“You know nothing.”
“I know that the past is holding you hostage from a present that is shining with hope.”
I stand and begin to walk. He lets me take a few steps before walking towards me. I sense him. In the cold winter day, I sense his heat. This is crazy.
“You can walk away, but you know I’m right. You haven’t left your past behind you. You carry it with you, your shadow, your greatest motivator.”
“Why did you come into my life?”
“So you can move forward freely.”
I sit in my empty apartment after Max accompanied me back home. I’m out of sorts. That dream from earlier marking me. I felt so desperate to save that young woman. She wasn’t conscious but she was alive. Why wouldn’t she wake up? Why was everyone so ready to attack her? To possess her? It seemed as if she was already marked with this role in life. The role of victim. I wanted so badly to protect her, but no matter where I turned we were rejected, left again to find refuge.
It wasn’t me they wanted, it was her. So there I was carrying an undressed woman I didn’t know, or maybe I did, and running like a mad person asking for help from anyone with a kind face.
If I was also that girl, the one so wanted, what does that say about me? How can I save myself if I need saving? How are you every part of a dream yet have no idea what that dreams means in the real world? Why am I so obsessed with this dream?
I need to stop thinking. I’ve become philosophical these last few weeks. I liked it better when I thought of nothing but controlling. I liked it better when I was keeping to myself and dancing under the red night sky.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Bale says as I say goodbye to him.
“Really, Bale?”
“Really, babe.” He puts his arm around me and leads the way.
Max came in tonight for a brief moment with the announcement that he is going to Germany tomorrow for a few days. Why he didn’t tell me yesterday or this morning is beyond me. So like always, I told him I’ll be right here when he comes back. And he looked at me with somber eyes and responded by nodding his head.
“What’s going on with you and the German?”
“Nothing. He comes in, talks, tries to understand me and leaves.”
“He walks you home.”
“You’re walking me home. What’s going on with us?”
Bale gives me a pointed, no bull stare.
“Nothing Bale. Nothing. He’s too good.”
“S, you deserve too good. You’ve had enough of too bad.”
“I’m not a victim. So I’ve been dealt a shitty hand, it’s made me stronger.”
“It’s made you lonelier. You wanted your revenge on the male race. You got it by taking care of that shit bastard. Now let go and move on.”
Revenge. Revenge is an ugly thing. It makes us feel entitled to judge others. It makes us believe that we have the authority to punish another for his flaws. Revenge is a never-ending cycle of pride competing with pride. Once we attain it, we want more. No punishment is great enough for the pain caused on us.
“We come from the same thread. You got your revenge as well and you’re here, managing the career of a prostitute and hiding behind the room that exposes the core of the business.”
“I’m not hiding.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“You know my situation is different. I had my soulmate.” The sadness that washes over Bale at this moment is greater than the one that shadows him daily.
“You’re still hiding. You’re still bitter. You still haven’t let go.”
“You’re calling the kettle black.”
“Look at you using American expressions,” I try to joke.
“Don’t change the subject. Max. He cares. No man would waste time and money like he does to come in and just talk. Tell him.”
“The two of us are fucked up.”
“You have a chance to change that,” he presses.
The part of me that Max awakened last night wants to believe Bale. The part of me that lives in this moment doesn’t. Meeting him has stirred me. Is this what certain people do to us? They shake us up and toss us around until we are forced to face the shambles within us. I already faced the shambles and rebuilt my life from the leftovers. I fought. I won. I don’t need to be pointed at and told to make a better life. Why do I feel like I miss who I was then?
Of course Bale took the time to talk to me the night before I was going to have a day off. My entire run this morning was full of wandering thoughts. My time cleaning my small apartment was full of visits from my past. And that stupid dream continues to turn in my mind. The more I think about it, the more I remember. The building I was seeking refuge in was my old elementary school. Why would my subconscious mind take me there? Why would no one help me?
I don’t remember ever feeling desperate while I was there. Ugh! Stop! Just stop thinking. I squeeze my head as if I’m juicing an orange.
I live with the remorse. I live with the fear. When I’m outside the window, life is a free for all. I can’t let my guard down. Alone one can survive. It’s when you fill the ship with more that it slowly begins to sink.
Focus. That’s what I need. Focus on the night which I love and the work I enjoy. Go back to that. Go back to the nights my black heart could dance to its own beat and my body would enjoy the pleasures that accompanied it.
After the uproar with Max and Bale, all I’m left with is blankness. A defense mechanism. Feel nothing. Think nothing. Do nothing. I’ve shut down. It’s what I do best. So I turn myself off like a robot. I turn into a void being that walks around town careless of anyone’s thoughts or actions.
Caring binds you to a person. It gives you something to be responsible for. The connections I try to avoid. There’s nothing to love but two fools who are not content with being with themselves. Love is a way of covering up your lack of confidence. It makes you feel better to know that you are loved by someone than to be content alone. If I am loved, I am important. No, you love yourself and make yourself important. The problem with people is the dependency on others to be happy.
