Royal sessions [9.30.1998]

I searched the dials for intelligence and found none. I stopped at the Chicago Press to pick up a letter and took the bandana off my head. One woman stared at my birds nest. She was old enough to have given birth to me. I stared back at her and noticed a touch of fear like she was worried the untamed mess might reach out and strangle her in this antique elevator which was no more than a cage in a shaft with shiny buttons smelling of oil and grease. There are many of these in the art district near north of Chicago. Here was an attendant sitting on a stool who operated the thing and I imagine whose secondary role was to watch over idiots or children tempted to extend limbs through the collapsible metal gates in the back and front. As we ascended he began fiddling with a small battery-powered radio searching for intelligence or a clear signal. Sometimes I get a feeling like elevator attendants are one with the elevators over which they preside. I know it's fucked up but I imagine they never have to leave, they have no appetites no urges no homes; that they occupy a time and space curled back on itself like an eyelash with super hold mascara: a complete circle, inseparable, unitive. I loved being in there with them and my birds nest. For a sacred moment my problems went away. The lady who could have given birth to me didn't ruin it with words. Her perfume was pungent and as offensive as my head. When I reached my floor I followed the signs in the hallways and everything went black and white. I'm in a Perry Mason episode. The frosted glass. The long quiet halls of oriental rug. The Times New Roman fonts. The antique lamps lighting the way. Film noir. A lady at a desk had my letter but it wasn't a letter. It's an architectural firm and a blueprint safely rolled inside a cardboard tube. Hazel eyes. A streak of gray in her brown hair styled around her round face. She smiles. They are not alike. I would have said this morning they are all alike but they are not. She saw something in me which I could not see in myself. A becoming? How mysterious. I did not dare ask because like many things it's better not to know. I prodded the truth and it did not yet hurt, not like the white lies. Not like the black coals that taught cats how to dance. I will hold on to this smile because it's the only one I'm going to get on this ten hour shift which will end far out past the suburbs on a deep stretch of highway, inhaling midwest farmland.   by #katyamills

Royal sessions [10.2.1998]

What if it was premeditated what if it was orchestrated what if they broke in and attacked her what if she wasn't strong enough or fast enough to get a dough roller and crack it over their skull? The slightest movement or sound and she played it out to the fearful end. It took a precise and steady routine, a military exercise almost, to get herself back to baseline. She knew she was ridiculous. The dude was locked up in a max state pen and he was too miserable and weak to risk getting sliced into ribbons by barbed wire. Of one thing she was sure. She wasn't gonna let fear get the best of her. Bad things happen to good people, which explained why her grandfather was lying on his back in his small bedroom dying of a terrible and punishing disease. She got up and brushed her teeth until they foamed. She talked to someone with a big reputation without a voice without a face without a driver's license or an address whom she called god. She sang the most joyful songs she could remember at the top of her lungs.  

by #katyamills

Royal Sessions [10.5.1998]

Storms carry clouds over Lake Michigan like a doomed zeppelin. They boarded up some of the many vents in the apartment to mitigate the wind and make it through the winter without too high a heat bill. The needles on the tops of the Sears and Hancock towers puncture the clouds and the yellow cabs slide on bald tires across the oily streets. Her oldest kid got a job in a hardware store making keys on weekends. Hands grip hammers and pliers and the sound and smell of metal being cut up into unique patterns, silver and gold slid on to rings with other older keys which makes your world seem bigger but really it's smaller as you leave behind the wide open spaces that most find unbearable as they drive into their garages as the final joints pull the door up and parallel to cement floors. I will survive was declared the best disco tune of all time yesterday and she was feeling it, gosh darn it, she got all her life to live, yes. She fucking hated disco for some reason but the song was great great great. It would be a busy day at work and she was loading up on coffee and getting ready to conquer. There would be no more sitting down at any kitchen table because who has time for that? She was always moving about, taking care of the kids, the pets, and herself if she was lucky. Gone were the evenings of saying prayers before meals and patiently cutting and eating one's food. Gone the breadwinner and patriarch, too. The kids were very little then. Yes she was irritable, anxious, stressed, and not so happy. But when she was happy watch out, you might not be able to handle it, she was really fucking joyful. A contagion of fear and doubt had swept over the land a long time ago. Everyone relied on keys and it was considered ridiculous and stupid to leave your doors unlocked anymore, which gave her son plenty to do at the store. When he came home he helped take care of his brother who spent long hours watching the world through the windows like a cat, the rain beading on the glass and streaming down into the rivers to the street. He wanted them to know where he was, he wanted to show them where he had been and make them guess where he might end up. One day to return to the anonymity of a cloud that learns to cry. He had lost the ability to express it but he wanted them to know. The sun would pull everything together some day.   

