Biting The Lotus

The look's a dead giveaway. You just can't wait to bite into that lotus.

Mrs Madrigal to Maryanne Singleton

- Armistead Maupin
'Tales of The City'

I met a girl last night who reminded me of me ten years ago in some ways*. Long hair. Sort of 'alternative looking' as my Mum would say. Smiles a lot. In love. Inquisitive. Fresh-faced and wide-eyed. Optimistic. A girl who just can't wait to bite into that lotus...

And the more she spoke the more I missed being the girl I used to be. The one I was before the piercings and the fistings and the floggings and the Daddies, before the dyke bars and the trannyboys and the butches and the femmes, before I knew what girls and Wet Stuff and amyl tasted like, before the drug-fucked orgies and the the poly relationships, before I came out as bi/dyke/queer/leather/kinky, before the strutting about and the slutting about, when I didn't know the hanky code or that Crisco had any use other than cooking, before the metal and the ink. Before most of the scars. When I still wore a bra and would never pee in front of anyone else or go naked for any longer than was necessary. When I was still capable of blushing. When all I needed to be happy was my boy, my liquid eyeliner and a custard tart from the pie shop in Cronulla.

Lately I have been finding it hard to get really excited about much at all. I mean, my heart still skips a beat to see the Gentleman Caller, and my face lights up when A Certain Boy is around. I danced joyous laps of the studio after my face cutting, and was all dizzy and ecstatic after the suspension show last Saturday. And I confess to doing a childish leap into the air when I first spotted a house with its Christmas lights on the other week. The Shadowers film left me in a state of delirious awe. There are moments of ecstasy still, true, those dazzling moments that cut straight through the muck that covers my rose-coloured glasses. But they don't seem as frequent, or as bright or... its hard to describe it exactly. Maybe its depression, maybe its exhaustion, maybe its grief, maybe its just that I am turning into a jaded old creature. Blah. Bah humbug!

But Christmas falls late now
Flatter and colder
And never as bright as when we used to fall
And even if we drink
I don't think we would kiss
In the way that we did
When the woman was only a girl

- The Cure
'Last Dance'

I just wish I could remember where I put that lotus.


* This is not meant to be an accurate depiction of her as such, just what she was to me at that moment. I don't know her very well at all, and obviously we see things as we are and not are they are anyway!