I'm glad I had left my guitar in my car.
Valentine was a most gracious host but southern tradition always dictates that if someone is cooking for you, it is only right to bring them something in return. Valentine is always satisfied with a song, or a notepad to write wisdom upon or sketch pad to doodle in. She wants her “Temple” to be a place where art is born. Often, she talks on the topic of starting a reservation, deep in parts unknown, for artists and thinkers to churn out art and thoughts. For now, her home was her reservation and she viewed it as a very matronly duty to keep her “family” productive.
At a Valentine dinner, a song is much more appropriate than potato salad.
I situate a friendly smile on my face too the point of dimples and walk through the door.
Imagine Santa's elves, freed of whatever debt owed to the old glutton Nick and left at the North Pole with nothing to do but tend to elvish folly and merriment. Remove all Christmas connotations from that thought and you'd have The Temple of Color. Valentine's home, which was currently a car crash of glorious smells and sounds. Valentine has become very skilled at creating a very precise arrangement of smells and sounds that somehow magically fills a room with her presence. I could walk into this room blind and still be perfectly aware that she was near.
You can feel her.
Traditionally when I enter the room the sequence of events is as follows:
1. Valentine makes a noise. It can't be spelled or described, it's just a happy noise
2. The rest of “The Family” say their greetings and smile my way.
3. All of the dogs start growling at me.
4. Everyone scolds their dogs.
Tradition, in this instance, doesn't fail.
I pay no mind to the scorn of these beasts as dogs have never been quite fond of me and hug Valentine's neck with one arm making sure that the tuning knobs on my guitar don't get caught in her hair. This hug activates my charisma and I make my rounds hugging necks, shaking hands and smiling like a jackass the whole time.
A few people are noteworthy here.
Jackson is Valentine's boyfriend. He's southern hopitality to a regal degree. With a blonde beehive beard that always gives me visions of a grand Civil War General that could have really turned things around for the Confederacy had he only been there. His eyes are dark and twinkle, his smile is persistent, and when someone speaks, you never doubt Jackson is listening. A truly rare and important quality. Most impressively though, Jackson seems happy. He seems satisfied with what he has and who he is. If I didn't feel welcome before, Jackson's handshake seals the deal and in that moment of welcome, I would probably jump off a bridge if one were handy. My hypocrisy shoving me hundreds of feet to my demise. I am an unworthy being. He's wasting his welcomes on a tragedy.
Still, It's always good to see Jackson.
Jackson enjoys working with his hands, Natty Light, the outdoors, and practical jokes that end with his penis being exposed..
After my handshake and greeting, Jackson turns back to Jim, who also extends his hand for a greeting. Jim smiles at me, but never stops telling his story. Jim is a well known conspiracy theorist and is apparently at the pinnacle of explaining to Jackson how the government is putting something in the water to make us want to go to war with all non-white nations....or something like that. Jim is as close to a mad scientist as I will probably ever meet. Even his wild-eyes and messy brown hair are the perfect condition for a man familiar with gene splicing and zombie virus. I don't imagine him spending his free time the way ordinary people spend their time...not that I have any room to talk.
Jim's not crazy, however.
Jim's smart.
Which I believe makes him better than just an average stoner rambling off stupidities. His arguments are sound. His research is valid and he speaks, although through a marijuana slur, with confidence and poignancy and even though he does get excited when he preaches, he never comes across as a lunatic and is always receptive to a comical aside from another “family member”.
Also, Jim does not give a fuck.
Jim likes hallucinogenic drugs, the guardian.uk website, seeing stupid people fail, and not giving a fuck.
Even though The Temple of Color has a very spacious living room, most of the guests choose to wander around the kitchen. Its small, which invariably leads to frequent collisions, but we are all comfortable enough with each other that it doesn't really matter. Even the random few I have never met before seem at ease in this confined space.
After a brief conversation with Jim and Jackson concerning George Bush's grandfather and the Nazi party (google it) I collide with Jackson's brother, Boo.
Now, Boo isn't what everyone else calls Jackson's brother, but after a lost bet left him with a very haphazardly shaved head that looked like a training accident in a beauty school for the mentally disturbed, Boo Radley is too perfect a nickname to not use.
I am quite fond of Boo and believe that Valentine would say we are “moons orbiting the same planet.”
Poor Boo.
Boo is funny and smart and good looking and many other adjectives that I would use to describe myself. Much like myself I sense that he has stains on his past he'd rather keep hidden behind a wall of charisma than expose to the rest of the family. The difference being that Boo has happy ending written all over him. Something about Boo lets you know that he has enough of what it takes to actually become his mask.
