Ginevra Bianchini
Have you ever woken up in a tiny public bathroom, lying on the ground, violently aware of what you just did? I have, too many times. I can see myself so clearly, like I am watching a movie. I am lying over the worst possible garbage, mixed up with bodily fluids, half asleep, half awake, legs akimbo, one arm weirdly twisted inside the toilet – I think I fell into it. With my left hand I feel the cold oily tiles under me, and I try to stand up. It is so slippery I can only move an inch while I dive with my right arm even more in the toilet. I can’t really feel anything. This is who I am or who I used to be. All my memories and thoughts are so tangled up I can’t even tell if I am remembering this, or dreaming it, or living it. A song, like a lullaby in the background. Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality. Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see… maybe I am actually dreaming, or just tripping hard.
I used to wonder if every time I was getting that high I was having a life crisis, a revelation regarding my own existence, or if I just wanted to have fun. Or maybe I wanted to kill myself. I never really wished to die though. I didn’t want to be there, with my hand fishing in the dirt of the toilet – was that really me? In my mind’s eye I can see myself sprawled on the floor, barely conscious, but somehow blissful. Was that real bliss though? I was scared to go to sleep then – what if I could not wake up again? Don’t go to sleep, trust me, or it will turn into a really sad story. I think I liked hurting myself. I was searching for a sort of vicarious drug-related self-destruction because I didn’t want to feel loss or abandonment.
When I am sober, I sometimes envision myself as a Kintsugi vase. People lift me up in the air and make me fly for a short span of time, like a parent would do when they are playing with their child. I look up to the sky and all I see is stunning pink and orange clouds. I try to reach them as I realise that I am not really flying, it is but a brief illusion. Instead, I am being tossed up in the air, only to then come crashing down to the ground because there is no one ready to catch me. Where is my father? I thought it was him making me fly.
I break in a hundred thousand pieces, for the millionth time.
I am sitting on the floor of a toilet cubicle; I think someone is trying to open the door.
Somehow, my future self has managed to pick up all the tiny pieces, again. In a very meticulous way she puts them back together and paints the cracks with golden. Do they look better now? Is the gold making the cracks more pleasant for the eyes or are they making me look beautiful? I don’t like the idea that what broke me made me better, that it made me aesthetically more luscious for the eye. I did not choose to soar down from the sky just in time to shatter again as I fall to the ground. Those who tossed me up were supposed to catch me. I don’t want to break again, and I don’t want to have golden cracks.
I want to be caressed, I want to be held, I want you to tell me how gorgeous I am, right now, even if it is just in your eyes. I want to lay in bed, bodies interlocked in a connection that can last forever or for a single instant. I want to look you in the eyes and tell you how much I want you in this very moment. I want you to touch those cracks and see that they are not really golden. The paint is just on the surface, underneath they bleed on the inside. They are infected and they fester in the labyrinth that my body is, eating up that poor pristine flesh that had not been corrupted, cut open.
But your touch is a blade, and it cuts even deeper into the crack on my hip. Reaches into my belly, in my guts, and I feel the blood boiling in your cool soft hand. You lavish in it like a ghastly night-time vampire, lick your hands, the blade, and the wound while you look deeply in my eyes. You want me to see you can reach deep inside of me.
I think this is what betrayal feels like.
Have you ever taken so many drugs all at once just because you wanted your mind to become a tabula rasa? I have, too many times. I thought I was an iron vase in the middle of many made of ceramic. I thought I could spit in the face of pain and say, ‘Not today, Satan!’ Instead, here I am, helpless like a fat snake that just swallowed its prey. Another ceramic vase, full of cracks painted with gold. When am I going to break for the last time? I used to crave it like a sweet delight. I don’t know if I do anymore now.
My eyes are so foggy I can barely see the door in front of me. There is a dim cold light hovering over me, and I hear a voice in the distance. Someone is tinkering with the door, hitting it. I guess they really need to pee. I wish I could tell them to go, I won’t be able to stand and unlock the door for a while so maybe better try an alley. However, my voice comes out more as a whisper, I am not even sure I actually said something. I think there is someone holding my face up and talking to me. They are too close – I can’t really work out who it is and even less what they are telling me. It sounds like an eerie slow-motion mumbling. I think maybe it is myself.
