I haven't been especially forthcoming about the events that led up to what happens here, but it's affecting me enough that I have to post this here. It's long, and melodramatic, and oh-so-fucking annoying, but it's what happened on Monday night. So, if any of you actually care enough about this to want to ask questions about what led up to this, I would ask you to please refrain from doing so, because I don't have the energy to tell it again.
Also, the italicized song quotes that separate the sections (they were cuts on livejournal--sorry) are selected from the song "Posers," by Frankenixon.
Okay, on with the shit...
"if we are to go on co-existing,
there are things i would like to discuss
like why your favorite things make you so selfish,
and who these people are posin' as us..."
"I think," she said, "I've spent more time sitting in my car with you talking than I have with any other person," and I was laughing inside, the memory of her in the driver's seat, the heat from our breaths catching on the smoky windows and coagulating while the christmas lights from the houses caught and spread. The haze around her head completely elevated me because it was so fucking real, I mean present and meaningful not in a poetic way but in that simplistic way solipsists like me chase around every dark corner of the world, it was there, no real reason other than it had to be there, and I immediately believed in her then. I missed her when I was in Iowa, it was barely there while I was establishing what I established with Allie and Mackenzie but it was always there, something that kept me checking my email every day, waiting for little bits/bytes of her to be there for me. She was waiting for me to come back, she'd decided that when we parted at 3am that night in December, she was waiting for me, and that was perhaps what made me feel free enough to enjoy what little time I enjoyed there, the liberation that comes when you know, actually know you have something at the end, and whatever happened in the now would tell the rest of the story but at least it would be an adventure.
But that was two months ago, before she'd told me she had something to ask me in those small black letters, before I'd driven the hours in Iowa snow to see Allie, before I'd shoveled three days of Oregon snow out of the driveway just to see her, before I'd poured her the enormous glass of vodka so she could ask me what she asked me and why didn't I fucking realize it then?, before the parts of me and parts of her became Us, and I was only laughing inside, because I was still confused and hurt from everything that had happened in-between then and now.
I'd found her sister's place faster than I'd expected, a townhouse on a side street near the Lloyd Center on a corner with brick buildings and polite-looking houses. I recognized the neighborhood; my shrink's office was two blocks north and a few more west. Despite having taken ten minutes to clean out the car, thirty to drive to the office to pick up money owed for gas and check my email and another twenty to drive from Beaverton across downtown, I still managed to beat them there. I listened to Maserati the whole way, Closer Than You Know How filling my senses and spilling out the open window as I soared over the I-5 bridge and the city filled the windy air, and something resembling fear pushed through the detachment and settled into my chest, coupled with that new sensation I hadn't expected, the want, that elated, flabbergasted want.
"i'll learn to dance with the winds that are blowing,
away to the country my heart calls home,
so at least you will be safe in the knowing
you'll never wander these fields alone..."
I walked in circles for about five minutes before I actually found the place, unable to distinguish any structure from one another before the numbers from her sister's directions began to make sense. I rapped on the door twice. Then louder. After a minute, I rang the doorbell; getting no response, I pivoted and walked back to the car, the familiar twinge in my stomach began again, and I knew this time it had nothing to do with hunger. I had my hand on the door handle before a passing cyclist caught my attention. "Where's the nearest convenience store?" I asked.
"There's a 7-11 on 21st," he replied, startled.
"Thank you."
The pay phone felt ugly and alien in my hands. I dialed the number by memory, the third number I'd grown to memorize associated with her name.
"Hola," she said.
"Donde esta usted?"
"Um..." she trailed off; I was surprised and cruelly delighted to recall that, despite the tenure she'd spent in L.A., she had absolutely no knowledge of Spanish.
"Where are you?" I repeated, this time in English. At the back of my mind, some idle part of my brain put the Maserati song down for a second and toyed with the concept of formal verb forms.
"Oh, we're two seconds away" was her reply; she seemed as jovial as ever, words coming with a warmth that hardened the edges of my emotions, bitterness building with a slowly-returning frustrated fear that asked more questions than my detachment could accommodate. It returned in a second, hitting long enough for me to detect it in my voice as she asked where I was and I responded. I hung up and walked back, warm enough in my coat but uncomfortably encumbered, feeling strangely immobile.
I ditched the coat back at the car and looked around the corner, where she sat, smoking a cigarette on the curb, and I wish it could say it was the temperature that made me cold again, but really it was just the sight of her, bringing back every second on the plastic mat beneath my grandfather's desk and the corner of the kitchen and the chair in the den, all of which I'd inhabited at various points in time over the weekend crying in my own various ways.
