Hot water feels so good on your hands.
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small circle
--wet wind reunion--
i saw people i knew in high school at a bar. home for thanksgiving, gathered for someone's birthday. the two worlds of outside and inside, 20 degrees difference, the gateway being a clumsy woman checking my license with a penlight. inside the faces i used to know rendered blue, blending into the dark wood paneling. walking into the yearbook bat cave.
--the birthday boy--
the birthday boy rubbed my back and it put me in a tiny trance. just a quick drunk circle to distill all the months i have gone without being touched into a single drop of syrup, the amber lonely shakes. rolling down the vast expanse of my back.
but he was so drunk he could have been absentmindedly wiping the condensation off a car window. for all we know.
he also spit in my face a few times while talking, accidentally. this made it very clear that it was time to go.
i had a cigarette with him first. "what have you been up to? since i last saw you?" being sober talking to someone who is about to fall over into the grass, you wonder if this is the best time to the truth. i mean it might actually work, or he might remember my answer.
--you wanted to know--
i was in some sort of fog with my best friend but it had nothing to do with him. he fucked me ten ways to tuesday. then i came back home to be unemployed for a while. i drove to california to befriend my solitude, and to hook up with my long term frenemy with benefits. this summer i had a whirlwind mindfuck with a wonderful, damaged illusion. i started writing something long. i used to have a crush on you. i have intimacy issues. do you have to brush your hair that way? can i bum another cigarette?
4:16 a.m. - 2009-11-28
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out
sometimes it's as simple as, dammit, i wish i lived in a city, because tonight i could really go for some good thai food, followed by a drunken makeout with a stranger.
9:19 p.m. - 2009-11-22
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the bridge
i'm on the bridge, the bridge has guardrails, the guardrails are made of iron, iron is forged by men, men ask me if i need help finding anything, i say, no, i am on the bridge.
the bridge is high up. a breeze! up my skirt. the boots hug my calves until i come.
--
actually when i wear these boots at lowes i almost believe. read a definition of intimacy in the newspaper, made me fold it twice and stand up in the middle of my sudoku! i've become obsessed with peppermint.
he didn't want me, clean a break as a spearmint leaf. why did it take me so long? he buried them all. i am ashamed for the first time, i believe, ever. i can't even go on my own facebook profile in case i see him in my friends panel, because he is not my friend, he is an asshat. i masturbated to him just the other night.
--
i drive through the woods, the road where your high school boyfriend goes too fast and takes a wide turn to make you tremble, make you curl up like a drying leaf into his shoulder. he has no other way. that's the road.
i drive it and sing along to paparazzi, the road i paved when i was in high school, forged by my dark unfulfilled, hot tar i laid on the road, piercing my ears to make me a woman, before i had boots, before i went to lowes and sang chase you down until you love me.
2:03 a.m. - 2009-11-21
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seriously
at noon i've taken to watching mtv's true life and as a direct result i've also taken to talking to myself as if i'm being filmed for a documentary.
true life: i'm driving to buy my brother a coffee table.
i thought that habit was gone. i used to pretend that my middle school crushes were watching me through secret cameras. can't decide if that's the most egocentric thing ever, or the most insane thing ever, or just pathetic, or if i did too much drama camp in the summer, or if that was my life before blogging existed, or everything all together mashed up like the filling of a delicious breakfast burrito.
true life: i could go for a breakfast burrito at all times. true life do you know anyone you could set me up with? i'm incredibly picky and as i understand it a lot of godddamn trouble if it weren't for that mouth.
2:29 a.m. - 2009-11-12
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he knew the question to ask
you're in the suburbs. you're not dead. don't you have some friends?
don't you have family? a place of your own? naturally beautiful eyebrows?
don't you have two jobs? what more?
you could be doing data entry for so much money it almost fills the hole in your heart. you could survive the swine flu. you could tutor part time. you could be writing a novel, ordering indian takeout, borrowing classic southern literature from the library. you could sell cherry-vanilla cupcakes for $1.50 each. i did. you could decorate your brother's apartment in exchange for a loan on a laptop.
prepare yourself for the most boring voyage of your flowering years. give up marijuana for a job.
