Jack and I grabbing whatever we can: drinking, smoking, dying, loving. I feel like a cliché. CARTER. CARTER. CARTER has rooted himself as a Prince Charming to save me from myself. There is no Evil Queen or Stepmother or Poison Apple, just my own desire devouring me whole.
But I don’t write to him or return his texts except maybe with just a smiley face – if at all – because I would just collapse hearing that thing that I can’t have. And besides… what if he’s not obsessive back? I need to be worshipped; I need love; I need softness; I need it all. He sent flowers to me at my hotel in Des Moines the week after we hooked up and the message said, “my one, my all.” I gave the flowers to Annie. She laughed at the note and said, “Well, I’m not going to put out.”
I don’t need love right now. I’m so confused and messed up and the last thing I need is to be involved with someone like this – to dive off a deep end. I need to focus on my career and writing songs and helping Jack stay a little closer to the ground. Sometimes I feel that if I weren’t around he’d be shooting bad drugs in some back alley in Cleveland and completely lose himself. I mean, if he weren’t here I wouldn’t have made it this far if at all; I’d probably kill myself from the insanity of living on a planet that doesn’t get me.
But it doesn’t mean I don’t notice Carter, and it doesn’t make me want him less. I just obsessively check his column online to see what he writes, Google him, and stare at his face on a screen. Empty visions of a life that won’t be.
We land in Tokyo wearing faux-fur and destiny. Jack and I walk hand-in-hand off the plane to thousands of screaming fans: little girls with my hair cut, boys with his, girls wearing the ‘key to the broken heart’ that Jack wears. Thunders of voices, loud and louder, shrill and giggle. We step between barricades, white-painted with orange kanji on them, and tall security guards in suits push us through – an ocean of fish drowning in the oxygen. I’m not in my body. The noise. There’s so much noise, never silence – except the painful kind when I try to sleep at night and the world closes in. All I feel then is the failure and uncertainty and impending doom and worms crawling though all the holes I put in me or my family put in me – so silent I can’t breathe.
There’s a break in security! Ah! Will we get elephant-stampede-trampled? AHHHH! GO, GO, GO, FASTER, FASTER, FASTER . We’re running away from all those little school girls. Chase, flash, scream. Skirts waving. White knee-high socks. Louder and louder. Jack opens the door, and we get in the black Escalade, just in time.
I am nauseous and throwing up, though I’m not high or drunk. Maybe I have the bird flu. I puke into a bag Jack hands me, then he throws it out the window. We drive from Narita with green hills and endless tall trees, to the outskirts of Tokyo, to the heart of the city: endless, gray, stacked buildings with rainbow neons and big, painted advertisings; trains speeding; mini construction cars; skies of man forever; laundry hanging from tiny squares. Jack is rubbing my neck and downing champagne. I’m too sick to drink.
FLU, FLU, FLU! The radio is playing J-pop. Squeaky clean, auto-tuned choruses jump about, singing to the beat of the what lays just outside the windows of our souls: giant screens, endless dreamers working away, and all what for? Tokyo makes me feel manic glee and like a cockroach on a shit pile of unimportance. Tokyo makes me feel how big the world is and how many of us are on it all trying to find a little meaning.
Limo stop. Hotel up. Puke, puke, puke. Upstairs. I want to crash, but I’ve got a nagging feeling that something’s up with my body – and not drug wrong, but seriously, seriously wrong. I haven’t had my period, but I think I’m too skinny to get it anymore anyway. But I’m not sure, and I’m so fucking hungry. I go down to the ‘souvenir n’
But I don’t write to him or return his texts except maybe with just a smiley face – if at all – because I would just collapse hearing that thing that I can’t have. And besides… what if he’s not obsessive back? I need to be worshipped; I need love; I need softness; I need it all. He sent flowers to me at my hotel in Des Moines the week after we hooked up and the message said, “my one, my all.” I gave the flowers to Annie. She laughed at the note and said, “Well, I’m not going to put out.”
I don’t need love right now. I’m so confused and messed up and the last thing I need is to be involved with someone like this – to dive off a deep end. I need to focus on my career and writing songs and helping Jack stay a little closer to the ground. Sometimes I feel that if I weren’t around he’d be shooting bad drugs in some back alley in Cleveland and completely lose himself. I mean, if he weren’t here I wouldn’t have made it this far if at all; I’d probably kill myself from the insanity of living on a planet that doesn’t get me.
But it doesn’t mean I don’t notice Carter, and it doesn’t make me want him less. I just obsessively check his column online to see what he writes, Google him, and stare at his face on a screen. Empty visions of a life that won’t be.
We land in Tokyo wearing faux-fur and destiny. Jack and I walk hand-in-hand off the plane to thousands of screaming fans: little girls with my hair cut, boys with his, girls wearing the ‘key to the broken heart’ that Jack wears. Thunders of voices, loud and louder, shrill and giggle. We step between barricades, white-painted with orange kanji on them, and tall security guards in suits push us through – an ocean of fish drowning in the oxygen. I’m not in my body. The noise. There’s so much noise, never silence – except the painful kind when I try to sleep at night and the world closes in. All I feel then is the failure and uncertainty and impending doom and worms crawling though all the holes I put in me or my family put in me – so silent I can’t breathe.
There’s a break in security! Ah! Will we get elephant-stampede-trampled? AHHHH! GO, GO, GO, FASTER, FASTER, FASTER . We’re running away from all those little school girls. Chase, flash, scream. Skirts waving. White knee-high socks. Louder and louder. Jack opens the door, and we get in the black Escalade, just in time.
I am nauseous and throwing up, though I’m not high or drunk. Maybe I have the bird flu. I puke into a bag Jack hands me, then he throws it out the window. We drive from Narita with green hills and endless tall trees, to the outskirts of Tokyo, to the heart of the city: endless, gray, stacked buildings with rainbow neons and big, painted advertisings; trains speeding; mini construction cars; skies of man forever; laundry hanging from tiny squares. Jack is rubbing my neck and downing champagne. I’m too sick to drink.
FLU, FLU, FLU! The radio is playing J-pop. Squeaky clean, auto-tuned choruses jump about, singing to the beat of the what lays just outside the windows of our souls: giant screens, endless dreamers working away, and all what for? Tokyo makes me feel manic glee and like a cockroach on a shit pile of unimportance. Tokyo makes me feel how big the world is and how many of us are on it all trying to find a little meaning.
Limo stop. Hotel up. Puke, puke, puke. Upstairs. I want to crash, but I’ve got a nagging feeling that something’s up with my body – and not drug wrong, but seriously, seriously wrong. I haven’t had my period, but I think I’m too skinny to get it anymore anyway. But I’m not sure, and I’m so fucking hungry. I go down to the ‘souvenir n’
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