Tag: Create

Chapter Seventy – Eight of Pentacles

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide, Memoir, Someone Else’s Life, Tarot

It felt odd to be working towards something again.

My brain kept trying to interject and tell me that what I was doing was not work, but my body was so happy to be active again, even if it was just so that I could sit and take money from men who wanted to watch strippers dance for them. As Rhonda had told me before, we all had to start somewhere.

“I don’t know why you’re bothering,” Lisa said. “We get free money every month. Why do you want to work?”

“I just want something to do,”

Lisa shook her head. “What could be better than sitting with me and reading?” She told me. “You be careful around Rhonda, I don’t trust her.”

I didn’t share with Lisa how Rhonda felt about her, nor did I tell her that I needed a break from her. I didn’t want to fight and that would be the only outcome. Trying to balance the relationships I had with people with trying to find balance withing myself was getting to be a lot of work. I was trying not to upset Lisa and at the same time, trying to establish something good for myself. I loved her, I just needed more for me.

Lisa let out a puff of smoke as I continued getting ready for work. “You just think you’re better than the rest of us, that’s all.” She waved her hand. “Not that I blame you. I mean, look at Francis, he thought he was than better than you and that’s why he dumped you.”

I chose not to respond to that comment. I knew that her words weren’t true and that Francis had loved me in his way. I slung my bag over my shoulder. I was wearing a pair of sparkly jean shorts that I had found at the mission and a white mesh tank top. I figured that I would get more tips as a door boy that way.

“Why do you dress like that?” Lisa asked. “I can see your nipples.”

I shrugged. “A lot of men there like looking at my nipples. I’ll be back later.”

She gave me a little wave, and I could not help viewing it as a dismissal. We had had words earlier about her smoking while pregnant. She was almost due. It would be any day now. She had been a little pissy with me afterwards. I knew that some friendships were a lot of work, but she was becoming even more work than usual.

“I read your latest story by the way. It wasn’t as good as your others. You can do better.”

I let out a sigh, grabbed my coat and left. I knew that she was being cruel because my view on her smoking while pregnant had hurt her, but trying to crush my spirit when I was really just beginning to find my own spirit was a low blow. I chose to walk out instead of confronting her. It was easier that way. She often found a way to be right, even when she was in the wrong.

On the walk to Frankies, I just reminded myself of the work that I had done to get to where I was. It wasn’t what I had thought I would end up doing with my life. I’d had plans as a kid in high school to teach drama and act on the stage or screen, becoming a playwright at the same time. I wasn’t living that dream, but I was living this one instead.

 I had come to realize that my road was only just beginning. I had gotten this far and there would be more work to do, but that would come in time. I knew that I was on the right path because I had chosen it for myself. I didn’t want to be afraid anymore.

When I arrived at Frankies, Jake was there to greet me when I entered. “One of the dancers was asking for you. He needs the crotch of his underwear checked before he goes on stage. Don’t want his dick showing before anyone has to pay. You don’t have to touch it, but let me know if can see his cock at all.” He said. “One of the drag queens, too. You’re in demand this evening.” He winked at me and I could feel my cheeks blush, the redness spreading across my face.

“It’s nice to be wanted,” I said. I made my way up the stairs to the second floor to find a drag queen waiting for me at my station. Mizti was fairly new at drag and she totally rocked it. We had bonded one night when she had come up to my floor trying to promote the drag show that was going on at the bottom level. We had become fast friends even though we only saw each other on the nights that I worked.

“Honey, does my makeup look okay?”

She was wearing a blond wig and had done her eyes all exaggerated. They made her look like she was a Japanese animation character, and she had done her lips to match, all big and red. She made a kissy face at me and I laughed.

“Your makeup looks wonderful, very saucy.” I said shyly. I adjusted her wig and gave her the go ahead. “I don’t know why you come to me for my opinion on makeup anyways.”

“Honey, you always tell it like it is. That’s a rare find and it can be so much work to speak and worry about hurting someone else’s feelings. You manage to speak your mind. You tell it like it is, AND you’re a gentleman doing it. Plus, Honey!” She motioned at my outfit and made a gesture at my face. I had applied smoky eye shadow in blues and greys. “You look amazing.”

I sat on my stool and counted out my float for the night. “You’re just saying that.”

She gave me a sour look. “No, I’m not. I mean look at you. The men will be tipping you well tonight, I mean look at those nipples! Look at your hips! I’d kill for hips like that.” She waved a hand with red talonlike nails. “I kid. I wouldn’t want to end up in prison; I’d look horrible in orange.” She let out a sigh and snapped her fingers in front of my face. I looked up from my float. “Good, you’re paying attention. I like when men do that. It’s easier to drop the mic if someone is listening.”