I don’t need to be with Max in order for my life to be good. My life is good. I like how it is at the moment, flaws and all. I understand I am not perfect, but I do what I can with what I have. I moved forward the way I knew how to, and I don’t need some charming German to come in and psychoanalyze me in order for me to find why I’m angry. His words, not mine.
I was young when I met John. Too young to know the difference between healthy and not. I was oblivious to the world. A girl that had stars for eyes and ears that heard the beauty spoken to them. John knew what to say. He painted the perfect picture with his words and drew me in—a deer straight into the hunter’s sights.
When you’re young, you ignore warning signs. You don’t know what they are and continue to move forward until one day it hits you in the face and you find yourself stuck in place. Shock fills you. Truth is revealed. Deception boils. And your self-worth is flushed. After far too long, I refused to continue living like that and I did what I needed to survive. You know how the story goes.
I can’t imagine having ended up in a better place than this one, but at the same time I hate this place for having to be a refuge from my memories. Or it was, until recently. Now those memories caught up.
It’s time to forget again. It’s something I do. It’s something I do well. I block things out—memories, people, experiences—if I no longer want them to be a part of my life. Poof. Gone. My mind holds no recollection of it. Except it is a part of me. Because when I least expect it, those memories resurface. The people enter my mind in such detailed form that you’d think they’re standing in front of me. Maybe it’s self-preservation; maybe it’s torture.
I begin to play my beat in my mind to begin the process for tonight. Seduction. That’s all I need to do. Keep it simple. Make money, satisfy clients, forget. Build that exterior that used to keep people out.
The snow has c
overed most of the city today. I dance for my reflection, rarely paying attention to the few people that walk in front of it. All that matters is if they come in or not. I stare into my eyes in the window, dark and intense. I understand why I intrigue people. My expression is set flawlessly. My body speaking for me. It’s a combination of, Enter at your own risk, and You know you want a bite of that apple. Tempting and fearful, what people look for in life. Intolerable pleasure. The mentality that it’s never enough and it’s too much to handle. I give them that. More than just the physical satisfaction, I give men the confidence they crave. They want a show and I make them the star.
As I walk home, I’m aware that it’s a new moon. Darkness fills the night sky with just the twinkling of faraway stars from another galaxy. I count the stars that fill the void of space. I wonder how many of them orbit the midnight sky alone. The moon is staying to herself for a few nights. I wonder if she thinks about the sun, or if it’s just natural to have him in her path. Maybe I am more like the moon. Maybe I enjoy hiding myself in the darkness of reality, only exposing parts of me until the world is ready to see all of me. The question is, am I ready for the world to see all of me?
I like living and staying to myself. I like the silence that accompanies it. The noise and debauchery cause internal chaos. They rock me out of orbit. I like my inner world and the peace it brings to me. My vision of life is honest and raw but knowing that life is the way it is leaves no room for disillusionment.
As much satisfaction as it felt to finish off John, I also carry the burden of having lived a life that called for that. A life that brought in so much bitterness that I felt the need to kill in order to survive. A life so full of disgust that everything I knew as a child was dispersed and I was left with a hole in my chest filled with hatred for the beings responsible for me being here.
The more the thoughts spew in my mind, the more fuel I add to them. This is what I need. The reminder of what brought me here to surge through me so I can cut the unrealistic ideas that there is hope for those of us that have a lifeless heart beating in our chests. This will cut the connections I’ve made and take me back to the road I was walking on before I met Max.
Max.
I drift to sleep with his name being the last thing on my thoughts.
Max returns with the peeking of the moon.
“You got your rhythm back.” He leans against the dresser, his coat still on.
“I’ve been going to the same tune for many years.”
“It had changed recently. It’s back.” He crosses his arms over his chest and analyzes me.
“How was Germany?”
“Cold.”
“You always say that.”
“Because it’s true.” I look him over from his feet crossed at the ankles to his mussed hair. That’s when I notice a beanie in his hand. “You’re hiding again,” he adds
“I’m at full exposure.”
“The glass may be transparent, but all it does is mirror what people want to see from you.”
“They see what I provide.”
“You can fool them but not me. I walk you home at night. I’ve seen you outside this dollhouse.”
“I don’t play dress up like you assume.”
“But you do. You put on these clothes,” he waves his hand towards me, “and dance for a group of people who watch, transfixed with this image they have of you. It’s all make believe.”
“Are you done?”
“Not even close, but I’ll leave it for later. You have work to do.”
Today Max is obstinate. He’s shown me so many different sides of him in the weeks I’ve known him, yet he’s full of good. Why does he continue to come back? Day after day, trip after trip, he returns to me. I haven’t given him anything but my body. He’s the one that has given me memories better than the ones stored in my mind.
He says my past is my warden. Is he worth escaping for?
“I’m tired of this routine. I visit you here. We talk. I walk you home. You’re reserved. You stay closed off to the world, I get it, but you were changing with me. Be my full moon in a dark sky,” Max says as we exit the Red Light District.
