Into The Dream You Came

Try to squeeze a puddle of mercury in your hand. What happens? It dissolves immediately into hundreds of sparkling silver balls that quickly escape through your tightly clenched fingers. One Gemini man whose wife thought she knew him very well wrote the following lines just before he left her, and she found them among his papers after the divorce:

“Into the dream you came
And across the soft carpet of my reverie you walked
With hobnail boots…”

You’ll often read or hear it said that Geminis must always have two loves at once. This Gemini duality, hinting at deception, is so frequently mentioned, it may cause unfounded anxiety. May I modify that description? A Gemini needs two loves. Not necessarily two women [or men]. That’s a riddle. If you truly understand him, you’ll know the answer to it.

We were sitting on the launch at Port Hilton, several days after the cab incident, sipping alarmingly over-sugared Café Americanos, and laughing. I was smoking.

It was twilight.

I looked behind us, toward the beach. Heard an Israel Kamakawiwo’ole song being played liltingly, wistfully, by a Hilton Hawaiian Village band. Started. Looked sideways. And stopped.

Smiled.

“Are you all right?” she asked, laughter in her voice.

I took a moment, collected myself, and turned toward her. “Yes,” I said. “I am. I just now realized that I haven’t been out on the water at night since…well, since Him.”

“You looked like you were Having A Moment,” she said. “Was it a good one?”

“Yes,” I said, a note of genuine surprise in my voice, turning to her with green eyes shining and smiling.

“I think,” I remarked, gazing at two men on the shore splashing each other with water from the blue-gray Pacific, “I think I’m over Him.”

“Good!” she exclaimed. “Shall we go? More coffee?”

“Yes,” I replied, taking her arm to help her up.

We walked along the launch, toward the beach.

My little ten-day exercise in vanquishing demons and laying the ghosts of relationships past to rest did not turn out exactly as I had imagined. By the end of those ten days, I had not succeeded in vanquishing or exorcising anything; I had merely gathered the demons and ghosts around me for a sort of ghoulish reunion. I began to think, by the end of those ten days, that I really did not have anything to exorcise; that, if I did end up exorcising any of those ghosts of relationships past, I would not be remaining true to my nature. The author and astrologer Linda Goodman once wrote of those born under the sign of The Crab, “Cancerians have such control of imagery, and their moods are so intense, they can make you feel them, too. Their imagination seizes joy and despair, horror and compassion, sorrow and ecstasy, and holds each emotion fast with a retentive memory. Like mirrors and cameras, they absorb images and reflect them faithfully. Every experience is engraved on the heart as a photograph is etched on a negative plate. They never forget any of the lessons life has taught them.” And none of that would really be possible if I did not have all of my demons and ghosts. So I did not vanquish them, nor exorcise them. I am just kind of allowing them to hang around. To remind me of how even the shortest of relationships can inspire you to love again. To remind me of how giving and compassionate a man can be, just when he is needed the most, in post-operation recovery from emergency surgery, throughout the long, blinded night. And to remind me of just how beautiful the beach and the ocean at night once used to be, when shared with a friend, even if the friend did, eventually, dissolve immediately into hundreds of sparkling silver balls that quickly escaped through my tightly clenched fingers.

And frankly, I certainly need to hold my relationship demons and ghosts close to me if only to remember which signs of the zodiac never to fall in love with again!

“Midnight stroll through Waikiki?” she inquired.

“Yes,” I said, taking her arm and smiling widely.

I looked back at the beach, now behind us. Saw two thin men playing in the water, one tall and dark, one short and fair. Saw the fair one glance back at me before clutching the dark one’s arm and dragging him into the water. Heard, again, the Kamakawiwo’ole song reverberating off of the water.

“Ready?” she inquired.

“Yes,” I replied.

And returned the flirtatious wave the blond man gave to me, before slouching, ghosts and all, into the depths of the Waikiki evening.

