only to discern the future, or what little he has left of it. And time and time again, his divinations fail, returning blank and empty handed. The crystal balls are cracked, in the wake of his cheerless shadow. The cards are burned. Teacups smashed.

If previous episodes of this nature had any evidence to show, several hours would have passed like this,

were it not for the sudden jab of  pain in his chest.

The tired eyes suddenly flicker from their barren visions, and a pale hand rises, presses against his heart as another blow comes. This time, worse. The breath leaves him, and his shoulders bow inward as his heart flutters wildly like a bird trapped in the maw of a bear-trap.

And he can only see blackness.

It’ll pass, he says to himself. It’ll pass, it’ll pass.
Ignore it.

Breathe.

Following his own demand,  he draws in a shaky lungful of air, but suddenly stops, holding it, as his ribs seize too. A long string of curses erupt in his mind, when a flood of pain takes over.

It stabs, stabs, stabs, with every white-hot heartbeat. It radiates to his back. His shoulders. Through his ribs and up his neck. Like a wildfire, it spreads, eating at every taut muscle and sinew like dry kindling. Trapped in its clutches, he can do nothing but ball his fist against his chest and try to breathe once more.

He turns his head to search for an orange medication bottle - but oh, a terrible mistake, as he hits an absolute burning wall, and his throat closes in; he gasps with the motion and nearly chokes. Rolling his eyes with a frantic frustration, he grits his teeth and tries to stand, groaning with the effort.

The agony brings him to his knees, chair crashing to the floor behind him. His arms wrap around his chest, and his eyes shut tight, a high, pathetic sound escaping his broken throat and clenched jaw. And he waits. Head bowed. Legs crumpled beneath him. Frozen from where he fell, too terrified to try to move again.

He knows when he is beaten.

Several minutes pass, and at length, the grip of pain lessens. Tentatively, carefully, he moves his head, and finds it free of consequence. His heart still rails against its cage, his hand never moving from its aching position, but there is enough freedom now to jump at the opportunity. Dizzy, he climbs to his feet and finds the orange medication bottle mixed in with its many brethren, all in disarray on the coffee table. Shakily, slowly, he removes his hand from his chest only long enough to pry off the cap. He accepts the white pill on his tongue, like a wafer from a priest, and he takes it with a sip of afternoon-warm water, bitterly wishing it were wine.

...He knows that the ache will remain for several hours still, but the seizing muscles finally rest after a handful of minutes, and at last, he exhales heavily, his shoulders dropping with some relief. He presses his face against the cool wood of the chipped coffee table for a moment and just enjoys the act of free breathing, as his heart begins to slow its mad pace.

At length, he remembers his original task - answering a single email - and he returns to his desk, trying to forget about the episode, trying to move on. Thoughts begin to reform, lines connecting from point to point, where they had been interrupted. Threads reunited.The chair is hauled upright, the papers reorganized.

And one sticks out from the rest.

A small yellowed note, once taped to his monitor, some years ago. Scrawled in a calligraphy ink, when he’d gone through that particular artistic phase.

Write hard and clear about what hurts.

He swallows, and moves like a sleepwalker, laying the paper down with gentleness, letting a bitten fingernail linger over the words as though a long forgotten lover’s letter. A familiar forlorn look enters his face. Recognizing the famous quote and the implications its had in his life over the course of a decade.

Sinking into his chair, his hands return to their usual position, standing at the ready.

Alright.

What hurts? he asks himself.

Everything, comes the reply.

But it was too much to tackle as a subject, and his fingers leave their black keyboard to rest at his temples, and brush away the sudden, surprising beginnings of hot tears. Everything was overwhelming. Everything was his harrowing past, his luckless present, and his desolate future. Everything threatened to drown his lungs in dark water and chew through his stomach with horrendous angler-fish teeth.  His anxious heart rallies again, and his breath catches in his chest, this time free of physical pain, but, in pain nonetheless. In a routine mental exercise, he shoves it all away, crams all the noise behind the wrought iron doors in the hallway of his head. He shouts at them until they quiet,

and at last, his eyes are dry.

But.

This is not what Hemmingway meant, he thinks to himself. His head is still in his hands.

There is another note.

