Read 1:44am

I can seriously be such a fucking idiot sometimes.

　　I don’t know what she expects me to say. Let’s be realistic. I honestly thought that our encounter on the Top of the World was gonna be a one—maybe two—time thing. Maybe I’m doing the both of us a favor. No one wants to be tied to someone that far away. I can’t.

　　I’m sure she feels the same—she probably wasn’t thinking clearly when she sent that. Maybe she was high. That’s plausible. That’s how I met her, after all. I don’t think anyone in my place would’ve resisted asking why a well-dressed woman was stumbling around high on top of a big hill. She made it too easy.

　　But I still can’t believe how fast I let her into my car.

   car

car

      car 

　　My back pressed against my car door and my feet in her lap, I stared out at the sunset I’d driven up to see. It was one of the most ethereal sunsets I’d ever seen in my life. The clouds were a tangerine-tinted pink—splattered, smeared, and spotted all across the warm blue expanse by the Universe’s favorite stipple brush. The diffused rays of light falling through their underbellies cascaded down onto the city like puffs of powdered blush. I wondered if the clouds were alive. I used to go up there all the time in high school, but that view was once in a lifetime. It only happened that day. Never again.

　　Quinn sparked up the rest of the joint she lit earlier, opening the window and resting her arm on the side of the car door. I reached down to grab my little Kodak and readied a shot, but my gaze inevitably wandered to the tattoo on her left shoulder, of an orange getting fingered. I blinked myself out of my trance, and focused the lens on her eyes, inviting her to “say Mitski.”

　　“Mitski!” she said through her bite on the spliff, flashing a Shaka sign. The flash went off, burning the chipped daisies between her lips into an eternal frame of cellulose.

　　“That’s going on my wall, you know. I just hope that was in focus,” I said. She blew a puff of hot smoke through her nose, but her little smile in response felt a bit warmer. She muttered something about the dark web, then continued puffing. A painfully familiar Steve Lacy song blasted through the walls of the car parked next to us.

　　“Dark Red.” Quinn murmured after a hit, as if she was reading my mind. I looked over at her, but only with my eyes. “Something bad is ‘bout to happen to me,'' she sang softly, but with admirable control, “I don’t know what but I feel it coming.” She was also staring at the sunset, but eventually her eyes drifted to my bra on the floor. She laughed to herself silently. 

“Do you wanna know something?” she said, cutting the silence with her smoke-strewn rasp.

“Mmm.”

“I don’t actually live here.”

“What? Where do you live then? Concord? Hayward?”

“LA.” She flicked the extinguished paper crutch out onto the pavement, and rolled the window back up.

　　“What the hell? You probably should’ve told me that before we started making out. I didn’t take you for an LA jerk.” 

　　“The hell you mean LA jerk? I only moved there two years ago. I lived in SF for like, 10 years. But, yeah…’prolly shoulda said something. Heh,” she uttered, shrugging and scratching the side of her face with red hands.

　　I gazed back out at the sunset and sighed. “So what do you do there? And...what are you doing here?”

“Well I’m in a…” she began as she rocked my foot in her hand, “I’m a solo artist. I’m up here because I was doing a quick state tour, but got stuck once everything went on lockdown. Not complaining, though,” she said, laughing to herself once again. I noted her peculiar pause, rolled my eyes, and jerked my foot into her stomach.

“Ow.”

“I don’t even know why I let you in here in the first place.”

“But you did it anyways?”

“People do a lot of things that don’t align with what they want.”

　　Quinn raised an eyebrow, her lips curling downward ever so slightly. Too much.

　　“Sorry, sorry. Really. You don’t seem like a complete jerk. But anyway...yeah, Miss “Solo Artist”—what kind of music do you play?”

“And why do you want to know?” she inquired, leaning in and closing the distance between us. Suddenly, I wanted her to open the window again.

“Well, obviously it wasn’t what I just heard a few minutes ago. You put on quite the concert for those stoner guys in the other car,” I noted, jerking my head to smoke locomotive behind her.

“Oh, fuck you.” Quinn rested her head against the window, her gaze scattered, not focused on anything in particular. “Progressive indie rock, I’d say. Like a blend of Omar Apollo, Gorillaz, and my boy Steve Lacy—as you just heard. Oh, girl in red, too, since I have a feeling you listen to her.”

　　“Was that supposed to be smooth?”

