DISCLAIMER: I do not own the characters of Helena, Barbara, Dinah, Batman, and Catwoman etc. They are the property of DC comics and I suppose the WB network and the creators of Smallville and Tollin/Robbins (geez, this is beginning to feel like an Oscar speech) etcetera, etcetera. I'm just borrowing them for a short period of time.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thinking and writing about B/H I have sometimes entertained the thought that captivating and cute as their relationship can be, it also has the very real potential to be extremely messed up. As various, wonderful stories posted to this board can attest to. As much as these two and their love can be the best thing for both of them, it can also be the worst thing. So, staying up far too late and thinking about that, led to the following story, which is really nothing more than a tripped out, rambling, psychedelic voyage through Helena's drug addled mind one night. It's weird and random, and … um, like psychedelic. Woo! So, if you dare to read further, just like flick on your lava lamp, listen to some Cream, put on some sunglasses and prepare to be … something'd – I don't really know what.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
Irreverence
By Janine
How'd it all start?
I know! I know this one. In the Beginning the Universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and has widely been regarded as a bad move.
No, no wait. That's not mine. I read that somewhere once. That's not what I wanted to know. That's not where I wanted to begin.
*Here's* how it started:
A well-to-do boy met a girl. They fell in love. Awww. A baby popped up. How completely unexpected. The happy couple and the privileged, happy child were coming out of a movie one night. A giggling maniac viciously murdered the happy couple in front of their child.
The happy child was no longer a happy child. He turned into dour, obsessed man-bat.
The dour, obsessed man-bat met a girl. The girl turned out to be an incredible beautiful, smart, talented thief who dressed up like a cat and jumped a lot. They fell in love. Then they got to know each other and it ended horribly and the jumping cat lady moved to Paris.
A baby popped up. Wha … how … when? Oh yeah.
So the baby and the "Catwoman" lived in France and ate lots of nice food, vacationed in vineyards in the summer, went to the beach, lived and learned, watched the Simpson's and really, really loved each other.
Then, then they moved to New Gotham and everything turned to shit. Stuff happened right after they moved to New Gotham, and stuff continued to happen for quite some time after that, but that stuff isn't important. What is important is that after the various stuff happened, the Catwoman was murdered in front of her child and everything turned to shit and stayed there.
The nice food, vineyard vacationing, beach loving baby, was no longer a baby and was pretty much convinced that everything was shit. She was a bit of a downer that way. But, she fell in love. She fell in love and thought that maybe things wouldn't be so shitty anymore because the love thing was kind of sweet. It almost made her forget what shit life was. But love turned out *not* to be the saving grace she thought it would be, and it became clear to her that love, just like life, sucked really hard, and everything in the world truly was shit.
That's how it was.
This is how it is:
I'm being irreverent. It helps, to be irreverent at times like this. Irreverence makes things seem less serious than they are. Funny almost. Ironic. Irreverence is distancing. You can pretend like you don't really give a shit. But you do. And you know you do. Irreverence can't make you not care it can only make you feel less vulnerable about caring. I'm being irreverent. I care. I care too much. I care so much it hurts. So I'm being irreverent, because it makes me feel slightly better about the fact that my heart barely beats, that my heart sputters raggedly, bleeding and ravaged, shredded beneath my breast. I'm being irreverent because I fear if I were to be anything else, it would be a black mass careening towards the ground after jumping from a ledge too high up for even me to survive the fall.
I'm not sure if it's normal … or healthy, to love someone as much as I love her. I don't think it is. I think people write about and dream about that kind of inordinate, sweeping, all consuming kind of love, because they've never felt it. It's fucking romantic isn't it? Well, it fucking isn't. It's about the most unfucking romantic thing you could ever come across, and I know that for a fact. It's ugly. And it's raw, and wet, and soiled, and rotting. It's a parasite, latching onto previously healthy skin and sucking out your life's blood, eating you, consuming you, and taking your life to feed itself. But unlike a leech, it is never full. It does not drop off of you when it is satiated because it cannot be satiated. It can never take enough of you. It becomes you. You become love. Love that can never be realized, and so you can never be realized. You become what you need and what you hate. You hate love, and you hate yourself for loving. You become hate. You love so much, so well, so completely that you get sick of its taste. It becomes like ash in your mouth, rotting fruit, flies buzzing around your head. You wish you could escape it but you cannot. Because it is you. You are love, annoying, addicting hate.
