Yesterday, we romped.
The phone rang me out of my idle reverie moments after David had left, just as I was leaning back in my hammock chair...
"So are you comin' to brunch or what, hottie mama?"
There was some scrambling of grey and mushy circuitry before it dawned on my that only Lucky likes pain enough to wake me up with that. ;)
Anyhoo, Dazahan is in town, the wizzord that I'd been drinking with on EQ before I suddenly dropped out of Norrath for two months of late work nights, Saturdays of hard skiing, and Sunday of laundry or maybe a little extra overtime code churning.
It was good to see him and his frizzy red beard and jolly cheeks and haphazardly tilted newsboy's cap.
It was good to drag him out to breakfast, it was good to eat and drink and worship the great Java Bean together, the entire Montreal faction of the guild plus one particularly jolly wizzord.
It was good when Marc turned to me with the brilliance of a summer sun in his eyes and handed the afternoon to me saying "take us to that place you did last time" and I knew exactly what he meant from the already welling tears of his memory of that night.
So I took them to The Mountain that MontStreal is built upon (but that it seems no Montrealers ever visit), took them to lookout point where one autumnal night nearly a year and a half ago, I had brought him and Eric and Nancy and Dan whilst they were all tripppin' on musrhooms, and had stunned them to silence with the only glory a city can have.
The lights.
The fact that a city can generate light, punch a hole in the darkness with such a cumulative burst of warmth despite the infighting, the bitterness, the lies and ambition and misplaced wishes.... Despite the greed and cowardice, despite the hippocrisy and the way I know deep down that each lightbulb is killing a tree, a fish, a bird as it burns...
From up there, warm arms and warm smiles and the human creation reaching up to the sky like that, it warms.
And so in the middle of an afternoon, without the lights but with all the more bodies and warmth we dragged Matt/Dazahan there, and we watched the city go by in silence for a while.
Then we grew cold and restless, decided that hiking all the way up to the cross on the mountain (which, incidentally, for Vampire fans -- the Montreal By Night handbook has either depicted twenty-foot-tall vampires, or isn't depicting our fucking cross beside them) was impractical what with Dazahan wearing American-made shoes unsuitable for the latest coating of ice on the mountain paths...
So we went to Beaver lake, right in the middle of the forest there's a lake shaped like a beaver (you guess which beaver I mean) and we grabbed blankets to wrap about ourselves and made our way through the snow and wind to the little hut to warm our hands before venturing out to play betwixt the trees.
Now we're talkin' about four car-fulls of men ranging between the ages of twenty seven to thirty four, here. Mostly older, and with me and someone's sweet but rather out-of-place girlfriend to round out the masses.
And we whouped and wailed and chased each other into snowdrifts, and I marvelled at the joie de vivre in Marc's bright eyes, and in the fierce upswing to Bruno's cheekbones.
And when I say marvel, I mean marvel. I mean awe, I mean being temporarily stunned to silence by the sheer magical wonder of the moment.
I marvelled.
And when someone pointed out that the way Louis had wrapped the tartaned blanket about his legs made him look the way a barbarian in everquest does when he dies and loses his armour, the cogs began to grind and I remembered why I'd ever fallen in love with Marc in the first place.
He whouped. He ran. He took to the idea with an excitement unknown to most thirty-four-year-old men, and a gusto unknown to most men at all. He helped find a spear for Louis to hold in his hand (although I was the one who'd finally convinced a passing cross-country skier to loan us a ski pole) and I convinced Louis to pull of his clothes and stand outside with the pole planted in a snowbank to emulate Wilen, his EQ counterpart.
We're going to add the blue warpaint in digitally, since I'd left my blue lipstick at home. It's unfortunate that I hadn't been wearin' any, cuz I wouldn't have been adverse to runnin' my lips along him to paint the lines in place.
Ahem.
So we took the shot, then sudden madness broke loose, and we frolicked.
We ran about in the snow, getting our feet wet and roaring with laughter like we had when we were the tiniest things, catching inside jokes and hurling them to the trees. We posed, we pranced, we acted out the way I always die and fall fetal to the snow whenever there is a raid and I overextend myself, and we acted out the way everyone mourns about my corpse, only this time instead of a shiny blue smurf robe with golden exploding nipples, I was wearing well-worn jeans, and a motorcycle jacket with the world's fiercest dragon swathed across the back of it.
It didn't matter. I wasn't a seven foot tall black man either, but I sure as hell frolicked like one.
And I marvelled.
And the whole ride back down to Hurley's, to beer and rich food and a gaelic storyteller who tol' it t'us the way his father before 'im and his father's father befor 'im had tol' it so many year aga...
And the whole time we sat there, wrapped up in Matt's arms and subjected to the flashing of the camera, I would sit and stare across the room at Marc and wonder in two parts at how it was possible to be so in love with such a big, angry, irrational man, who would never love me back, and then I would forget about the little things like love and lust and how I'd spent far too much time with David this weekend and was glad to have the day off and it hit me
I haven't frolicked in so long.
I haven't romped, I've laughed and I've played and I've ran and I've pushed myself to limits, but I haven't thrown my head back and nearly pissed myself laughing at how much fun I was having.
And I've done it in the name of growing up.
And oh, it is such a shallow complaint, so much good in my life already, but right then it was clear; the gaping hole between spontaneously quoting the Spam sketch with cf and laughing and running and fucking PLAYING, and between the joys here and there of work and accomplishment and athletic sex...
Screw it.
This is what it feels like:
The eye is a menace to clear sight, the ear is a menace to subtle hearing, the mind is a menace to wisdom, every organ of the senses is a menace to its own capacity. ... Fuss, the god of the Southern Ocean, and Fret, the god of the Northern Ocean, happened once to meet in the realm of Chaos, the god of the center. Chaos treated them very handsomely and they discussed together what they could do to repay his kindness. They had noticed that, whereas everyone else had seven apertures, for sight, hearing, eating, breathing and so on, Chaos had none. So they decided to make the experiment of boring holes in him. Every day they bored a hole, and on the seventh day, Chaos died. -- Chuang Tzu
And while I love the wine and the new crispness of my home, and whilst I love the crinkle of ancient books of poetry on my shelves, or the hum of my car as it races my skis and my expensive equipment to the trails, and whilst I love Tia and her giggle and I love the feel of David's skin brushing up against mine, I love Maria and cf and Marc and the chaos with the truth of my self.
With them I don't worry about material things, with them I don't worry about car payments and I don't worry about what management will think of my next crazy idea, and with them I don't nitpick and I don't fuss I just lean back because I know they are Good, and I lean back and I let the madness of the evning overtake me.
I love them because in them I see reflections, in them there is inspiration, in them there is an explanation for the world, and with them, with them I can remember the chaos.
I remember the important things.
Sometimes I am so afraid of losing myself. And then when I am no longer afraid, I am lost. But in between, somewhere, in between there is balance and in the balance a new kind of madness, and this new madness is the dance of the seven veils and the dance of the stars across the sky and the dance of the dojo ballerinas and the dance of the lights after dark and all the dances that I've seen and dreamt of and not yet seen or thought of, this madness runs with a spring in its' step.
~