　　“Definitely. My intuition’s telling me you tried to run me over on purpose,” she said, wagging her finger in my direction with a shit-faced smirk.

“First of all, that was an accident,”

　　Second of all, I had never felt so annoyed, nor so called out in my life. I hated how she wouldn’t shut up, and how I couldn’t convince her that this wasn’t what she thought it was, and how she made me feel completely and utterly powerless. But most of all, I despised how I couldn’t take my eyes off her, even when I was embarrassed; how she kept chasing me even when I resisted; how she could repeatedly come up with stupid, novel things to one-up me with. How her calloused fingertips felt unfairly nice on my skin.

“Second of all, it was a heat-of-the-moment decision. Similar to my new decision to kick you and your intuition out of my car.”

“Wow. Kinky.”

I glared at her, but she just laughed. So much for staying serious. Honestly, I kinda appreciated her lightening the mood. Prior to meeting her, I hadn’t smiled a single time that day.

“But, I was the only one that was high, wasn’t I? Reckless hookups are a two-way street. So what moment ‘heated you up,’ if you don’t mind me asking?” Quinn asked, searching for possible answers in my eyes.

I shifted in my seat. No way I was actually considering confiding in a near complete stranger I just hooked up with right after…

“Why did you invite me into your car?” she said, fixing her gaze on the blackened fuzz resembling the Golden Gate Bridge.

I could barely piece together the words she needed to hear. I didn’t know the answer then, and I still don’t know it now.

I picked up a rock, aiming at the distant drop below, but only managing to chuck it ten feet away, straight into the ground.

A laugh. I turned to my right and saw Quinn struggling to pull it back into her mouth. “That was abysmal,” she said, her usual smile returning for just a second, fading soon after.

“I know,” I replied, smiling back. “This was...one of the least terrible days I’ve had in a while. Even despite what happened earlier. If that makes anything even a little better.”

Quinn shifted her eyes towards me, then went back to looking into the distance.

“Honestly, I don’t really know why I approached you. Or, I guess why I didn’t brake when I first saw you. I think...seeing you after dumping that asshole comforted me, somehow. Seeing someone almost trip over themselves while singing ‘Ivy’ made me think, maybe humans do deserve another chance. And that maybe, I could join your little party—be just as oblivious, just as happy. Like the person I was before I got lost in a shitty relationship. Someone with some amount of self-assurance.”

“You heard me singing Ivy?” Quinn murmured, her gaze descending from infinity to her boots.

“Yeah, I did. It was nice.”

She turned around and walked back, but I stayed frozen in place, feeling my throat close up as I watched her leave me. But she didn’t. She picked up another rock, same size, and threw it off the ledge again. “I wasn’t always a solo artist. And, while I am flattered, I’m not exactly as happy or self-assured as you make me out to be,” Quinn admitted, crossing her arms and finally looking at me.

“What?”

☾✲⋆

“I wasn’t always a solo artist. I was in a band before I went on my tour. They kicked me out, and I couldn’t say or do anything about it.” I admitted, regarding Kiara’s weary, puppy dog eyes. “They just kept me for my lyrics, because they knew they couldn’t write. But they never let me handle what the song actually sounded like. They’d never trust me with that.” I laughed, and shook my head as I glared back at the city. “So I packed up my shit. Started renting my own studio in Silver Lake, and went to work on a solo album I’d been keeping secret.” I picked up a brown pebble and tossed it, watching it skid across the dirt until it fell helplessly into the abyss. Goosebumps bubbled up on my skin. “Once I finished, I didn’t know where I was gonna go, but I knew I was gonna do a tour. Next thing I knew, tour was over, and I was processing the entire thing on a pullout bed that wasn’t even mine. Here.” I pointed downwards, and searched her eyes for answers. She stayed silent.

“But, in any case, I do feel a bit freer—so I’ll give you a D minus for accuracy. You’re also the only one I’ve told that to, you know. I told everyone else that I just left on my own terms.”

Kiara spun around and picked up another rock, pitching it so that it actually whizzed

                off

                                  the

                                       cliff.

Not bad.

“I don’t know what they were thinking,” she sighed, kicking the same dirt I had kicked earlier, “letting someone with a voice like yours go.”

I spat out the ash polluting my mouth onto the ground. “If I sang ‘Ivy’ that high in front of them, I’d be able to fucking sense how twisted their panties were getting. They really didn’t like me getting high. They got annoyed with a lot of the things I did. Assholes. Tch.”

