(((awakening in a tiki ballroom))

[foxtongue]

Kyle and I crept down the familiar black wood stairs behind the bar, "Want to see where I go when I pull my ghost act?", and came out into the vast industrial vintage kitchen that dominates a third of the basement. I'm familiar with this place, but in the dark, everything looks different, as if the room is religiously slumbering, waiting for a second coming of a sacred pastry chef.

Exiting the kitchen into the hall, where the bar is, to the left is the entrance to a low thatched ceiling Tiki Banquet room, all low slung chairs piled haphazardly and woven bamboo walls, and to the right is the entrance to the Polynesian Ballroom which, when the lights are on, is dominated by a long colourful mural put up somewhere in the late forties, the sort of thing you tend to only see in movies unless you live in L.A. or San Francisco. However, it being somewhere close to two:thirty in the morning, the place was abandoned. In the dark, the mural is ignored in favour of the elegant farthest wall, made almost entirely of black and white glass.

This is what we walked into, the stained glass our only source of light, transforming the ballroom into a warm cavern of a room, dark as unwashed velvet. It was a movie moment, a cinematic young girl's dream of where she'd lose her virginity.

We were talking about fathers and how they're different from dads. How I'd had one of each as time progressed and how both of them were eventually terrible. I settled our things, strawberries, alcohol, his back-pack, three layers of our jackets, on one of the black tables scattered around the room as Kyle went up onto the balcony and fiddled with switches until he'd found us an unassuming light. The green carpet glowed.

My head in his lap, his hand in mine, my eyes slowly closing with exhaustion, we talked about the shattered crystal balls that were our childhoods. How our hell-raising had taken entirely different forms. Mine almost entirely after dark and secretive, away from my mother, his open to the point where his mother had to fight to keep him out of special schools. We swung ridiculously between being serious, out-pouring our personal history of hurts, and laughing at the futility of the human race. We both want to leave this place better than we found it. When the ice-age comes, if we're not colonizing the stars yet, we'll be standing on the side, waving flags and rooting for the Earth.

If you call it love, we'll cut you.

She sang to herself, as she waited, about the death of dreaming trees. She was almost asleep, but she still smiled when she heard him singing in reply from the next room. When he returned, he'd found she'd shifted from lying on the couch to lying on one of the shining black tables scattered around the room. His reaction was delightful to her, an outburst of sweet awe-struck vehemence so gratifying that it occured to her that she might take up lying on chilly tables in dimly lit rooms as a hobby for the rest of her life.

Comments

[vesperjade.livejournal.com]

you really are a beautiful writer.
Im glad I added you.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much, lovely. It warms me you say that.

Want to go for hot chocolate sometime?

[vesperjade.livejournal.com]

You know what, I would enjoy that muchly.

[mad-and-crazy.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to figure out what to say about the Polynesian Ballroom and Tiki Lounge, other than that it seems sort of.... I don't know, vaguely reminiscent of the sort of social events that characters look forward to in Garrison Keillor stories.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

.. who?

sounds like love to me.

[hentooth.livejournal.com]

you will also love this.

http://www.youtube.com/v/KmyN1ypGfEo

I have an urge now to go fellate some neon

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

... no wonder the 80's produced people like me

hold me mammy, I need a wtfomg icon

[static-eddie.livejournal.com]

allow me to cheat just this once and ask you, is this a current memory or from something long past?... or is it a dream?

please please tell me... I have little time and even less focus to track down the answer on my own....

speaking of dreams.......I should begin posting mine...
I think I heard an echo of my own in your words.

you may cheat as often as you allow

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Not the slightest bit of fiction here, dear heart. This was part of how I spent Tuesday night, Thursday morning.

Re: you may cheat as often as you allow

[static-eddie.livejournal.com]

yum.
If you're going to do it... do it RIGHT.


who is the ghost?

my first coherent thought was a clothing check, yes

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

The hotel ghost is the son of the family that owns the local incarnation of the Waldorf Astoria. He haunts the manse, as it were. He lives there, but is hard to find. When I ask for the Hotel Ghost, people know who I mean. Everyone's either just seen him or could swear that they'd heard him on the stairs. Never, ever, is he merely there, available, present. There is always waiting, spending time at the bar, engaging in curious conversations and being curiously stared at my desk clerks. as if, how could I exist, when he does so barely. We are not in a very traditional relationship tht way. he is not found away fomr the building, not yet. he does not call or call upon me. It is a strangely hopeful and delicious hunt.

I met him dancing at the Afrika Bombaataa concert a few weeks ago and I've been increasingly impressed by how we interact and how well. It's like I was hiding before I met him. It reminds me a little of myself when I met Warren, finally. Something just snapped, creaked, then bloomed.

Re: my first coherent thought was a clothing check, yes

[static-eddie.livejournal.com]

Excellent.

And if this union is sparking such writing then it must be substantial...

Kid ghosts are almost always a game of hide-n-seek....

there is something wholesome about finding another muse

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

He's older than I am, has a child even. The wee one turns three on March 5th. I'm not sure if a present is appropriate, though my room is full of splendid things for children that I must rid myself of.

Re: there is something wholesome about finding another muse

[static-eddie.livejournal.com]

mmm... another comment, so maybe not the last...
I'm still browsing photographs...

if your room is full, then a gift is a appropriate. and no child I know would ever concern themselves with proper social standards if it meant forfeiting a gift.

and here you said you were going to bed

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

I hope you find some you like. I'm still vaguely (reticently) nervous about the fact I put those on-line.

My room is more full than I'd like, as I plan on leaving for London in August, though perhaps with a whirlwind tour of Livejournal friends first. That, and my room really can be an accidental euporic. I have friends who paw through for neat stuff & things on a regular basis, (and there's a line-up for my bookshelf, I swear, the vultures).