December Dream

The feminine body; its beauty and the horrors of comfy capitalism

I let piping hot water cascade over me as I dream.

A dream of poverty comingled with glorious beauty; black velvet roses on crushed vinyl.

I dream of being poor. The kind of poor that I’ve always been: rich in house, never wanting of necessary things. Rich in food, and in ideas. Yet somehow poor. Poor in what, exactly?

Poor in preparedness. Poor in the sense that the rug might be pulled out from under one’s life at any moment, revealing a cold hard concrete floor below, about to become someone else’s dream.

The strange kind of poor that pretends to be rich. A bounty of flavour and sound with a dearth of warmth. A plentiful cascade of warm water delaying the sensation that one might be easily displaced, up-rooted from the familiar and spacious dwelling of home back out into the No Man’s Land in between this place and that.

My breast tissue feels firm and lumpy as I wash it. It’s the sort of thing one is supposed to have examined regularly; my modus operandi is only when necessary. Only when concerning. I am healthy enough for now, and hopefully for several decades ahead.

It’s hard not to question one’s entire mortality when faced with a bathtub full of blood. I wring out my enormous cloth pad, more akin to a diaper than the “feminine” products we all see in ads and on shelves. The blood circles and pools and never seems to stop flowing even as I increase the amount of force in my hands and the amount of water that invades the many layers of cloth.

It’s impossible not to question your entire being when you bleed profusely, all of the time, just as it is hard not to consider the end when you feel truly, deathly ill. Unable to walk or speak, or use one’s hands … a distinct sense that life could end at any moment.

The water washes past the absurdity of wealth measured in modes of transport and credit card balances. A new kind of poor – easier than its most ancient form of constant physical hardship – that tricks both oneself and those observing into feeling rich.

Rich in ideas and in autonomy. Rich in the sense of being able to take tremendous risks because one’s inherent privilege hangs as a hammock right beside them, should they grow too weary to maintain the façade. Hours clocked and sales logged and balances transferred.

Poor in the sense of having to move money around; of being deeply, insidiously indebted to big banks and cranky old billionaires. George Bailey’s Uncle Billy, a silly stupid old man, loses $8000 of other people’s money in 1946 and all hell breaks loose. A man wants to kill himself. An evil millionaire sneers and takes it for himself.

When does one become old, exactly?

Children believe we’re old when we’re thirty. I shudder to think of how old I must be at forty-three. Forty-three and still growing bold. Forty-three and cascading towards old. Leg-lifting, forest and field Kate Bush prancing about in a red dress in the 70’s, mounds older than the other teens. The opposite of stupid and old. Silly, of course, is par for the course for an artist. Seriousness wanes on occasion and the guts fly out of our torsos, not garishly. Without gore. More like tangles of rainbow coloured yarn and old crayon drawings from our childhoods led astray by Silly Putty that coats our hands in unfathomable purple glitter.

Eight thousand dollars is still a whole lot of money. It’s a whole thirty thousand dollars more than I have to my name.

I let the water flow over me as I dream. I dream of a home that isn’t up for grabs, that can’t be lost at the drop of someone else’s pin. I dream of perpetual warmth that doesn’t cost anything. I dream that there isn’t an unpaid power bill looming month after month.

As I dry my hair with an old thin cotton Turkish towel, I notice that it still smells of the cheap hair bleach I used on it several weeks ago. I bleached it shocking blonde before a show. A little punk rock show in an old tavern that may be silly with its pool tables and gambling machines and bright LED card-operated digital jukebox and looming TV screen broadcasting a middle-aged white man in a red golf shirt speaking into a microphone about something too loud to comprehend.

The tavern isn’t stupid, though. It knows how to deal.

I bleached my hair with a cheap old box of drugstore junk I bought three years ago. It sat around in cupboards, and moved in boxes when we changed houses twice. It remained, a stoic relic of capitalistic weakness and creative strength. I questioned why I bleached my hair. Why both as in, “why bother?” and “what motivates you to use your appearance as a creative tool?” I’ve noticed lately that I question a lot of my decisions a lot more intently than in previous years.

I’m getting old. A silly, stupid old man with breasts and a menstrual cycle.

What does an artist know? How to be poor and still have myriad works to show?

Who wants to know?

Uncle Billy, the original “silly, stupid old man.” Studio photo from It’s a Wonderful Life.