Jane. Bang. - S.Of C.

No obligations one way or the other, then Jane thinks,

"No, I must do what I am most afraid of. 

Walk the path that makes me cower."

 Minimal Damage is all she can ask for. 

It began with a twenty Minute walk.

Across the street from The Film Forum.

"How bizarre." thinks Jane, then she crosses the street.

Bang! This is a work in progress.

Jane Construction. Restricted Access.

A friend called out from behind the desk "Remember the wink!" 

A gleefull, beautiful smile spread across her friends face.

"I'll try." 

Is all Jane could say as the door shut the door behind her.

Now she looks up and increased the volume on the hand held device.

She looks out on the bustling traffic and faces of a nameless oblivion.
 Never the less, all caught in the same web.

Work in Progress.

"Bang" said the words on a screen.

Sultry positions, suggestive to "Jane", she will interpret it in another manner.

Too many strings said the sign of promise.

What will she say?

Not much.

 How could she explain that she will have one year of abstinence in a week or so.?

How can she explain she has done it on her own?

It will be received with shock if she called out her life to Puritans. 

To fret? 

Good thing there are no puritans here. 

Puritans know the value of delayed gratification Jane was once told. 

Those here are her brethren, they had to be schooled and take great efforts to live out such a seemingly simple action.

 No no no.

Remember my little Jane, what you found written upon your thigh when you woke up alone on the subway sometime around three in the morning.

Scribbled across your bare flesh through your ripped up Jeans, it read

"I could have done anything I wanted to you"

Jane had looked around the train car, to find herself alone with no knowledge of when or why she was on the train. 

She then recalled Ella Wilcox. 

Laugh and the world will laugh with you Jane.

So she did. How could she not? 

Tragedy will come to a point where it circles back to comedy. Ask any theatre major. 

This is the truth of Jane. 

A part, a wee little piece, a string, a filament of the weaves of stories she tells of her existence.

No, she thinks as she looks around the room and straightens her spine.

She says to her self in her favorite tongue,

"Non, Je ne regrette rien." 

But it had began with a twenty minute walk in that direction.

Mary Catherine Cowardice Queen

Something Familiar - Notes on Desire

I have been bored in the lack of company that intrigues me.
I do it to myself.

I have been something like celibate for at least one year.

Not for a lack of want.  Mostly to protect myself.
Perilous times, these are... one must be cautious with precious bleeding hearts.

I have touched him before and he did not pull away.
There were times we came together sweating and hungry.

 Sometimes he doesn't tear away but he does not touch me back.
 I am left to wonder what that means. 

He has always been difficult to read. 

He has spent a lifetime building walls to hide his true emotions. 

He is stunning, genuinely beautiful in my eyes.

He always has been.

This particular young man is something familiar that I cannot pin point exactly. 

I do not mean that in the sense that I have known him for nearly a decade. 

No- I mean that his soul is familiar and it bears a likeness to my own, a part of myself that I want to nurture and love. 

I want to run my fingers through his long dreadlocks. 

I want to press my lips against his and all over his tattooed olive skin.

I do nothing, I breath. 

Be still heart!

Do as I command and busy your mind elsewhere.

I picked up my book.

I want him to feel safe and to feel this pure love that swells within me. 

Why can I not nurture and love him?

Of course I can...

Only if  I continue to love and nurture those same parts of myself that I want to love and nurture in him. 

The best way I could do that right now is by listening to Mazzy Star and keep writing. 

Waves begin to come towards me, gently and slowly as I lay upon the sand in all my vulnerable nakedness. 

It reaches the tips my toes and the base of my feet first then my ankles, over my calves and my thighs. 

Drenching my hips to the top of my labia the temperature is not shocking, it is soothing. 

My lower abdomen then up towards and over my breasts. 

Next is my neck, I take a deep breath in, right before the entirety of my face is submerged.

The salty water releases me. 

I am clean. 

I baptize myself and it feels so good. 

I exhale, I am alone and I am pure again.

Mary Catherine, Cowardice Queen

B.S: The Actual Initials & The Others- Memoir Excerpt

 I just thought about Benjamin. 
I thought about what I was writing and then I thought how self centered I am for writing like this then I thought about a comment in a thread by someone I suspect might have been Benjamin Stratz.

He told people his name was James. He didn’t think Benjamin was a strong name.

He used to say and think exactly like what I read in the comment thread.

It read; “Is she still thinking about her special purpose and stealing my oxygen?”

