Mythical Beast
“Passion.”
I’ve got a therapist. These days, who doesn’t? Her name is Ellis and she could be my grandmother if my grandmother lived in Brooklyn and rode a Harley into the city. I started seeing her early on because Grace thought a therapist would make transitioning easier. Its been a few years and these days Ellis and I mostly talk about my food issues, Tom’s obsession with his serial killer, and sometimes the reoccurring dream I have about drowning in the Salish Sea.
I never miss a scheduled appointment, even if it means getting up at the butt crack of dawn on a Saturday morning before con opens and meeting Ellis for coffee at a florist-cum-café around the block from my apartment.
I sip my dark roast and squint sleepily at the forest of potted orchids on shelves surrounding our table while Ellis butters her croissant and mulls over the story of Jeremiah and his charcoal buildings.
“Passion’s sort of a mythical beast, isn’t it?” she suggests. Her long grey hair is braided down her back and she’s wearing a knit scarf the color of my coffee against the rainy morning. I’ve dutifully eaten the fruit cup she ordered for me before I arrived, but I’m sternly ignoring the cream cheese muffin. “Hard to pin down but you know it when you see it, I suppose.”
I blink at seventy-year-old Ellis over the rim of my coffee cup, thinking that with the wind apples in her cheeks, the colorful sea horse I inked on her shoulder blade just last year, and the motorcycle helmet hung over the rail of her chair in anticipations of an afternoon cruising, she’s the living embodiment of a mythical beast.
“I don’t know,” I hedge. “Maybe.”
Hemingway’s story is a mutable thing, changing often as I write it. I’ll be handing out free ‘Hemingway samples’ – plus other goodies – at NYC Comic Con, so come and find me October 5-10.
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