There are so many stories I'm not telling you. Each month contains almost an infinite number. For September of 2006, I could
tell you about finding my lakelegs on a ferryboat to Michigan, about smoking jasmine shisha from a hookah with Levi and Lucy,
about visiting Oshkosh and meeting Olive – Olive, the dark gypsygirl whom I fell in love with immediately and didn't know
what to do about it; we slept next to each other in her small bed while the cold rain tiptapped on the windowsill, her small hands
on my waist made me tremble; I asked the rain what I should do and the rain replied – Be patient, my dear. I could tell you about
rockabilly dance parties and leaving offerings to the gods of darkness.
But the real story of September is about being alone. I woke early in the gold autumn dawns and took shots of bitters and
whiskey, and I told myself it was to stave off the cold I felt coming on but that was just an excuse I used to justify drinking at 8:
30 in the morning. I drank whiskey and bitters, I chainsmoked, I felt sorry for myself. Afternoons when I wasn't in creative
writing classes, sharing my bloody faerie tales and rambling melancholy memoirs that none of the other students seemed to get,
I wandered the streets of Milwaukee with my collar turned up and my hands shoved in my pockets; the rain never ceased, the
earth was muddy and gray, the gutters were clogged full of leaves – green, with a crimson spray. I was sick with remembering
old flames.
Stories fold in on themselves, see, and there is no way I can tell you the story of September '06 without telling you a story from
September '03 –
It is not the full story; the full story would take pages, volumes, my hands would get cramped (more so than they already are,
damn arthritis and repetitive stress injury) if I tried to write it all down. Once upon a time, I left my soulmate behind in the
City of Romance. I was on tour with the Perpetual Motion Roadshow. One of our stops was Montreal, and he was in the
audience. He, Sullivan, the one I refer to as my Peter Pan. He saw my name in the paper, he said – back then, I called myself
Matty Disobedience – and was intrigued. He'd never admit to it, but I think he was more intrigued by the sexy picture of me
that accompanied our blurb – in the photograph, I was smoking in a bathroom, looking half-seductive, half-"gasp, oh my, I've
been caught!" It was a great photograph, and the reporter that did a write-up on us captioned it "bad behaviour." Whatever the
reason he came to the show, all that matters is that he was there. The whole night, with the exception of when I was
performing, we made eyes at each other. He was so beautiful, not just physically, though he was physically beautiful; what I
noticed most was the glint in his eyes that showed he got it. I don't know precisely what "it" is, but I always know when I find
someone who gets it. Afterward, we talked, and every word that came out of his mouth made me swoon – it was almost too
perfect, as though he had read a manual on how to woo me. He mentioned Tom Waits, Jack Kerouac. He told me he had a kitten
named Artaud. He offered to take me on a tour of Montreal, and I agreed.
We walked all across that beautiful, ancient city that night. I bought him bottles of Belle Guelle at a dive called Barfly. He let
me smoke his Galouises, and he recited one of his poems for me. To this day, it is one of my favorite poems – and when he recited
it that night, everything else in the room disappeared – he seemed to be flirting with me, but for some reason I thought he was
gay. While walking down Rue Saint-Laurent, I discovered he was bisexual. The next place we ended up at was a glittering club
full of drag queens, and prostitutes both male and female. We drank La Fin Du Monde (Quebecois end-of-the-world beer, it pops
like champagne when you open it) and shared one a.m. drunken truth. My tourmate Jon was with us, and he was sort of like an
older brother to me, so I thought it best not to tell Sullivan how badly I wanted him in front of Jon. When Jon got up from the
table to use the restroom, I had my chance.
Sullivan, I said, I just wanted to thank you for a glorious night. You are one of the most amazing people I've ever met, and...I find
you very attractive. –Miss Disobedience, the night has been my pleasure. I'm glad I could show you some of Montreal's beauty, and
some beauty in ugliness. I also think you are amazing, and I am very attracted to you, as well. –I would have been flirting with you
all night, but I thought you were gay. He put his warm, dry hand on top of mine, raised an eyebrow, and said – If you thought I
was gay, why didn't you try to change my mind? And then he kissed me, and the sky caved in.
I stayed at his place that night. We waltzed around his tiny apartment to Tom Waits' The Black Rider, we talked and talked,
about Love, Art, Life. It was uncanny how much we had in common, like we had been living parallel lives without ever
realizing it, like he was the male version of me. And we made love, over and over again until the sun came up, and then I sat
naked in his kitchen and he fed me tea and oranges. While a September drizzle pattered like faerie feet on the rooftop, we
crawled back in his bed and made love again. When I had to walk back across the city to meet up with my tourmates, so we
could get on our way to New York City, Sullivan walked with me. He let me wear his coat, to keep out the chill; it smelled like
cats and cigarettes and cinnamon. We held hands and he told me I was beautiful. When we said our farewells, I gave him his
coat, and hugged him as long and hard as I could, trying to memorize him. He pulled something out of his backpack, and
handed it to me. It was an anthology of Canadian poets. –To remember me by, he said. As though I would forget. –I wish I
didn't have to leave, I said. –C'est comme ça, cheri. That's how it is, dear. But we'll meet again. We have to.
That was in September 2003, and I never saw him again. There was a time when we sent each other kisses, letters, poetry. He
wrote a poem for me, once, something about beauty's dark hair spread across a pillow; it made me cry. We talked on the
telephone, shared tales of our drunken nights and doomed love affairs over miles of static. He was going to come to me in the
spring of 2004. We talked of getting married, because that way he could get a greencard to the United States, and I could get
one to Canada...and we were in love. He never made it. The last I'd heard from him, he was living in California, and Sweet
Lady Heroin had become his mistress. He was so caught up in that damn Beat poet mythology that he didn't realize he is
brilliant without drugs. I could not save him. I no longer even knew how to find him.
I spent sixteen consecutive hours with him, and that is all. But he was my soulmate; in September '06 I was as sure of that as I
had ever been of anything in my life. He was my muse for a very long time – every story, every poem, every journal entry I
wrote was told in a way I thought he'd appreciate. I will never forget him; I thought I'd never really get over him. I had my
soulmate, however briefly, and since then, I had not been able to really love any other man. They all paled in comparison.
C'est comme ça. Je me souviens.
A touch of glamour is the only cure for remembersickness and lovesads, and glamour was hard to come by in those drenched
days, so I spent money I didn't really have on bottles of rose wine and gourmet foodstuffs, vampy witchboots and 1940s dresses,
thin black cigarettes and strong coffee. Nights, I sat alone at home and wrote letters 'til my hands cramped, and I had the
thought that I could, if I wanted, measure the days of my life not in dates and numbers, but by the names of people I've written
letters to – Oh, that happened in the year of Penny, during the month of Hertz. I listened to those ladies who sing so well about the
same kind of deepdown blues I had – Lotte Lenya, Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee, Edith Piaf, Nina Simone. My foolish heart betrayed
me so; I couldn't help lovin' that man of mine. I drowned my past regrets in coffee and cigarettes, and smoke got in my eyes.
And I asked that old rag man how much he would pay for a heart that was broken, baby, when you went away. For a burnt out old
love light, that no longer beams, and a couple of slightly used second-hand dreams. But all he was buying was just rags and old iron.