Gin

A piece dedicated to all the star spangled ones...

I had checked into the final ward.

“Hey. I’m Murphy. Murphy Jackson.” He approached me, hand outstretched. Soft spoken. Leaning on an afro. Bit of fuzz below the lips. But a sweetness to him. So many tainted. So few left unscathed and still sweet. Genuinely sweet.

I returned the handshake, this gesture of kindness and acceptance and brethren.

“I’m Jo,” I offered in return.

“Wanna play a game of cards?”

“Sure. You know gin rummy?”

“Nope.”

“Mind if I teach you?”

“Sure.” He shrugged, a smile of effortless ease on his face. He was always easy like that. Up for anything that didn’t require too much strain. But always game. We became inseparable. Him and I. There were three more to our merry gang. But they were wilder, feral, branching out and not belonging to a single soul. The Loved One and the Piano Man and Star Spangled Socks.

We all loved the Loved One. For all his arms were bandage up on high to hide the scars where he had attempted to take his own life. He was so bright and so cheerful and always so very funny. He was a regular riot. Our Loved One.

He could alter the mood in a room like a goddamn magic show, making it airy and light and spun like pink candyfloss. He spun us all. Right around. And when he checked out, the magic went with him, and we were all just regular people again in a regular psychiatric ward. Paint peeling on the wall. Puzzles missing pieces. A pool table with weathered patches.

Gone was the candyfloss. Gone was the magic show. Gone was the Loved One.

As for the Piano Man, he played and he played and he played while Murphy and I played round after round of gin rummy in the commons room. And Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the donkey they rode into town on, could he tinkle away on those keys… But it was little wonder. Tall and skinny and the colour of caramel, he had long tapering fingers, born for ebony and ivory. In a group session he once confessed to being a big believer in masturbation when he needed a little shut eye. I chuckled. He could be so frank like that. But mostly he just played away at those keys.

Next in my solar system was Star Spangled Socks. She dreamed. Or so I thought. Just dream after dream after dream, whether awake or sleeping, no matter, always dreaming. And always in her high socks, coming right up to the knees, blue and covered in a bold print of yellow stars. No shoes. Just dreaming.

When her mother would come to visit and bring her treats and snacks, sometimes even a whole roast chicken on a couple of occasions, I would take it upon myself to keep the vultures at bay. Those who descended upon her ready to clear her out. I’d shoo them away like the bothersome carrion they were and protect Star Spangled Socks as best I could. So dreamy.

But eventually, like the Loved One, it was my turn to leave for all I’d grown fond of my solar system. Murphy Jackson and I promised to keep in touch. Even though his name isn’t Murphy at all. And wouldn’t you like to know?

But I’m wasn’t long out when I gotthe news. Moon-Face is gone. Hanged herself. ‘Hung’ I’m told. And I want to correct H. Nope. Not like cheap tinsel on a Christmas, but hanged. My brain flounders. Searching for answers. She never showed any signs. I’m stymied. Really and truly. Later, I search for some artwork Moon-Face made for me. Talented she was. Of the Madonna. A black Madonna. But I can’t find it.

Probably lost in one of my many chaotic moves.

With bipolar, mine has been a chaotic life.

I could kick myself for having lost this small piece of her.

I think back on the last time I saw her. In a tree. High up and high as a kite.

The love of my life, an unspoken and unrequited love, he was madly in love with her. With a complexion of nectarines blushed and soft as a falling rose petal. Two big brown eyes that fluttered always, forever dancing and enchanting when they alighted on you. The army issue boots. The oversized trenchcoats she wore. A head of irresistible curls. Round face just like my porcelain doll. I reckon we were all a little madly in love with her.

I’m angry. I want this not to be true. An April Fool’s in poor taste. But no. She is gone.

And I remember her so high up, aloft in that tree. Queen of the motherfucking universe. She’d climbed up there like she was a kid, never a hesitation. And she seemed it so often. Child-like. But not to be fooled. I knew better. Sagacious she was.

H. had told me she left no note.

This will stay with me. Unsettling me. For months. That I saw no sign. That we had no warning. That her rose petal fell so softly to the ground like that. Us the blissfully unaware.

And I wonder if they found her in army issue boots and oversized trenchcoat.

But I hadn’t. asked.

H. and I both wanted to be done with grizzly business.

I’d told him I had got a roast in the oven I need to attend to, and he had sounded relieved and we left it at that. There was no roast.

But women and suicide. Stones in pockets as it goes.

And I think of Woolf and Plath and Jonker. No mess. No fuss. Just escape.

From this cruel world so unfeeling.

And I think on my own mentor. Word had got to me in the ward that she had attempted too, to take her own life. I make a promise to visit. Eileen. Eileen Wayward. My mentor. More than. My saviour during a very dark time in my life. I must see her. Yes I must see her I think, thinking on scars on arms on the Loved One when he wasn’t wearing his bandages. Thinking on tree tops. Thinking of stars spangled.

I have to see her.

I miss the Loved One. I had a number for him. For his aunt. I invited him to mine, or moreover my uncle’s holiday home, for a retreat to be met with dead silence.

I guess it’s hardly like family would want us to be friends. It is a loony bin after all.

I call up Eileen Wayward. She says she’d be only too delighted.

The day arrives.

I pull up at her seafront cottage in the small community of Schoenies, kinda part of the city but not really. It’s in Periwinkle Lane. How I love this place. Hers to me a home away from home. She’d helped through a tough time. Really the worst of it.

