Excerpt from the solo performance, Waiting for Billie Holiday, by Amontaine Aurore
I should have listened to my mother. My mother watches the forensic shows. She’s always telling me, “Be careful. There are a lot of crazies out there.” And usually I do listen to my mother. But this time … I let him in. A stranger. A strange stranger. A strange stranger that I have a strange strange attraction to. When he came to my place for the first time, walking in wearing the cutest little newsboy cap, I swear to you, it was just like the sun had come down from the sky and walked through my door. It was so completely corny that I immediately mistrusted the entire situation. Something was wrong here. I kept my eyes on him. Every move of his head—suspicion. Every twitch of his mouth—suspect. Those two dimples—masters of manipulation. And how he looked at me without really looking at me. He knew that was cute. But then he did something that was solid proof I should’ve never let him in. He walked calmly over to the chair, sat down, folded his long fingers in front of him, and looked at me as if to say, hey, I’m normal. And that’s when I knew for sure he was anything but.
Letting him in was my first mistake. Trying to figure him out was my second. I wanted to crack his hidden code. Like a detective on a search for soul, I wanted to infiltrate into the far reaches of this mysterious guy. People, people, people! He’s young. Not illegal young! Not Mary Kay Letourneau young! But there’s something about him that’s old too, if you know what I mean. He’s poor. Doesn’t have a dime. Yet, there’s something about him that says … rich. And wouldn’t you know it … beautiful. And even more so because he doesn’t seem to care about that. No, he’s fascinated by the realm of human consciousness, always traversing the vast territory of his mind. He sits in coffee shops on rainy afternoons writing poetry about his brother—the tortured one who can’t stop feeling the fabric of the chair against his back. You know this guy. You probably see him, meandering the dark corners late at night, knowing not what to do with the anguish created by his inability to conform. Always musing, reflecting, consorting with his inner dimensions. Working to get to the kernel of truth within everything. The kernel which is the microcosm and the reflection of the macrocosm of the all. Yeah. He knows that’s cute.
Why do I find this man so utterly fascinating? Think of nothing but him—first thing in the morning, last thing before sleep, every moment in between? Longing to know him inside out, wanting to worm my way into his most private thoughts and feelings. But try as I may, the process was just so slow in coming. Plodding … plodding … And then, at last! A break in the case! He let slip that one of his favorite books is Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse–that he identified with the main character. Okay! So! All I had to do was get the book, read it, understand the character, and I would understand him. A crash course in analyzing the terminally eccentric. So … like a criminal … I donned by trench coat, turned up the collar, slithered down to Elliott Bay Bookstore. Perused the shelves. There it was! Steppenwolf! Got it! Bought it! Brought it home in a brown paper bag. Devoured all 218 pages in two and a half hours while nibbling potato chips with ridges. Then I tucked it securely under my bed. I didn’t want him to see it. I had planned to surprise him by reciting one of the passages by heart—perhaps a particularly sexy paragraph that I would whip out at just the right moment—like some huge body part that had been bound beneath my clothes for weeks. Ta da! Okay, I was stooping to petty calculation, I was scheming to titillate. But I convinced myself it would all be worth it once he realized just how incredible I was. How … beyond!
And it seemed to be working. The first time we went to the Pike Place Market together, was when I really began to notice that he was looking at me as if I were a bizzarity in the Olde Curiosity Shop. I don’t have two wombs or six toes, yet he seemed to sense something beneath the surface of me that was better than cable television. We oggled neat rows of purple glistening eggplants. We squeezed plump beefsteak tomatoes. We ordered two beers at Lowell’s Restaurant, and engaged in flirtatious but stilted conversation.
Afterwards as we strolled down Post Alley, he turned his face in disgust from the do rag boys hanging out on the corner, their no shirts, their white underwear creeping up, and kept his eyes on me, the curio that was least threatening. He lit up a cigarette, and held it so that a procession of renegade smoke streamed into my face and up my nostrils. It was just lovely. I tried giving him a look, the one that says, stop it you asshole. Well … it was then that I began to notice … something with me had gone terribly awry. You see, I couldn’t make my face do that. I used to have what? Twenty? Twenty five different expressions? Now I only have a few? Happy. Sad. Ecstatic. It’s like I’ve been botoxed. Like there’s botox floating through the ethers, or something?! What’s going on here? And when I thought about it, the same thing has happened with my walk. I used to get up in the morning, slip on my high heels, own the world with my strong, defiant strut. Now sometimes I can barely get my slippers on, hardly get my knees to bend.
Oh, I see what you’re thinking. You’re like, so? So perhaps to you this does not add up to so much. But you try waking up realizing you’ve lost your walk. That you’ve lost your repertoire of expressions. Realizing that you have a whole cabinet full of empty beer bottles that you’ve saved because his mouth has been on them. Or that you’ve spent an inordinate amount of time sitting at this man’s feet like a sycophant, listening to poetry about his brother that draws cats with no faces.
So now … I’m not quite sure what to do. Now that I understand all those silly love songs. All those baby baby baby baby baby … Yes, I prayed. That was the first thing I did. Second thing was to scrape together all of my money, ready and willing to pay for the antidote only to find that one has never been created. Are you aware of this? Are you aware of the failings of our scientific research? I am very serious when I ask exactly where are my tax dollars going?
My friends don’t understand either. But they think it would be better for me to find someone else. Someone … not so Steppenwolf. Place an ad in the paper or on one of those computer dating witchamacalits. I can see it now: Woman would like relationship with man that is not young, old, rich and poor, all at the same time. Does not wear the cutest little newsboy cap. Does not have an interesting brother. And most assuredly should not be consorting with his inner dimensions in search of the kernel of truth which is the microcosm and reflection of the macrocosm and the all. Something like that.
What must be plain to you now is that I am an unresolved mess. I have been punctured. I have looked into a shattered funhouse mirror. And I have come to one conclusion! I must create the antidote! I must create the antidote for … this!