Public Republic

Donna Ison

Photo: ripdownthetapestries

With the warm shawl of time-won wisdom pulled tight around my shoulders, I reluctantly recline into the lap of acceptance and begin the wait.

Almost at once–Body convulses. Skin crawls. Blood curdles.

My whiskey-soaked voice rips from my chest and screams, “Fuck aging gracefully.”

I throw off wisdom’s woolen itch and drape my bare body in self-centered satin and ostrich feathers.

I kick off the sensible shoes that have “walked a mile in another’s footsteps” and slide into silver stilettos that aren’t afraid to step on some toes.

I will not sit and wait for Father Time to molest me…to convince me to calcify…to seduce me into submission.

I will be the seductress. I’ll show up red-lipped and low-cut on his doorstep, ready for a night on the town.

I’ll throw the hollow old man over my shoulder and toss him in the backseat of a limousine—a long, white limo…the yin to yang of the funeral hearse.

A car built for the living.

A backseat blow job. A line of cocaine. A glass of champagne.

And we arrive at the club.

I stroll straight through the red velvet rope…the same one I’ll hang myself with at some later date…and drift onto the dance floor.

He bows deep.
I spit in his face and smile.

Stand up, old man.

No purity balls for me, thank you.
No pledges to go gently into that good night.
No born-again virgin, hope I go to heaven, finally learned my lesson.
No redemption waltz here.

I lived my life like a Barbarian Queen.
I needed to be heard, I wanted to be seen.
So I laughed too loud,
And I drank too many,
I loved too hard,
Regrets I haven’t any.

Time, shall we tango?
What will it take to convince you to leave me be for a century or so?

Can I urge you with my upper thigh? Can I deter you with my derriere? Or perhaps you’re a breast man?

If my advances do not work…

now a distinct possibility, being no longer utterly irresistible.

If my advances do not work…I’ll resort to violence.

I’ll kick the living shit out of time.

I’ll send him crawling on four out the door, down the street to the meat packing district.

or…

I’ll beg. Down on bruised knees. I’ll plead.

Please, just one more decade like the one just had.

Ten more years of excess.

Ten more years of too much…too much booze…too much boys…too much wine…too much women…too much sin…too much salvation…

Cause you see, Time, too much is just enough for me.

No?

Then one more year.

One more year like the one just passed.

Another 365 days of generous full-bosomed muses whispering in my ear and words flowing like lava…hot and alive…from my fingertips.

No?

Then one more night.

One more naked night in the pink moonlight.
With a waiter with a washboard stomach who can philosophize at whim.
With a deep-dimpled dancing boy who called me the goddess Diana.
With a blue-eyed poet whose flannel-clad words soothe my restless soul.
With all the miraculous men whose eyelashes have yet to sweep over my flushed cheek.

One more decade of debauchery.
One more year of living dangerously.
One more night of nectar licked from the lips of forbidden fruit in white boxer briefs.
One more minute of me.

This is the prayer of an Aging Party Girl.
Swan song of a Dying Diva.
This is my last will and testament.