Rainbow Black

Fear is natural, I was sure she would say. Fear is good. Fear is the universe whispering in your ear: I want you to survive.

We cast the spell in the girls’ bathroom during the middle of fifth period. “Turn off the lights and summon all the blackness of your soul into a spinning ball of energy behind your third eye chakra,” I instructed her. “Breathe in and fan the flames of the curse inside you.” Of all the self-destructive things I’d done, this was probably the stupidest, the one I have no excuse for. The last thing my parents needed was for me to get caught improvising Satanic rituals with a local weirdo. But I had crossed over into that thoughtless, uncaring “fuck it” stage of life: in other words, I was a teenager. I raised my arms. “We curse you for all eternity, George Bush. You promised not to raise taxes, but you lied! Read my lips: we curse you!” “Mention Iran-Contra,” Natasha said. “We also curse you for Iran-Contra!” “And for being a lame square,” she added. “You are a lame square, George Bush. May you lose reelection and choke on the taxes you stole from the American people! I summon the howling demons of hell and curse you! Now expel the curse from your heart chakra. Aaaaaaooooo!

So I weighed my options, going back and forth about whether I should cut her off completely before I got too attached or try to get as much love from her as possible while she lasted.

In jail, it becomes apparent how maladapted our society is to supporting lasting bonds. I's like we're trying to destroy love. Smothering it in concrete, deadening it with consumer good and blitzes of media. We are exceptional -- we are the only specific that acts directly, consciously, against its self-interest. Over, and over, and over. (401)

Would I not have loved her if your positioned were reversed, making me the benign one and her the one with a heart deformed by violence? Of course I would have. (400)

It was the kind of regret that gave lobotomies a certain appeal. Better to have it all wiped clean than to spend the rest of your life defined by one impulsive, destructive, decision. One lie. One pull of a trigger. (page 387)

But I knew. He was punishing me. Just like his wife, I'd failed to be the woman he needed me to be to make his life meaningful. (Page 296)

But at the end of the day, Mr. Hantz was just a man doing what men do: twisting the story around to cast himself as the hero. (293)

Malice begets evil and more malice. It spreads like a disease. It make's people's souls rot off, like syphilis.

My mother had always made it seem like losing my virginity would feel like becoming a luminous fruit on the tree of knowledge. The reality was I felt a lumpy apple someone had taken a bite out of and left on the ground to rot.

…nothing to my name but the rugged will to live, which is beautiful and horrible– a lone, gnarled tree jutting from the cliffside, exposed, hanging on.

All I can say is that freedom’s a feeling I’ll never know: to be so beautiful you terrify the world, daring it to annihilate you. Unlike me, whose only hope is to survive.

Then again, what else could love be, beyond surrendering your life to another person?

She’d dedicated her whole adult life to putting people in prison without ever realizing she was inside one herself.

Everyone wants to talk about MY BODY. No one understands MY MIND.

They were treating me like a far more dangerous person than I was, and it made me feel powerful, at least for a little while.

But it would be a sin to use the law to punish nature for the crimes of human nature.

Soul mates do exist. But it’s not what we thought it was. It’s not about partnership. It’s not even about love. It’s about something more powerful than that. It’s about life. Survival.

I disliked being hungover as much as the next person, but I couldn’t deny it held a kind of masochistic relish, like inhaling the scent of a loved one’s old sweater.

You think people choose to be stupid?” “Yes,” I said. “I absolutely do.

I don’t make wishes,” I said. “I live in the world.

Identity was cheap, it turned out.

Je suis désolé, but a ‘community’ of wolves has eaten all your children!

Identity overhaul is a queer rite of passage.

Of the many doors I’d assumed were shut to me forever, some oversight had left beauty ajar.

I suddenly understood why people took off in the night: goodbyes are far harder for the people saying them than the person hearing them.

All cats are lesbians,” my sister used to say. “Even the boys.

The fact that I spoke of murder like it was a mildly difficult chore should tell you everything you need to know about my headspace at the time.

It seemed I had reached my threshold for pain. I was, suddenly, done.

Meanwhile my father had remained godlike in my eyes, the sum of man’s potential to be noble and good. The reality that he was just a man was too much to bear.