It was in progress again, a gathering where shiny, charmed people get bored halfway through her stammer. There were two parallel universes in the room; Hazel's and theirs. Although a channel of communication existed between the distant circles of experience, it was useless. She was once the quiet, almost enigmatic teenager in white, prone to sitting close to strangers who then spoke to her. Now the room was ruled by a social dichotomy that forbade a much older Hazel's intrusion on affairs of the cool. Yet she would sit there for a total of thousands of hours throughout the years, if only because observation was allowed. The topics usually ranged from taking drugs in strange countries to coy measurements of boys. Hazel would cherish the ease with which the others would transport themselves from one exciting experience to the next, almost reliving them.
- It's too messy, ken. Divvint be so bloody daft, lass..
Somebody had brought a dog along, a brown creature with loveable eyes. They were discussing sex during periods.
- The lad kens the score.. but they're early this munth!
- Just blow him!
Hazel had skinny hands that were always cold, too cold for holding anybody's hands. She felt the dog's back and it sneaked away towards Sally's groin.
- Harry, stop it! The dog, does it..
- Does it nowt. I showered ten minutes ago!
The dog went from girl to girl, sniffing and amusing them all. When it came Hazel's turn, it made eye-contact but swiftly disappeared in the corridor. Lee was rolling a joint. Some of them lip-synched to MTV.
They were going out to see James Wilson. Sally had heard he put some special frequencies through his set which would tense the clit and cause some girls to come, just like that.
Make-up ran quickly to their faces, eyes met with gleeful, perfect smears. Cider made them laugh and sing parts of the hippest radio-waves. Hazel wished everyone well. She kept reading her books in pubs, sometimes in clubs, wanting to be involved. Yet a darkness caught her heart each time the others drifted farther on a cold stream of hedonism and crammed schedules. That feeling was a raging beast, eating its way out of her body.
She'd been relinquished lately by the architecture of her home town, that which hosted so many lives, destinies and activities. Hazel had started naming buildings and landmarks, quietly calling to some of them as she strolled past. There was Christmas, Easter '99, Birthday, Sunday and of course the most beautiful of them all, the Angel.
Their steps felt heavy on the pavement, accompanied by hard jolts of rain that smeared walls and nations with their grandeur and gave Hazel a tingling in the spine. But to these precious ones, the world was full of other things, and all of them abrupt, extravagant, violent. While Hazel could look at stained windows, oceanic sunsets, the machinery around pits and old photographs for hours, her leaders had other things on their minds. They seemed to be driven by a desire to experience and consume everything, as if to devour the pleasures of a hundred lifetimes before their thirties. But that was expected, that was on everyone's agenda.
The queue was getting shorter, everyone absorbed some of that brash energy of the mechanical paradise inside. A hard, racing pulse synchronized their brainwaves and quickly evaporated the outside world. An armada of wildly gyrating costumes basked under bright poison lights. They seemed to modulate with a higher purpose, unknown to her. Hazel was pushed around as Sally kept yelling past her at some boys in tight t-shirts standing by the counter. Hazel hoped she could be like that too, all care-free and spontaneous. The pounding in these places was so overwhelming all her thinking seemed to disappear save for the most automated of observations and perhaps that was its meaning. Hazel tried to enjoy the hypnotic, wandering sound but something in her core rejected it. A beautiful blonde boy was chatting the girls up, eyeing and measuring them through a pair of sunglasses, lifted just a bit to reveal birthmarks under his left eye. Hazel's cider spilled against a neon-green top fronted by a semi-familiar face that soon vanished from view. Then, another blow shook her frame from behind as Hazel made way towards her distant, fading support-group.
That face.
Hazel felt she'd lost her womanhood somewhere along the way, it was icy to the touch under a permafrost of smiling too much. Hazel too had that thing, that sun-dried tomato between her thighs, but hers was never under the targeting reticle of men. The clubbers had everything, they belonged to an underworld where exclusive young ones ma-tured into suave adults. They were all bopping on a sea of people now, drifting apart, losing themselves in the pleasure-chaos. A familiar face rotated past again, stirring a long-gone memory. Hazel felt drained.
Belongs.
She hoped there were others like her in some unexplored corner of her home town. She'd read self-help books, trying to get as curious of people as possible within the context of a festival atmosphere and a few well-planned gestures. Hazel thought of the penis sometimes, trying to feign some animal excitement. Whether she was lesbian or not made no difference as she couldn't bring herself to masturbate on images of women either.
