Metal

The room is quiet, except for the occasional page turning or the underlying click-clack of laptop keyboards. The fluorescent lights shine over many toiling (or most likely slacking) high school students, their sweatshirts showing a school name in varying shades of navy, gray, or white. The teacher at the front of the room vaguely scribbles in the margin of some paper they’re grading, probably for the oh-so-lofty upperclassmen they’d rather be dealing with. Nobody likes supervising ninth graders.
I always sit about the fifth row up, in a chair that swings out to the right. I can’t concentrate if the chair goes the other direction. Today, however, concentration is not on my mind. I only have Spanish homework left, and my severe dislike of the subject prevents me from caring if I do a good job or not. The workbook pages pass quickly, with a little help from GoogleTranslate and the dictionary at the back of the chapter. There are more important matters at hand.

Back in the good old days of freshman year, my school hadn’t figured out how to block many music listening websites. There was Youtube, of course (and there still is, thank goodness), but for those of us who took our music seriously and didn’t want to pay, there was Pandora.

Laptop click-thunks open, headphones settle gently into ears. Click-click-click with the mouse and the lovely blue Pandora screen appears. Pandora, simple and brilliantly easy: input an artist, and the algorithms within the program spits back songs by similar artists. It’s better than listening to the radio, with fewer commercials.
So, what shall I listen to today? Well, let’s see what the algorithm gives me. Silence, then tick-tick-tick of a high hat cymbal, then the slow, dull boom-boom of a bass drum. I’ve never heard this song before. Before I can think anything else, fuzzy guitar distortion pounds my ears, and then a voice, gravelly and electronic, and then guitar the riff everyone knows, even if they don’t know where it’s from. I do know this song, but I’m not thinking anymore.

The guitar and the drums reverberate all through my body. I can feel the vibration in the floor. My boots are stuck to the ground, my head feels like it’s about to explode. I’m suddenly a million pounds. I can’t think, or feel, or do anything but listen. I don’t know if my eyes are open or closed, if I’m standing or sitting anymore. As the tempo rises and the guitars shriek, I’m flying too. Just as I’m sure the song is ending, the distortion rises and I slam back into my body, back from my journey riding the spikes and valleys of jagged vocals and throbbing drums. The song peters out with a long trail of background static and one last note.

I remember to breathe again. The feeling slowly returns to my fingers. My feet unstick themselves from the floor. The weight lifts. I experimentally shift in my chair, and my whole body protests. I’ve cramped up in the four minutes I’ve been sitting here. Dazedly, I gather my things for my next class, not sure what just happened or what I just heard. The song plays back through my thoughts. Belatedly, I check the song listing, and a surprised chuckle escapes my throat in this quiet room. The little box flashes an album cover, and the words “Iron Man” followed by the artist. I stop, and frown, and then smile as recognition dawns. Black Sabbath. Still grinning, I leave for my next class, humming under my breath.

A Day Against Eternity

The room is too small for the people filling it. One wall, made of glass bricks, lets in a speck of natural light against the glow of fluorescent overheads. We can hear the people in the next room, but we scream louder. Our butts hurt from hours of sitting on the floor, but there’s no real discomfort here. In fact, it is perfect. Heads lean into shoulders, arms curl around waists, backs press against bent knees. Elbows touch. The room quiets as a man stands in the small open space in the center. He has an aura about him: calm, collected, confident, serene, all knowing, loving. The silver ankhs on his chest shine, mimicking the shine of his bald head and the flash of his glasses. His feet are bare. Rings join in the glow, and add to the atmosphere. This is Important.

The man stands in the center, surrounded by a room full of teenagers, and a few who seem older. The oldies (they’re barely in their twenties, by the looks of most of them), hold colored cards in their hands, reverentially. Rodney, the man in the center, speaks.
“Each card has a purpose. You wrote that card for a reason, and the person receiving it will receive it for a reason. It will be exactly what you need. You channeled your thoughts into that card, sent it on its way. Now, it will find its purpose.” He pauses. “Channel. Think about what you wrote, why you wrote it. Think about who it is going to. You may not know who will receive it, but know that it is for them. You will get exactly what you need.” Rodney pauses again, deliberately. “Each of the facilitators around me will pick a card out of the basket, and then let the card guide them to who needs it most. After you get your card, take one out of the basket and find who it belongs to, who needs it. Each card has a purpose.” Another pause. Rodney steps forward, bends down. He takes the stack of cards from Paula, kisses her on the forehead, and drops them into the basket. He moves on to Kelsey P., and then Jasmine. Each stack of cards hits the bottom of the basket with a muffled “thwap”. And then we wait.

