The Left-Handed Scribbles of a Wannabe Expat, on the Run from Uncle Sam

Melanie-Nicole Montano

The Left-Handed Scribbles of a Wannabe Expat, on the Run from Uncle Sam

Written by Melanie-Nicole Montano

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by MnM Press Campus Way, Brayford Pool, Lincoln Copyright Melanie-Nicole Montano 2012 The right of The Author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act of 1988 All rights reserved

ISBN XXX-X-XXXXXXX-X-X

What am I here for? I left my home to disappear, is all. Im here for myself, Not to know you, I dont need no one else.

If I ever matured enough into maternal, I would offer my child anecdotes of youth. I would sit down in a house decorated with chalet charm to share tales of her mothers longing for expat ambitions. There was a mid-twenties woman who voyaged transatlantic to escape bedroom mirrors that reflected back a human wrinkle without a story. She brought along the American flag in the shape of her tongue, and it clicked out jingles of independence with an East Coast inflection. Her head was a crawl space for the brave, for the reckless who purged reality by boarding aircrafts to avoid staying grounded. She drank away her knotted gut with courtesy spirits served in Virgin Atlantic cups, and waited for landing to seek refuge in an isle of rain. Im sure my wide-eyed child would cock their head in disinterest and resume playing with that generations toy. I would sit back with a cup in hand, reflecting back on that time when I counteracted the US mantra and felt most liberated, escaping the land of the free.

I think I should know how to make love to something innocent without leaving my fingerprints.

They were all various degrees of tall and tastytongued. Some posed as hipsters in straight-legged denim; others were meaty-calved athletes unable to squeeze into skinny jean style. I was equally fond of both leather and lad, as long as they proved themselves men upon some midnight mattress. They had accents spanning Midland commoner to Yorkshire cow-land; inflections drifting in dialect but never dressed up in Hollywood chivalry. Hugh Grant didnt exist in the men who appeared in my after-hours scenes, because proper should only be present when properly fucking against propped pillows. Im sure my mother wouldnt approve. These men slinked up to me on discounted ale nights, with breath reeking of hops. They complimented my twisted hair and eyes shaped like compact vanity mirrors. They imitated my accent that pinpricked my origin between the Hackensack and Hudson rivers. They were all gentle when exploring lady skin, and Im partial to European lovers instead of American selfishness. I wasnt interested in pursuing any of their happy endings, because I didnt believe happy should have to end. Leave before you get left, I once read on a bumper sticker while stuck in Garden State Parkway traffic, so I bounced from one climatic chapter to another and avoided the never-after.

Love me cancerously, Like a salt-sore soaked in the sea.

After crossing the Atlantic for leisure, I found myself anglophile to his 6 foot stature in plimsoles. He filled my head with tumors of how British love works, and his was something cankered that disfigured into a heart-shape when caught under certain light. He lived on the fickle side of the English milieu, off some landscape where orange ballooned down five minutes of Vitamin D, then tucked backwards into a selfcontained upset. He was exactly the climate that birthed his bipolar, all fog and frowns with intermittent stability. He was a hero of temporary, and I relished in the glint that tinseled everything hopeful until the hope petered out and I grew tired of living a tenant to the hurricane in his brain. He made me hate the word love, because what I felt was a disaster of everything Satan and cherub inside me. I heard he moved to Amsterdam. Ive never been that drunk off caring to ask him myself.

And it starts sometime around midnight or at least thats when you lose yourself for a minute or two as you stand under the bar lights and the band plays some song about forgetting yourself for a while.

Some evenings, the floor paneling would groan under the heft of lager-bloated bodies. Each patron arrived with purpose, or hoped to find one at the midsection of a Guinness that poured like gravy and fed like stew. Wait staff balanced plates of deep-fried potato slabs, shimmying around the tipsy who offered hand-gestured gossip and talked through their chews. There were other nights when the crowds were scarce, and conversations could be held without straining vocals. Elders reminisced about youth as the youth complained about growing old, and bartenders levered another stout to quench the thirsty. The low-key chatter served as white noise for servers as they wiped down gummy tables, scrubbing away at stubborn red rings staining the wooden lacquer. Whenever the bladder cramped with liquor, a trip to the female toilets produced four different dialects. Their regional disparities meant nothing as they all slurred at the same level of drunk, teetering in front of the mirrors as they reapplied their face paint. I prefer the community in these small drinking holes. Here I can nurse or chug my house merlot, and relish in the quaint of some hideaway tavern named after a lion or one of the kings.

I walked the streets of love and they're drenched with tears.

It was a day of clamminess and slate, a miserable wet suited for suicide and sad photography. It was the kind of weather that called for double caffeine after a post-wine weekend, when everyone queuing up for Starbucks wore waterproof and a scowl. It was the damp I expected of England, so I ventured into town for some chocolate cake and avoided all of the puddles.

And so they say, for everything a reason. My house is haunted by rotten desire, And on my skin left the scent of indignation

I wish I didnt have a haunted head that questioned the purpose he didnt serve. I fell vulnerable after he mirrored the motions of my tongue, and told me we should wait a bit longer to express our lust. He was in the RAF and mature, but stopped picking up my calls one day and that was our end. Hell always be that beautiful man from Leeds who led me on with a Hollywood kiss, leading to a dead end.