Her daschund, Widget, rushes to the gate to greet me. Slower, followed by Eileen is the old labrador. She unhooks the gate and invites me in, dogs sniffing me up and down all the while.

She used to be a badass. At the university.

But she’s still a badass. On her own terms these days.

As far as I was concerned, the best of the lot of them. I’d be hard pressed to find another Dr E. Wayward, that much I know. But a student had hurled “You fucking feminist cunt!” at her before a class one day, and that’s when she had decided it was time to cash in an early retirement. Struggle though she has. I can tell.

She’s not quite the Eileen I’ve known. There’s a trepidation to her.

“Fancy a cold beer?”

“Sure,” I indulge her although it’s a little early.

Beers in hand she calls me to come through and see some of her latest work. I already have a round mirror she framed in seashells and bits of weathered glass found along the shoreline hanging up in my bathroom. A gift. She had a whole wall of them and I was asked to pick my favourite. I think I got pick of the litter.

Now she’s into needlepoint. With famous and obscure feminist quotes. Then decorated and surrounded by seashells and bits of seaweed in design. Busy bee.

I cud very calmly go wild. - Annie Dillard

If that makes me a bitch, OK. - Madonna

No need 2sparkl. - Woolf

I am a woman with thoughts & questions & shit2say. - Amy Schumer

WeR entitled 2 wear cowboy boots 2 our own revolution. - Naomi Wolf

They’re so bloody good and I tell her so.

“Go on, pick one!”

“Seriously I couldn’t!”

“Oh, go on!”

“Are you sure?”

Immediately I gravitate towards the Annie Dillard quote, having long wanted to read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. And I could very calmly go wild, I so very could, I think to myself.

“It’s beautiful. And I shall treasure it always,” I promise her.

Then it’s back to the chairs on the sunny porch to crack open a second ice cold beer.

Luc, her lifelong partner surfaces.

“Oh dear. The women are in repose. Best I disappear.” And with that he’s off to the beach to take photographs. Dog follows. I like Luc. Him and I are both Irving fans. So in that there is a kinship. But he likes to leave it to us. Eileen and I.

Sipping in a comfortable silence, the old labrador at her feet, it got me thinking.

Needlepoint now.

But back then…

Where could one even begin with the magnitude of Eileen Wayward?

She struck to the quick instantly as the lecturer I found most sharp witted, and razor blading that tongue against all injustices of convention, and well, quite frankly so bloody brilliant it burned to sit too close. And from the very first encounter, before even opening her mouth, just waiting, and assessing, and revelling in our fresh blood, right away she had my rapt attention as a pioneer, a prophet, a god.

There was a magic to her. If you only believed in magic. And in her own way, there was still. She would always be magic. Not unlike the Loved One. But she didn’t spin candyfloss. She could. If she’d wanted to. I know that much. But candyfloss just wasn’t her bag.

Quick footed in the assured confidence of the compact and small. (For tiny she is.) None of the gangly awkwardness afflicting the tall. Not the slightest of glut. Light blue eighties jeans. A white vest. And a pair of plain Converse sneakers. A grey bun hanging in the balance atop her head, obedient for all its reckless construction.

You knew. You had to know. She’d take no prisoners.

So very inflamed by her uncompromising passion, in this, she became the only lecturer I longed to please. I swear my oath to any deity you deem fit and without any exaggeration or artistic perversion of the facts or my feelings, truly, if anything, I was as miserably smitten in the beginning as any humble disciple who longs to pledge their wretched heart and soul and life’s entire to that crazed madman who awakens in them the noblest of virtues. No reluctant weakness in my character, not with her, but so, so, so much more, in this aching desire to be the chosen one.

Please! I pleaded in the wee hours, still toiling away essay after essay, sacrificing, with everything I had, and submitting like a faithful supplicant into her little pigeon hole. Choose me!

And yes, she had some worthy colleagues, some of the brightest and shiniest of the lot, and yes, I was awed of course by many lecturers over the years, and naturally inspired by their breadth of knowledge, the sagacity of their insights, even, and often, the profundity of their teachings. Sure. And again, but of course.

All the same, I did not yearn for them to like me. Really and truly like me. But when it came to her, I had never wanted anything more. And those wee hours grew lighter and lighter yet, the mauve of dawn ever encroaching, hanging on by the thread of bottomless cups of green tea, as I sacrificed myself to that unforgiving slot of her pigeon hole.

Did she even know me by name? I had wondered time and time again as my papers disappeared into that dark void.

But that seemed like a lifetime ago now, sipping on a couple of cold ones together.

“I really liked your latest blog.”

“Ah. It was nothing. Bit rubbish really.” I went on the defensive. Embarrassed.

“No, really. Your work matters. I promise.”

“Uh, thanks.”

“Come on, one last beer between friends won’t kill us.”

I never did see Eileen climb a tree. But that was the last time I ever saw her. Luc fills me in. Some days up. Some days down. Travelling up and down the coastline with a couple of dogs in a camper van. She’s a wildling now. She very calmly went wild. Like my Murphy. Like the Piano Man. Like my Loved One. Like my Star Spangled Socks. And well, a bit like me.

But you can’t sign off the reservation altogether, I think, thinking of army issue boots and oversized trenchcoats and brown eyes aflutter in tree tops. In tree tops so high.

Still Life with a Bottle, Playing Cards and a Wineglass on a Table by Pablo Picasso