Music plays, softly. Soulful and sweet, it fills the silence that soon fills even more, with the sound of movement and then, slowly, ever so slowly, the sound of crying. The facilitators move among us, gently presenting each card, and then hugging the recipient tightly. Some cry. Most cry. Emotion swirls. Slowly, ever so slowly, kids start to stand. They dry their eyes and pick their way towards the basket. They reach in, select an anonymous card, and turn, searching. They wander, looking for the purpose, following the thread. When they find the end, both dissolve. Two girls hold each other, sobbing. The walls are crumbling.

I watch, and I wait. I watch. And I wait. And then, a tap on my head, a ruffle of my hair. It’s Matt. Sweet, adorable, goofy Matt, who stood up in this room yesterday and, knees shaking, squeezing the hand of the girl next to him, admitted for the first time that he’s bisexual. For him, the room exploded, as it did for all the others who came out for the first time, who felt safe enough to stand up and say, “This is who I am.” I’m so proud of them, and I’m so proud of him. As I’m remembering, he hands me a piece of soft red construction paper. I look down. Simple, upper case letters, a girl’s handwriting, look back.

YOU WILL NEVER BE ALONE, I’LL ALWAYS LISTEN TO YOU

And just like that, I break. A bottle spills, tips over, shatters. Everything overflows. I cry, like I haven’t cried in a long time. Everything inside me comes down. I can physically feel the waves pushing my walls away. I wrap my arms around Matt, bury my head in his shoulder. I shake. All the doubts, all the unrealized fears, every time I had to think about what I was saying or watch myself in case I gave myself away, disappear. Their absence feels new, strange, as if I am now unweighted from something I didn’t realize I was carrying. I didn’t know how alone I felt, until I didn’t feel alone anymore. The lightness shocks me, and I feel my back move up and down with the rhythm of my sobs.

When I look up, I see I’ve left tears on Matt’s grey shirt. He smiles down at me, teary himself.
I whisper, “Thank you.” He smiles.
“You know the saying “you came into my life for a reason”? Well, you came into my life for a reason.” His statement is low, clear. “I feel like I was just waiting to meet you. I love you.” I’ve never heard words spoken with that much intensity, sincerity. This isn’t romantic love he’s expressing. And it’s not romantic love I’m expressing back. I focus my swollen eyes on his face.
“I love you too.” I’m still wrapped in his embrace, still crying, still watching my walls float away. I’m entirely sincere. Here, I feel safe. Here, I feel love, flowing in from every direction. It’s real.

So, remember this. Remember what it felt like. Remember feeling safe, here in this room full of queer kids. Remember. Remember the love. Remember how it spread, first like honey, then like a river. Remember the feeling of your doubts shattering, your fears washing away. Remember realizing that it’s ok. Remember standing up, introducing yourself. “Hi, I’m Amanda, I go by she/her pronouns, and I’m bisexual, but questioning? It’s nebulous.” Remember how you feel, right now, in this moment. You are no longer questioning. Here, you feel safe knowing that you like the term queer, that it fits you, for now. Remember acknowledging that it may change. Remember feeling safe. Remember. Fill up that broken bottle. Fill it with all the love in this room, sparkling purple and free floating. Remember it, and store it away in your chest, locked in tight, where no one can take it from you. Know that here, in this room, you are loved. You are safe. You are you. Remember.

Proceed At Your Own Risk

Warning. Unreality Ahead. Proceed At Your Own Risk.

The sign stares at me, its letters black and menacing against the pristine white background. I look around. It’s a perfectly ordinary suburban street, houses displaying tidy lawns and cars parked in driveways. I look back at the sign, then down at the sidewalk. It, too, seems perfectly ordinary. The sky above shows a few clouds, but nothing radical or unheard of.