Letting out a chuckle, I put the money back in the till. “Okay, I’m listening. You have my full attention.”

“Good, that’s how I like it. Now listen here. Stop looking to other people for your own self worth.”

“I don’t do that.”

“Yes, you do. You work so hard at holding yourself so rigidly in hopes that, when someone actually notices you, you act like it’s some kind of fucking miracle. Then you keep trying to be what others find attractive. That’s too much work honey. You need to love your body, it’s the only one you will ever have. You can’t wait for other people to love you. You need to love yourself; do you hear what I’m saying?”

I nodded because I did hear her. I knew that there were many different ways that I could see myself and she was right. I tried to be what everyone wanted instead of listening to what I wanted.

“I do, and I’ll try. I promise.”

“Better not be pie crust promise, honey. You are amazing and your whole life is ahead of you. How about we celebrate your newfound resolve by having a drink. I’ll get you a screwdriver. You like those right? They’ll go with my outfit at any rate.” She had dressed in a flowing yellow dress that hugged all of her curves and fell to the floor in a pool of sunlight. She walked away from my station, her high heels clicking on the floor.

A couple of guys came stood in front of me, holding out five-dollar bills so that they could enter to watch the dancers. One of them was wearing a shirt that said “Fellatio is not an opera.” I had no idea what that meant. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you waiting. What’s fellatio?” I asked.

The man dropped a five in my till and another five in my tip jar. He got down on his knees and placed himself between my legs and ran his hands close to my crotch. I let out a laugh that surprised me. I was so nervous and yet, this sound of joy was able to leave my mouth. I was so thankful to this man. His blue eyes looked up at me with thirst, and he gave me a roguish smile.

“Have a good night, boys.” I told them. The music was loud and the air was warm and this man had given me a gift, and I had no words to tell him so.

He stood up, planted a small kiss on my cheek and went into the other room to enjoy the boys.

Chapter Sixty-Five – Three of Pentacles

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide, Finding Balance, Memoir, Personal Growth, Someone Else’s Life, Tarot

When I arrived at her home, Darnelle had all sort of things laid out on her dining room table. She poured me a mug of tea and laid out milk and sugar on the table. The cups looked funny among all the magical paraphernalia. I was immediately put at ease when I took my first sip. I saw Darnelle smile at me.

“Never underestimate the healing powers of tea. It reminds us to spare a few moments for ourselves, at least while the tea is hot. Tea helps us to stop, breathe and practice patience.”

“How does tea give us patience?” I asked her.

“Because young and old, we wait for that tea to cool slightly so that we can drink it. It’s kind of like magic. We’re afraid until we delve into the pool beyond our ankles, but then when the water is supporting our weight, we let go and wait for joy.”  She lit a cigarette. “Here, let’s do your Medicine cards and find out who your guides are.”

Pulling the deck towards her, she put down her cigarette in the ashtray and handed me the deck of cards. “You need to shuffle these until you feel like you are done, just like the Tarot cards you love.”

It felt odd to be holding a deck of cards without having a question to guide me. While I was shuffling, I thought to myself ‘Who is willing to guide me?’. It felt better to give the shuffling some direction. I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind of nothing else but the question so that it would take up room in the dark. I could feel a card fly free from the deck. I opened my eyes and put the deck on the table.

Darnelle held up the card that flew out of the deck. “Looks like the Wolf if your guide.” She let out a bark of laughter as she set the card down in front of me. “Well, you already chose them.” I knew that she was referring to the fact that I had changed my name when I was eighteen so that I would no longer carry my fathers name as my middle name and family name. I had chosen the name Wolf as my middle name. I always had a fascination with them and the wisdom that they carried. I liked that they were part of a pack to survive but would go out alone if they needed to. I had a pack of people that I loved and could be the lone Wolf if I needed to be.

She lit another cigarette and took a sip of her tea. “Spread the deck around in front of you and slide your hand overtop of the pile. Stop when you feel a card pull you.”

I did so, familiar with this being a way to look for a Tarot card, too. I used my left hand. I was right-handed and I had learned that the dominant hand rids you of the energy that you don’t want and the non-dominant hand brings in the energy you do want. I ran my hands over the blue backs of the cards, the yellow lighting bolt design looking as if it would point me in the right direction.

Stopping when I felt a tingle in the palm of my hand, I plucked the single card from the pile and held it up. It was the Crow card. Darnelle smiled at me.

