Wear the Mask, Play the Game

I stared at the setup with familiar apprehension. I wondered if I could do it this time.

Eyes stared at me in the gloom; I caught a glint over light off of horn-rimmed glasses. “Think you’re ready for this?”

I took a breath. Held it too long. Expelled it in a whoosh that didn’t settle my nerves in the slightest. “No. But I can’t keep hiding. I must do this.” I reached for the lighter.

Two years. Two whole years, and I hadn’t touched a torch, much less made a bead. It was too painful. Memories…

That roguish grin, that would light up when you thought up some deviltry, which was most of the time. That curve in your cheek, that dimple that your neat-trimmed beard couldn’t hide.

Autumn sun. We hid under the giant umbrella in the back yard, the kit clamped securely to the attached table. You, rummaging in the kit, finding the dichroic glass noodle-rods I stashed in there, just to see your face light up when you found them. A light breeze, with gusts brisk enough to make one or the other of us grab for the umbrella, so it didn’t interfere with the torch. Fourteen hundred degrees is nothing to mess with, though Mother Nature had other ideas…

A gentle cough brought me back to myself. I had a lovely blue-white flame, lighting up my working space. Rods, mandrels, cooling blanket, waiting for me to do something. I picked up a rod...

I miss those piercing blue eyes. I miss your Joker-style laugh, unpredictable and crazy all at once, and the way you’d fall into a disordered pile of limbs when the laughter took you. I loved being the one that said something so clever or funny to do that to you, a moment of spontaneity in your otherwise very rigid and constricted life.

I loved the conversations where we could forget where we were, that dingy and dirty place that served as a second prison. Curtains drawn, stay inside, barely go outside, in by curfew. So we told stories, and made future plans, when you could walk away and never have to be confined ever again.

But most of all, I miss the light in your eyes. It rivaled the torch you would sit in front of, hour after hour, making bead after bead until I had to switch tanks and take the frost-furred one away. It would burn with a passion I have rarely seen in almost thirty years of teaching glass beads on the torch. For someone who originally turned me down when I offered to teach you, twice, as soon as your foster brother got in the seat to learn, you were trying to cross-check him and jump in, you were so eager. You were only one of three naturals to the torch that I’ve ever seen.

The plans we planned. The collaborations we collaborated…

“Well, you’re doing okay, but yeah, you’re a bit rusty. Try again, but concentrate on shape.”

I blinked. There were rods sticking out of the blanket, forbidden candy I couldn’t even look at till they cooled to room temperature. My apprentice-turned-teacher smiled in the darkness, haloed by the torch’s flame. “I know, you haven’t been able to make a bead since…”

Yeah. Since.

I miss you, so, so much.

I remember looking up at that autumn sky, the goldenrod waving in the neglected back yard. Looking at the planes flying overhead, the birds zipping around, that dratted squirrel creeping over the wire and driving the dog crazy. Knowing this would be the last time this would happen, not knowing why I knew that, mourning a thing I didn’t understand. You were ecstatic, I was happy, why was I so sad?

I will never forget that day. The sun, the breeze, the scent of your cigarettes, the shining white of the dog’s coat with his nose to the wind, smelling all the things his eyes could no longer see.

I couldn’t see the mask already slipping.

You had a new victim, and I was now expendable.

Once you illegally took yourself off your court-ordered meds, the human that I could see under the trauma was already being systematically destroyed.

Humanity was a liability. I knew too much. Your demons came back with a roar.

I had to go, so I was discarded.

Like garbage.

You only pretended to care because I had the glass kit.

Nothing more.

A perfect autumn day. What I thought was the beginning of an amazing relationship, of crafting peers, bring you up to my level in skill, and we could make such awesome things together…

When dreams are shattered by the stark reality of betrayal, the shards hurt like hell when you fall on them…

“Hey, that’s better! Those are shaped well. I know I don’t have to get on your case about colors, since you come up with combos that work but I wouldn’t think about doing.”

Same, bestie. Same.

I stared at the opened blanket. Beads I don’t remember making, but a neat row that showed progress. Rough and misshapen gave way in steady progression to ripples, cylinders, blended pastels.

I couldn’t touch my own kit yet, the memories were sharp and cut deep.

But my bestie’s? Most of which I bought for her? With her urging, I could at least try to get back to form.

She grinned a toothy grin, dragon totem that she is. “Urge, hell! You weren’t leaving till you made at least three. That’s what we tell the torch newbies, right? So you couldn’t do any less. That’s the rules, you know.”

Rules that I had made, when newcomers come to the torch. The first bead, hands are shaky, not understanding what the mind is demanding. By the second, fingers start to get the rhythm. By the third, fingers have it, and the creator remembers. The skill returns, when a person returns to the torch.

Or gets back on the horse, whatever metaphor works...

You are beyond my help. I offered everything I had, and you treated it like filth, and demanded more and more. Something had to give.

Masks slip, eventually. I know what you are, now. To your pain, because I now know you created a personality to lure me in, to get what you wanted.

Never again.

You will never do that to me again. Ever.

But I remember an autumn day…

But I also remember other days – like the one where I could get back on the torch without seeing a shadow of a person who never existed.

Or the time I first taught again, without your specter haunting me.

Or the time I went on a vacation, getting inspiration for my next story or bead work, where I didn’t think, “Oh, you should be here.”

Or the time I finally pulled out my own kit again. And opened it up, and set it up, and did some amazing work at a demo. And it was good, solid work, beads I could be proud of for their own sake, not for what they could teach you.

Creative energy is a heady drug for a crafter. Finding a collaborator, a different energy that can hit, yin to yang, and craft a new thing out of the way those energies mix…

I’ve heard New Relationship Energy is an amazing thing. But I have tasted New Creation Energy, which is probably as close as a demisexual can get.

Shattered dreams. When that energy isn’t reciprocated, cannot be reciprocated. Self-sabotage becomes the inexorable force behind the hammer.

I never even noticed your scar. Perhaps I should have paid attention to the ones on your soul, that made you lash out at anyone who tried to help you. You left fresh ones on my own soul, and justified the cruelty by painting yourself as the victim.

But…

I still miss that beautiful, passionate mask.

And the eyes behind it.