I hate her and I love her at the same time. I can't separate the two emotions. I think they're the same. In me they've become the same thing. She's made them the same thing. Maybe it's my fault, not hers, that I couldn't control it. I used to be able to tell the difference. Maybe I didn't work hard enough to maintain it. Maybe I let her change it. Change me.
They say that energy cannot be created or destroyed. I think my love is like energy. I don't remember its creation, so maybe it always was. And try as I might, try, try as I might I cannot destroy it. I cannot destroy it.
I've been trying to destroy it. I really have. I've been trying like hell to destroy it.
It's like I said before I am it. Love. So I've been trying to destroy me maybe. Yes, in order to destroy it I would have to be destroyed as well, so in my attempts to destroy my love I try to destroy myself.
I haven't been having much success with it. I don't really think that I want to be destroyed. I love my love. It's mine, and I love it. I love it as much as I hate it. I don't want it to be destroyed. I want to keep it forever. I want to keep me forever. I want to stay, and so my love will stay.
I try to numb it. It's overpowering sometimes. I can't take it. Things get hot, and fast, very fast. They start to sweat and pulse and flash, and they pull tightly towards me until I can't make anything out other than the light, strobbing, changing around me. It hurts my head. It hurts my whole body. My body begins to strobe and pulse, and sweat and hurt. My whole body becomes too much for me to bear, so I must numb it.
I can't really move my body now. Everything is light and spinning and flashing and strobbing. My body feels heavy. Every part of it. I think I feel my cells moving. They're going slowly too so I can feel them. My cells are heavy like my body. They are my body. They compose it and so what affects it, affects them. I have dulled my cells to dull my body.
I'm shaking slightly, twitching maybe, but I'm not cold. In fact I'm warm. Cozy feeling almost. It's like I'm wearing a blanket, but I'm not. My body is the blanket.
In mind head I've curled into a ball. But I haven't moved.
I haven't moved because I can't move. I've dulled my cells and so my body lies where it lies, heavy and unmoving. My mind moves though. My mind moves so fast that my body wouldn't be able to keep up with it if it could move. My mind and body would be in two different places if my body could move, but it can't and so it ensures that my mind will be able to find my body when it slows down because it will be exactly where it left it.
The carpet makes my neck itch. I wish my body would move.
So the only part of me that can move, moves. My mind moves. I'm thinking about things constantly. I'm thinking about thinking things. I think it's amazing that I'm thinking the things I'm saying. I try not to think much. I thought it was because I wasn't a thinker, but I think I'm a thinker that doesn't want to think. I don't much like the things
I'm thinking. Thinking makes me feel and I don't want to feel because it hurts to feel. I feel and I think, is this always how it is? Is this my mind, my heart? Is this really what I think about things? Have I always thought this, and thought to myself not to think it.
I think I'm being profound and incredibly stupid.
I was thinking about love, and the past, but then about love and …
I've tried to numb myself, to numb the pain because I love her and she doesn't love me. And I can't leave her because I love her, and I wish to leave because loving her hurts, but I love her and so I can't leave. And so it hurts. And the pain lets me know I love her, so while I hurt, I love, and while I love, I cannot leave, and I cannot leave, so it hurts.
The ceiling of this room is pink. I don't know what colour the floor is. The back of my head is on it and so I can't see it. I suppose I could turn my head to the side, but I remember I cannot move, and so I cannot know what colour the floor is. The ceiling is pink though.
Pink's a lovely …
I'm actually very captivated by this colour. I really…I can't, I just wanna look at it. It's pretty. It's pretty and pink. I think I'm laughing. That's funny to me for some reason I can't remember now, and since I probably won't remember any of this later on, I guess the reason it's funny will remain inexplicable to me. But I won't remember so maybe it won't be inexplicable. Something can't be inexplicable unless you're aware of its existence.
I wish I'd never become aware that I loved her. It should have stayed inexplicable. I should have been drawn to her side and stayed there without hesitation and not known why. I should have stood by the warmth, and felt it and let it seep into me, and been happy and warm and not known why. I should have been happy and never, ever thought about why I was happy. I should have never thought to myself that it could be love. Knowing what it was, or even thinking that I did, ruined it all. It made me want and my wanting was denied. If I had never thought it was love I would still be inexplicably happy. I would never have tasted what I was to be forever more denied.
