one long prelude

so it's kinda weird. i'm struggling a little with putting a bit of this book up here. and yet, as i'm reading and revising and re-writing i'm missing the context of a writing workshop, ears to bounce these words from. i'm wanting to use this forum, my blogster world, for my word-bouncing, so to speak, but part of me is slightly scared of letting this part of me touch this place. The thing with blogs is you never know who's reading them. And i work in a rather conservative sort of industry where is image is pretty much everything- and the thing is, i'm relatively palatable as a nice femmey white lesbian from a middle-class christian family, (relatively, and in new york.... i still doubt my palatability to most of the south and definitely 97% of utah) especially since I'm not currently dating anyone and therefore i can exist in folks' minds as a rather sexless sort of human who just doesn't date men. a theoretical lesbian, if you will. though i'm quite sure the signs are there for those who are looking- i do lean towards birkenstocks and lots of keys and no make-up and i have two cats and duh, i like girls, and ok, i could go on but i'd like to get back to the point tonight because I have to pee and i want to publish this before i go upstairs. anyway, point is- my writing, my fiction, is kind of harsh, for lack of a better word. the story in this book is not a pleasant one. i just want to be clear about that. cause the thing is, i have decided i'm not making the book have its own blog or any such thing. cause this is me: writer, scrapbook artist, teacher, sister, dyke. i'm not relegating any one portion of my self to another forum for any one's comfort. so if you're faint of heart, skip the rest of this post, ok? for the rest of you, thanks for reading. in advance. and if you have a reaction, share it. i've gone through some incredibly tough writing programs, i'm used to truthful criticism. i appreciate it. ok, so here is one small niblet of this story (which is told in mini-chapters which are often found out of chronological order)...... ps, i don't know why the spacing is all weird but i can't seem to fix it. just know it's not stylistic, it's just a cut & paste glitch.)

Queries:
Stella answers some Questions

Why the
wings?

On my back? (she smiles loosely and wraps her
arms around her chest, cupping her shoulders in her palms and stretching her
long fingers onto her back, where the wings are. Huge, in shades of grey
and black, and the most intricately feathered detail, they stretch the widest
span of her shoulders, from hip to hip; the outer edges of her upper ass is
where the feathers stop and smooth plain pale skin begins again.)

I
love them. I’d wanted them for so long. My mom used to call me her
little angel, too, you know. And my grandma, she was Italian, and she’d
say “Che bedesta bupo … cara mia, dito Angelina…” When I was a kid I read a
story about changelings and thought for a while I might be one of those. I
was always convinced I was going to die. Or be drastically maimed. Once my
Mother found me hopping around with my leg tied to a chair with a hair
ribbon. I was practicing for when my leg got amputated. Not
if.

I wanted to be a fairy. I settled for being an
angel. A godsend. I did everything she asked and when I was done I
asked “Can I do anything else?” and she’d say “Stella, you’re an angel,
you’re a star, what would I do without you?” And I wouldn’t get a hug or a
kiss but sometimes those words, like a caress themselves.

Also, when I was little, like six, I had these dreams about sex or
what my idea of sex was, then. Which was not sex so much as being naked
with people and kissing them and painting on each other’s bodies with lipstick
and eyeliner, magic markers. Writing poems on asses and thighs.
Painting flowers on knees and elbows. That’s what tattoos are for me,
then, sex and art and pain combined in the most perfect way.
And Gabe
gave them to me. She gave me my wings. (she laughs and looks out the
window)

Why did you stay with Gabe for so long?

You
know the Australian Aborigines? I read somewhere if you put them in jail, they
die, because the horrors of jail become all they can see. Their time is
different from yours. Jail becomes their all. You cannot tell them
It’s only for three weeks. It’s only for six months. They lay down
and die and get out of jail right away. It’s not that they don’t believe
you, it’s that the future doesn’t exist and they know that.

But,
you understood that you weren’t really--

I knew I was a girl, and I
was small and weak and in the end I couldn’t save her. But you have to
know that for years before, I did. I was. She called me her Angel
and that was enough. I was.

What about others around
you, how did they see your relationship? Did they know you were being an
angel?

When we would leave her house after visiting, her mother
used to say to me, “Keep my girl safe,” and I would smile and say “I always do,”
because I always did, and at least that way I wasn’t promising anything, just
reminding her of all the days I’d already kept Gabe alive.

Don’t
give me that look. I know I wasn’t really responsible for keeping Gabe
alive, but at the same time I was. Or at least that is what everyone was
saying so that must be true enough. She believed it. Doesn’t that
make it true? If someone gives you a power over them, does it matter that they
never really had the power to hand over? She told me everyday that I was
the only reason she got up in the morning, and most days she acted like it was
true. That I was her reason for being. Well, me and heroin. Us
two.