Dear Penny.
I’m writing this letter because I need to say goodbye. I need to tell you all the things I never said. Your death came swiftly and tragically, and I need to try and make some sense of it. I just have to.
You weren’t my friend for long, but you were some friend. Like everything you did in life you did it well and with all the intensity those sharp green eyes could give. When you loved you loved with such passion that it could make yourself sick.
Maybe that’s why you were so lonely, because no one could be as candid as you, even if they wanted to.
When I met you I was living in east village in New York, the only city you could ever call home. It was a shared house with 5 other people, all coming and going, working all day and partying all night. I don’t think I even met you until I’d been living there for three weeks. You were always out. Chasing a dream. Any dream. Working your way through the jazz club, your voice a backdrop in a dimly lit room. You were like a whisper, a legend. “The Great Penny Jane” they would say. Loves everything and everyone, but nothing as much as that piano. Never without her glitter eyeliner. Loves disaster and drugs. Hates the sound of quiet.
All the rumours and stories were more than true. But no one could take the time to fully describe you. Skin so pale I almost thought you were half albino. Hair so blonde it was almost silver. A whirl wind of colour and commotion. Once I told you were like an ADD boy on acid. As ungraceful the sentence was it was you. Ungraceful and wonderful and fighting, forever fighting. But no one knew what for.
I don’t need to tell you how close we became. Although now it sort o feels like I didn’t know you at all. I went with you to all your clubs. Couldn’t even breathe in that smog but I didn’t even care. You told me about your childhood. I believe I was the one of the few you did. You ‘the great Penny Jane’ went to a catholic school, the kind that throw around words like ‘chastity’ and ‘virgin’ like confetti.
How your father made you practise your piano so much. How you repaid him by playing bohemian rhapsody over and over again at your recital until they had to rip you off the stage. How you always felt hated. How you always felt despised. Penny, my lovely, I just want to tell you now that everyone who met you fell in love with you. They just couldn’t show it.
Like everything in my life, I lost track of you. You faded quickly out of my life until it almost feels like I had never met you. You moved out of our apartment and I don’t even know why. You kept going to those clubs, leaving your bloody red heart on the fall and no one even noticing. You became addicted to everything you touched and did more than anyone thought possible. I made some you friends and you made many. I heard you fell in love, more than you ever had before. I was happy for you, It was all you had ever wanted. “I want uncontainable joy” you used to tell me with a flair of your hand. “And that is worth all the pain this world could throw at me.”
I can’t remember the exact moment I found out you had died. I can’t even remember how I felt. Numb, maybe. I felt numb.
I hated the way you died. By your own hand. In that moldy room surrounded by lines of that poisin. Of what killed you. The word “goodbye” written on your stomach in lipstick. One thought crossed through my mind through the whole thing “If the Great Penny Jane couldn’t survive this world, what hope is there for the rest of us.”
As I finish off this letter I want to pin down a memory, a flash in time that could try and find. It always comes back to. Only one comes to mind. You and me on the of our apartment. The whole city stretching out in front of us and the whole night sky to explore. We are dancing to a song. It doesn’t matter what song it is, we take no notice. You are wearing your gold sequins dress and you look like the goddess you are. Laughter. Glitter. Vodka. The whole world is ours.
That Is the story of the great Penny Jane
Love your dearest friend
James