Which is the ultimate goal for all of us. Like it, or not.
Boo likes stand-up comedy, playing pranks on Jackson, Everclear and yelling at people walking down the street...nothing foul, just a random word to make people question their day.
EGGPLANT!
Something like that.
Boo is telling me about his latest idea for a comedy skit involving a redneck Muslim that has an Earnhardt 3 stitched on his prayer blanket (not his best stuff, but still quite funny), When I hear a curmudgeonly Ahem.
I turn around and see Charlie.
She's standing there with her arms up. She wants me to pick her up and give her a hug, but you wouldn't know it by looking at her face. She's looking at me with a look of sincere disgust or at least as much disgust as her 4'11” frame and adorable face can muster.
She looks like a beautiful doll that has been abused by a careless child and dressed like a scarecrow with a credit card. Shirt with a torn collar, thrift store jacket, sweatpants, some peculiar hair clip with tentacle like feathers, loooooong matted scarf and you would almost think that her entire wardrobe is based on a dare.
But, for her. It. Works.
I smirk as I see her look of loathing and she just turns her head to the side snobbishly to avoid eye contact. She knows if she looks at me too long, she'll smile and she doesn't want that. Not because it means she'll succumb to my sexual advances, just because it means I'll win. I sling my guitar to my back and pick her up in a hug that is friendly and aggressive, almost like a dog chewing on a squeak toy. I can feel her smile big, but she never shows it to me. This is the game Charlie has set for me. She's quick to belittle and berate and despise me...in the most loving way possible. If we are truly a family like Valentine says, she's definitely my little sister.
And she's damaged.
I hold her in the air for a few minutes with ease whilst listening to the rest of Boo's pitch, when her personality kicks in and she demands to be put down because I'm “Too fat for long hugs.”
I smirk at her jab and set her down.
She then introduces me to someone that she's obviously having sex with, obviously doesn't fit in here, and will obviously be gone in about a day or two.
Almost like a dog chewing on a squeak toy.
Charlie likes trouble.
Aside from Charlie's “squeak toy” Valentine has also invited over half a dozen “people of value” that do or are into something “obscure” and “interesting” and they will all be impressed by my charm and wit and I'll forget their names and faces every time I leave the room. I have no use for new friends. I feel guilty enough about the ones I have now.
The night goes on. I spend most of it assisting Boo in fleshing out comedy skits for the show that will one day make us famous, smoking pot with Jackson as we discuss Jackson's regulation beer-pong table he just built and the giant pirate/bull skull he wants me to paint on it, and listening to Charlie talk trash about her newest chew toy while he's in the other room fixing her a drink.
“He has hands like a smurf.”
Poor guy never had a chance.
This whole time I keep my guitar in front of me so I can poorly pick out the same tunes I always pick out every time I come over. Every so often I can sneak out alone on the Temple's patio, playing and singing a song or two too an audience of kudzu that festers to the right of the Temple like a green tide that will eventually wash us all away.
Everyone laughs at my jokes, everyone is genuinely invested in my well being, everyone here loves me and with that thought I realize that I'm completely distant. I'm watching all of this on a small black and white TV in a movie theater on the moon. Every laugh and comment is heard through a telephone, muffled by a fluffy towel. Every clear vision, distorted through the bad reception of my eyes. My words were scripted before I even left my house. My stand-in is here.
I'll be in my trailer.
It's not that I don't want to be here. I love it here. They love me here. It's not that. It's that I feel more like a taint on the ecosystem of my friends, my family, than a fruiting body. I am a psychic vampire. Feeding off the emotions of the people that care about me. I am kudzu. Out of my adoration for them, I only submit them my shadow. Everyone I have ever really cared about is now a Chernobyl victim. Feeling the effects of my manipulations for all time. Never trusting. Always afraid. You know that twinkle in a happy person's eye? I eat them and leave the box they came in.
Every. Single. Time.
I'm pondering Nietzshe on the patio with a Camel Wide and my black guitar when Valentine walks up behind me.
“You're about to leave soon, aren't you, Brother Alchemist?” she says with a smug knowing.
“Yeah, I got work early tomorrow, Oh Soul Sista.” I say as I extinguish my coffin nail.
“You got time for a story?”
I pause, think about the abyss for a few seconds, smile and say, “Yeah, I guess I got time for a story.”
I set down my guitar as she pulls up the adjacent chair and gazes unto me.
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