He pulls the yellow corner free from the pile of loose drawings, watercolor splashes, and overdue bills. The same inky hand is scrawled here too, and he sighs.

There is nothing to writing.

All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

His mouth twists, and he grips his shoulder still raw with last night’s self-inflicted wounds.

Truth, he says.

He lays the two notes side by side, and his hands are restored for the third time to their keyboard. He bows his head, thinking.

And ultimately,

reluctantly,

the doors are swung open,

the orders given,

and the weary creature is honest with himself.

----------------------------------

don't know if I should own up to this, but. 

true story. 

esophageal and diaphragm spasms are a real bitch. believe you me. 

they often cause heart palpitations and panic attacks.

medication mentioned is hyoscyamine, a muscle relaxer.

quotes are all from ernest hemmingway. 

richter scale

“You…” he began, situating himself squarely in front of me on the couch. “You’ve been in bed so much. Never getting up. And I just.” He looked up at me with the same piercing eyes that I so long ago fell in love with. “I don’t want to be in this relationship anymore,” he stated. Directly. To the point. Without blinking.

My eyes fell and I nodded.

Like scene from a goddamn movie.

Unreal.

He continued talking but I never heard him. I didn’t want to cry. I’d braced myself for this inevitable moment, feeling the initial tremors of this earthquake months and months ago. But. Within seconds, in absolutely shame... I collapsed in rib-seizing sobs, choking on my own breath as everything, every thread that was tentatively holding me together, was snapped in twain.

false promise

There is a grating sound, like a plastic rake dragged over a driveway, as the blade creeps across my skin still raw from the desert. It cuts. Again and again. The blood drips in a thick rivulet from the top of my shoulder down to my elbow. Drips onto the bathroom tile in a tidy red splash.

With dull eyes, I stare. And get lost.

You are one sick puppy, a voice says in my head.

I'm....I know I am, but maybe...maybe if I had help? Maybe if someone cared? Maybe I could stop, another voice argues meekly. ...Please.

And there is discordant laughter.

Minutes? Hours? A day? passes.

I come out of my catatonic state, and brush my hand over eyes, brimming with hot tears. All at once, its back again, in the usual overwhelming tide. The fear. The hurt. The chaos.

The pain.

I stir like a sleepwalker, and reach for the rubbing alcohol.

The breath hisses between my teeth, and I grimace with a cold fury as I scrub the congealed mess away, uncovering the fresh wounds again. They ooze once more, awakening. I hold them closed with one hand, and turn on the shower with the other. Awkwardly, I kick off my clothes.

And with my head hung low, eyes dry as water poured down my face, watching the pink rivulets wash off my body and into the drain.

Its a lot of pink.

Can’t keep doing this.

The laughter comes again, recognizing that age-old, false promise.

8/06 A transitional vision

He shut the car door with a grimace, sinking into the familiar grey cloth seat with something of a repressed sigh.

It was another day that had not gone well; hadn’t been easy. But he was here again. He had survived. It was something a skill set he’d learned over many years, this survival thing. Of keeping his head down, and working hard. Taking jobs when he could find them.

This is no different, he told himself.

Except it was.

His face, his name, his voice had changed. The way society treated him, if they figured out the truth, had been the hardest thing to overcome. It hurt less now than it initially did, but there were still stings from time to time that lingered. Comments people made, usually unwittingly, but they stayed with him. He did his best to build up a thicker skin and ignore it, but it was a hard process that took time. Today was one of those days where a comment had dug itself right into his heart, and its barbs took hold, infecting the young man with pain and a quiet rage.

“You’re a pretty boy,” the older woman had said.

“Ah. Thank you,” he murmured.

“No, I mean that,” the woman pressed, tilting her head to one side. “You kinda  look like a girl.”

“Mm?” Milo countered. Too afraid to open his mouth to make words; too afraid the bubbling anger always just below the surface  would lash out at this insensitive grandma.

“Why do you look like a girl?” the woman asked, before her family was at her side, taking her to a new part of the store. “That man is a woman,” she told them. And they laughed, and threw backward glances at the worker,  now with his head hung low, cleaning windows.

I’m not passing well enough to fool an old woman, he thought bitterly. What am I doing wrong?

