It's really cool either way, Bev.

This is three at once. I kind of went off on this topic...I almost feel like apologizing.

My hands look like other people’s hands, better than some. They look like piano players’ hands, even if they never have touched a piano. They are writer hands. People have told me that my hands look like they could wear lotion for money, which makes me think, only in America can it be good that my hands don’t make anything...no wait, that’s not even true. Men have come to life under my hands. But they do get to stay out of dishwashing liquid I’d get in trouble trying to get paid for that...friction consultant.

My hands don’t work like other people’s hands. They can be hesitant and shy and abandon each other. They drop things and act like teenaged employees I’m not sure whether to fire or be gentle with because we all were young once. When we all work together, I feel like celebrating, cause it happens sometimes, and it’s beautiful. But like most beautiful things, it doesn’t last. Not forever. My hands do everything on a keyboard. Fight, kill, save the world. I am lucky in my hands.

My hands feel like other hands. They respond to textures from cold glass to a loved one’s skin. Sometimes. I don’t touch just anybody. My hands have been raised in triumph, in anger, in wearing grape jelly that’s hard to get off. My hands love to touch leather and suede, and little raised beaded things on somebody’s shirt. My hands have expensive tastes and want to fondle silk. My hands can touch my wheelchair and not smear my nail polish, in a skill worked out over time, even in an electric one with a...joystick. My hands gave my inner twelve-year-old that pause. They think she’s been good this week and deserves it, especially since they don’t work fast enough for rude finger gestures.

Nice, Erika. (And you do have stunning, stunning hands. They're amazing.)

Thank you. I feel really pretty now.

Oh erika. Those are wonderful.

Thank you. I feel really pretty now.

You are! Pretty and witty and, okay, not so much with the gay, but hey! Two outta three ain't bad!

Man, all three of those kill. I love the line about men coming to life under them.

Another memory, same set of hands, from the rock and roll years:

Roll

Hot music, hot night, hot stage lights.

She's got her high heels on, her leather, a killer hat with a veil that she bought in Paris a long time ago.

The band is rocking; guitars trading off and the bass stitching the rhythm, oh yes, oh baby.

She's used to him playing the stadium gigs, fifty thousand screamers, faceless. This small club, impromptu, it's better.

The lead singer purses his famous lips, the bassplayers drops a walking line into the mix.

Piano time. WHAM, his hands hit the keyboard.

Later, when the show's over, his hands come home to her.

Maybe I've just not met the right girl, Plei. After all, I've got a very strong connection to both Willow and Bayliss, which points to either a same-sex experience or murdering somebody nobody will miss very much sometime in my future. I think being with a girl would have fewer legal ramifications. :)

I want to do this drabble, but I have to wait for another subject to come out of my head. I do not want to dwell on what's in my head. (It's in regards to death, not anything that's happened to me, in case anyone was wondering.)

Third one, autobiographical, as are the first two. This one has nothing at all to do with music.

Damage

I'm sorry, the surgeon says.

I'm seventeen and my hands are destroyed. They're barely recognisable; the tendons are displaced, the bones bent, the skin puckered and burned.

Wow, says the surgeon, and carefully moves the light, examining the carnage. I've never seen damage quite like this.

I picked up the back end of a Cadillac - amazing stuff, adrenalin. We fell off a mountain, I thought my goddaughter was underneath. The metal was hot.

We may not be able to fix it, the surgeon says.

Sweating, I manage to bend all the fingers of my right hand except the middle.