“The sun can shine without the moon.”
“You’re wrong. Without the moon, the sun’s purpose is diminished.” His face is serious in the darkness of the alleyway. How did this man walk into my life in the middle of a prostitution neighborhood in a foreign country and start comparing us to the sun and the moon?
“Max, you have so much more to offer.”
“So let me offer it to you.”
The heart is an organ in the body, a muscle that pumps blood in order to keep us alive. Who said it has to be a center for emotions? Who said we needed to feel in order to function? Can’t we just go through life mechanically, each part of us doing its purpose until we finish this life?
We must feel. It’s the torture for choosing to live in this life. I can stage indifference, but now I know the act it is to ward people off. Hatred and anger are as powerful emotions as love. I’ve lived through them all. They poison you. Love is a sweet venom that kills you with kindness, and hatred is a debilitating one. At least hatred informs you of what it’s doing. Love. Love is a traitor. But here I am, walking with my sun, and contemplating his offer.
Mad. That’s where I’ve gone. I contradict myself at every turn, and here I am questioning if I can open myself again to another man. A man who reminds me of the good in my life. They might as well strap me down and admit me to the psych ward.
“Sam, all I ask for is your time. Real time, not the paid one I get. I want to know you.”
“Why?”
“You pull me in. Maybe we knew each other from another time. I don’t know, but I’ll keep coming back. I crave for your light in the night sky.”
“Affairs like this don’t exist, Max. You live in a fantasy.”
“What you see as my fantasy is my reality. I told you, it’s all relative.”
“My reality doesn’t connect to your fantasy.”
“Allow it to and it will.”
“You’re such an optimist.”
“You’re such a cynic.” He challenges me and I surrender, too overwhelmed to continue this back and forth. Too much thinking required when part of me is eager to slip into him. That girl who was fighting to escape my inner-self and make face with the world again is ripping through me. He’s pulling her out unknowingly. The memory I have of my childhood as a child, not the memory I have of it as an adult, reminding me of another life that seems worlds away.
He sees me making sense of this. I’m in a game of Tetris, and his words take turns knocking down the tiles encasing me. I try to bring in a new puzzle piece to build what he’s torn down, but sooner or later, the blow may be too big to rebuild. I’m not ready for that, but Max is light that hasn’t judged my darkness yet.
“I want to take you out. Not to breakfast the morning after sex, or sex the night after you work. I want you outside your glass house.”
He kisses my forehead and says, “Think about it. Goodnight.” He waits for me to enter my apartment building before going home, alone.
For a long time I haven’t been the woman a man wants to woo. For a long time I was the woman they would take from, until I found my strength and control. Now I have a man willing to give me what I always wanted, except I’m no longer in that place in my life. If I’m already cold as stone, what’s the worse that could happen if I let Max in?
Once stone breaks it can never be put back together.
If I’m just living day to day, controlling the male gender with my body, would it really matter at the end if I shatter into a million pieces? Is anything worse than the truths I’ve already encountered? Maybe I can suck in his light for a little while.
Max has entered my life with a silent force. As much as I’ve resisted it, he’s taken a peek into my life. It’s time to own up to it and understand he has this freakish way of understanding there’s a dark reason I’ve been led
down this road. If he wants to take my time to really know me, then he’ll have to know all of me. I won’t be able to hide myself anymore when I begin exposing bits and pieces. Eventually even the moon shows herself completely. The sun still loves her fiercely regardless.
I’m starting to realize that everything I’ve judged about others is a mirror to me. Living in a fantasy world. I live in denial believing that my reality is the only true one. Max sees things differently than me because his experiences have been different. Mine have marked me, jaded me, and hidden me. His, whatever they may be, have kept him positive and kind. It’s time to let someone explore my wilderness and in turn fill me with some kindness.
I have had a routine for years, one I enjoy and feel safe in. Now it has been altered by a man who seeks my soul. He longs to know every corner of me. I warned him last night when he visited me that I had jagged corners not even the bravest of creatures would want to explore.
He responded with, “No one is braver than a man longing to caress the scars of a woman he wants.”
And just like that, I opened a path for Max to walk in. He triggered every fantasy I had as a young girl of what true love should be. He triggered the hopeful girl that believed in happy endings and soulmates. I’m not sure how he will react to what he finds in the shadows of the jungle, but I am now willing to let him decide for himself.
It had been a few days since he had told me he wanted to know me. Tonight, I gave in. I’m not sure what got into me. My careful façade was turned upside down. My cynicism was transmuted to something else. When I met Max I had chosen for this to turn out tragic instead of beautiful. I guess I’m no longer wise for choosing beauty. Max’s beauty. It’s different than outer beauty. He’s a beautiful soul that has slowly and persistently captured a part of me.
Lying on my small bed, staring at the moon from my window, I ask her to help me understand how one can remain half hidden and still be beautiful and full of light. How can someone so fond of the darkness, have good within her?
Red Lights, Black Hearts Page 6