I proceed at my own risk. One step, two steps, three. Nothing. I step less tentatively. Step. Step. Stepstepstep. Still nothing. Then, out of the corner of my eye, a flash of white. I turn my head. It’s a chicken. White, with yellow legs and a little red floppy bit on top of its head, like any normal chicken. It’s normal sized, normally shaped, and as far as I can tell, behaving in normal chicken fashion. It cocks its head at me.

Warning. Unreality Ahead. Proceed At Your Own Risk.

The words appear in my head without stopping to funnel through my ears. I stop. The warning sounds again, coupled with a cluck. The chicken stares at me, its eyes not leaving my face. Is this normal chicken behavior? The chicken continues staring, and I stare back, searching for the source of the disembodied words now flashing through my head. Warning. Warning. Leave now. Warning. Cluck. The chicken takes a step closer, then another. Step. Step. Stepstepstep.  In response, I back up, matching the chicken step for reverse step. Step. Step. Stepstepste-

The ground disappears beneath me. I’m falling backwards, looking up at the fast shrinking chicken head peering over the edge of what appears to be a hole that wasn’t there before. It forlornly waves a wing at me, shaking its head sadly. Or that might have been my imagination. That’s definitely not normal chicken behavior. This is all my imagination. Any second now, I’ll wake up. Please tell me I’ll wake up. I can’t be falling. There was no hole there, and no chicken. There can’t have been. This isn’t happening . This isn’t happening. This isn’t ha-

I hit the ground.

Splat.

My eyes open. I’m in my own bed. It’s dark. My clock, ever vigilant on the desk at the foot of my bed, reads 11:23. I exhale. Just a dream. Just a dream. Just a-

Cluck.

I look. Nothing. Cluck. There it is again. Cluck. Cluck. Cluckcluckcluckcluckcluck.

Drawers spill out onto the floor, of their own accord. They’re full of chicken feathers. My closet door bursts open, feathers spiraling out in a giant wave of deadly softness. I’m paralyzed. Feathers stream in through the windows, fall from the ceiling, materialize under the bed. I’m being carried on a rising tide of feathers, destination unknown. I can’t breathe. Where are they taking me? Oh god it’s just a dream it has to be a dream PLEASE LET ME WAKE UP I’m so scared I don’t even like chickens where am I going why me why me why why why why why-

Splat.

I open my eyes. Bright sunshine, coolness. Tidy front lawns, cars parked in driveways. A girl stands in front of me, reading a sign with great concentration. She pauses, then takes a step. Step. Step. Stepstepstep. She doesn’t see me. I take a step forward and she turns, locks eyes with me, pauses. I stare, and she stares back.

Cluck. 

Strangers

Eyes follow me. It’s always the same: a quick glance, followed by an immediate drop of the gaze, like they know they shouldn’t be staring. But they can’t help themselves, and ever so covertly their eyes creep back. Some blatantly stare, while others make tiny darts with their eyes, like they’re trying to catch me unawares. Little kids stop in their tracks, mouths agape, like they’ve just seen something magical. When I smile, they smile back. Teenagers are more vocal. A passing girl calls out, “Hey, I love your hair!”

I always reply with a huge “Thank you!” and the biggest smile I can muster. I’ve learned that people love it when they can engage, especially with someone as wildly colorful as I am. On any given day, in any given place, people reach out, asking, admiring, awestruck.

~

The two ladies approach gradually, neither of them more than five feet tall. One carries a shopping bag, the other displays hoop earrings and sunglasses, and both have the gait and bearing of grandmothers many times over. They settle themselves next to me, and sure enough, their gazes fall on my hair. They lean together conspiratorially, considering. Finally, the one on the right speaks:

“Your hair… It is so beautiful!” Her Latin American accent caresses the vowels, pushing them across the sentences.

I smile, stretching my face to its limit. “Thank you so much!”

The ladies smile back in unison. They lean in again.

“        The colors, how do you do them? Your mother is ok with this?” They chuckle matching laughs, their faces wrinkling up.

