She knows her life is spinning out of control but she has no idea what she wants. Her hours are long and she is surrounded by men. Attractive men, charismatic men, who pander to her ego and her predilections. Who mirror her image of herself. That is why she does this, why she works where she works, why she is caught in the chaos of sleepless nights and lost days. Lost weeks.
She is not lonely but she has lost her taste for solitude in the same way a drug addict forgets to eat. The pace is addictive. Her energy levels are euphoric and synthetic. She knows a crash will come but still the desire for sensation draws her onward. It tastes like life, like a rebellion against the heavy crush of normality and the necessity of living daily, doing daily things. It effects her choices.
She has no longing for companionship but idealises the notion of connection. Of ships passing in the night. Of twinned souls and loves not bound by time or pedestrian, formalised relationships. Living and loving are star-crossed things.
These men run in her same rush-rush pace; frenetic, hungry. Some are artists, some are actors, some are musicians. Some are trying to be. Some have been yet have fallen. All are bartenders.
With them she spins, unique and singled out, sometimes drawn in to more visceral interactions than she intended. Mostly it leaves her empty; drained and disappointed by the reality of what always follows.
Like her, these men can not be trusted. Nothing sates them, as she is never sated, and she and they move on, still searching for something more real than dull reality.
She says, Enough!
She knows she needs to be alone, that this overpopulated world is slowly eating her. A New Year’s resolution, a token gesture towards something she does not want to face head on; she swears off bartenders and musicians. No more disappointing mornings. She will remain her ice queen self, always hovering on the brink of consummation. It is the tension which she craves, not the falling. A life solely composed of possibilities.
But there he is, his slow chasing growing more intense and she is trapped by the picture that he paints of her. She wants always to be an object of fascination and she is his.
The staircase walls of his parents house are lined with gold and platinum albums, awards and autographs she recognises. She is accustomed to living on the outskirts of fame and feels at home there, listening to her friends talk about their friends whose names are splashed around the world, seeing supermodels and rock stars as what they are; simply people. She is used to having invitations to exclusive functions and walking past queues knowing that the ropes will be moved aside for her..
She is close enough to see the truth of fame, and to read between the lines when those outside of the circle she lives in the fringes of talk about the people they presume they know from gossip columns and movie screens. Only rarely though, privately, does she admit to herself that she too is sometimes caught by the unnatural glow.
So she stands too close to him, but it is not the fame that captures her. It is not even his rejection of it and those lost years in Africa. It is the picture of herself he gives to her, that notion that she is special, that she is inspiring and captivating. He believes it, for now at least, and that image is quicksand.
So it is January. And she lies awake beside a child-man who is both a musician and a bartender. So much for resolutions.
Sometime later in the year, she will remember why she decided she didn’t want to do that anymore: You do not need to be Rita Hayworth to know that men will go to bed with Gilda, but wake up with you.
