ZIA RAVENSCROFT
cult classic
i’m desperate to learn how to live right
how to not always be dragging myself around, out of bed, off of the bathroom floor
out of the shower with the same words caught in my cheek
held there like a secret or a piece of gum i just want to spit
out. how to unfurl in a harmony-driven way
how to feel that feeling like when a girl in class told us all she was in love and
that’s why all her art was about love.
i say my art is about love. i think it’s really just digging deeper into the
caverns i’ve constructed, or a way to look at myself in anything but a
mirror, how to live right, how to know a tree beyond its leaves
how to know a song beyond its words, down in the deep heart of all things
how can i kiss her at the door and not just think about it screaming?
thinking of all my pieces while i lean my head against the shower wall and mouth words
this thing (living) feels endless and as if i’m always swallowing down something
afterward, i stare in the mirror and burn my mouth mint
i hold my body like an antique you don’t want to break and have to pay for
i clean all my nice things to make up for all this rumbling in me
i hold all my halves and struggle to place them in the easy shapes
i make everything hard and feel related to no one
like that old dusty car you keep hidden in the garage
tarot reading 4 a tradie
Card one: the mechanic
I call him ‘the mechanic’ when I mention him to my friends. His car is the second photo on his Grindr profile, a 90s Nissan boy racer that feels dangerous just to look at. That shouldn’t be as much of a turn-on as it is. The third time I ask to come round, he says he just finished work so he’ll have a shower. ‘don’t bother ;)’ I text. ‘i’m omw.’ I imagine him lying on a trolley under a car holding a screwdriver or whatever it is mechanics actually do. Whatever it is that covers him in layers of oil and sweat and grease. He picks me up from my own shitty manual labour job sometimes, always offering me a durry left over from his smoko. I close my lips around it and let him light it one-handed from across the gearstick. We speed over the river. I flick the ash out the window. He slows down past a cop. I like that he treats me like one of his boys. It’s my job as passenger prince to pick the music. His car is older than both of us and only takes CDs. Today, we get through a third of Blood Sugar Sex Magik. We’ll never finish listening to it.
Card two: the son
The pounamu he never takes off is a toki, a tool for woodcutting and building.
“It was my father’s. And his father’s before him. And his father’s before him. You get the idea,” he says over our bottles of Heineken. “When the old man finally carked it, Māmā said it was rightfully mine.” He’s borrowing my copy of Nights in the Garden of Spain, the pages pressed open on the coffee table by a chunk of flint. I lent it to him yesterday. He’s already more than halfway.
“What does it mean?” I say, leaning closer to look at the shades of sharp green.
“Strength. Courage. Bravery. Bit of a fucken joke.”
“I think you’re brave.” My bottle is empty. I steal his and take a swig.
“I’m not. I can’t be. I’ll break her heart.”
“You don’t know that.”
“She wants grandchildren. I’m the oldest. It’s my responsibility. What would they say at church? On the marae? You don’t know what it’s like.” He stands to lob the bottles across the lounge into the glass recycling. I wait for them to shatter.
Card three: the lover
A litany of things I remember about the first time we fucked: The creak of my window as it opened. The flick of the sensor lights. My shadow on grass. The ten-minute walk to his flat in the night air. His silhouette from behind the frosted glass door. Kicking my jandals off next to his steel-capped boots. Sitting next to each other on the couch and talking, until I gave up on trying to be subtle and climbed into his lap. Kissing him like I was trying to prove something. Him asking me what I like. If I’d done this before. My voice, higher than I wanted it to be.
“Yes, but not like this.”
“Not with a man?”
“Not as a man.”
His nod of understanding. The wanting summer heat coiling thick around us. How I’ve never felt more powerful than when he told me to take off my shirt and watched me the whole time. The arch of my back under him. The flushed outline of his handprints where my work shorts would cover them.
What I don’t remember: Asking for his name, or offering mine.
We saved that for the next time.
Zia Ravenscroft is a queer and transgender writer, actor, and Aotearoa’s next top bottom currently studying in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. His writing has been published in Circular, Cordite, and bad apple, among others. They perform drag under the name Judas Kiss.