novembre ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- still too early to say, but already a lifetime of lessons Let's think about nighttime and the fears it brings. I know you don't want to, but they'll come anyway, and make you into a monster, screaming and crying through an Oakland Friday. You'll wake up the next day, traces of his fingertips still calming your hip bone, still tickling your lonely, aging nipples. There might be a deep cut along your left shin, dried blood on brown heels. You don't remember how you got hurt, and that somehow takes the blame away. He'll never make your body sing again. This is a choice you have made. A finality. Your body is angry, but you've at least mastered this one throwback to messy supplication. I think the only person I was ever able to successfully see in such terms has been you, but perhaps it hasn't ever sat right with me. Your body is heroin to mine, and I forget how disastrous the ensuing shame and emptiness feels the day after, the weeks after, even now over a year after, when you are in front of me, your hands running up my body, tuning it to a resonance I did not know I could sing. I can't do that anymore. Casual sex has never sat right with me, no matter how beautiful you make me feel, for the instant of a night. If I attempt to pursue something like that, I will hate myself and drink myself into a monster where I am screaming and crying and broken in the middle of the Oakland night. I am so sorry I acted that way. I need to listen to my pain and deal with it, even if part of me never wants to grow up. I have to. I'm thirty now, and I'm sick of living a half-life. No extended teenagerdom is worth this. "Thank you for being a lovely, lovely man." Let that one go: his sex was heroin. It is so hard, because he felt so familiar. There's another, and he fits better, records and sudden flashes of kindred whim. This one loves selfishly, quickly, and then waits for you to disappear. You wonder what will come of it, but you've decided not to push, and this feels good. "Remember that I am someone who cares about you." How oxymoronic to realize the element of pride in order to love. Maybe one day we'll form a band, and our voices will harmonize even if our bodies never will. Let's think about nighttime and the fear it brings. You don't want to be alone with yourself: sitting with pain is boring, but necessary. You've just learned that real love is gradual, just like friendship. You can't make him want you, make him shuffle up enough space for you on his creaky leather couch, his Sunday New York Times. You are surprised that he watched you as you slept, as if you were a beautiful thing. Maybe his hands will want your body's nooks, and maybe they never will. He doesn't know what little pride you're left with, what elements of yourself you are mustering. Everything feels like a last stand, until you realize it is just one night. Tonight roommates are making chili and fire in the living room. "I want to hang out, but I also want to be present." "That's valid."
I am going to buy health insurance tomorrow. I am going to start taking better care of myself. Maybe you will notice, one day, and we'll both be proud in that moment. Afterwards I'll replay it over and over in my head like a song I'm in love with. 9:54 pm - 02.01.09 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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