trigger warning! seriously, this is your warning. this is not real life. i mean it is, but it's exaggerated for effect.
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back then (back then), one of my most treasured fantasies went like this: when they inevitably sent me somewhere i don't want to be, i would rent a place and do all the song and dance of setting up my new life, and when i was finally left alone i would hang myself. no letter. the letter was: you can't have me.
i did keep up, for a while, with a regimented programme of escaping. but then i had to escape from that too, and here we are. the time of leaving did come, but by then, alas, i was no longer suicidal. years of evolution down the drain --this is bad, fear this-- just like that, replaced by a productive member of society.
all this is to say: i am being killed as we speak, by people i don't like. the bad people are killing me.
i could escape without repercussions, of course. if there was, say, a grave and proximal threat to my well-being. how grave? graver then that. how proximal? p r o x i m a l .
..
i kept meaning to make a note of a few formative experiences i had in the second decade of the twenty first century. a light blinking in the distance (darkness, darkness): this is how seriously you should take your heart.
...
who was i if not the cynic, the clown, the misanthrope, the flirt? your good friend.
and didn't i put my head on your shoulder in front of God and about a dozen people in various levels of consciousness? all the while waiting for the bill to arrive; and when could i resist an irresistible phrase? exactly never.
....
i read about this once: somebody you want in a dirty motel room, the nylon bedspread and the city outside. and other times: will you permit it? and again: laughter in the garden. children in the morning. a bed of straw, voici le jour!
very much in my body, very much in my head, and i knew there needed to be some instruction, but i didn't have any words and i couldn't see, all my words are in the wrong language, and i had no strength, anyway, if i ever needed it. little packets of staticky information, but it's wild, the shit you can't guess about a person who's naked and also touching you.
i remember thinking; i will never get out of here. maybe the only truly perverse thing in all of this, and there: you get an image, a thought, a distraction. my body, and yours: believe it if you can.
.....
the urge to do lasts for about three seconds, and then you have the doing. what if you have an overwhelming urge to fuck but something's telling you to avoid touching the sheets? what if you have an overwhelming urge to get fucked but something's telling you to protect your airway? these are the kind of age-old questions we're talking about, here. my baby and i, let us sing you the song of our people. until somebody gets too bored or too exsanguinated by a freak jeans zipper accident, in which case we will have to stop.
i kept meaning to make a note of a few formative experiences i had in the second decade of the twenty first century. a light blinking in the distance (darkness, darkness): this is how seriously you should take your heart.
...
who was i if not the cynic, the clown, the misanthrope, the flirt? your good friend.
and didn't i put my head on your shoulder in front of God and about a dozen people in various levels of consciousness? all the while waiting for the bill to arrive; and when could i resist an irresistible phrase? exactly never.
....
i read about this once: somebody you want in a dirty motel room, the nylon bedspread and the city outside. and other times: will you permit it? and again: laughter in the garden. children in the morning. a bed of straw, voici le jour!
very much in my body, very much in my head, and i knew there needed to be some instruction, but i didn't have any words and i couldn't see, all my words are in the wrong language, and i had no strength, anyway, if i ever needed it. little packets of staticky information, but it's wild, the shit you can't guess about a person who's naked and also touching you.
i remember thinking; i will never get out of here. maybe the only truly perverse thing in all of this, and there: you get an image, a thought, a distraction. my body, and yours: believe it if you can.
.....
the urge to do lasts for about three seconds, and then you have the doing. what if you have an overwhelming urge to fuck but something's telling you to avoid touching the sheets? what if you have an overwhelming urge to get fucked but something's telling you to protect your airway? these are the kind of age-old questions we're talking about, here. my baby and i, let us sing you the song of our people. until somebody gets too bored or too exsanguinated by a freak jeans zipper accident, in which case we will have to stop.
....
for a minute there i dreamed of a life with menstrual huts and noisy sendoffs (the drums especially were conspicuous by their absence), and i liked the thought of it. like walking out into the light with the itch still under my skin, losing whole weekends thinking, thinking, not asking. if i handed over my body, he'd do something interesting. we all thought that.
...
sometimes you pull me out into your head, and sometimes i like that too.
sometimes i go through the motions of rebellion: my t-shirt that says "currently unavailable" for a first date, my white dress with crimson roses, my party skirt that has seen me through any and all parties in three continents for the past decade. what must be, must be; one day, slightly tipsy, i will tell a bunch of people the story of the time i stared at your bathroom floor and how clumps of hair stared back at me the way only clumps of hair can. this is now a funny story.
..
some of us artsy types are familiar with the concept of nostalgia. the same wall, the same horizon, the same bus stop, no way through. no way out, no way through, some day i will stop cursing at the fucking bus stop, today is not that day.
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and i know, i know that i improve (and it hurts) when i move towards contact. a long road that way, too (and no inn in sight, and night coming, and the body cold). the question is the ole am i worthy of being loved? you pays your money, you gets your answer; darling, i have to go hunt some bison, or we'll all go hungry, surely you understand. leave your message at the tone
