...And she wears stilettos

I have a muse. Like many creative-types, I owe much inspiration to this creature of myth and mystery but she is not what you would call conventional. She is not clad in a gauzy toga, hair coiffed in a gold circlet up-do, but a more modern version. Someone I can relate to.

She is a chain-smoking, booze swilling, long-legged red-head, dressed in a tight black pencil skirt, a french-cuffed fitted white blouse, and bright red stilettos. She often looks as though she just wandered in from a night on the town, hair askew and wind-blown, a run in her stocking, spent and ready for a greasy breakfast to ward off the impending hangover. She has no walk of shame, but more a stride of pride, an "ask me if you dare" attitude. If you only knew where she'd been... Never mind, you couldn't handle it.

She is impatient, tsks and rolls her eyes, slams doors and storms out when she is ignored. My genius is an entertainer with a foul mouth, a hearty laugh and a raw sense of humor. She is not concerned with decorum or silly, antiquated social norms and has been kicked out of more places than you and I have ever attempted to enter. She is revered by men who want her and women who want to be her. She is that woman that can say the harshest things right to your face and still, you fight to stay in her orbit. Her criticisms do not deter you, but draw you in. She attracts you because she sees your flaws for what they are: the dark, sticky humanness that bubbles like gooey black tar in all of us. Her recognition of this nastiness is not a condemnation, not a judgement, only a reminder that we all have our own ugly bag of crap. She will unabashedly call you on it should you start to feel your bag isn't as bad as the next guy's. Don't even try it, you will come away feeling infinitely small.

My genius, my muse, my daemon is often sitting in the corner, one shoe dangling from a brightly painted toe, swirling her drink, making the ice tinkle invitingly in her glass as she dictates my next sentence, my next paragraph, my next chapter. She tells the tales she weaves in a smoky alto, chuckling to herself when I hesitate to write what she has uttered, for fear it is too harsh, too sultry, too too. She urges me to write it anyway, push the boundaries, tell the real story. And when I fail, when I hesitate and pull up out of the dangerous dive she has us in, she slaps me on the back as she leaves. "I'll come back later, when you're ready to tell the truth," and I hear her shoes click off down the hallway and out the door.

I have a muse and she wears stilettos.