To test-tube Haze.
There was the image of childbirth: that prolonged, flesh-tearing climax of the intercourse seemed to justify her resignation. What was the orgasm really for? To produce children. Still Hazel's virginity was her biggest secret, although the others acknowledged it with quieter passages of speech every now and then.
Test-tube Haze!
Her father had vanished before Hazel's birth. Moving from London in her early-teens, mother had meant everything to her. The best they could conjure up in the school-yard was to tie Hazel’s origins to a test-tube. Mother would dress her up every day but her designs were old-fashioned, more suited to middle-aged hippies from trailers to whom she had often tailored for.
That face from her past, it looked so alive and vibrant. Her ex-tormentor appeared almost curious as she eyed Hazel, vaguely remembering the circumstances of their last meeting. She had changed, Hazel had not. Haze was still the victim.
A sheltering concrete hut had hosted countless of her private ceremo-nies. What had she sought in her school? She'd felt drawn to after-school corridors, first as an act of self-preservation from her bullies, later perhaps for the sheer thrill of having to hide from the janitorial staff. Maybe there was more to it? Hazel had enjoyed the silence and empty space much more than your average schoolgirl. She'd stared at the crude paintings of old, dead headmasters, and if it had rained, she'd find a spot beneath the windows in the ceiling and lis-ten to the gentle tapping, forgetting to go home.
Later, all the insults turned into a quiet disapproval, Hazel stood by the smoking area of the bad girls. The air was filled with wrong things which Hazel dutifully inhaled in silent regret, hiding her forearms. Her late-teens were spent drifting towards what she saw as normalcy. All the music she ever liked was old, unfashionable to the parading masses. She couldn't dress up properly or impress anyone with her hairdos. She wanted to be a girl, to be human. Finally Hazel was accepted as an observer, as she would never make it to the tampon-commercials.
She blasted some Cure tapes at her unusually eventful evening. Her after-rave emptiness was private, nothing like the easily dismissed hangovers of the others. She spent extra time in the toilet, dealing with some weird discharges that slowly flowed from her body. Flipping through the newspaper in the morning, she kept scanning for any fu-ture events where people go to. Her eyes would hunt down anything to wear lipstick at and move with the pack. They would be dancing again, laughing a little, drinking, not feeling anything.
She'll be leaving early next time. She will don her party-pearls, of course, gather those usual estranged looks from the crowd, rub those tacky pearls in her hands and feel them melt away. But then there will be a lump next to the Angel, all messed up from a diazepam overdose, cooling off into the next day and freedom. It was the most flawless thing Hazel had ever seen, spreading its wings like that over the glorious mounds of Gateshead. She'd felt the rusty legs only once, saving the rest of the cold embrace for later. She could be walking like a model then, knowing it all will end that night.
A tiny advert caught her eye.
Buddhist meditation, every Thursday at 6 pm, free entry.
What the universe failed to provide her with, she would take back in one slow, freestyle session in cold weather. Leaving outdoors, Hazel ran past Angel, almost hearing its calls through the hum of its ventilation units.
They were advised to count from one to five slowly and continuously for twenty minutes, after which two more such sessions would take place. Hazel sat down and closed her eyes. She felt like a secret agent, carrying classified information through some potentially dangerous places. Most of her co-meditators had seemed unusually polite and responsive. Amidst all this serenity, Hazel focused on her towering anger and all the demons of demands that come with it. She would explode and depart from the unity these people in the hall had discovered, unplug from pop culture too, but most of all leave the bad company lagging behind for another 30 years or so. For the second and third twenty minute periods she didn't feel anything.
After the final session, an old man greeted her with a smile and almost forced a reaction. There was some music being injected into the hall that first seemed like the sound of soft glass breaking, only stretched to an increasingly pleasant infinity. Hazel studied the bookshelf and its exotic contents, listening to the old vinyl with its cracks and hissing. Finally, the last member of the order stretched with lithe motions and left the hall.
- Never been here before, first time, she began
- Have you something on your mind?
- Oh I'd like to.. I'd love to..
- Perhaps you'd like us to talk about something?
It was as if the music didn't let go, it forced them into a state of sharing secrets. The man was not a geordie, he looked more like a seasoned traveler without a single identity.
- It's just that.. sometimes I feel so....!
She thought of suitable words. They all seemed to crush her with their uniform weight.
The man appeared perplexed, although in a very calm manner without much intrusion. Tears flooded Hazel's eyes uncontrollably, she often thought of her mother when these certain words choked her. She needed a confession and didn't care.