Kiara laughed. “Well, I enjoyed it.”

I scrunched my nose up and shook my hand in front of my neck in disagreement.

“Really, I did!” she said, punching me on the shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah I know you did. ‘Cause you’re you.”

“Don’t get too cocky on me.” Kiara looked back at the parking lot, and I followed suit. “Listen, I don’t know where I’m gonna sleep tonight...but if you want, we can open my trunk and watch the moon, maybe. We can chill there for a while, you know, and just...uh...see what happens.” 

“See what happens?”

“Yes, Quinn. See what happens.”

☾✲⋆

When the Moon appeared, the sensation I felt was beyond language. A white, Arctic sleet ripped through my flesh, carving coarse trails of goosebumps in its wake. My brain’s usual electric funfare was quickly reduced to a small spark—a hypnotic, insatiable...yearning. My eyes and insides burnt against Its cold heat, and impossibly immaculate light. I tried reaching out and grabbing some of Its shimmering embers, but they dissolved in my hand as quickly as they landed. I kept grabbing and grabbing, but none of them stayed, nor wanted to be held. And they weren’t warm. They weren’t warm.

Every time I tried to look away, I think It tacked on another five miles an hour to my orbit. But looking at It was like looking directly at the Sun...it was as if I’d burn up, and join Its supernova. I’d already lost most control over my body, my thoughts. It wanted me to face it. I screamed at It, drops of saltwater raining upon my quivering lips. I was being stripped of my lucidity by a bright rock, on a collision course with Death, and all I could do was cry. Trapped in Its eternal light, I cried.

Rock bottom is bottomless. Getting kicked out of my band wasn’t enough. That wasn’t enough for you—no, you had to cast me all the way down here, where you weren’t obligated to watch, then leave me to die. Silence is your safety.

I hate that you found me in such a low place. At times, I wonder if you only fucked with me to feel better about yourself. Even on my solo tour, the lingering threat of pure, unsupervised independence in this world made me sick to my stomach, and you knew it. I had never been that alone in my life. Almost all the people who I thought I could trust were gone, and you were the only one I felt comfortable telling anything to. I haven’t spoken to them since, you know.

Truthfully, they rarely even acted like my friends. They might as well have spat on the ground I walked on, with the way they disapproved of my creative vision. I could see right through them. Always. But somehow—I just kept...accepting their shit and I kept accepting it until I lost myself trying to merge into their monolith. The day they told me they found another songwriter, I just lost it. Everything I had put up with for years went down the fucking drain. I’d been used, defiled, and finally tossed to the side—without question, without further conversation.

So that’s when I went on a long, long drug binge across California, until I forgot about how I forgot myself. And that’s when I met you. And I remembered what it was like to feel wanted again. But no one in their right mind would want to settle down with a touring druggie they found in the woods.

Quinn’s orbit quickened even more, her negativity magnetizing her, drawing her closer towards further destruction.

Bathed in the floods of my own saltwater, I sank further into Her seafoamic, milky-white breast, and felt our heartbeats overlap. We were alive. We were One. Her wispy white arms, Her celestial grandeur, Her viscous, unerring light piercing through the amorphous black—all of it, was my own.

I peered back out at the cavity—into the past: where charred, cottony strands of my anxiety and lay floating, like senescent clouds. I thanked the darkness—for pushing me through the dead sea of my own memories, only to guide me back to my own brilliant light. Released from the prison of what was, I felt my insides being engulfed by the flames of lucidity—my celestial seams bursting with energy, truth, and freedom. The tenebrous tides of my unconscious drowned me: until I chose—dared—to swim back up.

  I had the choice to submit—become the supermassive, suffocating cavity I had left to fester: or I could see our remains float through the dark and still choose to let us go.

Under the moonlight, I danced with a star called Kiara. Intertwined in each other’s light, we tentatively burned our way through the tempestuous, shapeshifting shadows that surrounded us—a shitty, abusive roommate, a band formed by ego. But at some point, she fell into the abyss, and pulled me down with her—as if we had to explode, and disperse back into the universe as one. Thing is, I was already whole. The half of me that got lost in her—with her—has to die, so that I can be reborn.

I felt my white tears dripping up my convex cheekbones, climbing above, above: into what used to be the unknown. I looked up, and saw them soaking through the decaying black roots that had made up the obscured sky. They turned white. And they parted.

This was my illusion. Now, it’s my creation. 

I swim.