See, B.S instilled in me, well he tried to instill in me, the notion that we, all human beings, all creatures, are alive only by default, we are only breathing because it is a default mechanism. He believed or wanted someone to convince him otherwise, that there is no purpose to our ongoing life at all. He was a very sad boy with a bleak outlook. I almost believed him because he was obscenely intelligent, borderline genius. Which made it fairly difficult for me to not believe everything he said and swallow it as truth. 

He was romantically in love with me and I did not posses those feelings for him. 

I was not attracted to him in that regard. Though I would try so hard to make myself.  He was an attractive young man. Every other straight girl or woman thought he was, and I was not blind. 

He also had a fantastic, twisted, dark sense of humor.  Both of us with our jet black hair and mock goth-punk wardrobe, I remember we wore each others clothes. You also happened to look way too much like Johnny Depp circa 1992. An odd combination of John Water’s Cry-Baby and Benny & Joon, you were so sexy, just not my type. 

I would be more turned on by Adrian Brody then Johnny Depp any day. 

So I suppose my taste is a bit refined in sexual attraction.

You had a history of extraordinarily good looking ex girlfriends. You even Dubbed Helen, Helen of Troy. I saw her picture she looked like she just walked off the set of Lords of Acid video shoot. 

You wanted to settle down, wanted to take care of me. The entire endeavor was unbelievably sweet but completely ludicrous and untimely. You even tried to get M*** to send divorce papers so you could marry me. Benjamin even took under his dark wing my baby brother. Even let him move into the house we shared on 313 Woolbright road, right next to the highway.

He was originally from a small town in Michigan, before opiate usage and addiction in Detroit sent him my way in Florida. I loved him very much and a part of me still does, a dusty, rusty part of me, but he was my best friend for a few years, which is a long time in my history of hysteria. Yes. I know that supposedly signifies some kind of psychological problem, psychologists and psychiatrists both always give me the “I see…” and scribble in their note pads or move their fingers across a keyboard like mad, always asking me to re iterate my short lived relationships without taking into consideration the outside circumstances. I have yet to meet a Psychiatrist or Psychologist of my caliber. If that sounds arrogant, blame Benjamin. He was constantly telling me we were an intellectual power couple and I was by far the smartest girlfriend he had ever had. Always giving me a random quiz or teaching me something new, we would do that to each other. He said I gave him the best gift he had ever given by a girlfriend, I found and bought for him an antique encyclopedia collection of about eight of them, hard covers. “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire” He Loved Ancient civilization, power, rulers, etc… He was the one that taught me about “The Prince” and Niccolo Machiavelli. You had a bit of a Napoleon complex and I did find your downloads of dominatrix porn. Is that what you wanted, for me to hurt you, for you to let go of control and give it to me? Why didn’t you ever say so? Is that what it would have taken to make you warm in the bedroom? We were not suited for one another in this regard. We wanted similar things.

We were more like an incestuous brother and sister with an -us against the world- idea that you loved to fan and encourage then an actual romantic partnership.

 We both had scooters. I had one first. Mine was yellow and black and his was blue and black. We used to drive them around together, sometimes, just for fun. All over downtown Delray and back. I would scare him because of the reckless way I would drive, it’s just that I knew my scooter. I knew what it was capable of. I pushed it to all its limits. I guess I do that often, with everything, at least I used to… I would have a blast with my bumblebee. I would make it dance in tune to whatever was playing in my ear buds. I would weave in and out of traffic. It made him nervous. He was a very rigid, controlled human being. I wanted to scare him out of his regimented ways.  Or perhaps even Love him out of it. I could make him laugh, but he had this suffocating effect, when he would really look at me, into my eyes, they were so dark so far away, like planets I was looking at through a telescope. 

Oh Benjamin, what ailed you so? Why were you so broken? Why did you fuck me like a cold machine? I had never experienced the like. I still haven’t experienced the like since. Actually what was his name… the guy I screwed a few times while I was employed at Starbucks number two? It started because he was in the corner reading “The Plague” by Albert Camus and I was a single huntress that smelled intellect and dark eyes...He said he was a part time E.M.T and studying to be a professor, he worked odd hours, he kept his apartment dark and filled with Vinyl and two tall book shelves that was over flowing with them.  He liked Leonard Cohen and John Cale. It was Gabriel! That was his name, I think. He lived in Boca Raton. He came After the Bass player from a band that was called ‘The Secret French Kissing Society”. That was Jesse Steele , yes that was his name, he showed me his I.D when I giggled about the unbelievably appropriate name for a man such as him. (a Brazilian that fucked like a Jackhammer, loved poker, drank loads of Heineken, watched soccer, took Suboxone at nine A.M and then fuck again! Totally different experience.) Anyway, Gabriel fucked in a similar fashion as Benjamin.  It was as if you wouldn’t allow yourself to feel any emotion at all when you were inside me. You would grasp my jaw and say look at me. You would have this anger and intent in your eyes that was unsettling and you would push yourself all the way into me as far as you could go and silently release yourself. Then collapse onto my chest. Breathing heavy, your sweat soaking me, I remember feeling your heart pounding so hard. Then you would kiss me on the lips as if you wee kissing a child on the check. Stood up, grabbed our pack of Marlborough’s off the coffee table and light up one for each of use as I would lift the sheet to cover my breasts and wipe the sweaty strands of hair from my face. The music was always on wasn’t it? You and I lived with a soundtrack too. Sorry Benjamin but Tony and I did as well. We lived like that together first. I know that I came onto you while I was technically still with Tony. I think that I’ll explain that now. You deserve to know.

