EX-LOVERS AND MADMEN

Almost everyone was under the impression that you were a bit mad- not quite right, that you had crazy eyes and it looked as if you could have a nest of baby birds in your hair. They pointed to the fact that the friends you spoke of never seemed to materialize anywhere, that your laughter had a tinge of Dracula's side kick Renfield to it. That you moved oddly, as if stuck in your own body. They told me of things they had seen you do that I somehow missed. How you had stabbed open a can of very old peas with a fork and proceeded to eat them one at a time through the jagged metal lid. How you sat staring, picking imaginary insects from your hair. But I did not see these things. I called you graceful and strangely beautiful. You called me an angel that had fallen from a field of wildflowers.

Of course there were things that I also took note of. The scars on your arms for instance. Deep, raised scars, some small, some inches long. Some still bleeding, or recently scabbed over. You'd scratch until they bled, and when they'd begun to heal, you'd scratch them open again. Your roommates were 4 cats. 2 of which you'd found on the street, and the other pair you'd taken in for a friend. You were their servant though you'd often curse them for "christening" your couch or bed, or one of the many pieces of clothing laying on your floors. Little stacks of cat hair were piled up in the corners of every room, and scattered about on the bare floors so that when you walked they would move like tumbleweed in the desert. Cat hair would almost always stick to my eyelashes, and cling to my lipstick. My dark clothes, flecked with small light colored hairs, would look like mohair by the time I left. The food we ate in those rooms and the water we drank all contained at least a few wispy hairs. When we'd kiss they'd gather round in their sleek curiosity. I had a feeling they were sizing me up, but you made sure to pay attention to them, and often spoke their names out loud, making little comments to each of them, lest they should think they were being ignored. In those first weeks you were ecstatic I think. You would laugh often. We would not be able to stop ourselves from kissing and touching, and there were nights I thought I would starve to death over want of you. You'd laugh at me when I told you that. You seemed so well put together, at ease and in control.

I remember at this time in my life there was a drug dealer living next door. At all hours there would be someone knocking on the back door, on the window. Rapping, sometimes for up to an hour. I thought, as I lay awake, that I was like these addicts, unable to help myself, knocking again and again without an answer.