I laugh along with them. I get this question all the time and I know exactly how to answer:

“Well, I get the colors with a lot of time and effort, and my mom doesn’t really mind- it’s my dad who’s more of the problem!” They nod knowingly, as if they’re thinking, “Ah yes, the patriarchy strikes again!” Their eyes remain fixed on my blue and green hair, glowing brightly in the summer sunshine. Even as we settle into a comfortable silence, their smiles stay, and so does mine, until the bus comes and we board, each of us going our separate ways.

~

“Ohmygosh, I love your hair!” The woman smiles, bright and earnest, as she ogles my hair through dark lenses.

“Well thank you!”

“How do you do it? It’s so bright, it’s amazing!”

“Just gorgeous.” The other woman adds.

“How do you do it?”

I stop and assess my flatterers. Two women, one mid 20’s with brown hair pulled back, the other maybe in her mid-50’s, wearing a sunhat. Both have sunglasses, and similar coloring. Mother-daughter, maybe? They seem like they actually want to know, so…

“Well, I have to bleach my hair first, because otherwise the color won’t take. I use semi-permanent dyes to get the color. They fade after about six weeks though, so it leaves plenty of room for changing it when I get bored!”

The women seem to drink in the information as I rattle it off. They can’t stop grinning and looking at each other, like they’re thinking, “Can you believe this girl?”

“What’s your natural hair color?”

“Dark brown, and booooring.”

“Can we take a picture of your hair?” I pause. People rarely ask to take photos, and when they do, it’s never with the honesty and open awe of these two. Their enthusiasm, strangely, matches mine, all of us focused on this slightly bizarre manifestation of my inner rainbow. I view myself through my hair, and these women seem to catch that, and want to remember this moment.

“Um… sure!” I nod my assent for the photo.

The older one whips out her white iPhone, fingers flying across the screen in her eagerness to take the photo. I lean back and turn my head a bit to the side, to show off where the neon pink melds into shiny turquoise. The click of the phone camera signals that a random stranger now owns a piece of my soul, if you believe that sort of superstition. She asks for one more, so she can see the top, and I obligingly tilt my chin down so she can capture the colors on my cranium. The camera clicks once more, and then they’re done. With a last chorus of “Amazing!”, they continue on. A few minutes later, my bus comes, ferrying me from one set of people to another, crazy hair and all. 

Writing on the Wall

Oh my god.

My heart drops. Outside the window, the familiar hulking shapes of bunkers and buildings stutter past, rocking and tilting in time with the movement of the train car. Aboveground Metro rides are always a high point in my tangles with public transportation, but today, my normally relaxed ride feels cold. On the Red Line, just after Union Station, where the Metro comes aboveground, the tracks run parallel to new construction on one side and older, slightly creepy black bunkers on the other. The huge shapes are normally covered with letters and numbers, spray painted tags and names declaring JU, PEAR, OCHO, CHE, CHUNGO, MOE. Familiar monikers all, but now, that familiarity is suddenly, achingly, gone. The bunkers are devoid of their normally hectic skin, and stand ominously, painted a dull and deadly black. They’ve been buffed.

 ~

I don’t know when I first started noticing graffiti. I don’t know when I started learning about it. I don’t know what drew me in. I do know that now, I can’t go anywhere without noticing. The handwritten tags, the quick, bubble letters of thowups, and the elaborate, painstaking colors of burners and pieces all catch my eye. I’ve slowly begun to decipher the stilted and jittery letters of wildstyle, and the initials of the different crews who tag. I know the names behind different stickers, and whether they’re for advertising or just an identity. Wherever I go, I’m always on the lookout, drinking in this unattainable and impermanent art form.

~

For such a small country, Israel sure has an abundance of graffiti. Everywhere we went, the walls shouted names and phrases, in Arabic, Hebrew, and English. Giant murals splashed across walls in both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. I went everywhere with a borrowed camera swinging from my wrist, ready to document every scribble, every slap-up. I snapped photos of twisted and distorted faces wheat pasted on walls papier-mâché style, of giant dancing women spray painted up the side of a building, of the huge and colorful names beckoning from every wall and street sign. One of my most prized sightings was on the beach in Tel Aviv. There’s a seawall on the far left, supporting an embankment for a tower. On a bright red background, three names pop: SEVER UTAH ETHER. Since I’m not a local, I asked Yochai, one of our Israeli group leaders, what they were.
“Probably smugglers, or gang signals,” he replied, shaking his head and staring in distaste. I wasn’t so sure. Something that beautiful simply couldn’t be malignant. It turns out my gut reaction was right- those names are three copies of many all over the world. I wonder if those artists know how the locals view their work.