In my memories though, I see you. I had given you a little key to a tiny door hidden in the most remote part of my consciousness. It was the first time I was doing that, I was scared; the door had been shrinking in the years, so that only a couple fingers could pass through. I don’t know how you managed to wiggle your entire body through it, maybe that fucking door was not that small after all. Did I forget to lock it? Where is the key? I think I lost it, or maybe you took it. I guess that door was enormous in reality and wide open ready to welcome you.
I can’t remember the taste of your mouth, your smell, your voice, not even the feel of your beard through my fingers. I remember though the last time I touched my grandfather’s cheek. I can see it and feel it so clearly in my head. It is the last memory I have of him. I am looking at him, I caress his face and he has a little stubble of a greyish beard. He looks at me with sad eyes, he knows he won’t see me again. He died in his sleep that night after I had left my hometown again. I think for a period of time I resented him for it. How dare you die when I am not there? How can you die if I don’t see you dying? How dare you go away without my permission? Why did you not say goodbye? I still have so many questions for you.
I feel as all the people in my life wiggle away from me while I am not present, while I am looking in the other direction. Like my grandfather did. How dare you leave me like that? Not once, but twice. The feel of my grandfather’s beard is immortal in my head, the memory of the last few seconds I had with him. You, instead, you are gone. I can’t remember anything about you, I just see your eyes, constantly, piercing through me like a scorching flame.
I finally open my eyes and the cubicle is empty. No one opened the door. It is just me, again. I try to stand one more time by holding onto the toilet, I am so out of it I can’t even smell anything. I am standing now, and I slowly manage to open the door. There is a line of girls outside, wildly pissed at me. “Were you taking a dump, you bitch? We’ve been waiting for hours!” This scary-looking white girl with seven layers of makeup pushes me aside out of the cubicle, and I stumble towards the sink. Wow, I really look like shit. Glittery dark eyeshadow is glued all over my face, it poured down from my eyes. When did I cry? I try to wash my hands in a useless attempt to cleanse them from all the filth I touched in there. I climb back up the stairs, holding on to the handrail like I am in a sinking boat. Every step is an effort.
But then I am outside, wait, how did I get here? I am sitting on the ground, great, it is wet, more filth. When is this dream going to end? I feel like I am falling again into the apathy of a death masquerading as a celebration of life.
I wake up and I am in my bed, drenched in sweat. Now I really see you, sleeping, lightly snoring. My head is on your chest, and I hear your steady heartbeat and I think that we will be here forever, bottled up in a memory: I caress your long blonde beard, I draw a line on your pointy nose, and you say nobody has ever done that. I feel special here, close to you, connected to you on a different level – one that belongs to only you and me. Here we are eternal, together, without death or even life. We are not human; we are just energy feeding off each other’s particles. In this liminal space between today and tomorrow we don’t need to define our lives, we can just enjoy this warmth we have and exchange the static that runs between us.
When I see you, on the other side of the road with that constantly pensive, frowning look on your face, I go back to those moments out of space, out of time, out of body. I feel your hand gently touching my naked shoulder, too close to one of the many golden cracks. We are embraced, and I tiptoe around the scar on your left shoulder, a painful tattoo. I thought I knew what loss felt like, but this is different. With those sad tired eyes you pierce through me, and I know that a long time ago, when I didn’t exist and you didn’t exist and this world hadn’t been built around us, we were in love, in a limitless empty space of budding desire and pain.
Yes, it was a dream. It was also a memory.
I think I am going back to sleep now.
Ginevra Bianchini (she/her) is a PhD student in English at Trinity College Dublin, working on a project focused on the intersectional and interdisciplinary representation of sexual violence in North America and the UK. Her most recent academic article was published in December 2022 in the journal LEA – Lingue e letterature d’Oriente e d’Occidente. She is Postgraduate Caucus Co-Chair of the Irish Association for American Studies (IAAS) and was co-convener of the School of English Staff-Postgraduate Seminar Series in 2022/23.
Stone Quarterly 