Her Static Halo Dimmed
Her Static Halo Dimmed
Her Static Halo Dimmed
By Brandon K. Nobles
Well, in most love stories, it’s all prequel; it’s all on the cusp, on the edge of your tongue, a word you can’t articulate. Something that you can’t quite grasp; Elise was that.
I got out of high school, waited about nine months before I went to tech, you know, I wanted to take a break; everybody wants to take a break after that long of a time. I met Elise. Elise was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. I met her while I was dating a girl whom I actually did love; I did love the girl I was dating. I promised I’d marry her, we’d been together for over a year, and I cared for her–I cared about her family. I kissed her mother on the cheek before I left. I’m not a one note disgust–-grotesque story teller. It’s not always the obscene and absurdity with me. It’s a lithe mask of sorts. In a sense it was sloppy. Because I don’t face my problems; I just put on makeup and act like they’re not there.
Elise, she was from the bayou; she was from Louisiana. She had a Marilyn Monroe mole on the bottom of her cheek. Blonde hair, a goddess face. She was so fucking feminine and innocent. The more I talked to her, the more I wanted to be with her. The first time I met her, I drove to her house 2 the morning. We put a full tank of gas in my car. We rode around the country roads listening to the Beatles. Our song was Let it be. That was our song; Let it be. She was Christian and Mother Mary, let it be, let it be; I wasn’t Christian, but I understood the significance.
She was in Arizona when I met her. She was in Arizona and I was in South Carolina. I was still dating Sarah, the girl who loved my tales of horror. And I talked to Elise. I talked to her about things I couldn’t talk to Sarah about. She became almost an obsession. And when I met her–-she always had her head turned down like, slight grin, eyes kind of looking up, whenever she smiled she looked up, this bashful, perfect look. And I was still with Sarah. This sounds like, you know, any other romantic tale involving teenagers; it really doesn’t amount to shit in the bigger scheme of things. But it matters a lot to the people involved. It mattered a lot to me because I was put in the position of do I go for two in the bush or do I keep what I have in my hand?
Elise was two in the bush, which I wasn’t sure I could get. Sarah was a cock in the hand. She wore an engagement ring that I given her. I mean, I kissed her mother on the cheek. I brought her mother flowers. I watched wrestling and football with her father. Our families were close. Everything suggested we’d be together indefinitely. And Elise was the flaw in the plan. And I meet Elise after she came back to South Carolina. And she lived in Pomaria. And this is like a nexus point in my life, where in went in a rapidly different direction.
I went over to my father’s house. I called Sarah and told her that I was going to stay the night with my father because nobody was there with him. She said that was okay, we could do something the next day, and in reality, I purchased 500mg of morphine from a friend of my father, this is back in my early stages of addiction, and that’s another one note joke stereotype; Kid hooked on drugs. Kid hooked on drugs. I’m still popping pills now. Doesn’t make you who you are.
And I went… I was on the interstate going to Pomaria. I remember that I told her that I spoke some French. I had beside me, while I was stuck in traffic that there had been a wreck. And it delayed me for fucking hours that I couldn’t talk to her. I mean I had my phone … I could talk to her but there was a wreck and I was stuck in the interstate. I had this list of French sayings that I had written down to say to her. You know, I memorize all these French sayings. I love you, you are the blossom of my life, I would kiss your feet, I would write poems to your eyes, you know, your hair is like the finest silk–-poor similes that bad writers use. Dressed in French. I got to her house. And it was like we were friends, like you me and you are friends, like she was someone I could hang out with without being Mr. Upstart–-you know, I didn’t have to keep up any airs. She thought I was crazy and I think history will bear that out. And she loved that. And she liked my absurd stories, because that’s really, that’s really all I have; just a collection of loose stories associated with people.
We played pool in her basement. And I remember going to the bathroom; I crushed two of the three morphine pills up under a pill bottle on the bathroom counter, snorted each line with each nostril, and took the last pill orally. 300mg or so; I don’t remember. We go into her bedroom and she has little glow in the dark stars on her ceiling and we lay there together mapping out our own make-believe constellations, just laying there with each other. She rolls over and puts on a movie, stuffs in into the VCR and it sputters on.
