girl before a mirror
“Good mornin’ from the TN Mtns, dazzling lady! Where’s the adventure today?”
I
Melissa Ann Sweat
channel together—as one often does these days when in good, inebriated company. , Melissa Ann Sweat, am more like my friend, Deborah Ann The night of her show would be the last I saw Deborah before she got news Crum, than I realized. Even now as I notice the similar cadence that her grandmother was in ill health and had to split for home in Tennessee. As of our names and their almost matching number of syllables, she took the train back across the country, rolling into Grand Junction, Colorado (depending on pronunciation), not to mention our common and texting me about her travels, it dawned on me it was the same route that christening names, I consider the signs far more a knowing I’d taken a few years before when I traveled across the U.S. via train. I looked wink from the universe than mere coincidence. through the old photos of my trip, while she sent me new ones along the way. When I first met Deborah, I found her to be so much further Even some 2,500 miles apart, she and I found ourselves in a similar place this out than I. Hailing from Johnston City, Tennessee, Deborah has summer. Like Deborah, I was living at home, saving up, and preparing some crelived in Japan, New York, LA, in between, and now Santa Cruz, ative projects, and although our situations California, where I met her were comfortable, we couldn’t help but feel sitting beside her “boss” a little stuck. Still, we were making the most at the bar as he explained out of it, and as we started to carve out our what he needed her to do next for their projmutual but peculiar paths, we shared what ect. “Whatever you say, boss man,” she said was happening in our lives, our encourageto him. Her attitude couldn’t have been any ment and half-wisdom and started texting cooler. Auburn-haired with little gap in her “Auburn-haired each other nearly every day like 21st centufront teeth like Lauren Hutton, Deborah had a with little gap in her ry pen pals. A not-so-uncommon text from Southern sweetness and an easiness about her front teeth like LauDeborah would say, “Good mornin’ from that calmed like a breeze. Her charms, though, ren Hutton, Deborah the TN Mtns, dazzling lady! Where’s the belied the cunning girl underneath who learned had a Southern sweetadventure today?” We messaged each other how to make it in a tough life. And it seemed ness and an easiness on Facebook, too, and later I watched one to me—as a slightly more conventional girl— about her that calmed of Deb’s concerts live online through Stagethat having drinks with your boss at the bar like a breeze. It, while taking photos of her on screen. above the famed Catalyst music club was a Somehow or another, I’m not sure who pretty admirable situation to be in. it was, but through our frequent and mulWe got to talking and I learned the details of their enterprise: the branding and selling tifarious communiqués this summer, one of us started referring to our situation as of a brightly-hued nail polish line in bottles “tropical.” #Let’sGetTropical began to shaped like butt cheeks. Deborah’s intrigue populate our texts and tweets, and the imagery that followed: I took a photo glowed. She was to help her boss market the product; do some copywriting, PR, of myself playing keyboard before a simulated beach background on my Mac; etc. I learned she was a writer of all sorts—poetry, articles, short stories (like Deborah snapped a Photobooth shot wearing sunglasses “underwater” among a me)—and that she was an artist and photographer (also, like me), and a musician school of butterfly fish. We exchanged these hopes, jokes, and words of support (me, too). In fact she was also a Capricorn (like a certain writer you now know), about inhabiting a far more prized state of existence this summer. Neither of us born two days after me, a few years ahead. were actually in a tropical Shangri-la, or even in a place we necessarily wanted to When I met Deborah it was like meeting a mirror image of myself, or somebe in our young lives, but we discovered we could inhabit the “virtual tropical” thing like the famous Picasso painting, “Girl Before a Mirror.” Breasts and limbs with one other—sincerely, completely, and with the most righteous of intentions. popped out in delineation, then muted in the reflection. I squinted at a purple To spin a phrase from Ferlinghetti: we inhabited a Tropical Island of the Mind. shadow occluding the face, while shades of red and orange illumined the foreAnd then our summers began to turn around for us. head and cheek. Eyes stared back at me, familiar but inscrutable as olives. As Deborah, who hadn’t left the confines of Johnson City all summer, booked I observed and tried to discern these distorted and magnified characteristics, I a music tour in the South and was now on her way through Savannah, Florida, could see myself better in her and saw some of what I’m missing. and ever more humid climes. It just so happened to be the same stretch I had One of those things is boldness. As I learned from our talk at the bar, Debotoured the year before. rah had exhibited naked portraits of herself in Los Angeles, been featured in Back on my side of the country, I also found the means to leave town, and The Village Voice, was a regular participant in local poetry readings, and had moved to Echo Park for the summer while I took a class at UCLA. You may not published her creative writing in some notable journals. These were things I adbe surprised to learn that my friend had also matriculated there some years ago. mired; the girl just went for it, and for all her art. So it wasn’t much of a surprise, When I met her, I thought Deborah was a superwoman—a bold artist, travthen, that Deb had a music show scheduled the following Wednesday just down eler, musician, and poet—but, of course, as our friendship grew, I realized she still the street at the Blue Lagoon. has her human needs and frailties like me and any other. That night I showed up with my friend Azma, another dynamo, and the three of us had a electric time: we riffed off each other, laughed, made up jokes, and skits, As she said to me in one of her wise texts: “At the end of the day everyone and I announced assuredly, after several rounds, that we should all start a YouTube just wants to be loved and appreciated by someone.” And I do. Melissa Ann Sweat lives in Joshua Tree, Calif. where she is working on her first novel and new music for her acclaimed singer-songwriter project, Lady Lazarus. 62 junew2014 skirt!magazine