The City Of My Interior

There is so much to be said for those moments that catch us with our guards down. The walls of the cities of our interior take a long time to build up again and sometimes in our haste, we build them so they topple at the touch of wind. You are strong, darling, and worthy of love because you do not regret. You are aware of the healing process. You shall be as Moscow, a city that has been burnt down time and time again, invaded, its Kreml and heart taken and nearly disappeared. But you rise, too, just like the city. Again and again, each time stronger than the last so that every experience you have lived becomes a part of your emotional culture.
- Anaiis Flox

“Get home safely!” my little sister said to me as she embraced me in a warm hug. “Take DaBus! Do not walk home!” she admonished me as an afterthought, reminding me of my mother.

I did not heed her advice.

It was nearly midnight following an invigorating and inspiring late afternoon and evening spent with her and my littler sister over coffees and pupus in Waikiki, and I kind of didn’t want it to end. So I allowed the crispness, chill, and faintly salty smell of the late evening early morning island breeze to propel me into Waikiki.

Strutting along the streets of my city.

Wandering down the roads of my memories.

“I’m frightened,” I had confessed to her, not five minutes earlier, voice quivering and hands quaking as I inhaled grandly from my Marlboro Light.

“Why, hon?” she asked.

“Because I know that I have to write about him again this week. And I don’t want to,” I explained, taking another aggressive, almost angry drag from my cigarette. “And I wanted the last time I cried about him to be the last entry in the ghost town.”

She smiled at me archly, wisely, as she usually does. “But we’re not wandering through ghost towns here, anymore, hon,” she said. “We’re telling ghost stories. And after we’ve told them all we’ll collect them all and walk out to the end of that pier and just expel them from our viscera into the midnight high tide,” she finished, smiling widely and excitedly making a motion with her hands and arms that began at her abdomen and concluded in an expansive, outward shoving action.

I smiled wryly. Threw my cigarette onto the ground and stepped on it. Secretly wondered if I was strong enough and confident enough to do that, as I knew she was.

I thought about her words as I strutted past Hula’s, waving up to the boys and men who sent catcalls down at me from above; as I passed a karaoke bar on Kalakaua Avenue that Gavin and I once patronized; as I remembered a similar strut up the avenue two Halloweens ago with Bartholomew, all fuchsia wig and six-inch Patricia Field stilettos, made up as Gwen Stefani After A Bad Break-Up.

I chuckled to myself at these memories, and into the surprisingly quiet early Waikiki morning.

I stopped to rest across the street from an old haunt, The Wave, now simply a construction site. Fired up a newly acquired Marlboro Red after squatting on the curb. Considered my intention of only a few weeks ago to leave this city, what I have come to think of as my city. Surveyed the construction site across the street with a vague nostalgia.

Started slightly, as I felt the presence of another man squat on the curb quite close to me, thigh nearly grazing thigh.

I turned quickly to stare into a pair of vibrant green eyes, and quickly took in other details, as well: familiar, tightly-woven Armani sweater; similarly tightly-clinging Armani jeans; Prada lace-up loafers; a faint whiff of Dolce & Gabbana; blond hair soaked nearly black with sweat.

“Hey you,” he said hoarsely, voice all Bette Davis and Lauren Bacall from an evening of too many cigarettes and scotches. A Marlboro Red dangled loosely from his wry smile and jiggled as he inquired in perfect and non-provincial French, “Avez-vous du feu?”

“Bien sûr,” I replied, in equally perfect and non-provincial French. I produced my supah kawaii butane lighter and lit his cigarette for him, like a gentleman, his fingers falling lightly onto my own to hold the flame steady, green eyes flashing mischievously up into my own.

Cigarette lit, he sat upright again, exhaled, and asked, “Are you going in?” as his arm gestured widely toward the construction site across the street.

I smiled, closed my eyes, and turned my head toward the site, beginning to laugh, and in that instant felt the ground beneath me begin to quake with heavy bass and drums, heard music, laughter, and screams from across the street, smelled the long ago but still familiar scents of mingled sweat, alcohol, tobacco, fabrics, and a mixture of fine and not-so-fine perfumes and colognes. And opened my eyes with shock and awe to see The Wave, right in front of me, just as it once was: small groups of revelers posing in clusters outside and drying off after sessions of sweating on the dance floors, long entrance line that I somehow always managed to circumvent.

