Integrity of Identity of Integrity of Ascendency of A vanity of, Ch. 22

Not so brave without your gun, out you run, faster than a speeding bullet chasing down a speeding Suzette losing her head in the...tulips? but no no no, there's no way no direction to which she could bend that to work, no, Suzette or so she goes by when she's out there, when she needs to give a name, goes by Suzette or Suzy but never by Paige, her given name, the name her friends know her by. She values her anonymity and perhaps her given identity. It's been a while since it mattered, though. When she was 17 and homeless she began rapping on street corners for quarters and dimes. She enjoyed the attention, to her surprise as she was always such a shy and quiet child.

Faster than a speeding bullet speeding down a fleeing... Suzette sits her back against the front door of her uncle's apartment, her 500 count spiral notebook on her knees, desperate to finish this rhyme. She'd been up all night the only reason she was outside right now in the hope that fresh air and the sounds of kids crying out at top volume and splashing around as loud as they could and the smell of Indian food being cooked way too early you would think downstairs would each or by some mystic combination of sensual irritation keep her awake, alert and creative enough to collapse on the sofa two steps into the apartment she's been staying at for a month. She's been bouncing around homes and hostels for years. The stability of caring for her vacationing uncle's apartment stoked some embers. She'd quit corner rapping once she first found some hippie roommates in San Francisco and that was going on 7 years earlier. She'd been on the look out for the right type, the hair in dreads type who she could approach and say hey, do you guys need a roommate, I've been looking for a place. It justified the time she spent not using the pocket change she'd been busking but instead on stylish outfits and makeup. As if she didn't enjoy putting on a show.

...speeding bullet cometing to (a) distant universe, escaping atmospheric.....this is getting off-track, so very far beyond bending territory. One of her defining quotes she applied to herself as a half-assed, post-facto definition of self was something Neil Young said about Jimi Hendrix, how he never played a bad note because if it was the wrong note he'd just bend it 'til it was right. Perfection isn't attainable but perfecting is. The life of self-perfecting. Self-correcting. Duh- da duh duh....boom bap boom... self-perfecting, self-correcting, freedom pending, pleased effendi, breathless fending, feet don't fail me...now I'm sailing......? No.

She'd gotten rusty. Not so brave without your gun, out you run, out of breath, take a rest so soon blessed with broken bottle to the chest, a knife to solar plexus, beaten like a bitch for a gold necklace, not so brave without your tongue....boring. She didn't used to be so boring. She wants to sleep so bad but she needs to finish. Past seven years she's been unaccountably, inconsolably restless. No boy, no job, no good book or new album could pacify her like singing in the shower loud enough for the neighbors to hear. Hollering her sex so the whole block her hear. Dressing flashy. There were neighborhoods she had to move out of within 2 months of moving in, with the nicest of roommates left deserted too, for no better reason than that she was vaguely discomfited by the sorts of people inhabiting. They dressed too flashy for her to stand out. Not that she could ever admit that as an excuse.

Not so brave without your tongue, out you run, into the enfolding arms of welcoming slow exploding suns. Faster than a spilling toolkit you trip on your untied laces within 15 paces of me, and that's just your first mistake staying up late for this? So far 20 scribbled pages of the weakest, least rhythmic, uninteresting, insipid and ultimately easy shit. No flow. No nothing. There were websites to which she could send in her rhymes, forums for aspiring emcees. Before she'd sink into a coma 20 leagues under the kitchen sink or something she was determined to post something or other. But no. And no she couldn't return to the wild. No way no way no how. NO WAY. She drags herself up by the knob of the door and begins to step in when she remembers something important. She leaps off the railing to her death.

Or wait, no she doesn't do that, I don't think. More likely she finally came up with the perfect rhyme. Or she turned right around and walked down the stairs, towards the complex front gate, past the mailboxes, out the gate, looks to her right, looks to her left, shrugs her shoulders and turns left. Down that sidewalk under the morning sun she walks 5 blocks to the nearest park. On a chipped-paint bench under an oak tree and more or less free of aphids and ants she sleeps the day away. That night she sings, spits and bobs her head to herself to the beat of the crickets chirping, occasionally distracted by the occasional passing car. It's miserable but she takes some pride in it. Next morning the bench is swabbed in dew and she's reflexively wheezing in the cold air out of some hope that that'll warm it and by extension her up. She misses her coffee but has some stimulation spilling outward from some over-worked corner of her brain, serotonin or adrenalin or something, a neurochemical for the under-slept and uncomfortable. She remembers this hyper feeling. A couple miles down that same sidewalk is the town center with a packs of roving pedestrians shouldering a heavy burden in the form of quarters and dimes and she smiles to herself and bobs her head as she makes the trek. It's the feel good story of the decade. Her uncle's house is robbed.