My Happy Place is Broken

There were a lot of bats. Not the kind that move as a giant mass of tiny heartbeats, shitting on your face as you look up to admire them--the nice romantic kind of bats, like the lone bat that flies out of a vampiric castle to be silhouetted against the full moon and you’re walking underneath and thinking, ‘wow that’s sorrowful and beautiful at the same time’ and maybe ‘I am just like that bat, you know, alone in the dark world’ or even ‘I hope that’s not Dracula swooping down to suck my blood because I am rather enjoying this picturesque scene.’ (Those kind of bats.) The castle was probably there too, in need of repair. The stones would be blue-white in the moonlight and as I walked under the granite arch leading to the courtyard, climbing rosebushes would be cowered away from the castle, desperately reaching up the walls and spilling over into the surrounding forest. Vampire castles are always crumbly and full of cobwebs and make you wonder, why doesn’t this guy hire a housekeeper, for Christ sake. Haha. Like a vampire would do anything for the sake of that guy. He’d be like, ‘Oy, church-people, that is grape juice, definitely not anyone’s blood, you can’t fool me.’ If a vampire went to communion that’s what he’d say. And someone would be like, ‘holy crap! That guy is a vampire!’ And the vampire would hold up his hands in a gesture of innocence and be like, ‘yeah, so?’ ‘So you love Satan, that’s what.’ And he’d reply, ‘who the hell would love someone who wants to stick a hot poker up your ass?’ And then he’d have to kill everyone, or else leave quickly while everyone still had imaginary ass pains. But vampires have dirty houses. Lots of cool Victorian knick-knacks covered in dust or blood. Something pretty juxtaposed with ugliness. Like a fat old woman in a ball gown. Like a trailer park in front of the Taj Mahal. I’d want to fix it. Clean it up a little. Get some Clorox and wipe off the chandeliers and stuff. The vampire would come down the iron staircase in his pajamas--well, it’s nighttime, so I guess he’d already be dressed--maybe he had a cold and wanted to stay in bed--and he’d say ‘what do you think you’re doing?’ and I’d say ‘cleaning’ and then he’d be like, ‘ok, just come get me when you’re finished and then I can drink your blood because I have a cold and I’m not up to going hunting tonight.’ Maybe I’d finish cleaning, oddly satisfied from being exhausted and smelling of bleach, and hum as I marched up the stairs (creak, step, creak, creak, step). The vampire would be there in his coffin that I just polished with wood wax (by now he would be slightly delusional from his fever and the fumes) and I would take off my necklace and be like, ‘ok, I’m ready, goodbye, hope you feel better.’ Suddenly he would stand up, woozily, then start to fall, so I’d catch him, and his hair would smell like lavender in formaldehyde, and he’d whisper ‘thank you’ and tell me that he’d searched for a woman like me all his life and the wind would blow through the open window and his cloak would wrap around us and his skin would be wonderfully cold against mine and the vampire would ask ‘how would you like to be undead?’ and I’d smile and jump up and down ‘I’d like that very much’ and I’d say ‘really?’ a lot.

That’s what my happy place is like.

The bats, the castle, the Clorox. If someone said, ‘go to your happy place,’ that’s where I’d go. That’s where I’d go if I were a rabid poodle about to be euthanized or babysitting my cousin who wanted to watch Thomas the Tank Engine for the eighteenth time. The happy place is usually an effective escape from reality, which can be full of death sentences, talking trains, and other horrors. Sometimes these things are just too overwhelming.

‘Um…I think you misunderstood me,’ said the vampire, extricating himself from my arms. ‘When I said I’ve been looking for a woman like you, I meant a housekeeper. I’m just too busy to do it myself, what with staying up all night, and the part-time job at the library--‘

Sometimes things just shatter like that, don’t go the way you planned.

I didn’t plan to spend this night in a coffee shop in the company of my sister and her boyfriend. She was the twenty-one-year-old equivalent of a high school prom queen. He was my Psychology professor. And they were in love.

While Mr. and Mrs. Hot Stuff ordered drinks, I opened my notebook to a pasted-in excerpt from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and just below it I wrote:

A travesty

To anyone who sees.

I wish

To cut you off at the knees--

And maybe fill the stumps with bees.

That is the type of thought I think when I’m in Psych class, when the happy place is abolished. ‘How is your sister?’ Allen always asks. I quickly cover up my notebook and the latest poem and shrug. In my head I am saying, ‘you tell me, you bastard, you were very up close and personal with her last night.’ Tonight I notice some mouth-shaped bruises around his shirt collar. I try not to think about him and my sister flossing each other’s teeth with their tongues. She is just as bad. Like a cupcake with poison frosting. Pretty and bitchy. And Allen pampers the shit out of her just so he can visit the bakery, if you get the metaphor.

It’s not like they’re not perfect for each other.

It’s not like I care.

I am totally jealous.

It’s later on in the night. We are sitting on the curb outside the grocery store because Allen and my sister are broke but no one wants to go home and sitting outside the grocery store cuddling and cooing and caressing doesn’t cost a thing. I’m not involved in any of those c words, I have my pen poised above my notebook and I am looking out into the parking lot while really looking at Lovey Land (aka, the curb) out of the corner of my eye. And I think about how all people in the world really are beautiful.

And some people happen to be more beautiful when they are on fire.