novembre ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- found: letters 1. It is odd what I keep. Here is a tin box filled with makeup from 1999, the liquids separated and congealed. Another tin half-filled with pennies. Magazines. Bills. An outdated check. Sometimes I look through the archives of this diary and feel the same way. 2. Parts remind me of my favorite poem by Frank O'Hara, Having a Coke With You, but sadder and in a more nonsensical tone. Written as letters. I was going to type out a bit I particularly liked, and then I found it online. I knocked on her kitchen screen door. It took a minute or so for her to answer it. She came downstairs from her bedroom. "Here's the watermelon," I said, putting it on the kitchen counter. "Yes," she said, her voice obviously very distant and her physical presence hesitant. There was something I wanted to show her about the watermelon that required her to get a knife a cut into the melon. It's not important what I wanted to show her about the watermelon, which after doing so, she continued to be hesitant, as if she were someplace else, not actually in the kitchen with me.
I wanted to talk to her for a few moments about the telephone call that I had gotten from your friend, but then suddenly, her hesitancy and growing uncomfortableness made me feel hesitant and uncomfortable. Finally, I guess, only a couple of minutes had passed and then she said, looking down at the floor, "I left T upstairs writhing around on the bed." T was a man. My bringing over the watermelon had just interrupted their lovemaking. My first thoughts were: Why had she answered the telephone while she was making love to somebody and then why didn't she think up some excuse for me to not come over at that time? I mean, she could have said anything and I would have come over later, but instead she had said yes to my coming over. Anyway, I apologized and went back home. Then I thought about the humor in the situation and wanted to call you on the telephone and tell you what had just happened because you have the perfect sense of humor to understand it. It's just the kind of story you would have enjoyed and responded to with your musically screeching laughter and said something like "Oh no!" while still laughing. I sat there staring at the telephone, wanting very much to call you, but I was completely unable to do so because the telephone call I had gotten from your friend a little while before told me you had died Thursday. I had gone over to your friend's house to talk about it when I interrupted her lovemaking. The watermelon was just some kind of funny excuse to talk about my grief and try to get some perspective on the fact that I can never call you again on the telephone and tell you something like I've just done that basically only your sense of humor could appreciate. Love, R. 1:36 pm - 01.12.04 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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