I started talking to her then, simple greeting at first as I eased my frame, still sore from the inexplicable exercise of bowling, down to the curb a couple feet from her. She replied, simply and analytically, and it was almost like that first night at the Pied Cow, me trying not to stare at her too intently but afraid to break eye contact, not wanting the dream of her actually wanting to see me to end, not wanting the interesting, thoughtful, beautiful woman whose first words to me questioned my sexuality to retreat back to wherever perfect place she undoubtedly came from. She told me again what she'd told me on the phone an hour earlier, that she and her sister were headed to the coast, adding that her mother had issued the edict, and it made sense to me, if only at the time.
She finished her cigarette and asked if we could migrate to the car, and I agreed. It was in the vehicle, safe in a place where I knew at least I couldn't escape, that I told her everything I could think to tell her, that I really wanted it to work, that I was willing to give her my heart, but she was giving me every reason to not do it, that I had placed my trust in her and was starting to think my trust had been misplaced, and a few other things that I don't feel comfortable mentioning here, and it felt so good to be fucking honest that it didn't matter that I was worried at how suspiciously agreeable she was.
When I was done, I realized she was touching my face, and the softness of her hands, the delicacy with which she treated every movement of her fingers made me close my eyes in spite of myself. She's going to do it now, I thought, this is where she's going to drop me and leave me all alone,
and I could have sworn I saw something in her face that filtered through into her voice, something suggesting she was about to do just that, but it came out as "I don't know."
I told her I was worried about her, and that I wanted to help her in any way that I can, and I could wait for her, but for my own selfish reasons I wanted, for lack of a more articulate description, to remain her "boyfriend," the word rolled off her lips weeks ago and I never ever expected to hear it, and it felt better than I imagined but when I said it, it came out tentative and rushed.
She said she needed to figure some things out, and that she still wanted to spend time with me, and we talked for a little while more then but avoided anything serious. We went inside then, joining her sister, who was packing for the trip, before returning to the car, this time with her sitting in the passenger's seat, sister behind the wheel.
"Goodbye, beautiful boy," she said softly, the name she'd called me the few times I'd actually seen her during the week.
"Be safe," I said.
"i'm alive, and that's all i can say.
No need to coax you away from your play.
No need to cloudy your sunshine day.
i give up, and i'm running away."
As the car pulled away, I felt a certain calmness settle into me, a real calmness and not the fake detachment I inherited from my father to keep me from hurting others, and a peace that came with the suspicions and facts of the matter that didn't quite make sense. Despite all of the questions, I knew at least enough to develop a picture of what was going on, and I'd done all I could. All I could do then was wait, wait until tomorrow, or the "tomorrow" she'd mentioned, the tomorrow during which she promised she'd call.
Tuesday has come and gone, and I'm still waiting, even though there's something at the back of my head that says I'm never going to see her again, at least not as I have in these past weeks.
But that's the way it is.
And the way it feels.
Also, the italicized song quotes that separate the sections (they were cuts on livejournal--sorry) are selected from the song "Posers," by Frankenixon.
Okay, on with the shit...
"if we are to go on co-existing,
there are things i would like to discuss
like why your favorite things make you so selfish,
and who these people are posin' as us..."
"I think," she said, "I've spent more time sitting in my car with you talking than I have with any other person," and I was laughing inside, the memory of her in the driver's seat, the heat from our breaths catching on the smoky windows and coagulating while the christmas lights from the houses caught and spread. The haze around her head completely elevated me because it was so fucking real, I mean present and meaningful not in a poetic way but in that simplistic way solipsists like me chase around every dark corner of the world, it was there, no real reason other than it had to be there, and I immediately believed in her then. I missed her when I was in Iowa, it was barely there while I was establishing what I established with Allie and Mackenzie but it was always there, something that kept me checking my email every day, waiting for little bits/bytes of her to be there for me. She was waiting for me to come back, she'd decided that when we parted at 3am that night in December, she was waiting for me, and that was perhaps what made me feel free enough to enjoy what little time I enjoyed there, the liberation that comes when you know, actually know you have something at the end, and whatever happened in the now would tell the rest of the story but at least it would be an adventure.
But that was two months ago, before she'd told me she had something to ask me in those small black letters, before I'd driven the hours in Iowa snow to see Allie, before I'd shoveled three days of Oregon snow out of the driveway just to see her, before I'd poured her the enormous glass of vodka so she could ask me what she asked me and why didn't I fucking realize it then?, before the parts of me and parts of her became Us, and I was only laughing inside, because I was still confused and hurt from everything that had happened in-between then and now.
I'd found her sister's place faster than I'd expected, a townhouse on a side street near the Lloyd Center on a corner with brick buildings and polite-looking houses. I recognized the neighborhood; my shrink's office was two blocks north and a few more west. Despite having taken ten minutes to clean out the car, thirty to drive to the office to pick up money owed for gas and check my email and another twenty to drive from Beaverton across downtown, I still managed to beat them there. I listened to Maserati the whole way, Closer Than You Know How filling my senses and spilling out the open window as I soared over the I-5 bridge and the city filled the windy air, and something resembling fear pushed through the detachment and settled into my chest, coupled with that new sensation I hadn't expected, the want, that elated, flabbergasted want.
