**********************************
I can no longer tell the difference between the dialogue spoken aloud and the dialogue that resides in my heart where I think no one can find it. I think, therefore I am lost. It’s funny how some moments seem present forever, no matter how often I retell them.
I think I will miss the cats more than I will miss him. There is one, gray, brown, black with white socks that curls up on my stomach every night, purrs and shakes my hips, stirs me more than “he” has in a while. I remember a time when my legs would curl around this human him from the inside-out and he would shift inside me, his feet vanished beneath the bright yellow of the bedspread given to me by the last lover, the last one that thought I might be cold and decided to warm me for a few months. We’d wake up in the morning, sunlight streaming through the window setting the sunflower comforter softly ablaze. And we’d do it again. And now I wonder, “Doesn’t it get better than this?”
But they all discover I am crazy, like so many explorers, they set foot on me as if for the first time, months after months of promises, and decide I should no longer bear them, as if I had no choice but to be claimed for a desperate country. Usually I warn them, with blazing flares, but they don’t recognize the signals, don’t yet know what all the fire means, uncivilized men who speak my language only brokenly. On the surface I seem so sandy, warm, so beachy and full of sun. This surface is too boring for me not to stir it up. But boring is exactly what he is looking for. His periscope is ill-equipped to find the cliffs beyond the beach house, the temperate climate beyond my tropics.
His boxes are everywhere, stacked high to the ceiling, traces of him even though I haven’t seen him lately in my space. I have allowed him to live here lately only for the sake of the cats and the occasional drunken thrusting that bursts when he rolls on top of me after a night of avoiding my presence. When we moved to this large loud-mouthed hub of activity four months ago, he never unpacked, but shoved his boxes in an alcove, pushed them up against a wall and trapped our clothes in the closet next to each other. There was some understanding that he would eventually leave nothing lasts forever, but still we were well, still we were wrapped up, even if the wrapping was less transparent, less saran, more aluminum and armored, mostly my armor. And now all I want to think is that it’s a good thing there will only be a little dust behind all those boxes instead of something substantial left behind, a little fly-away cockroach that crawled off to die in peace when the cat only maimed it. The boxes, with the exception of a few, were sealed up the whole time with brown packing tape, since the time we packed them together, when we had to move his things out of his Chicago apartment with a beautiful view of the lake, downtown … you probably remember holding my hand in your bed with downtown lights on our faces and music playing drifting to sleep. You will probably always remember that, but I will eventually forget and into my Chicago house. We were scrambling and leaving furniture, only taking what would fit into a mini-van, what was necessary for the faux life on the lam he lives.
And now it has come to this. I want to capture that moment when someone first meets someone, before she knows it will be anything, that moment on the brink of happening like when I picked Fred up for the first time outside his apartment, and he got into my car, and we parked, and we got out and were walking down the street, height-checking. He was in a gray coat, dark gray pants, maroon sweater with stripes, when they don’t even know what is ahead of them ... how does that feel, to not feel the future for that one brief instant? How blissful is that?
Cognoscenti … It has come to this, when it began with a moment that was a polar opposite of this you always suspected I was bi-polar, and yes you were right, but at least I am interesting. Now his friends are here, and he won’t even look at me. His friends are eying me as if I’m going to steal purses and wallets to get strange revenge, as if I’m really so small that I will take something that is not mine while as if I would take someone else’s money, someone else’s soul, someone else’s heart they are downstairs, outside.
F,
“Thanks for the talk. How poetic ... rain, then thunderstorm ... I love that thunder.”
“Seriously, I've been very happy lately. Life is filled with uncertainty, but I am certain that we get along incredibly well, and that everything we do is sprinkled with just a bit of magic … I do apologize again for making you feel ever pressured or like I'm not happy, that I am dissatisfied in some way or have been. I'll try to be more sensitive to the fact that some of the things I say might be interpreted in other ways.” And then I'm done apologizing. See how flexible I can be? I just let it all go just like that, just like I stopped funding your unemployment. You couldn’t even handle a little brain difference, too much synapse activity.
Sometimes I do think you just need to let it go. Let go the past, let go your disasters and heartbreaks and get on. You get on (or around) in other ways, but your heart sometimes needs help. You know this, of course. Self-aware you are to your emotionally closed off-ness. And that’s shit.