“Very hot DJs tonight,” the blond man said to me, squinting though smoke as he inhaled his cigarette. “San Francisco and Los Angeles.” I sensed him looking at me. Felt a finger wipe away a tear I had not realized was trailing down my right cheek.

“Don’t cry,” he murmured, softly.

And then, more conspiratorially, into my right ear, “You can’t leave, you know.”

I turned quickly toward him again, voice rising to be heard over the din of the club. “What?”

“You can’t leave,” he repeated, matter-of-factly. “Too many people. Too many relationships. Too many experiences. Too many memories. Too many personal deposits invested in the emotional `aina. Too many emotional landscapes still left to navigate. Too many drops of blood left for the goddess Pele. Too many strands of your retina, your very vision, left in this city. Too many deep fields of personal strength left to cultivate. Too many ghosts left to still lay to rest.”

I inhaled sharply, my mouth agape.

“You may carry The Paris with you,” he said, again, softly, placing one hand gently over my heart and waving his other arm again across the street, and far beyond. “But this,” he concluded, “this is Home.”

He flicked his spent cigarette onto the sidewalk, smiled at me sideways, and rose, walking into the middle of the street toward the legendary club. He stopped, swiveled swiftly around on one heel, and said, “She’s right, you know.” Music blaring and light bulbs flashing from behind him.

“Who?” I managed to croak.

A blue-lighted HPD cruiser sped by, and right through him.

“Our little sister,” he said, smiling. “Tell. Collect. Expel.”

He waved demurely, smiled wryly, and turned to strut the rest of the way across the avenue to throw his arms around a glamorous blond woman and an elegant raven-haired man, and dashed inside The Wave.

I closed my eyes.

And everything vanished: the feelings, the sounds, the scents, and, when I opened my eyes, the visuals. The construction site was back, lit only by a solitary night watchman’s lamp.

I extinguished my cigarette beneath the toe of my left Prada lace-up loafer, rose, inhaled the crisp, cool, salty air of the morning, and continued my walk home. Conscious, all the while, of the darkness, of the lightness, of all of the ghosts, and of the walls of the city of my interior enclosing and enveloping me as I walked ever deeper into its night.

The Last Time

This morning, I finally allowed myself to cry.

Not over the past two months of personal and professional drama. Not over the hell that is apartment searching and moving to a new place. Not even over the terrible unconfidence that only comes about when one’s job is terminated.

I cried because of you.

Right here, on my lanai, in an Abercrombie & Fitch “27″ t-shirt and my roommate’s necktie, in the bliss that is the light of a Honolulu dawn, two things sprung at once to the forefront of my memory, and I finally allowed the tears to flow…just to be rid of them, once and for all.

The first memory was your face, and your smile, brightly illumined by the light of an evening after April Fool’s Day North Shore full moon. We had stood on a beach, watching the waves crash onto the shore, drunk with what I thought at the time was happiness, and I had taken your hand in my own and said to you earnestly, regarding the previous three months of no contact with you, “Please promise me just one thing: that you will never do that to me again.”

“I promise,” you said, low, and serious, squeezing my hand in return.

(And continued squeezing it throughout our ride back into Town while listening to a certain Death Cab For Cutie song on repeat.)

The tears were only flowing slowly at that memory, this morning, in the light of the rising sun reflecting off of the stark white Waikiki high-rises. But they began flowing ever more quickly once some stanzas from a particular chick flick I had seen for the first time only several weeks ago suddenly popped into my memory…for they described, I realized, precisely, my feelings about you.

I hate the way you talk to me,
and the way you cut your hair.
I hate the way you drive my car.
I hate it when you stare.

I hate your big dumb combat boots,
and the way you read my mind.
I hate you so much it makes me sick;
it even makes me rhyme.

I hate the way you’re always right.
I hate it when you lie.
I hate it when you make me laugh,
even worse when you make me cry.

I hate it when you’re not around,
and the fact that you didn’t call.
But mostly I hate the way I don’t hate you.
Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.

I had to do it.

I had to allow myself to cry over you, one final time. I had to do it to remember how happy you made me…and also how miserable you have made me. I had to allow myself to cry in order to mourn the loss of your friendship, to grieve, one final time, and, also, to move on.

