The Church Channel

I’ve gotten used to feeling homesick in my own home. It’s become a version of normalcy. I’m not really alone, but I’m lonely, sitting here on my bed trying to figure out life, while thumbing through the latest Cosmo. I feel a little bit silly. I’m a little bit deranged. Some might say I’m searching. Sitting and reading, with the ever-flawless Drew Barrymore staring back at me from the glossy pages of the modern woman’s Bible, I feel fake. I’ve been reading Chuck Palanhiuk novels since I was ten, so Cosmo’s just not my thing, but I want to fit in somewhere. 

The TV flickers green, red, blue, yellow, white off in the corner of my room. Somewhere in the back of my mind, just beneath my concentration, I hear the word “Bible” resurface. I read about the best ways to make a man fall madly in love with you. Most of them involve your thigh muscles. The words “Jesus”, “faith”, “belief”, and “life” flow past my subconscious just long enough for them to register briefly in my mind. They hang in the space between my ears, like a fly caught in a web. Dangling, waiting to be caught. I shake the words from the web of my mind and continue reading about the latest trends in footwear. 

The idea of sleep occurs to me for a brief moment and I look at the clock. 4AM, not nearly earlier enough. I won’t be sleeping till at least seven, maybe eight, o’clock today. The television murmurs and flickers again in the corner of my room, and my eyelids flutter briefly over the screen. The church channel. I grapple for the remote, which sinks only deeper into the flannel depths of my bed sheets. Again, the words “Bible” and “belief” brush past my ears, in a dance of what sounds like perfect alliteration, at the time. I try to shake the words, but the murmurs of the TV seem to grow louder. The sinking remote has apparently been given free-will to adjust volume. My eyes graze over the images on the TV. Someone’s praying.

I reach the remote with my big toe and pull in closer. As I click the television off, the sounds of the televangelist prayer hangs in the cold air of my bedroom. 

Maybe sleep is a good idea. Tonight. 

Pink Elephants

"Hey, do you remember that one TV show?" Rob asked me over coffee one morning.

   "Which TV show? There's a lot of them out there." I replied, silently cursing him for speaking to me before the sun had fully risen. 

   "You know. The one with those guys that have that job, and there's that girl. You know, the hot one!" 

   "Well, that narrows it down so much!" I spat sarcastically, " I'm sorry I had to ask!" 

   "Jesus, Jamie, why you don't try being just a little bit more of a bitch?" He scolded; apparently sarcasm was our forte. 

   Rob left for work without saying another word to me. Without even a kiss on the forehead, he left me to find solace in laundry and homework. I had been taking classes at the local community college and waitressing four days a week. I fell perfectly into the category of 'starving artist.' I was studying Film&Theatre, the only thing, besides Rob, that I had ever been passionate about. When I was little I always had this big dream of being the person in charge of all the TV shows and movies. I never wanted to be the pre-madonna actress prancing around in front of the 

camera, but the person telling her the words to say, how to say them, and how to move and emote. I wanted to paint the canvas of the movie screen with the right colors, faces, and light. I wanted people to hear my name and be flooded with thoughts of beauty in motion.

   As I attempted to sketch out the story board of my first short film I gazed around the apartment that Rob and I had shared for the past two years. Even at a glance, you could tell that I had done the decorating. There were little touches and Jamie-isms everywhere. From the green crepe-paper covered living room walls, to the pink ceramic elephants I had been using as book-ends, and the bright blue painted kitchen floor, I had over taken the whole of the apartment with rampant artistic expression. For the past few months I had been begging Rob to agree to let me paint a giant Oak tree in our bedroom. I wanted to feel as if I were making love in a forest every night. However, Rob didn't exactly share my artistic views. In fact, most of the time he 

found my affinity for bright colors and unique objects to be obnoxious. He told me once that if I kept adding things, and painting, and decorating, and changing that I'd come home one day to find everything painted grey. I remember him making me cry when her ripped down my hand tie-dyed curtains after a particularly vicious fight. Never the less, I loved him. And most people called me crazy for it. Told me I 'tried to hard to please him,' but I knew they didn't understand. Other people couldn't understand what we shared. That evening, however, everything about our relationship would change.