by #katyamills

Typewritten on my Royal (2.26.98)

2.26.1998

A fifth of liquor followed four days of anger and then I was done. Done drinking, done being angry. I uncurled my toes like a good boy and sat patiently. I did not look up until she was standing above me. She was awfully still which meant she had made a decision. Well? I asked, what is it? I prayed she might surprise me but my prayers went unanswered. Now I had to take her spoken words seriously and bring myself to believe, though I could not be moved by them, by anything.  I had next to nothing left after a hundred hours of basic misery, watching tv until tv was essentially watching me, locked in my house, seated in the center of a room, dangerously safe, talking to myself, lost in a language full of images only I could decipher…Wrap the dutiful land with sky and milk, the clouds round and full with the dimmest hope, waiting to be sucked. The side of my face presses into an interminable chain link fence. Blood dripping like a leaky faucet. The pastures turn green. Sweat off the iron palms. My fingers wrap around the links and my body goes limp. Inseparable against the sky. Do not care if we live or die. The ghosts within me began to wail, long slow and rising from the caps of my knees to the pupils of my eyes. I woke from semi-consciousness to the aching of my calves and feet in Japanese position. My arms were somehow upraised with a power I had not bestowed. I remembered her and what she told me, before she even told me. And after she gave me her decision I was unable to be moved, I was speechless. I was sorry but I could not apologize. The good news was that the air began circulating again and the oil began lubricating my pores and I was no longer suffocating, and I could bring water to my lips and the chain link fence was gone. God had carved our lifelines and the sky was still with us.  

by #katyamills

excerpt

They were in Florida at the time. Ocean, orange juice stands, rednecks, salt and sugar, lizards. She was coming down for a visit one week. The summer of ‘98 found them smoking and drinking, watchin the surf pounding away at the beach, lulling them to sleep until the sun rose and woke their asses up. Pop some X and go for a swim. Lay out the multicolored towels. Feelin the sun layin in the light. He was pushing into keys on the typewriter nights while she kicked back on the couch reading magz. They worked their fingers across the board so the letter arms wouldn’t rust, living off the pay and bonus from the last job. Rumbling around the intercoastal on the bike to take the steam off a hot humid day after the noon rains.     

- Katya Mills. Excerpt from my new project, tentatively titled They The Firmament.

NOVEMBER 22 1997

playing crazy eights listening to music
talking trash fighting getting high
twentysomethings in the late 1900s
spilling drinks spilling consciousness
on the dance floors of YBOR CITY

a blackout drinker in those days i
would lose my credit card and eventually
my wallet my shoes and my keys
my sanity. early hours of the morning
nothing but my clothes and my high on
and a couple phone numbers of friends
in my head.

dressed ina stare

this room. the one window never
saw a sun set never saw a sun
rise

tired yellow light. emotion-driven
words. dawn not yet broken
and who would know

lonely nights in the city
she lay with someone. any shadow
wrapped in sheets

she was meant to be
surrounded by prayers
careful movements
giving hands

and who would know
not this user not this
lover

end of a cigarette
wet. blackened
the other

ceiling dressed ina stare

against his chest
she listened
every man's heart beat different
and none for her



#katyamills
remix 1998

FEBRUARY 11 1998 (1/2)

 I found a typewritten sheet from the Royal I had in Florida, 1998, tucked into my diary. Here's a remix from the first paragraphs I wrote...


She lay with him she
trusted him she knew him no more than
the shadows the moon cast on the wall
dressed and gone by morning

balancing on the edge of the tub
she shaved her legs with a cheap razor
someone left behind

02.11.98

the blood didn't bother her
there would be no sleep
tonight

he lay awkwardly after
hands in his pockets
she played a palm across his chest
carelessly

to be robbed was something
he imagined he
deserved

taste of her in his mouth feather
pillow imbued with her
perfume



#katyamills. remix'98