This I Shamelessly Tell You

Being Death's bitch or how I came to know I could talk to dead people, my own brushes with the Grim Reaper and a fond goodbye to my Capitol Hill

by Rajkhet Dirzhud-Rashid - November 2008
photo by Dr. Steve - Model: Krystal

Walking down Broadway the other night, dressed in my gothy best, it struck me that something horrible has happened to the one place in this hell hole of a city I used to love.

I guess the fact that I was the only goth/queer who showed up to watch a screening of one of the best vamp films ever made,"The Hunger" and that I got a few stares and giggles from some pretty mundane looking folks while I walked, hit me pretty hard, having not been on the strip in quite a while. It also made me think about my own relationship with things dark and things that only go out at night. I've always felt sorry for Catherine Deneuve when she gets a brutal comeuppance from her newly made successor, Susan Sarandon. Hey, I'm always on the side of the darkness, even if inside I know it can never win, that light must and usually does carry the day.

This and other thoughts whirled around in my head, and have been ever since the beginning of what I think of as the dark time. That time when the earth slows down and darkness rules for at least a short time, and each of us is forced to deal with our own ideas of death and dying because it's literally in our faces every day, all day. Ah, and I've been winking at, flirting with and sipping tea with death all of my life. I'm a psychic and a medium (someone who bridges the world of the living and the dead), who was diagnosed with sleep apnea several years ago. So, by going to sleep every night, I'm literally inviting death into my bedroom in two minute increments when I stop breathing.

A friend once witnessed this when he woke up and watched me dreaming, being the early riser that he was. He called it scary and fascinating. Lovers just looked at me strangely when we woke up together, and some held me a little closer. Me, I just consider it a part of being me, that I'm Death's bitch, she who gets to dance with that one entity that scares most folks. She who has been close enough on a couple of occasions to feel that grave breath on my neck, but managed to fight her way back to this world, and she who on odd occasions (try being in the middle of having fun with your lover, when some ghost shows up, asking for help) has had the undead ask for favors when all I wanted was to buy pizza or make love, or finish mopping my floor. Oh, and believe me, Death's a tricky bastard, always trying for that lowered guard moment when I say, "sure, hon, you can rest your head on my shoulder, if you need to, I know you're tired." That, and having dead people show up in my dreams before some horrible tragedy (every serial killing spree, and several local incidents were my nightmares before they became headlines) isn't the interesting stuff that show "Ghost Whisperer" makes it out to be.

Still, the little vamp I am, energy vamp that is, does enjoy a little light every time I find that someone who has so much light they fairly sparkle (like my first soldier, he who was lost to me via his PTSD). So I dip my dark hands in and fill up like a tick, orgasming both physically and psychically. It makes me pretty picky about partners. They need to be psychic and young and completely malleable. Not as easy as it sounds, trust me, as I seem to intimidate all but the bravest souls, and Seattle is not rich in those. Meanwhile, I salute the dark season, and hope that as you're reading this, we haven't descended into the dark ages by putting McCain/Palin in office. That darkness even I couldn't live with, even though I am living with (though not happy about) my little forays with death on a nightly basis via my sleep problem, and occasionally finding that lover who gives me his light, if even for a little while.

This, I shamelessly tell you, and to my Capitol HIll now dying, a kiss on the wind for you my darling.