Milo shook his head to himself, and started the car, starting the drive home. His music blared as loudly as a teenager’s and he grinned sardonically.

Home was a collection of lost boys - a large house on the edge of a field, a social worker’s experiment, always renting rooms to misfits who needed places to stay. In the spring and fall, a couple kind farmers would stop by looking for hands, and the work was hard, but good. Despite Milo’s small build and varied health problems, he often joined a farmer and relished the early sunrises, stacking hay. Feeding chickens. Looking after horses. He couldn’t carry or lift as much as the other men, but what he lacked in strength, he made up for in knowledge, his pursuit in medical sciences often enabling him to lend a hand when an animal fell ill.

As much as he enjoyed this life, there were moments when reminders from the west coast would return and something inside would let loose an empty pang. It was a familiar twinge, something he grew up feeling repeatedly, having moved several times as a kid; missing his old life. This was the same, never fully happy in one home; lived in too many places, found too many lovely things to simply be at peace in any one location. At times it drew him to keep moving, keep finding new places to live, like a gypsy's blood thudded in his heart.

I am forever running away, he scrawled on his wall late one night.

Despite the quiet mornings on farmland, life at the house was often loud, and he felt that he was rather old to be living a “dorm”-like experience; yet considering his only other option was to live out of his car again? Milo stayed, paid his dues, and appreciated the hell out of his bed.

Some of the kids here were drug addicts, some came from abusive families. Some were more like him; they lounged with pubescent sort of awkwardness as their testosterone, or in some cases, estrogen, took hold, shaped their bodies over the course of several months. He didn’t always know all of their names, but he kept tabs on them, made sure they were alright. Every once in a while, one of them would confide in him and he’d make tentative friends. Everyone here was friendly enough - they waved as he came in the door, and he smiled back, speaking as little as he had to, taking a beer from the fridge before going up his room.

Milo was thankful they understood that he needed his privacy.

He took a swig of his beer as he sat down on the edge of his bed, pulling his desk closer to him, looking over the last notes he’d written before going to sleep last night. His refurbished laptop hummed happily as his fingers flitted over the keyboard, picking up where he’d left off.

Behind him, chaos reigned in his room. Textbooks lay open, haphazard on another, bigger desk in the corner. Half finished paintings were stacked against his closet. Discarded clothes lay in small piles. And the walls were a sheer collage of polaroid photos, drawings, watercolor splatters.

Rounds of  schizophrenic and PTSD episodes in his youth had left him scarred in more ways than one; the photographs on the walls told these stories in varied artistic fashions. They spoke of the pain of his past, loud and clear; he was never far from difficult reminders. It was perhaps another facet of his self-destructive personality speaking, not allowing him to ever forget.

The scars on his shoulders, hands, legs, and chest certainly never did.

The warmth of the late summer air suddenly seemed stifling to him, and he turned on a fan, opening his window that looked out onto the fields. He paused a moment, fingers exploring the stubble on his chin, watching little specks of light flicker on and off below, in the yard. Fireflies, coming in from the tall grasses. He smiled a happy memory from days long gone and withdrew, instead now moving to his second desk. He unbuttoned his shirt as he went, removing it, and then pulling off the v-neck underneath. Milo ran a distracted hand over his sore chest, fingers pausing at the puckered scars still healing.

His tired eyes went to a row of photos by his door; the faces of the family members who never spoke to him, the friends he barely kept in touch with. The man he had loved, and still did. His loneliness threatened to swallow him whole. At times he still hated his body; still unsure whether he’d made the right choice; still expected the husky young woman’s voice to come from his throat when he spoke - but that voice was gone, dead. Replaced with something deeper that enabled him to further sink into the wallpaper of society  -

-except when little old ladies tried to pry into his life.

“Why do you look like a girl?” she had asked.

Who the fuck just straight-up ASKS that? he pondered angrily.

He heaved a sigh, his head falling into his hands as the familiar hum, like the static of a forgotten radio left on, buzzed in his mind. Old habits, familiar cravings left him clenching his fists, alone in the night. Thoughts of several more beers, or a razor blade came to light, and he wrestled with his demons as he had time and time again.

Taking several deep breaths, he moved back to his laptop and composed himself. His eyes drifted once more out the window and he watched the fireflies again.