Over the two weeks I was in Israel, I came to recognize individual styles, the same names recurring on different streets, in different towns. On the plane back to the US, I opened the camera case. A smashed, broken camera looked up at me. When I popped open the memory card slot, I found that it, too, was wrecked. Back in DC, I lamented my loss to my mother. She asked, “Why do these mean so much to you? It’s just graffiti.” I gaped at her.

“Mom! Those might have been the only documentation of those pieces that existed! What if they’re buffed? No one will know!” She laughed.

“Well, if you say so. Next time, bring another camera!” I agreed. I’d thought of photos as permanent, but they’re just as fleeting as any tag or sticker, at the mercy of the authorities, the weather, or in this case simple bad luck and a misplaced backpack.

~

Six months after my camera smashing trip to Israel, I touched down in Rome, bound for Florence, Italy. As soon as we exited the cramped city streets for the highway, my eyes popped. Giant names and characters covered the Plexiglas and green plastic barriers beside the road. White highlights chased through neon yellow and purple letters, while electric blue offset black and green. My family laughed at me for pressing my nose against the small glass window of our car, and for swinging my head from side to side in my eagerness to see everything.

“Amanda”, they chided. “It’s just graffiti. It’ll probably be gone in a week.”

“I know!” I replied. “That’s why I have to see it all RIGHT NOW!” The colors on the barriers were new and different- bigger than anything I’d seen in the US, and lacking the artistic finesse of the Israeli street artists. This was pure, New York style tagging: marking your territory, the bigger and brighter the better. When we finally reached Florence, I found that the tags on the highway trailed themselves all the way into the city, where they evolved into handwritten tags and wheat paste stickers. There’s no buffing there, or none that I could detect; just layers and layers and layers of people’s identities, hopes, fears, and warnings, scrawled or sprayed on any available surface.

~

The train continues on, though for a moment it feels like everything stopped. I leave the bunkers behind and rise up with the elevated tracks. Down below, the names follow. They are a trail, making my day a little more colorful, a little more right. I don’t know how many people notice the graffiti. I don’t know how many care if it will be buffed. I don’t know how many names stick to the walls and rooftops I’m passing, buried under layer upon layer of paint, but I do know all of them, as old friends. MOE tags all over DC, his name greeting me in all four quadrants of the city. I see him every day in the spring, winking down from the Key Bridge, white bubble letters outlined in black. PEAR moved to San Francisco, but his name is still around, long after he left the city. JU stopped tagging, but not before he left several indelible portraits, ranging from Tony the Tiger to Michael Jackson. CHE and CHUNGO are still around. I see their new tags every month. Others are not so prolific, and the only memory of them is contained in these walls. Some have died or gone to jail, some moved, and some simply stopped tagging. As I watch the colors fly by, I sit and wait and wonder: which one will be gone next? Who will replace them? I may not know now, but I’m always watching. I’ll be the first to know.

On The Color Red

I don’t like red. It’s too strong, too angry, too out there. I have red sock yarn, red like richness and comfort and autumn. I got it on sale, just because. It’s a lovely yarn, silk-wool-nylon and gorgeous. I’ll never use it. The color’s too off-putting. Red socks seem like something weird. Even if I cabled them up all pretty, they’d still be red. And red is bad. I’m not even sure why I dislike red so much. It’s not every red that’s an issue. I can deal with red in moderation: bright red stripes on a sweater, dark red jeans, a single perfect red rose. My hair was even red once: dark, beautiful auburn red, shiny and soft as the silk sock yarn. Another time it was almost orange, a vermilion like a cross between a pumpkin and a tomato. Those kinds of reds are fine. Real, fire engine reds are not. They’re not real. I’ve never seen that kind of red in nature. Real reds are deep, rich, layered. Fake reds are flat. And flat is bad. Flat is boring, one dimensional, not worth it. It’s just not worth those socks. Flat feet are almost as bad as a flat head, which is why neither my socks nor my hair are red. And that’s why I don’t like red.