the left handed scribbles of a wannabe expat on the run from uncle sam

8/2/2019 The Left Handed Scribbles of a Wannabe Expat on the Run From Uncle Sam

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The Left-Handed Scribbles of aWannabe Expat, on the Run

from Uncle Sam

Melanie-Nicole Montano


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The Left-Handed Scribbles of a

Wannabe Expat, on the Run from

Uncle Sam

Written by Melanie-Nicole Montano


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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 thiswork 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


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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.


7/32

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.


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I think Ishould know how to make love tosomething innocent

without leaving my fingerprints.


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They were all various degrees of tall and tasty-

tongued. 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.


10/32

Love me cancerously,

Like a salt-sore soaked in the sea.


11/32

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 self-

contained 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.


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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 awhile.


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I walked the streets of love

and they're drenched with tears.


15/32

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.


16/32

And so they say, for everything a reason.

My house is haunted by rotten desire,

And on my skin left the scent of indignation


17/32

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.


18/32

Time it was and what a time it was

It was a time of innocence, a time of

confidences.


19/32

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.


20/32

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.


21/32

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.


22/32

What a night for a dance, you know Im a

dancing machine,

With the fire in my bones and the sweet taste

of kerosene.


23/32

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.


24/32

Oh, what are we doing

We are turning into dust

Playing house in the ruins of us.


25/32

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.


26/32

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.


27/32

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.


28/32

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.


29/32

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.


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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 everydayiPod shuffle to preface each anecdote and

encapsulates the sentiment through musical

representation.

MnM Press

ISBN XXX-X-XXXXXXX-X-X

the left handed scribbles of a wannabe expat on the run from uncle sam

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