"i'll learn to dance with the winds that are blowing,
away to the country my heart calls home,
so at least you will be safe in the knowing
you'll never wander these fields alone..."
I walked in circles for about five minutes before I actually found the place, unable to distinguish any structure from one another before the numbers from her sister's directions began to make sense. I rapped on the door twice. Then louder. After a minute, I rang the doorbell; getting no response, I pivoted and walked back to the car, the familiar twinge in my stomach began again, and I knew this time it had nothing to do with hunger. I had my hand on the door handle before a passing cyclist caught my attention. "Where's the nearest convenience store?" I asked.
"There's a 7-11 on 21st," he replied, startled.
"Thank you."
The pay phone felt ugly and alien in my hands. I dialed the number by memory, the third number I'd grown to memorize associated with her name.
"Hola," she said.
"Donde esta usted?"
"Um..." she trailed off; I was surprised and cruelly delighted to recall that, despite the tenure she'd spent in L.A., she had absolutely no knowledge of Spanish.
"Where are you?" I repeated, this time in English. At the back of my mind, some idle part of my brain put the Maserati song down for a second and toyed with the concept of formal verb forms.
"Oh, we're two seconds away" was her reply; she seemed as jovial as ever, words coming with a warmth that hardened the edges of my emotions, bitterness building with a slowly-returning frustrated fear that asked more questions than my detachment could accommodate. It returned in a second, hitting long enough for me to detect it in my voice as she asked where I was and I responded. I hung up and walked back, warm enough in my coat but uncomfortably encumbered, feeling strangely immobile.
I ditched the coat back at the car and looked around the corner, where she sat, smoking a cigarette on the curb, and I wish it could say it was the temperature that made me cold again, but really it was just the sight of her, bringing back every second on the plastic mat beneath my grandfather's desk and the corner of the kitchen and the chair in the den, all of which I'd inhabited at various points in time over the weekend crying in my own various ways.
I started talking to her then, simple greeting at first as I eased my frame, still sore from the inexplicable exercise of bowling, down to the curb a couple feet from her. She replied, simply and analytically, and it was almost like that first night at the Pied Cow, me trying not to stare at her too intently but afraid to break eye contact, not wanting the dream of her actually wanting to see me to end, not wanting the interesting, thoughtful, beautiful woman whose first words to me questioned my sexuality to retreat back to wherever perfect place she undoubtedly came from. She told me again what she'd told me on the phone an hour earlier, that she and her sister were headed to the coast, adding that her mother had issued the edict, and it made sense to me, if only at the time.
She finished her cigarette and asked if we could migrate to the car, and I agreed. It was in the vehicle, safe in a place where I knew at least I couldn't escape, that I told her everything I could think to tell her, that I really wanted it to work, that I was willing to give her my heart, but she was giving me every reason to not do it, that I had placed my trust in her and was starting to think my trust had been misplaced, and a few other things that I don't feel comfortable mentioning here, and it felt so good to be fucking honest that it didn't matter that I was worried at how suspiciously agreeable she was.
When I was done, I realized she was touching my face, and the softness of her hands, the delicacy with which she treated every movement of her fingers made me close my eyes in spite of myself. She's going to do it now, I thought, this is where she's going to drop me and leave me all alone,
and I could have sworn I saw something in her face that filtered through into her voice, something suggesting she was about to do just that, but it came out as "I don't know."
I told her I was worried about her, and that I wanted to help her in any way that I can, and I could wait for her, but for my own selfish reasons I wanted, for lack of a more articulate description, to remain her "boyfriend," the word rolled off her lips weeks ago and I never ever expected to hear it, and it felt better than I imagined but when I said it, it came out tentative and rushed.
She said she needed to figure some things out, and that she still wanted to spend time with me, and we talked for a little while more then but avoided anything serious. We went inside then, joining her sister, who was packing for the trip, before returning to the car, this time with her sitting in the passenger's seat, sister behind the wheel.
"Goodbye, beautiful boy," she said softly, the name she'd called me the few times I'd actually seen her during the week.
"Be safe," I said.
"i'm alive, and that's all i can say.
No need to coax you away from your play.
No need to cloudy your sunshine day.
i give up, and i'm running away."
As the car pulled away, I felt a certain calmness settle into me, a real calmness and not the fake detachment I inherited from my father to keep me from hurting others, and a peace that came with the suspicions and facts of the matter that didn't quite make sense. Despite all of the questions, I knew at least enough to develop a picture of what was going on, and I'd done all I could. All I could do then was wait, wait until tomorrow, or the "tomorrow" she'd mentioned, the tomorrow during which she promised she'd call.
Tuesday has come and gone, and I'm still waiting, even though there's something at the back of my head that says I'm never going to see her again, at least not as I have in these past weeks.
But that's the way it is.
And the way it feels.
miloryan:
Aargh, girls!!!! Confusing specimens they are.