Back then I didn’t really know how to be a single adult. 
My self worth was practically non-existent. 

It depended on the lust men had for me and or their intellectual pursuits recognizing my own.  

So, you see, you fit the description I was subconsciously hunting perfectly. I was what age, twenty-three? When we eventually lived together after our three-year hot-cold, off-on friendship and liaison? I believe so. You know, I would really appreciate your input on some things right about now. See, the more I recall about you and I, the more questions arise. You loved “Asleep” by The Smith’s best of all, even more than Joy Divisions: “Love Will Tear Us Apart.  

You had the most adorable smile and that charming nerdish laugh. You would probably not take that as a compliment but it was totally endearing and infectious. 

I hope you found a young woman more suited for you. I wasn’t her. I was not brave enough to tell you that I didn’t have romantic inclinations towards you. I loved you Benjamin. That is an undisputable fact. You were my best friend, also a fact. You were sent conflicting messages from me, another fact, albeit a shameful one and one that I regret.  

 I know that hurt you. It hurt to do it. 
Please know and trust me when I say, it came back around more harshly than you could imagine.

I wish that I could have been the woman I am now back then. 

But alas, it is ash of a cigarette that’s nearly burnt to the filter.

I am sorry and I did love you. 

More than most of the men that made a guest appearance in my life’s story.

I hope you do not feel like you are only alive by default and have no purpose anymore. 

If someone said that to me today, seven or eight years past when you first vocalized this philosophy of yours to me, I now know what I would say.

First off, You are right that there is no pre-defined purpose to any of this.

It is up to you, to give meaning to your life. 

You have complete control over your existence. 

From one choice to the next, from one breath to the next. 

What do you do with this responsibility? 

Why do you choose to breathe? 

If you feel that you have no purpose then that means you are afraid to do what it is you want to do 
or have not figured it out what you want to do yet. 

You are responsible for your life’s meaning. 

Scary huh? 

Kind of like that girl swerving on that black and yellow scooter.

Mary Catherine, Cowardice Queen

Dear Heart Shakers- S.of C

Dear Heart shakers,
 Oh my lovelies.... you rattle, rattle, rattled it around.
Did you enjoy that? 
I sure did. Many times in fact. 
I know I will enjoy a different kind of pleasure from now on.

To the ol' breath snatchers who make it cease without warning. Ahem....

Time takers and distractions of all kind, tick tock tick tock.... 

Who make proclamations of a word you do not comprehend the meaning of:

I will start off with a fairly simple statement that I am quite fond of,  
- Fuck you! -

You recognized another reflection of the lost parts of yourself in me? 

You should know by now, I assume that you have figured it out. 

No matter how many times you fucked me, you never did find you.

That will not stop you from trying will it? 

A new sheath for your rusty sword… What a shame. 

I wish I could tell you that you are going about it all the wrong way. 

I know you wouldn’t listen because you do not understand the nature of your actions.

Maybe one day you will. 
For now this little dreamer runs towards. 

Not away.
I look inward and not outside for what I know is already there.
 ~  
To one worthy of the delicate beauty that I now recognize within me:
 You must know that I have deep reverence for my heart and my mortal form. 

It is God Given and unique unto me.
It beats and bleeds with a love of the truest kind. 
Never again for fiendish, frivolous grappling.

It will be a painful day for you when you do figure it out, if you ever do.
It will be something you will celebrate later on. 
I am relieved that it is over. 
All of those many 'you's are gone now
Just dust kicked up in the path behind me as I walk farther away. 

I know it is there without having to turn around. 

You all just disappear into the atmosphere.

Such a comforting and appropriate feeling this image brings.

One day you will shake up another’s path. 