And I got really, really, like really steamrolled off my ass fucked up. These pills were called Dialudid; they’re really strong and I had never taken that much before. I did it… I thought that it would make me less nervous because I wanted to kiss her. I mean, it was like I was choking and the only way that I could breathe was to kiss her. And I lay there beside her, with her fingers running through my greasy hair. And I’m like, It’s greasy ain’t it? Real men have greasy hair. Real men stink! We stink! And she loved it.
She looked at me like I was an aberration of nature, some one of a kind design flaw that wasn’t noticed until the factory shut down. I didn’t speak like typical southerners did–I grew up in isolation, never learning to mimic the sounds of the indigenous around me. I could speak with eloquence. I wrote books and all that–that was the novelty of me as a character to her.
And we lay in bed–and I start blacking out, going in and out, lapses of concentration and what not; she freaks out. I black out for maybe 20 minutes and I wake up and she’s splashing water on my face, I tell her that I’ve been sick, and she’s crying, right above me, and one of her biggest tears drops fall into my eye and I cry too the tears of someone else.
My eyes were pinpricks, distorted, too large or too small I can’t remember, but it was noticeable. I had overdosed in her bathroom. My skin was clammy and I was shaking. I couldn’t control myself. I went back to the bathroom, I splash water on my face, you know, I try to get my shit together, slap myself, run water through my hair, rattled my head and gritted my teeth.
When I left the room I was hyper-sensitive, hyper-aware, I walk back into the room and there’s a blue glow cast across the bed from a streetlight just beside her driveway. There’s this blue glow that reminds me of a dream. It silhouetted the outline of her figure. I remember thinking of it as rolling hills. Smooth, curvaceous, and she looked up at me, and a little blue line across her face, with the television behind her, and her head it looked it was glowing with the static of the TV set glowed on her like a halo. I told her I had to leave.
She begged me to stay. She wanted to make love. I told her I couldn’t because it wouldn’t be right. She asked me why it wouldn’t be right. I couldn’t tell her that–that I was on drugs, that I wouldn’t remember it… that I wouldn’t, that it wouldn’t be natural. That it wouldn’t be right for our first time. That I wanted it to mean more than some junkie excursion into the windup dinosaur sex the broken junkies have. I couldn’t tell her why I wanted it to mean more–What could mean more than now? The time was right. And she ended up thinking I rejected her. I had her, this beautiful light of my fucking life girl, so fucking pretty in that shade of neon blue; perfect. I had the perfect moment, everything I’d wished for when we first began to love each other, and there it was, right in my hands. She had a halo and glowed a brilliant blue. And I had this perfect moment. And I just looked at her and said I had to leave. I return to it over and over again in my fiction and my poems, usually best expressed as: The door to happiness she led the way / and ignorant I turned away. The truth path appeared, and there it lay / and again I turned away. I’ve written time and time again that I saw the perfect way, and every single time it crops up, I always turn the other way. And it all goes back to her. I had her. I loved her; I didn’t want anything more than her. She told me that she loved me that night, that she wanted to be with me, to be close to me, for us to be together, and all I said was, “That’s weird.” That’s weird, to my homemade angel–that’s what she was to me–and when I kissed her, it was like my first kiss all over again. I held her by both sides of her face and just pressed our lips together, nothing sloppy, but intimate and forceful, and we put our foreheads together both of us breathing heavy. I scratched her hair and made her laugh. And I told her I had to leave.
She was like, Why do you have to leave? Why do you have to leave? And I said it wouldn’t be right, it wouldn’t be right. And Sarah fond out; Elise had told one of her friends that I rejected her. Then I told Elise what happened, that I really cared about her, and I did what I did out of respect for her. That was the consummation of our love; just one long embrace the kind of moment that for a fleeting moment brings God into the life of an atheist sinner who only wanted to do what was right, and by doing so I left my Madonna on the shore–the Madonna was mine for free, and I walked out.
And in my hour of darkness, she’s standing right in front of me…
` Until then, my drug use had been recreational. I love Elise that night forever, and Sarah the next day. I took morphine as my mistress and crawled inside a bottle that I’m still in, seven years later. I’m not a one note joke, but sometimes a clown can color the face of a drowning man. I lost the girl of my dreams, the girl who would stand by me through anything, and took to bed a pale imitation synthetic love. And that’s why I think I stayed on that shit for so long, each little pinch was my Madonna in blue with the static halo kissing me under the plastic stars that night. I had heaven in my fucking hands and dropped it. Every girl I’ve been with since, is me looking for Elise again. In the end, the drugs became Elise to me.
