"TONGUE" PART ONE

    "TONGUE" (part one) 

     She never intended this to be her life
    But it was…

     “That is why¼” she wrote but never found herself able to complete the thought. Who would believe that this was her life unless she wrote about it? 

     None of this seemed to matter when she set pen to paper, words flowing so quickly as she could think them. They spilled from her like water from an overturned glass. This was her home. Her solace. Yet, in the back of her mind–so far back that it didn’t even seem to be real anymore–there was this nagging reality.

     She never intended this to be her life
    But it was...

“I’m sinking,” she often thought.

     A shame to be just 22 years old and feeling this kind and level of weight. Leaving home for school is never easy but returning is almost impossible when one has seemingly nothing to show for all of the time being away.

     Lost pride. Emotions of failure. Being resolved to the fact that she wasn’t an adult–no matter what society continued to insist based upon her age. “That is not me,” she protested like a mantra. She wore that statement as if it were a coat of arms. The so-called and now meaningless “individuality badge of honor.”  As she sat in the coffee tin sized room of her efficiency, sipping her ritualistic cup of jasmine tea, she pondered her current state. But, sometimes that was almost too much to ask of her. This was indeed one of those times. So, she continued to drift.

     She itched her arm. She thought that it was a mosquito until she remembered the fact that it was the middle of February. Setting down her tea, she gazed two feet in front of her at the wall and imagined herself trapped inside. She imagined the concrete dust filling her lungs as she awaited the rescue team and obligatory news crew. Tiring of the morbid fantasy, she sat and contemplated grabbing her coat, burrowing herself in her scarf and trudging through the freshly fallen snow on her way to Ilyce’s apartment.

     “Ilyce is the smartest person I know,” she reasoned with herself. And with a wherewithal that arrived from some unknown location, she rose, dressed and off she went...

     “Let me out!!” she screamed internally.

     She never intended this to be her life   
    But it was...

     She never made it to Ilyce’s.

     Daryl Moon, known to all who knew him as “Moonman,” was one of her many weaknesses. In fact, and without question, he was indeed her Kryptonite. In her eyes, he was beautiful in a helpless sort of way. In love with his own misery, whether it was earned, invented, suffered or completely prefabricated. God, he is so beautiful, she thought to herself every time she saw him. Don’t let him have this hold over me. No. That’s wrong...

     For months she attended sessions with a therapist at the behest of her parents, who, from a distance, attempted to discover the source of their middle child’s malaise. Or more truthfully, she felt, they just tossed some money at the problem they weren’t willing to confront themselves. Her therapist, a bookishly attractive woman somewhere within her 40s, with an impenetrable owl-like visage and deathly serious demeanor yet who bore a penchant for always wearing a pair of fire red cowboy boots despite her otherwise conservative appearance,  told her consistently that only she was responsible for her own actions. That she is entirely responsible for any supposed hold the Moonman has over her, as well as anything else she feels is operating her mind and body like a squadron of internal tiny demons. That the desire for any change she wants rests with her and she is unable to control anything or anyone other than herself.

     She pondered this rarely delivered basket of adult wisdom for mere moments before staring daggers back at her therapist and severely exclaiming, “That’s bullshit.”

     “‘Bullshit’?” questioned the therapist, completely unblinking her owlish stare. “In what way?”

     “It sounds to me that what you’re saying is that I am the only one who has to change anything while everyone one else around me just gets to stay the same assholes they’ve always been.”

     “Well...,” the therapist began, offering the rare yet minuscule crack of a grin, obviously entertained by her young client’s volley. “Yes...I suppose it is ‘bullshit’, as you say. But, even so, it is true.”

     “So, no one ever has to change for me?” she asked. Yet it was considerably uttered as less of a challenge and more through the slow realization of life’s unfairness.

     “As I said before,” her therapist began kindly but unwaveringly. “You’re not in control.”

     Why couldn’t someone else take the blame once in a while? She thought this question over and again but now it simply did not matter as there he was, Daryl Moon, cradling his cigarette in the falling snow. She had promised herself to make it to Ilyce’s apartment hours ago as she sat in the tiny bathtub finishing what she desperately hoped would be her last joint. But, here she was, transfixed once again by the Moonman’s beautiful hollow eyes, arched brown, and crooked grin. “Don’t go,” she told herself, a message that apparently did not make its way from her brain to her feet. Maybe he was simply too much like what they say about the full moon itself and the strange behaviors it inflicts upon people...supposedly. It didn’t matter anymore and she blankly followed him to the alley, just as she’s done before, and finds herself succumbing to her desires while catching snowflakes on her tongue.

     “I have a friend at Brown And Benchmark,” said Ilyce at a State Street café last week. It was balmy. At one time, this weather at this time of year would have been unusual but with the ozone layer fading, it was much more common. “If you want, I could talk to him and at least find out what sort of channels to go through or people to possibly talk to. You’re too talented to waste your life doing something you don’t care about.”

     Ilyce was right. She was always right. Maybe that’s why she’s the smartest person I know, she thought. She’s so focused. She’s so formed.  What can’t I just be like that? Why can’t I just know things like she does?

     She never thought of herself as the type of person to have a role model but if she had to have one, then Ilyce September was it, whether she knew it or not, and whether she even liked, appreciated or even wanted it or not. Ilyce September was in grad school for English, she was a highly sought after T.A., and consistently appeared upon the Dean’s List for her academic excellence. “Ilyce is a person who really has it together,” her Mother once expressed with a hearty sigh. 

     She stared at Ilyce’s lips for a moment as she gingerly sipped her coffee. She couldn’t help but to wonder fleetingly what it would be like to kiss those lips but figuring that Ilyce would never go for such a thing, the thought faded forever.

     She never intended this to be her life
     But it was...

     The Moonman’s head bobbed up and down between her legs as she lay motionless on the floor. Strangely enough, especially considering her obsession, the Moonman never seemed as interesting to her in times like these. But, she didn’t care. She was with him. In the snowflake haze, that’s all that mattered.

     It wasn’t always like this. For so much of her life, she did everything correctly. Everything she did followed “The Plan,” as her Mother would consistently proclaim. She received all of the right grades. Read the right books. Knew the right people. Dated proper young gentlemen. She served on various high school committees until she up and found herself not doing any of those things at all anymore and there was nothing to drag her back. The only thing that really made her feel alive were the times she lived inside of her head and transformed those limitless inner adventures to artistic realities on paper. It’s what she did. It’s what she knew.  But, never would she admit to anyone in her family that writing was all she loved and wished to pursue. If she had her druthers, maybe she would not have pursued college, either right away or at all. But, what of her parents and “The Plan”?

     “How did I ever end up here”

     Time passed and Ilyce has vanished. “Life beckons!!” she announced happily and was all she bothered to say but more truthfully, was all she actually chose to remember. Ilyce September escaped to who knows where. Everyone leaves. They always do.
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