You Never Got Me

A taxonomy of Angel

I live in a dangerous and expensive neighbourhood.

You could never understand the addicts and criminals I let crash on my couch.

But I just got lonely sometimes.

I frost my mouth with pink Lancôme lipgloss every day after I brush my teeth. I have dark, shiny hair down to my waist. It’s clean most of the time. I can be maybe five different people (sexy allyana, baby allyana, spooky allyana, abandoned allyana and angel).

I’d barely had the chance to acquaint the six of you when you told me you didn’t like the picture of that Russian model with four cigarettes in her mouth on my Spotify playlist cover. You were so weird about things like that. You wanted me to fit into a mould that you built for me. But I’m already made up. I’m already set. So everything started oozing and dripping out the sides and it was liquid but solid, kind of like putty. Pink. Or blue. No, pink! Blue! I was being art for you and you thought I was making a mess.

You said you never understood why the curtains being blue had to mean anything. You didn’t understand why everything had to reverberate somewhere in my body; painful or wonderful or hot. You kept trying to break me down, unglue my parts, scatter them around the apartment. So tonight, I’ll spare you the effort. I’ll unclasp the Pink Sparkle caboodle and show you what’s inside.

I’m made of: Disney Princesses (Ariel + Cinderella to be precise), sexy angel/nurse costumes, Haifa Wehbe lying about being 20-something when she was actually 35, black eyeliner pencil, expensive things from the early 2000s, TRUE AND REAL love, melodies from God, Park Towers, cotton candy and the smell of it, Bridget Marquardt’s dispassionate birthday cake strip tease for Hugh Hefner’s 80th birthday, Courtney Love’s America’s Sweetheart record, (get it? Because everyone hated her; it was a commercial failure), derelict office blocks with red and blue gelatinous lights inside, when Elliott smith sang ‘cuz everyone is a fucking pro and they’ve all got answers from trouble they’ve known and they all gotta say what you should and shouldn’t do, though they don’t have a clue’, an insatiable lust for calm danger, and a lot of other things that you may or may not understand and that I cannot remember at this time.

The point is, that strange/ugly/mangled/attention seeking/sad/broken/gauche ideas are always contained inside beautiful things. Jeder Engel ist schrecklich. You didn’t even understand poems. That’s why I’ll always think you’re hopeless. It’s like you’re walking through life with one eye wide open and the other puckered shut on purpose. Like the islamic antichrist. Philistine. Meanie.

You were obsessed with the way that people were looking at me. You were always looking at me. With delight; in anger; in awe. That’s where the no poetry thing comes in again. All you knew how to do was look. You wouldn’t know how to see if John Berger smacked you in the face. You didn’t want to see. That I am more than a limited edition Valentine’s Day rhinestone panty from Victoria’s secret PINK and there are more colours than plaid.

Some people are haunted houses. I am one of those. Things are always going bump, cupboard doors are always flying open; the lights go out. I am a repository of things that are neither dead nor alive, neither present nor past. And it sounds counterintuitive, I know, but it’s only that way because I’m smitten with the life I’ve been given. I feel blessed. Isn’t that the premise of souvenirs? Relics from romantic vacations. You didn’t like that about me. It was as heinous as hating my banged up nurse Hello Kitty phone charm. It wasn’t her fault she was so banged up, it was mine.

You wanted me to live quietly, because you wanted me to be yours. And I could never be. All I ever wanted since I was a little girl was to be the whole world’s girlfriend. Wipe the whole world’s tears. Kiss it goodnight.

And now that it’s all over, I’m wondering whether I’m the haunted house, or the haunted house is in me. I’m putting too much french vanilla creamer in my coffee and trying to alchemise these clown demons that you left in here with me. At first they wouldn’t let me sleep; they’d follow me around, start chatting idly with the resident ghosts, scare angel jr. But then I noticed that they actually had really great bone structure, so I drew little beauty marks over their face paint and dressed them up in the Dior sunglasses and Louis Purses you bought me. A little pink lipgloss to finish, (peach for Bobette because she’s a spring) and now they do my screaming for me.

Anyway, I know, deep down in my heart, that wherever you are, you’re being a weird bitch.

Bad case of reality, in dire need of fantasy.

Dr angel says: Abstain from self help and non fiction, pop a novel and call me in the morning.

Being so literal is a sin. Like, literally. I’ve heard it’s worse than all seven others.

But.

A part of me used to love you. And in this haunted house, no naïve bimbo ghost is ever cast out onto the street.

So I’ll keep pouring pre-bottled strawberry milkshake into your fancy glasses until it overflows and spills all over your Airbnb table and the wood thinks pink. And here, I’ll offer you a cigarette; but you don’t smoke, right, of course you don’t, it’s so bad for you. And yes that’s the only beverage on offer, I’m sorry, unless you want to undertake some microwave experiments in changes of state with me.

Thank you for being what I am not; I could not be inane frosting without your methodical honey. Thank you for solving the math problems so that I could draw hearts and baby giraffes in the margins. Somewhat girl, mostly Tempur-Pedic marshmallow. Choose your own cage, lock the door, never rattle against your chains goddamn.

And then I sing anyway. Because some of us have to. I run. Because some of us have to try. And when the champagne’s run dry and the blue and pink balloons are sinking down to the floor, like so many deflating gemstones, we will all grow up, of course we will. We’ll dust ourselves off and wash off our eyeliner and go to bed.

But.

You don’t always have to be so serious. It’s an awful idea to always do what you think you should. Laugh on cue. Rage on cue. And it’s so boring. We all belong to each other. The world is a plush, tropical wind and it hugs us all. It must be terribly lonely thinking that you belong to yourself.

You made it rain for a year and a half. Here are your flowers.