Black
ruffled dress, dark hat and ribbons flowing, one fishnet sleeve on the
left arm, the right as bare as all sin, and hands as
liquid love. She steps into the fading rays of an overcast day looking
out over the baked denizens of aural delight who appear for one show
and witness another in the towering goddess and her shorter white escort.
The pig-tailed delight grows tall, tall to heaven, and fills the room
when there are no walls. Smiles as she mingles in the crowd of
onlookers and pauses when one of them wants a memento. They all watch
her walk along the path between the bodies, elegantly, and so easily
that it makes them wish they could be as tall as a goddess and
hopefully half as beautiful in a tattered Victorian rag. They never
will, not like her, and she is blessed in this fact.
The trick to the grand show is in the crinkle. No
one notices, but that's where it is. She looks down at a child as she
looks down at a man and the crinkle at the corner of her mouth catches them all by surprise.
The goddess smiles down upon them and they thank her silently. It makes
her like them and above them, above them all.
A little girl waves and the goddess slows time as
she waves back, left and right and right and left, fingers flowing as
threads in space, and she is lost. Visions of blinding sunlight and
starshine filling her eyes. A kingdom, far from here, far from now, and
she knows that she is meant to be there. She can almost reach it, high
as she is. It is there, and she can smell the burning embers of the
warm fire that she must deserve for being here, and being beautiful and tall and elegant.
She does not just parade herself--no, she doesn't.
She brings such joy into the their hearts, Kevin. She does... she
wishes you could see their eyes. They love her so much and you don't
understand, you dont. She presents the possibilities of endless
beauty and in her steady lumbering stride she brings them all into her
bubble, into her world. She's so good to them and they don't demand
anything of her because they love her even if they don't say it...
A mere thundering boom cracks the bubble, and a little girl's attention is called to the stage back on the world's surface.
Performers--men with guitars and women on
tamborines--on stage to begin their show where the crowd begins to form
upon them. The grandest woman walks beside them, unnoticed and a
distant memory. A photograph, a smile, a caress of a hand--her remains
among the people who dwelled in her space for a time and lifted her to
great heights. Her divinity crushed by so much interference and mic
checks.
She dawdles along, out of view, and her companion
closely in tow until they come upon a barren dirt-topped layover behind
the food service tents.
"Hey," says the goddess. "How's your leg?"
The shorter white lovely reaches down, undoing
straps one and the other, then lowers herself further until she is mere
human. She smiles up at the goddess and touches upon her thigh.
"It's not too bad, just needed time off the poles."
"Yea, well don't push it."
She mustn't, or risk not returning to her place in heaven.
"Yea I know. I'll keep off it this week, I
promise." The woman, a deceptively small blonde beneath a curtain of
powder, gathers her legs and walks toward the parking lot as she waves
goodbye.
"You want to come?" she adds. "I'm meeting Steph for pizza at Tino's."
"No," says the goddess, "no, I'm okay. I need to go to the store and pick up a few things."
"Okay. Call me tomorrow?"
The black-ruffled goddess nods and says goodbye.
The sun rolls along the glass dome and the above
the thunder gets louder, and the cheers fill the air all around. The
goddess' strands fall free and slide across her face when the wind hugs
her and urges her to stay where it can be with her. She glances out
across the top of the tents and sees a girl perched atop a
young man's shoulders, arms high in the air. Beyond is a woman
in a long coat coaxing a high-pitched screech from smoke-choked lungs.
The goddess tells the wind "no" before loosening
the straps and lowering herself. The noises below envelop her further,
all that she is.
Smiles and screams for the siren usurper.
Dirt gathers along the fringes of her dress; the
woman in the black dress yawns. What a glorious dream... what a
glorious day. Her feet ache and the red sheen upon her face reminds her
what she forgot. She enters an empty tent and lifts her black bag from
a pile. The black dress, and the hat, and single fishnet sleeve come
off. Torn jeans and a t-shirt that says "Tide" then adorn her and make
her more human than she cares to consider. The ribbons in her hair fall
to the ground as she shakes her curls loose and sighs through her nose.
Beer in a cooler keeps her company until she must leave. Bitter and
calming, like a sweet embrace from a hated friend.
When the day ends the workers dismantle the stage
and ravel the cords criss-crossing across the grounds where hoppers and
dancers and arm flailers bounced to the music and lived for the moment
when everything for a while... for a while. And as life resumes and the
future beckons the revelers depart and
leave behind the sense of wonder and freedom inside the beer cans on
the grass and the rumpled paper bags.
The woman in torn jeans and a t-shirt exits the
tent and she is Mel. No longer the goddess... no longer above. Long
aluminum poles in hand, she exits the tent and waves to familiars on
her way to the parking lot. Her brown Honda Accord with the faded hood
and red tape for a taillight does not beckon nor carry her on wings of
golden feathered silk to the birthplace of smiles and the eternal
loving embrace. She drives among people, and cars, and dirty little
animals, until she stops at a store near her home.
"That'll be three-fifty," says the clerk.
A bottle of sunblock in a bag on the front seat as
she drives to her apartment over the hill on Geary, near the Presidio,
where her boyfriend Kevin finds her tired and not in the mood.
"C'mon Mel. Look at you. I don't get why you keep
doing this. You come back tired and depressed every time. If this
stilts shit is so much fun why're you always like this when you get
back?"
"I know you don't get it. There are lots of things you don't get, Kev."
"Look, I don't want to get into a fight about this
again. You do it until you realize there's no point. I'll support
you..." her hair in his hand, "as long as you like." He kisses her neck
and she turns away towards the television; commercial for laundry soap.
"There's always a point. Good or bad, there's always a point."
"Don't get poetic on me now Mel, then I'll really
be lost." He sits beside her and holds her hand. "You know I care about
you babe. I just want you happy. Is it too much to ask to see you
happy?"
She crinkles the corner of her mouth and allows him to kiss her,
softly, and as he begins to move his hand up along her thigh his lips
move up along her jaw, towards her ear, she pulls away. He pleads and he charms; she relents. Mel
stares past his glistening ear and dark hair and she notices that a
stain on the ceiling is shaped like a dog paddling along a lake,
probably looking for a stick that was never there.