So they went through the make-up, television, dogs, nightmares, the nights of cutting herself with knives and how she felt like some walking self esteem boost for other people. They'd talk about her mother who died too soon and left Hazel hanging from some psychic umbilical cord, dangling in mid-air, grasping for any affection from anyone which never came, about the special places downtown where they used to go together in the last phase of mother's struggle.
- You have avoided creating any worldly addictions and lived completely selflessly.
The man took her completely by surprise, no empathy was necessary.
- But I'm.. so tired.. I'm sick of it..!
- It seems to me you have lived very wisely. Perhaps this is the end of your karma. You have no significant ties to this world. Maybe there is but one realization left.
- What can I do?
- You can start giving! You are free.
The sounds changed from their quiet drone to a somewhat louder movement. It was the incense then, that's what she first noticed after a relief beyond aeons. Who in their right mind would call her life wise or even a life to begin with? Yet she felt it now, that thumping feeling in her chest of being somebody. Was she falling in love? Hazel had never thought of herself as a spiritual person, yet she remembered what they said about students and teachers. The small man was not the invisible lover she used her pillow to stunt-hug with but his message was all she needed. It relieved those memories of talking too much to wrong people, of feeling incomplete.
Outside, the buildings appeared tall and divine, they would stand all weather and time, live beyond the populace. They had been present, as a form of static in the background all these years, regardless of the tenants and the changes in their lives. They were not beautiful but they served others. The old man, too, had inhabited a tower-block, strolling the torn corridors with his disarming grace, smiling to anyone passing him. Some things in this world remained calm and still, not needing excitement and that began to intrigue Hazel. It felt warm somewhere inside her body. Months passed as Hazel spent more time in the incense hall and less among the street-cred until she finally gave up the city. She stopped expecting outside interference and studied her new books instead, loaned from the little library of her new spiritual teacher. Those countless hours of silence. Had she been searching for Godhead all along, even as a child?
Hazel's dreams were brown or gray since mother departed, they would be devoid of surprise or comfort. Between different stages of a certain dream-space, light began to beam in from the window. Hazel felt so present and wide awake as mother sat on her bed and they talked about music. They were dressed like they'd been on so many occasions, covered in red and white, happy shrapnel, when they were about to go for a walk. You would mistake them for sisters.
- You still on Elvis?
- Well.. yeah.. sometimes..
- I see you threw the cardboard away..
- Can you blame me? It was giving me the b-bloody creeps, standing there..
- I gave that to you!
Mother paused for a moment.
- How do you feel?
- What do you mean?
- You don't cry so much these days, do you?
Hazel remembered her own plans at the Angel's feet. She couldn't carry it out after all, even if there was no-one to remind her. Hazel was all that was left of mother.
- N-no..!
- That's good. I still love you, you know. More than ever.
- Why did you go..?
- I see you're doing alright.. so don't ask!
Mother poked Hazel in the ribs and made her shriek.
- Come on, let's go. I want to show you something!
They left the room and moved swiftly in the bright outdoors. It was raining but it was so warm they didn't mind.
- You will become a teacher, I'm so proud of you, mother said, disappearing behind Hazel's back.
There was a moment when it all transformed into a beautiful view of an eastern monastery. Hazel felt full of hope next morning, lying in bed unnecessarily long. She took a shower and had some toast with those tiny, sweeter tomatoes on top. It felt so good walking out on the streets, pondering on such things. As some pain left her heart, a strong wind swept the last remaining tears off her cheek and onto High West Street.
Although nobody cared what time of month she had her periods, Hazel ventured in the local rainy labyrinth like a lovingly elevated scien-tist, unmoved by dispersing football fans. Her rat-days were almost over. She'd realized all her pain existed in time, in the past and it had transformed into a mere emotional derelict that was breaking off with each step. Hazel would treasure all future moments of peering over the streetlamps from her balcony among the tower-blocks, wrapped in her favourite robe, watching the city that once beat her to the ground. Soft drops of sometimes horizontal rain gave her robe that certain scent, almost warming it up. First she would observe, just watch it all. In time, Hazel could be living a life of warmth, simplicity and security. For some nights Hazel would be pressed again tightly against the shape of her bed and almost crushed by the grip of sorrow. But whether she'd liked it or not, loss had given her nearly everything. People would flock to her, ask her about life and she would always respond with respect, thinking back to her mother's closeness, the incense and the lapels of her first robe.