This is pretty fucked up. I'm thinking to myself like I'm somebody else. Like I can think something back at myself that I hadn't already thought of. I'm thinking, who needs a fucking shrink, I'm better than any fucking shrink. I already know what's wrong with me and I don't have to pay me anything.
My attachment is unhealthy. I know this. I don't need anybody to tell me this. I should leave. I should go and find myself. I know this. I should leave this, co-dependant, unhealthy, unproductive, painful, loving and loveless shit fest that I call my love. But I can't leave because I love, and that's fucked up. I'm fucked up.
In more ways than one.
There's a song about getting fucked up. I should be playing that right now. That'd be really appropriate … and … and topical.
Instead I'm listening to… what am I listening to?
I figure that I better listen to figure out what it is.
I don't know what the fuck it is. It's music. It's some chick singing. She sounds happy, but I think the lyrics are depressing. They're probably depressing. Something about love. It's depressing. It's one of *those* fucking songs. One of those fucking two-faced songs that talk about you beyond your back. "Did you see that? I totally got that bitch! She thought I was happy, but I fucking wasn't! You're gonna remember me in the shower and start crying. Sucker!" I hate those songs.
That is a really, really pink ceiling.
I'm kind of tired.
What the hell are those lines that start flashing in front of your retinas when your eyes close? What are those things? They could fucking keep you awake at night. I mean, my eyes wanna close. I'm tired. I wanna go to sleep, but there's a disco behind my eye lids.
I'm feeling pretty numb, and it doesn't hurt and I can see her smiling in my head surrounded by that pink, pink ceiling and I love my love. I remember when love felt good, and warm and fuzzy and I think that maybe it'll stay that way. Even as I think it might stay that way though, I think that it won't. I think I'm being an idiot and that I should just suck it up and leave. Maintain some fucking dignity. Give love the middle finger and maybe bang its mother. Ever loving motherfucker. Rock on! 'Ahhhhhh,' head bang, head bang!
She's so beautiful that it makes me want to cry. But I can't cry on the outside, I won't. Or at least I try not to. No, I cry on the inside, at her beauty, at feeling the love that I feel for her. So I cry inside and my tears fill me up until there is no space left, and they begin to overflow. My tears spill out of my eyes.
My chin itches.
It's like a torrent, a downfall. I become soaked in them and they carry me off like a river and deposit me in a place that's empty, and dark and cold, like how I feel where I can shiver and cry on the outside. But when my tears dry up, I track my way back to where I came from by the salt that they left behind and I find my way back to beauty. To my beauty, and it makes me want to cry. And so it goes.
Is my hand twitching? I think my hand is twitching? Or do I just think that I think my hand is twitching?
I wonder what she's doing? If I was there with her, we'd lie down on the couch and I'd wrap my arms around her, and I'd sing softly in her ear. I sing better when I sing softly. I almost sound good when I sing softly. But she wouldn't care even if it sounded like complete shit. Cause we would be in love with each other, and when you love someone like that everything is good.
………….
………. My head hurts.
Am I lying on the floor?
Where the hell am I?
Is the ceiling pink?
My mouth tastes funny.
I should sit up.
Whoa, sitting up not fun.
What happened?
I look to the side and I know what I happened. I was hit by a fucking hurricane. I bought it on Lexington Avenue.
Why?
Oh yeah. What happened can't happen again. It was a mistake. She loves me and I love her but we can't be together. More bullshit and I'm having a really fucking hard time swallowing it.
I feel like shit.
Yeah, that's how I got here. That's why I don't much feel like leaving.
I struggle into a sitting position and look at my 'supplies'. It's all fucking gone. No wonder I feel like such shit. No point in staying.
What happened last night?
Nothing. Nothing happened. I fell down on the floor and stared at the ceiling for a couple hours. It made me kind of dizzy, but it also felt kind of warm.
I know I was thinking about things, but I have no idea what I was thinking. I'm happy about that. I don't want to think. I don't want to think about any of it. It's never made a difference before and it won't now. I'm not a thinker I'm a doer.
I wonder what Barbara's doing?
I want to be near her.
If I'm near her it's going to hurt.
Don't think about it!
I'm going to go see her. I love her. That's what I do.
The End