** Howdy all.  School has sapped my life away, and I have been knitting like a fiend for Christmas.  Five scarves, going on six since the beginning of November.  This is something spawned off a RP with demonic_muses.  However, this bit of plot is new to even her.  It’s been living off my brain, feeding on an AIDS Awareness presentation, imbued with musical songs (from RENT to Little Shop of Horrors.  This becomes obvious).  Yay for obvious references! Perhaps you may enjoy this a bit. You can also tell I’m mad that Band has taken away my time for the potters’ wheel. **

            The feel of the clay under my fingers is soothing, like a lovers caress…Hah.  Not really.  The earthy scent comforts me, though, spackling the cracks in my spirit and reconstructing my heart.  Isn’t man supposed to be made out of clay in the beginning?  Perhaps God is just a glorified sculptor.  Or more flatteringly for me, sculptors are echoes of God.  With my art, I shall reforge myself; create a new, more resilient hybrid of man.

            Molding the lump as my whims take me, the spinning bottom of the wheel hypnotizes, and I’m lulled into a calmer reflection of the smashing of my soul.

            I was happy.  I lived in the slums of New York in a crumbling little apartment with Ryan, my boyfriend.  We roomed with his sister and her darling little girl, Audrey.  Maria, his sister, loved the greeting her dearest brother would sing out to her when we made our way home, “Maria… Say it loud and there's music playing, say it soft and it's almost like praying…”  She would smile, stop whatever she was doing, and accept his hug, calling him a silly fool.  So happy with her West Side Story name and home to a wry and bitter sense of humor, she named her daughter after Little Shop of Horrors’ beautiful blonde.  Ryan and I decided not to quash her hopes that her daughter would get out of Skid Row and failed to tell her that in the original play version, Audrey was eaten by Audrey II.  There are some things people just don’t need to know.

            Ryan had a beautiful tenor voice and his niece was forever coaxing songs out of him.  He could never resist her blue eyes, and so the apartment was often filled with the soft crooning of that honeyed voice.  It echoes in my dreams, now. 

            Maria’s despair was a hidden barb in Audrey’s name.  It was the first plea for help that Ryan could actually hear.  Which is why we did what we did. 

            As a slim, tall vase forms under my unwary fingers, I try to figure out how to tell Jimmy I have to go back to those nameless alleys.  I have to go back and save those girls. 

            I left the comfortable, suburban house of my brother’s Pennsylvania home when our father died.  Both Jay and I had been disowned.  At the age of seventeen, I had the living daylights beaten out of me by my military dad when he caught me making out on the couch with Jimmy’s cousin, Ben.  Screaming ‘faggot’, ‘queer’, and other such pleasantries, he kicked me down the stairs and I began a new life. 

            When the will came to light, he had left all his money to the army.  After he literally kicked us out of his life, the military was his family.  I hear they are building new barracks with it.  I had idolized my father, even though my older brother was my life.  I was thirteen when my brother came out of the closet.  He was eighteen, and was banned from the house.  I wasn’t allowed to see him, which didn’t lie well with either of us, but we found ways to keep in contact.  My father blamed him for my ‘unnatural tendencies’. 

            When even in death my father denied my existence, something inside me broke.  I was already trying to find a way out of my brother’s home, so this was the perfect irrational excuse.  Jay had been recently been laid off and they had a young daughter to support.  Money was tight and they couldn’t afford to support an art student with no real job.  So I ran for it.

            I hitchhiked to New York and tried my hand at displaying and sketching portraits in Central Park.  I did ok, enough to keep myself alive.  I buried my pain for awhile in the balm of art, however pointless.  I hope that one or two portraits were kept fondly, or framed to remember a trip.  Who knows? More than once I found the portraits somewhere torn and dirty in the pathways of the park, forgotten or purposely discarded.  

            Every once and awhile I would send a postcard back home or to Jimmy over in Ireland, studying art as well.  He’s always had more talent than me.  And obviously he’s using it better… I wouldn’t put a return address on these little missives from the street.  I didn’t have one; that was a big obstacle.  And I just didn’t want to be found. 

** ‘Tis a start.  You know the drill.  Review.  Would you like to see more? **