And it felt good.

Because as much as I still, perhaps stupidly, after all that you have said and done and have not said and not done, care about and love you…

…it felt good to really know that this will be the last time I cry because of you.

Holiday Cleaning

There really is no better feeling than that feeling one experiences when one gets the proverbial house cleaning hair up one’s ass at the start of each new season. The process allows time for reflections and decisions, results in an immaculate living space, and prompts the discarding of objects (and connections to said objects) that one no longer requires.

Of course, the process also involves (if you are me) several protracted emo hours spent going through one’s things and revisiting memories that have attached themselves to them. (These emo hours are even more emo at the beginning of the Holiday Season. If you are me, obviously.)

I did that this weekend.

Now, the kitchen and the first floor bathroom are flawless, as are the hardwood floor of my second floor bedroom…and bathroom, which is ready to receive any willing gentleman caller who would require its facilities after an evening of marathon hot butt sex on my aforementioned immaculately clean hardwood bedroom floor, should he, in fact, actually exist.

(I suspect that he does not, actually.)

Also, said process almost always results in an emo hard cider drinking session with one’s fabulous roommate, during which one is prone to pontificate at length about close friends who have died, obsess about a certain Honolulu IP address that continues to present itself daily on one’s blog SiteMeter, and ask, choking with tears, before harassing said fabulous roommate with an oral reading from Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, “I found my bag of Bartholomew and Atherton memorabilia in my closet while I was cleaning and wondered if I should just throw it all out without looking through it.” (Thank you Mr. Run-On Sentence!) And hearing her say, “Get rid of it. Chuck it down the chute.”

(And not being able to do it, even though one knows that it is most likely the healthy thing to do.)

So, one focuses instead on the holiday tasks at hand: cleaning around aforementioned bag of memories to achieve a way wicked clean living space; volunteering as a photographer for the Special Olympics Hawaii’s Holiday Classic; attending benefits for the Gregory House’s World AIDS Day observance and Hawaii Fi-Do’s function to celebrate service dogs; preparing for ARTafterDARK’s annual Starlight Ball, Circo di Notte; and, of course, attempting to seduce Cillian Murphy into being my lover.

(Obviously, it is all about cleanliness, philanthropy, and Cillian Murphy this Holiday Season, for Atherton Bartelby.)

Speaking of the Holiday Season, I just updated my new Amazon WishList. Now if you know me well you know that I: A) never expect presents, since I, in fact, rarely give them; and B) when I do give them, they are perfectly chosen but it takes me forever and a year to actually make it to an actual post office to send them to you. But I thought I would provide a link to my WishList anyway, and also ask that you (if you feel so inclined) send me a link to yours, if you have one (with the proviso, of course, that you may be receiving a gift, due to my current employment status, not for Christmas, but, say, Chinese New Year? February? Does that work?). Send your link to athertonbartelby AT gmail DOT com if you’d like.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have to continue cleaning, cuddle with a Basenji puppy, and attend to some writing.

I also need to throw a bag full of memories down the trash chute.

(In the spirit of Holiday Cleaning, of course.)

At The Limit

I sit here.

I manipulate pixels and vectors.

I correct the egregious grammatical errors in the copy I receive.

And I think about you.

How you were so vociferous about not asking me to help you move. And yet I did. Because I love you, and care about you, and did not want to see you do that all by yourself. I took two half vacation days off to help you move. And yet you could not give me two hours to do the same for me.

How you denigrate, now, me, my profession, and my friends, when I have always only praised the same in your own life.

How you called me at four in the morning, requesting my companionship, after a break-up…and you know how difficult that had to have been for me…but I did it anyway. I held you while you cried. Because I care for you.

(I even lost my 30 Seconds to Mars t-shirt and iPod nano that morning, in the face of a broken window, but I still do not regret it. Because I was helping you.)

How you squeezed my hand, that night when we became friends again, while listening to the strains of “I will follow you into the dark.”

I thought you were my friend.

My best friend.

But you turned out to be the most selfish man I have ever met in my entire life.

And so I sit here.

And manipulate pixels and vectors.

And correct grammatical errors.

And wish that I had never given you as much of myself as I gave you.