This definitely doesn't have to be difficult. It definitely isn't difficult. The difficulty comes when he begins to try to find difficulty or think too far ahead. That's at one point what I was so inadequately trying to express tonight. That and the question: How can anything have a chance to be anything with this kind of pressure? No need to pressure things that are working, that are happy inducing. But the tip of it got lost in my desire to rearrange furniture.
You said to me a couple months ago, you wished you could be as open, emotionally, sexually, as you are when you've had a little or a lot to drink. It's a good place to be. It's a happy place to be … easy … scary.
Both of he and I have enough emotional baggage to go on a trip around the world (I thought someday we’d take that trip and not even have to pack rat bastard). But there's a fear of being exposed as less than interesting, less than intelligent, less that one thinks he/she is. The fear at its deepest level lies in the idea of getting hurt, or in the concept of being misinterpreted or of misinterpreting. Or of letting go just a little. Those last three things tied up together is probably the real root of that "fear" (or whatever a less strong but still powerful word would be). I'm speaking of course, not necessarily specifically. I'm just speaking about my theory on the whole idea of having any sort of a relationship with anyone that means anything more than a toothbrush on the sink and a place to crash on weekends.
“I'm just thinking out loud. I’m just thinking a little bit out loud.”
Every moment has been enlightening in some way ... every moment I've been glad we've had, looking back on it.
But I've had plenty of moments all over the place. I can name most of them, though some happen in the fraction of an instant when I'm barely paying attention. Most of mine happen when I'm driving. These reminiscences I know you'll appreciate because they are filled with description, definite images you eventually tuned out. I remember one in particular a few years ago. I was driving home from my friend Melissa's house. She lived in Minneapolis, and I was driving back to St. Paul, driving east. I think it must have been Fall. But I was driving, and there was no one else on the road. It was the middle of the week, somewhat late at night. I went over a hill, and all of a sudden was coated in the orange glow of the most perfect full moon I had ever seen. It was huge. You don't know how huge the moon can be until you've traveled far enough north. At the moment, nothing else mattered but that huge orange ball surrounded by stars in a blackened sky, offset by metallic buildings. And I followed it as I drove into it, then drove away from it, until it disappeared. Beautiful. Moments are like that. Split-seconds where nothing else matters. As I sit here with him packing, I think I am in one of those moments. Because I just don’t care that he is leaving, another straggler to shake off. But I wonder sometimes if I could let go like I let go at that very instant when I saw that moon, just let go of everything and let myself soak it all in, I could have these moments constantly, not based on nine months here with you.
I'll tell you something specific and involving you. I try not to do that because of who you aren’t, but I will because I want to. I had a moment one Saturday in Chicago. We were sitting listening to Prince: "Starfish and Coffee." I was staring at the clearest blue sky, the skyline, lying on my stomach. I was in a world, thinking of other things, daydreaming about possibly nothing, but I was definitely not there. And you put your arm around me, clasped my hand in your hand. Ridiculous moment, but it meant something because I pulled you into me when I thought we were through. And nothing else mattered but the fact that we were two people making some sort of a connection, however brief. They just keep happening, changing, transforming, becoming more and less and more beautiful again. And it’s how the heart hungers for something that makes it beautiful.
I'm funny because I like to leave things open. You just never know what's going to happen. Like ending sentences with a preposition. It leaves things unfastened. It keeps things interesting. But when he leaves, I will deadbolt the door, lock it up with a readiness to let someone new in.
I don't know what I'm saying. Just babbling. I like the babble. Especially with you, I ramble. We are definite ramblers -- truck driver, gas station attendant ramblers with traveling mouths, packs of Pall Mall cigarettes tucked into our flannel sleeves.
“Take care. I’ll see you later.” He picks up the litter box, the last box, the last asshole box, the place where things shit, where shit becomes reality. It is midnight, and he is not coming back up, even though he left his underwear in the drawer. He will get it when I am not there, then leave the keys on the tipsy table that tips because the room is so slanted.
Sometimes something good and enlightening emerges ... sometimes not, but sometimes it does, or tries to.
No comments:
Post a Comment