All that was left for him was to achieve the dream: to have the white coat, to care for patients. He hoped that drive was enough to sustain him for many more years; keep him warm, where his previous relationships and friendships had failed to, severed, turning their backs on him once he took the step to having the altered face, voice, and name.

Milo’s gyspy heart beat on, and he resumed writing his paper, ever searching for his peace that was always out of reach.

__________________________________

therapist asked me to explore what I felt like my gender stuff could become, in the future. 7 to 10 years from now.
so I wrote this.
best case scenario I can imagine for myself.

hard truths come to light.

but.
I think I like the name Milo.

our talks, my infested heart

and the dilapidated menagerie

it sits away from the road.

it rots in the forest.

I take you by the hand, trembling,

and guide you with quiet steps

into the heart of the matter.

and one by one, I take these rusted chains

open doors exposed to the elements,

swing them on screaming hinges,

and take out each beast,

each grinning demon,

for you to examine.

their jaws, their teeth -

watch, they thirst for more bloodshed.

wary, you must be

when I take you to this place

else they may eat you up

as they have devoured my body, many times over.

with great care, I handle them.

make false promises, wheedle, and plead

until I can get them back into their cages.

and you, with a look of shock,

finally understand where the pain all radiates from;

at once, you understand my sleepless nights

and the dilapidated menagerie,

which sits away from the road,

makes a rustic home for my weary head.

I’ve known nothing else, no other song

except the rattle of these chains.
and my heart grows as dark, as thirsty as these monsters.

but I often find, late nights, that I am bound
unable to call out to any companion
or reach for your hand

and I shiver in my cage,
trapped like my own damn demons,

waiting for a dawn that may never come.

therapist referral

Nightmare driven.

Demon infested.
Iron clad with

clenched teeth,

I sat rooted to the floor  -

thread and fibre of every muscle straining  

in clear agony

when you knocked, once, quietly.

And you searched for my face, clear-eyed.

You cleaned my wounds,

took my hands in your own.

Your small fire, kind warmth

melted me away

and all at once

I stood blinking, dazed, awake

in a cold mountain stream.

I was...

myself again.

Casting off the bitter armor,

I began my long trudge homeward.

comes with the territory; an open letter concerning the genderfluid life

There is a gap that not many see.

A place between the binary countries.

A frontier explored by few.

I walk this narrow, winding path; a precarious valley and boundary that separates the two sexes - neither male nor female, something new, without title. And I stray, and I certainly stumble, pausing only to tend to cuts and bloodied knees from the jagged rocks on either side. I come up gasping for air like drowning sailor, when suddenly washed away and lost in the tides from the two sectors. I awake on strange shores, bruised and exhausted; one day I find myself in a frock and heels, and the next, a suit and tie.  Either way I am a foreigner, wary of the locals, and tender and sore on all accounts. I climb for many weary nights to return to my beloved middle ground. Above all, I prefer my pilgrim’s journey of solitude, in the canyon between, at peace with my own manner, speech, and dress.

I clutch my glass of wine in the early hours of the morning like a life preserver, alone and afraid.

On the rare days that I accomplish to walk the narrow, winding path, the devil on my shoulder laughs with maniacal glee at the public’s confused expressions, and the way they trip over their words - ever unsure of how to address me. But if asked to explain myself, or outright chided for my pell-mell appearance, the soft-shell heart within me bleeds for days. The children stare with widened eyes, and whisper behind their hands to parents who do not directly gaze out of shy, conservative politeness as I pass them on the streets, in my amalgamation of genderless clothing.

You question, and define with your drawn brow and darkened eyes; your shouts that ring out in the parking lots, or the way you avoid contact with me altogether. Were you ever given the task to find a label for everyone in the world? Then no, do not take this upon yourself, as it is not your job in life. I beg of you to only see me as another human - not as a trespasser into your side of the gender fence.

Lay down your arms.

There is a gap that not many see, or hear, or know.

A place between the binary countries, sometimes under fire.

A frontier explored by few, but frowned upon by many.

It is at once a nightmare, and the freshest taste of freedom I have ever known.

I shoulder my pack and continue on the narrow, winding path.