Hopefully your exit will be as helpful to them as it was for me. 

I know I opened the door.

If you hadn’t made the entrance you wouldn’t have been able to make that unsettling exit. 

So, really and truly- thank you. 

It was nice to have met you. 

I bid you ado and still a fuck you.

Mary Catherine, Cowardice Queen

Dearest Timothy Ryan

Dear Timothy Ryan,

My blood, sometimes I wish we were born twins. It certainly would have saved you a couple years of mean big sister torment.  Alas, it was not in the stars. You, my baby brother were born four years after me, fat as pumpkin with thick brown curly hair. Born the year of the horse, 1990. 

I want you to know that I would choose you as a brother even if our DNA did not already do that for me. You are the only one I feel this way about in my entire family. If I saw a girl hurt you, I think I would beat her ugly. If a guy threatened your life, I might just take his. I was a bitch to you when we were children. I found it cathartic to beat you up when I was around the age of ten, give or take a year or two.  Remember that time I picked you up by your tiny hands and swung you in circles until I was dizzy, then released you and you went flying into the kitchen cabinets?! 

Oh! What the hell? I thought it was a riot at the time, who knows what you were thinking, but you took it in stride, never the cry baby, a brave boy. No, you were stoic. I was just jealous and didn’t have anything else to abuse other then poor Milo the cat. I am sorry Timmy, I truly didn’t know any better back then. I had an absent father and a mother who was cold and cruel to me. I watched as she showered you, her son, with affection, attention and love. Smothered and suffocated is a more appropriate depiction. I think you would agree, either way, it did not have a positive effect on you. 

I do not know how you managed to get out of our childhood as relatively unscathed as you are. You are an angry young man, but you mean well and you are the best brother I could have wished for. 

Sometimes, when I think of you, our age difference does not seem as different anymore. 

We are now young adults in our late twenties, with children of our own. 

By the stars! What were we thinking? Let us hope they do not have the hex. 

I wish I had been a better example for you. I tried to teach you things, about life, how to be tough, how to look your enemy in the eye, but I know I could have been more convincing if I had not been my own breed of coward. I do not think I had much to offer. Forgive me for not setting a better example.  You are so clever and handsome. You look much like father did. You are funny like he was too. Please know that just because you inherited some of his positive traits,

 does not mean you are doomed to be a monster.

You may already know this, but it cannot hurt to hear it from your sister.... you deserve to be happy.

You deserve a young woman that will be loyal to you.

Who will see the best in you and cherish it.

When she sees the unflattering things, she will not run, she might not adore them but she will love and accept them just as well because they are a part of you.

You deserve to have someone whose mere presence will encourage you to be a better man.

You deserve to have a feeling of safety in your home, and that may be up to you to provide.

I know you can do that.

You already are, for yourself and for your beautiful daughter, your family.

Thank you for existing and loving me back the way I love you brother.

Mary Catherine, Cowardice Queen

Dearest Mary Catherine- A letter

Dearest Mary Catherine,

I have loved you from afar for so long it aches. 
I have told many lies for you, I have stolen for you, and stowed you away when you needed to hide. 
I have painted you up to look like something you are not. 
I have written and rehearsed lines for the façade that once was your life. 
I know you so intimately, your nakedness breaks my heart.  
I know why you did all those things. 
I love that fragile, beautiful girl so deeply. 
I want to graze my fingers across the skin on your face and trace the outline of your sharp angled jaw. I want to look into your eyes so I can study every speck of gold and green within their jarring blue.  
I want to study the hardships you try so hard not to acknowledge. 
They are there and they are scars from a brave, hard won battle that you survived.

 Look at your hands, they are tired yet still so loving and tender. 
Those life shaping extensions of you. 
Look at the tiny lines near the corners of your eyes. 
That is proof that you still found humor and joy during tormenting and frightening times since past. You lived and laughed whilst in hell.  How could I not adore you Mary? 

You truly are amazing. 
You brazenly walk the very sidewalks and streets that you once slept on.
Onward, with your head held high, sometimes even smiling or singing. 
Off you go, on your way to write, to read, to see a film, to meet a friend, to make an appointment. 
You have such a power.
You are alive. 
Against a great many odds that were not to your favor.
 You are a miracle if there ever was one to find. 
It is within every breath you take and what you take it for. 
You are hope embodied, thriving and climbing. 
I love you ever so much. 
Please, sweet love, please just let me love you. 

You do not need to fear so harshly any longer.
 No harm shall ever come to you,.
Not as long as you and I are together. 
You are safe now my love,  ever so safe.

Mary Catherine, Cowardice Queen