Whispering words of wisdom, Let it be…
By Brandon K. Nobles
Well, in most love stories, it’s all prequel; it’s all on the cusp, on the edge of your tongue, a word you can’t articulate. Something that you can’t quite grasp; Elise was that.
I got out of high school, waited about nine months before I went to tech, you know, I wanted to take a break; everybody wants to take a break after that long of a time. I met Elise. Elise was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. I met her while I was dating a girl whom I actually did love; I did love the girl I was dating. I promised I’d marry her, we’d been together for over a year, and I cared for her–I cared about her family. I kissed her mother on the cheek before I left. I’m not a one note disgust–-grotesque story teller. It’s not always the obscene and absurdity with me. It’s a lithe mask of sorts. In a sense it was sloppy. Because I don’t face my problems; I just put on makeup and act like they’re not there.
Elise, she was from the bayou; she was from Louisiana. She had a Marilyn Monroe mole on the bottom of her cheek. Blonde hair, a goddess face. She was so fucking feminine and innocent. The more I talked to her, the more I wanted to be with her. The first time I met her, I drove to her house 2 the morning. We put a full tank of gas in my car. We rode around the country roads listening to the Beatles. Our song was Let it be. That was our song; Let it be. She was Christian and Mother Mary, let it be, let it be; I wasn’t Christian, but I understood the significance.
She was in Arizona when I met her. She was in Arizona and I was in South Carolina. I was still dating Sarah, the girl who loved my tales of horror. And I talked to Elise. I talked to her about things I couldn’t talk to Sarah about. She became almost an obsession. And when I met her–-she always had her head turned down like, slight grin, eyes kind of looking up, whenever she smiled she looked up, this bashful, perfect look. And I was still with Sarah. This sounds like, you know, any other romantic tale involving teenagers; it really doesn’t amount to shit in the bigger scheme of things. But it matters a lot to the people involved. It mattered a lot to me because I was put in the position of do I go for two in the bush or do I keep what I have in my hand?
Elise was two in the bush, which I wasn’t sure I could get. Sarah was a cock in the hand. She wore an engagement ring that I given her. I mean, I kissed her mother on the cheek. I brought her mother flowers. I watched wrestling and football with her father. Our families were close. Everything suggested we’d be together indefinitely. And Elise was the flaw in the plan. And I meet Elise after she came back to South Carolina. And she lived in Pomaria. And this is like a nexus point in my life, where in went in a rapidly different direction.
I went over to my father’s house. I called Sarah and told her that I was going to stay the night with my father because nobody was there with him. She said that was okay, we could do something the next day, and in reality, I purchased 500mg of morphine from a friend of my father, this is back in my early stages of addiction, and that’s another one note joke stereotype; Kid hooked on drugs. Kid hooked on drugs. I’m still popping pills now. Doesn’t make you who you are.
And I went… I was on the interstate going to Pomaria. I remember that I told her that I spoke some French. I had beside me, while I was stuck in traffic that there had been a wreck. And it delayed me for fucking hours that I couldn’t talk to her. I mean I had my phone … I could talk to her but there was a wreck and I was stuck in the interstate. I had this list of French sayings that I had written down to say to her. You know, I memorize all these French sayings. I love you, you are the blossom of my life, I would kiss your feet, I would write poems to your eyes, you know, your hair is like the finest silk–-poor similes that bad writers use. Dressed in French. I got to her house. And it was like we were friends, like you me and you are friends, like she was someone I could hang out with without being Mr. Upstart–-you know, I didn’t have to keep up any airs. She thought I was crazy and I think history will bear that out. And she loved that. And she liked my absurd stories, because that’s really, that’s really all I have; just a collection of loose stories associated with people.
We played pool in her basement. And I remember going to the bathroom; I crushed two of the three morphine pills up under a pill bottle on the bathroom counter, snorted each line with each nostril, and took the last pill orally. 300mg or so; I don’t remember. We go into her bedroom and she has little glow in the dark stars on her ceiling and we lay there together mapping out our own make-believe constellations, just laying there with each other. She rolls over and puts on a movie, stuffs in into the VCR and it sputters on.
And I got really, really, like really steamrolled off my ass fucked up. These pills were called Dialudid; they’re really strong and I had never taken that much before. I did it… I thought that it would make me less nervous because I wanted to kiss her. I mean, it was like I was choking and the only way that I could breathe was to kiss her. And I lay there beside her, with her fingers running through my greasy hair. And I’m like, It’s greasy ain’t it? Real men have greasy hair. Real men stink! We stink! And she loved it.