“That’s so profound. Did you know that the Crow is one of the only animal spirits that can go to the land of the dead and cross back over the border of the world of the living? They are harbingers of magic and they tell stories. When they speak, you need to listen. Much like you’re a writer and you have seen so many shadows in your life. The Crow will show you the right way for you.”

I took a sip of tea and looked at the Wolf and Crow cards. “Don’t thing come in threes?”

Nodding, Darnelle smiled. “Yes, but in this case, they are your guides and you have to work together to get to where you need to go. You have to work together, the three of you, to achieve your goals. They are with you to show you the way as best as they can, but you have to find the way yourself. Does that make sense? The three of you have to work in tandem to create what is possible.”

I nodded, because that made sense to me. It was nice to know that even though I was asking magic for help, I was still in control of my life. The Wolf and the Crow would help guide me, but I knew that I had a lot of work ahead of me. “Thank you,” I told her.

“Okay, now that we have your guides, we have to work on your resume.” She got up to pour some more hot water for our cups of tea and lit a cigarette. “You need to tell me about all your skills and the jobs you’ve done before your time on the streets, before you ended up at Lisa’s. Do you remember everything?” She handed me a pad of paper and a pen. “I’ll help you make a new resume. It’s something I’ve helped a lot of people within my line of work. We got this, okay?”

I looked at the blank page in front of me, and I knew that my guides, I knew that I would find my way to where I was supposed to go. The page in front of me was asking me to create the direction I wanted to go in. I was being asked to really focus on myself for once. I took a deep breath.

“Okay,” I said.

Chapter Fourteen – Temperance

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide, Tarot

After wandering for days with my mind, body and spirit split from each other, I decided to do what I could to bring them back together.

Sunshine could tell that I was still being affected by my mother, so he did what he could to draw me out of myself. I wasn’t speaking a lot, and I had forgotten that I was on a journey to find myself. I had stopped trying.

“Family is awful sometimes,” he said “They know how to hurt us the most. Why don’t you come and see my mom with me? It might make you feel better.”

I was a little shocked. “You still talk to your mom?”

“Yeah, of course I do,” Sunshine said.

I gestured at the concrete jungle around us, the people milling about on the streets too busy with their own tasks to acknowledge us. “But we’re here.” I said, as if that explained everything.

“Well, she let’s me live my own life, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have a relationship. When I get tired of being here, I can always go see my mother for an afternoon.”

“She let’s you live like this?” I was still hurting from what had happened with my mother, still not able to see on the other side of it.

“If you mean that she lets me live my own life, but she’s still there for me, then yes. She does.” He gave me a wink and a cigarette. “Come on, I’m taking you home to my mom. You need a hug.”

“You gave me a hug this morning.”

“Not the same and you know it.”

We took the bus to go see her. It felt like an extravagance, and I wondered when it would feel normal being in one world but coming from another.

On the bus, Sunshine and I sat in silence for a while, and I enjoyed the hum of the traffic and the sound of conversation. I tried to hear the music within the noise, the beauty within the racket, trying to distract myself from the torrent of water that still threatened to take me over. My emotions were all over the place and I found myself filled with sudden bursts of anger and shame. I tried to put that emotion into writing, to let the words flow from me, but they were stuck, too concerned with the fact that they might hurt someone else as much as I was hurting to come out onto the paper.

When we got to Sunshine’s mothers place, she greeted us at the door with a bright smile. She took me into a hug right away and it warm and comfortable. “Call me Sarah, everyone does, even this one.” She jerked a thumb at Sunshine. “You’d think he would have learned some manners by now.”

“I learned my manners from you,” Sunshine said with a smirk. Turning to me, he said “Don’t believe a thing she says. She’s lying.”

“Takes one to know one, son of mine.” Sarah looked at me, really took me in. “I’m sorry, but where are my manners? Come here, I want to give you a hug.”

“You already gave me one.”

“That was hello hug. Not a hug to help you heal. Come here, I won’t bite.”

“Unless you want her to,” Rainbow said cheekily. “I’m going to make a cup of tea, Do you want one, Jamie?” Not waiting for an answer, he went into the kitchen.

Sara wrapped her arms around me and this time, the hug felt different. It felt motherly and comforting. She held me while I cried, and I let the tears fall from my eyes. Sarah must have known that they were soaking into her shirt, but she didn’t stop hugging me. She said nothing, but made gentle noises while I cried and patted me gently on the back.

When the tears stopped, Sarah stepped back from me and held me at arms length. “There now, you look a million times better. You can’t hold on to all that sadness, Jamie. It eats you up. Instead, you have to make something from all those emotions.”

