Turning Point
Mark
Hardly any sleep in five days can really take its toll. During those few hours I was able to crash into a restless slumber, I was only able to dream of what was real. No matter how tired I was, no matter how deeply asleep I was, my mind still continued to work, cogs rotating, hands ticking, images flashing behind my closed eyelids. Even in my sleep I could see my film taking shape, materializing into a work of art. My family ─ no, my life, was my art, my film. I could see all of those little clips and photos come together into something bigger instead of what they really were, which was piles of negative film on the floor, and the couch, and the table…
Angel, in her striped, polka-dotted, camouflaged glory, sat next to Collins, her face lit up by the smile that took up half of her face. She was our beat, our rhythm. After those long days in the hospital were over, and her smile had left us, it seemed that everything seemed to fall apart. It was only then that we all realized she was the glue that kept us all linked, making us smile when one of us was ready to hurl ourselves off of every building on Avenue A, acting as the mediator between many coupled fights.
Mimi was the one who was always dancing, right in sync to the gentle drumming that seemed to radiate from Angel. Pole or no pole, her body seemed to move in a way that even when she was simply walking down the street she looked like she was performing the most explicit of ballets.
Both Tom and Roger were always the ones leaning on the wall or sitting back, watching the ones they love. The cool ones. Roger looked at Mimi as if she were a song. Collins gazed at Angel…just because that's what she was, an angel. They would both soon follow in Angel's footsteps, gone. but I knew that Roger would not go without writing his song. And Tom would go whenever, feeling his work was done, whatever that work was.
There was something about Maureen that made you love her the moment you met her. She always jumped off the page, off the face of the earth, even. Her eyes were the hottest kind of ice. They burned through your skin, reading your mind, and then they froze your heart so that you never stopped loving her. Joanne completed her. She was her rock, her organization, her sanity. They sort of fit together like Ying and Yang, exact opposites. They completed each other. Joanne was black, organized, and articulate. She knew what she wanted and would strive to get it no matter what. She could make a grown man cry in the courtroom. Maureen was white, spunky and unpredictable, never afraid to say what she felt. She would her opinion when people begged her not to, and even when she was wrong, she was still right.