She looked at me like I was an aberration of nature, some one of a kind design flaw that wasn’t noticed until the factory shut down. I didn’t speak like typical southerners did–I grew up in isolation, never learning to mimic the sounds of the indigenous around me. I could speak with eloquence. I wrote books and all that–that was the novelty of me as a character to her.
And we lay in bed–and I start blacking out, going in and out, lapses of concentration and what not; she freaks out. I black out for maybe 20 minutes and I wake up and she’s splashing water on my face, I tell her that I’ve been sick, and she’s crying, right above me, and one of her biggest tears drops fall into my eye and I cry too the tears of someone else.
My eyes were pinpricks, distorted, too large or too small I can’t remember, but it was noticeable. I had overdosed in her bathroom. My skin was clammy and I was shaking. I couldn’t control myself. I went back to the bathroom, I splash water on my face, you know, I try to get my shit together, slap myself, run water through my hair, rattled my head and gritted my teeth.
When I left the room I was hyper-sensitive, hyper-aware, I walk back into the room and there’s a blue glow cast across the bed from a streetlight just beside her driveway. There’s this blue glow that reminds me of a dream. It silhouetted the outline of her figure. I remember thinking of it as rolling hills. Smooth, curvaceous, and she looked up at me, and a little blue line across her face, with the television behind her, and her head it looked it was glowing with the static of the TV set glowed on her like a halo. I told her I had to leave.
She begged me to stay. She wanted to make love. I told her I couldn’t because it wouldn’t be right. She asked me why it wouldn’t be right. I couldn’t tell her that–that I was on drugs, that I wouldn’t remember it… that I wouldn’t, that it wouldn’t be natural. That it wouldn’t be right for our first time. That I wanted it to mean more than some junkie excursion into the windup dinosaur sex the broken junkies have. I couldn’t tell her why I wanted it to mean more–What could mean more than now? The time was right. And she ended up thinking I rejected her. I had her, this beautiful light of my fucking life girl, so fucking pretty in that shade of neon blue; perfect. I had the perfect moment, everything I’d wished for when we first began to love each other, and there it was, right in my hands. She had a halo and glowed a brilliant blue. And I had this perfect moment. And I just looked at her and said I had to leave. I return to it over and over again in my fiction and my poems, usually best expressed as: The door to happiness she led the way / and ignorant I turned away. The truth path appeared, and there it lay / and again I turned away. I’ve written time and time again that I saw the perfect way, and every single time it crops up, I always turn the other way. And it all goes back to her. I had her. I loved her; I didn’t want anything more than her. She told me that she loved me that night, that she wanted to be with me, to be close to me, for us to be together, and all I said was, “That’s weird.” That’s weird, to my homemade angel–that’s what she was to me–and when I kissed her, it was like my first kiss all over again. I held her by both sides of her face and just pressed our lips together, nothing sloppy, but intimate and forceful, and we put our foreheads together both of us breathing heavy. I scratched her hair and made her laugh. And I told her I had to leave.
She was like, Why do you have to leave? Why do you have to leave? And I said it wouldn’t be right, it wouldn’t be right. And Sarah fond out; Elise had told one of her friends that I rejected her. Then I told Elise what happened, that I really cared about her, and I did what I did out of respect for her. That was the consummation of our love; just one long embrace the kind of moment that for a fleeting moment brings God into the life of an atheist sinner who only wanted to do what was right, and by doing so I left my Madonna on the shore–the Madonna was mine for free, and I walked out.
And in my hour of darkness, she’s standing right in front of me…
` Until then, my drug use had been recreational. I love Elise that night forever, and Sarah the next day. I took morphine as my mistress and crawled inside a bottle that I’m still in, seven years later. I’m not a one note joke, but sometimes a clown can color the face of a drowning man. I lost the girl of my dreams, the girl who would stand by me through anything, and took to bed a pale imitation synthetic love. And that’s why I think I stayed on that shit for so long, each little pinch was my Madonna in blue with the static halo kissing me under the plastic stars that night. I had heaven in my fucking hands and dropped it. Every girl I’ve been with since, is me looking for Elise again. In the end, the drugs became Elise to me.
Whispering words of wisdom, Let it be…