I shook my head. “My words keep getting stuck.”

“And so they will after a great upset. But you know what I believe? I believe that the greatest things are created when we’re full of emotions. Keep writing. Here,” She went to the kitchen and got a journal from a drawer. “I keep them around for Sunshine. He’s always writing something. Now you can, too.”

“Thank you, Sarah.”

“Never you mind. And don’t you worry, your mother will come around to the changes that are taking place for her, even as your whole world has changed. You’ll find each other again.”

“Mom, can I put brandy in my tea?” Rainbow asked.

“No you certainly can’t.” She slapped his hand as Rainbow reached for the bottle. “And don’t you worry, Jamie. I’ll be your mom for now.”

“Hey,” Sunshine said. “You’re my mother.”

“I have plenty of love to go around, I can be mom to both of you.”

“Fine, I’ve always wanted a brother anyways.”

We all sat with our tea, the steam coming from the cups, and I finally felt that I was going to be okay. I heard the water in me begin to rain and I wondered what would grow within me. As the rain continued, I flipped my new journal open to the first page and took hold of a pen, ready for the words to come.

Chapter Eleven – Justice

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide

There was a justice on the street that hadn’t been in my life before.

In my life that had been, bullies sometimes went unchecked, those that were different were hurt and often there was no way to find retribution. The street held a kind of law and an unspoken rule of conduct. If someone was down, you held them up. It someone had been hurt by someone else, you stood up for them. I’d come to realize in a short time that you protected those that you were close to. It was just something you did without thinking about it.

Fast friendships formed and these people cemented themselves into your life and it was like you knew them right away. It was like this with Angel. I hadn’t known her at all when I had first met her, but now I searched her out whenever I was at YSB or the square. She filled my life with light, and I tended to gravitate towards it, not to drink from it but so I could bask in her glow.

It was healing to be next to her and her warmth filled over into my life. She would often draw her chalk art on the pavement of the square and put a hat out to collect change. Her art was so beautiful and lifelike that it looked like it could rise up out off the pavement and come to life. I was amazed that she could create such beautiful art with chalk on something as hard and unfriendly as the pavement. It seemed like a wonderful kind of balance whenever Angel worked the chalk into the cold pavement and brought it to life. Angel found life in the world that hadn’t been there before, and I marveled as I watched her work.

“Did you want to write something?” She asked.

I shrugged. “Well, nothing I write will be as good as your art.”

She stopped drawing and gave me a stern look. “Don’t say that. You’re a beautiful writer and your poetry is incredible. Why don’t you write a poem to go with my drawing. You can take your time with it. Here,” she handed me a piece of white chalk

I held it for a moment, watching her bring a woman to life within a forest of leaves. She looked out at me from within the window that Angel had created for her, and I could see her looking up at me. I looked into the woman’s eyes and began to write her story, scratching the white chalk onto the pavement.

I watched as both of our creations came to life together, my words taking inspiration from her. “She looks like she’s looking up at me from behind a window.” I told her. “Or like she’s outside looking within.”

Angel nodded and worked window lines in front of the chalk woman’s face. Only a few lines had been added, but it brought the chalk painting alive for me, made the final words of my poem come out and tumble from my fingers.

“There,” Angel said. We sat back and looked at our piece of art, my words a balance to her world of colours. I hadn’t noticed, but the amount of money in the hat had grown quite a bit. When the day was over, Angel handed me half.

“I can’t take that,” I said. “I wrote my poem for fun.”

“I painted my lady in the window for fun, too. We both worked hard in our own way and should both get paid for what we made. Fuck, I made more today than had it just been me painting. We helped each other.” She put the money into my hand and folded my fingers over it. “I mean, you didn’t see the people going to walk by my art, but they stopped to read your words and what you had written. We did it together, Jamie.”

We gathered up our windfall and headed towards McDonalds on Rideau Street. We could treat ourselves to something. I usually got a Fillet o’Fish and Angel would get nuggets or a Big Mac. We could eat in the restaurant and be near a washroom, pretend that we were normal, just for a moment.

I remember getting our food and thinking about the poem I had written. Eventually, both the drawing and my poem would be gone, never to exist again. It’s not like Angel and I could take a copy of her drawing, and I hadn’t thought to write down a copy of the words I had left behind.

I was okay with that.

It was our give to those that had given us the money we had in our pockets. The art and the words belonged to them, and we had left our magic in the streets. I wondered if others would be guided by the flash of the woman’s blue eyes or the curve of the vowels I had penned.

In that moment, I thought of the chalk dust we had marked the pavement with like stars, waiting to lead others to where they would find their magic.