---
last night i dreamt i was trying to get back to charing cross but naturally the only ticket i could buy involved my being handcuffed to a parole officer.
the parole officer happened to be a british man i dated for a week back when i lived in london.
he and i had some sex. the handcuffs were gone then, i suppose, the volatile existence of dream mise en scene.
i'm trying to think how it happened. something with, i need to take this bus and then that bus, or this train to that bus, or i could just buy this ticket and become a prisoner on parole.
it was incredibly pleasant. the pleasantness followed me all day. he took care, he was behind me lacing his hands in mine and saying, what are we going to do with you?
1:55 a.m. - 2009-11-10
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time to make the donuts
swine flu
too much take 2 tsp exp date 12/08
stood up, licked half an envelope of a letter for Wy, went back to bed. i won't send him the swine flu. someone made pancakes for me.
i have a job interview tomorrow and they'll probably like me more this way, loopy. i thought about fucking Tr for the first time in a while. could be the tide.
or could be the expired cough medicine, because it should be noted--i woke up at 5 am and thought i was in a cake factory. not for a split second but for twenty minutes. i said, fine, i can go back to bed but i've got to get these cakes made before morning.
1:51 p.m. - 2009-11-02
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have a good time!
look so this is why you're not a good person. because you worry about grammar rules that don't exist or don't understand how to be a good good to be so peeved when i say that i can no longer drive you to the airport. did you get that from Ad.
---
egad if horridness was sexually transmitted. god wouldn't i just rot from the inside out?
---
while you're out there waddling in the sun, yes go buffer your rhetoric until it no longer dulls me.
have a good time! smoke some dope and circle jerk. keeping me in your minds and your hearts--your collective mind. comes up with the lamest, wow.
walker percy wrote the BOOK I WANTED TO WRITE FUCK
1:29 a.m. - 2009-10-28
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who could have been gone
he reads and rams, i walk over the leaves, mutter to myself, when does it stop feeling like a trap?
the secret of my success is the precision with which i've cleaved myself into little rectangular compartments. rather like a bento lunch.
i have this sputtering part that charms the pants, sometimes the literal pants, off of people.
there is also a hop-skip part that mumbles in loops, crunches the leaves, comes bearing gifts. the clearest cut to myself. i spend ten minutes here and understand everything.
--
you matter so much to me in such a specific way-- no one can understand and it sweeps me into a corner to think about, how good and fit my feelings are at last, how free and singing i am with the thought of you, my friend, but i lack in my expression, and i want you to know, i want there to be another word for this feeling i have towards my best friend, a man i used to but no longer, really, is there no other word, except that one printed on some old lady's tee shirt as a symbol between I and MY DOGS?
12:41 a.m. - 2009-10-22
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waste
i'll be the kind of girl whose shoulder blades slide back like patient wings.
suddenly realizing i am pale, puffy, reduced to two tones. i think the cashier at cvs (bought more flossers) wouldn't be shocked to see me, not think i was ill or wearing bad makeup. you'd have to have known me in the past.
i saw a picture where my cheeks are so pink i wonder if someone slapped me just before it was taken. but then there's a smile, not just for the camera-- for the person behind the camera. whoever it was. for all the people who will look at the photo. for everyone, everywhere, i present, my taut lips.
---
i've been burning through these dental flossers, pre-strung little harps, wasteful fuckers. i go through four at a sitting. suddenly, one day i wanted the most resilient gums possible. i wanted gums you could roundhouse kick without a spot of blood.
this habit/frenzy won't last. it won't even fade out. like before, suddenly, one day, i'll look at the package of flossers and no longer feel excitement-- and no dread, either. just a big nothing. possibly, a nudge of guilt, initially, when i throw them away, and then renewed if i see them in the waste basket. why is my waste basket mesh? why is my bathroom mirror positioned such that when i see my reflection, i also see this mesh basket, and everything i've thoughtlessly discarded into it?
there are so many easy solutions. line the waste basket, or move it. or stop throwing good things away. i see these solutions, too, in the periphery of my reflection. somehow they are out of my reach, more useless clutter.
2:24 a.m. - 2009-10-16
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