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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.
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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.
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Love me cancerously,
Like a salt-sore soaked in the sea.
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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.
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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.
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And so they say, for everything a reason.
My house is haunted by rotten desire,
And on my skin left the scent of indignation
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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.
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Time it was and what a time it was
It was a time of innocence, a time of
confidences.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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What a night for a dance, you know Im a
dancing machine,
With the fire in my bones and the sweet taste
of kerosene.
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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.
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Oh, what are we doing
We are turning into dust
Playing house in the ruins of us.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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