Oh, Aimee. Damn.

I love that.

Thanks, Deb.

Bad Medicine

I'm eighteen, tough as old boots. Eighteen, and my life is a chronically ill musician, ten years my senior.

Actually, right now, he's with his wife in Surrey, and I'm at our supposed house in Mill Valley. I'm sitting in my favourite rocking chair, his chair, emptying a bottle of tequila: rock, chug, swallow.

He's gone. Again.

I don't know it yet, but later on, when I finish the bottle, I'll fill a bath and take a razor in with me, water going scarlet, bloodletting him out of me, friends pulling me out, interfering fuckers.

Like I told you, I'm eighteen...

Oh, man, Deb. Talk about fucking painful.

Well, I was starting to wonder if my muse had abandoned me. Thankfully, not.

Tainted

It was my first day in Rota and my sponsor took me out for dinner. We sat at a table on the sidewalk. The white-washed buildings crowded the narrow road; when I looked up all I could see was a small square patch of bright blue sky. The air had that gauzy quality that signaled sunset, but there was still so much light. I asked what time it was. Past 10:00, said my companion. Amazing. It was still light out when my steak came and I enjoyed the meal for the surroundings, not the flavor.

I can’t donate blood, now.

ETA: I rewrote this, so if you've already read it, check it out again. I like this much better. More visceral.

These blood drabbles are sharp and painful. Gorgeous.

Jeepers, Sail. We should compare scars, sometime; the one on my left wrist is a corker....

Oh, mine is actually more innocuous than it sounds. I was stationed in Spain (Rota) for three years. I found out a few years ago they won't let anyone who lived in Europe during a certain period donate blood for the fear of Mad Cow from eating of the beef there. It's funny, because we used to joke that all the Spanish beef was "dirt fed" because it was so tough and stringy. I never figured when I got stationed there that a meal I didn't even enjoy was going to end up with the repercussions it did.

Still, the drabble works on other levels that I like because unless you're familiar with just that, it does sound quite sinister. And, even with the knowledge, it doesn't change the fact that any one action on your part during life can have consequences you might never, ever foresee.

I can't believe we've never done blood!

Hmm. I will have to ruminate on this for a while, but Aimee! Loved yours.

And Deb, god, 18. There's a girl here at work who's 18, it's her summer before college, and she's sweet and innocent and doing makeovers with her friends and watching "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" and thinking it's all right.

I'm thinking that 18 was 15 years ago now, and I was learning about teeth during sex, and hangovers and cheap booze and betrayal and myself.

I'm always amazed at what 15-year-olds are supposed to know. I was a clueless, amorphous lump until I hit college, when all the anonymous facts finally got a framework to relate to.