PillBox (1st draft)

I think I fell in love with Lydia Lunch's hair in the mid-80s. I had to do mine just like hers. She was the ultimate dark diva, voluptuous, sharp, intelligent. Feminine and powerful.

I dyed my hair black and fire, kept my skin pale, and rimmed my eyes with kohl and dark eye shadow. My mother! She was wondering where her golden girl went. I looked great in pics, but it was hard to pull off being a serious "goth" because I smiled way too much. Still, I clung to my anger and depression until I realized I no longer needed it to feel real, or to be intelligent or beautiful.

In my 19th year, I began to experiment with being happy. I dated a lot of boys that year, I was in love with the idea of love with no constraints. I took the philosophy that "we are one" to the extreme, in fact, put that idea into action all the time. I read Timothy Leary and Aldous Huxley and books about kundalini and quantum physics. I wanted to connect with everything.

I dated David, a boy who was the color rust, from his skin to his hair, until I started to get the feeling that maybe he was some form of the Devil. At least he was one of my mental demons manifested in physical form. It didn't take long for me to get it, maybe 2 weeks (or maybe 3 dates). He kept trying to pull at me with his sadness, and I had no clue what his problem was, why he was so unhappy. I had no patience for it. I broke up with him when he told me he had written a composition for his funeral. He was 20 years-old and had music for an entire orchestra!

I was 18 and had already been through more in my lifetime than people twice my age-partly why I had no patience for David, a boy who lived in a nice house with his mom and had the time to study classical guitar and composition. Shit, I even died for a short time in a scummy hotel room. I remember looking in the mirror, face unnaturally pale and waxy, the edge of my vision going black. I was thinking, "I wonder how long it will take them to discover my body," and "I'm sorry, Mom."

I was letting the black grow out of my hair when I met David, it was growing in auburn on its own. David called it chestnut.

I have to say it. My life, the beginning of my life was a long winter. Springtime came and color flooded my lips and cheeks. I am happy when I am warm and flushed.


© May 10, 2008 Holly Troy