Time it was and what a time it was It was a time of innocence, a time of confidences.

I take a walk to avoid facing the future. Thomas Wolfe once wrote, You Cant Go Home Again, but the expiry of my visa says otherwise. Denial comes much easier when sloshed with cocktails, so I drink to remember to stay happy. My mom wants me back in America, but she realizes my inspiration depends on this rain-sopped turf. I think back on how much of a foreigner I felt in my birth certificate town. I think its the English island Ive fashioned myself into. I pull potential out of this drizzle; I pull my hair out in New Jersey.

People are strange when you're a stranger, Faces look ugly when you're alone. Women seem wicked when you're unwanted, Streets are uneven when you're down.

Somewhere between station and Starbucks, a man slouched with his head in his hands. He wasnt a beggar or permeating of booze, just a body perched against tunnel-tiled walls. I didnt peg him old enough for wrinkles, but he boasted premature etches anyway. They cracked in fleshy folds underneath his brow, a network of tentacles that tapered off and streamed alongside his mouth to form a puppet frown. His eyes poured out lament in wet strokes, pooling into the furrows meant for geriatric skin. I walked past, just another stranger without exchange, but his face stayed the night. He was howling a song of bereavement, a desperate dirge that toggled about in an echoed underpass. It was requiem music he garbled on repeat, a nonverbal tune condensing his timeline of misery in unwavering, extraordinary pitch.

What a night for a dance, you know Im a dancing machine, With the fire in my bones and the sweet taste of kerosene.

Sticky floors dont bother us dancing fools, drunk off the lyrics of Billy Joel. Here in a square room painted zebra plum, we shelter our camaraderie by caulking in the melodies. We toast and gulp and wait for the ferment to settle into smudgy vision, when our bodies contour into carefree. Contents spill to the ground, glazing a liquored lacquer while shy girls spin around in their frilly wear. Prepsters stomp rhythm-less to the rhythms in their head, and the problems of today will be hangovers of tomorrow. A boy with wispy locks and crooked teeth twirled me around to the beat of banjoes. We sipped our dancing juice, circling around in hysterics while the loudspeakers crooned, Were all in the mood for a melody. Tipsy off Coke and drums, I whispered in his ear sassy-somethings I would later pretend to forget, and we aligned our bodies to the closest sound that could ever echo rapture.

Oh, what are we doing We are turning into dust Playing house in the ruins of us.

Todays lovers fit each other like pieces of jigsaw from different box sets. His edge corresponds to her curve, but both are fashioned into shapes never designed to match. Years ago, my mother would force pieces of conflicting landscape, Washington State pine trees jammed into jungle scenes. She had no patience for the effort required to create; she just wanted to strain the puzzle into completion. I mentioned this to him once our climax led to silence. Re-dressing in the dark, I explained our incongruity and kissed him a tongueless farewell. I return to my flat for a naked comatose, but kept on the mismatched socks; one dotted with my fifty stars, the other striped with his Yorkshire accent.

And the waitress is practicing politics, As the businessmen slowly get stoned. Yes they're sharing a drink they call loneliness, But it's better than drinking alone.

Neither canister makeup nor two-day scruff can conceal the sour residue staining Monday morning faces. They barrel past High Street clutter, brooding their way through another dampened mundane. Miserable until sundown retreat, girls will paint their features dark for cocktail hour; blokes unknot their tie and sojourn for a yeasty brew at some old mans pub. Its at the bottom of libation number five when the flush colors their outlook a rosy shade of ferment. For a few hours before rising to reality, theyll finally see the glass half full after downing its contents empty.

Daniel, when I first saw you I knew that you had a flame in your heart. And under wild blue skies, Marlboro movie skies, I found a home in your eyes. We'd never be apart.

Under the rectangular cut of skylight sundown, he scribbled a brain rant that shot from fingertip to felt-tipped pen in a fervor of rolling ink. He felt the surge of writer when he didn't force the fluidity, and Im sure it was the rain that resurrected his flyaway motivation. I saw brilliance in his hands, but he could only put them to use when the muse spurred sporadically; a balloon of genius that toggled and popped whenever pressure swallowed him whole. From the peripherals of my affection, I glimpsed his foot tapping as he glided from spiral to corner page. He mentioned writing something destructive with humorous undertones, so I let him alone with his own mind and noticed the scuttle of happiness in mine. Here in this containment of safe and lazy, we slouched separately beneath a roof that pattered bipolar rainfall; writing with minds that spouted recipes for ingenuity as we sipped twist-capped wine. Even in the room silenced by reflection, his company bellowed the melody of "this is what it's all about," and it was in that pinprick of our time when I decided there couldn't be anything greater to inspire my hope.

The Left-Handed Scribbles of a Wannabe Expat, on the Run from Uncle Sam is a compilation of random rendezvous and sexcapades chronicling Melanie-Nicole Montanos so-far stay as a potential expat in the United Kingdom. She uses real song lyrics from her everyday iPod shuffle to preface each anecdote and encapsulates the sentiment through musical representation.

MnM Press ISBN XXX-X-XXXXXXX-X-X