When I was younger, we lived in a modest house--very condensed, ever so cozy as my mother would refer.
One sullen autumn, I heard a noise emanating from beneath my bed. Being between the ages where I would either hide from monsters or nod solemnly at inadequate plumbing, I sat up curiously.
I stood gently, trying very hard as to not breech the floorboards, and careen to my death. I held my head to floor, feeling my ear on the chilled wooden planks. A hazy, frizzy sound not unlike static electricity or a spray of water.
Water.
I thought of all scenarios: the house caving in from the pressure of a burst pipe, drowning all my family and earthbound possessions within a grave marked by undrinkable water, formulating a pool of morbid air bubbles as suffered our final gasps.
Or--well, nothing else was coming to me. So I stood upright and quietly got back into bed, awaiting the inevitable doom that must befall us.
I said nothing.
I shook a little until the waters wrapped me in their embrace, my body numb and nonresistant.
I was asleep.
But the water did continue to rise, not to the depths I dreamt, but to an almost worst midpoint.
My father spent the morning hacking away wood boards; sparks and clangs overshadowed much of the otherwise sunshine-exhumed day.
No one knew how this pipe, running throughout the house could have gone unnoticed by the entire family. We all had slept through it, hadn't we. If only one of us had noticed so much sooner, we could have attacked the problem faster. But alas, none of us did.
I burned my fingers on the iron that day. With no running water to balm, I sat quietly, unable to sob.
My mother thought I was so brave.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
Living Together
Briefly in my travels, I was living east of Chicago (or perhaps North New York City) or somewhere altogether else. There were six of us total, although seldom at one time.
JIMMY, if one were to be certain of his real name was a longterm smoker with an ash voice and dark cuticles. He was the primary breadwinner who sold unmarked tablets in discrete paper bags for jittery 2am visitors. His main concerns included avoiding police officers, sexually pleasuring his wife Alma, and taking large doses of cocaine that quite easily prevented him from accomplishing terribly much between the hours of 9am and 5pm.
ALMA herself worked down the road at a florist. She loved cheap jewelry, nail glue, and romance novels she'd buy off the rack six at a time, and resell for dubious profit to the used bookstore on the first floor. She would never make more than 60-65% back on the books, but it was more of an odd satisfaction for her to cheat the system... somewhat.
Alma's brother was a large man named JULIAN and despite the fact that he did not share a race, accent, or last name with Alma, was stalwartly Her Brother. At least between the hours of 9am and 5pm. He eventually stopping coming and going and simply stayed. He became a regular customer to Jimmy and soon after stopped talking about the spiders everywhere that only he could see. He retained his job as mail clerk nearly three weeks then but by the time I left, he was more concerned with painting the window panes very, very slowly. Those windows took about a month to dry.
KENSEY was next: a totally clean, straight, thoughtful guy I suspected was writing his disertation on The Human Condition using us all as fodder for his research. Instead he was simply making his rent, sleeping when he could, and heading out to a nursing homewhere he worked as a cook. I saw him for about seven hours total, so I don't know much about him. He eventually published a bookk, "Lfe in These Drug Addled United States" and wrote me a check for 30 dollars.
Finally, there was MARLA, who claimed she was an actress, had zero tolerance for Jimmy and Alma, but appreciated the dense fog that precluded their awareness towards her nonexistent financial contribution to the household. She successfully bobbed and weaved Jimmy and Alma for weeks at a time, convincing them through silence and lack of eye contact that she wasn't even there.
Marla was the reason I eventually left. She managed to somehow convince Jimmy that she was the one who was living in my space, paying my way, and the owner of my luggage. To be perfectly honest, we did share a similar complexion and were using each other's rouge but it was a nonsense approach all the time. It took all my strength to tip my belongings from her meth-friendly hands.
I ducked into a library for my final week in town and found my next benefactor on a Thursday.
JIMMY, if one were to be certain of his real name was a longterm smoker with an ash voice and dark cuticles. He was the primary breadwinner who sold unmarked tablets in discrete paper bags for jittery 2am visitors. His main concerns included avoiding police officers, sexually pleasuring his wife Alma, and taking large doses of cocaine that quite easily prevented him from accomplishing terribly much between the hours of 9am and 5pm.
ALMA herself worked down the road at a florist. She loved cheap jewelry, nail glue, and romance novels she'd buy off the rack six at a time, and resell for dubious profit to the used bookstore on the first floor. She would never make more than 60-65% back on the books, but it was more of an odd satisfaction for her to cheat the system... somewhat.
Alma's brother was a large man named JULIAN and despite the fact that he did not share a race, accent, or last name with Alma, was stalwartly Her Brother. At least between the hours of 9am and 5pm. He eventually stopping coming and going and simply stayed. He became a regular customer to Jimmy and soon after stopped talking about the spiders everywhere that only he could see. He retained his job as mail clerk nearly three weeks then but by the time I left, he was more concerned with painting the window panes very, very slowly. Those windows took about a month to dry.
KENSEY was next: a totally clean, straight, thoughtful guy I suspected was writing his disertation on The Human Condition using us all as fodder for his research. Instead he was simply making his rent, sleeping when he could, and heading out to a nursing homewhere he worked as a cook. I saw him for about seven hours total, so I don't know much about him. He eventually published a bookk, "Lfe in These Drug Addled United States" and wrote me a check for 30 dollars.
Finally, there was MARLA, who claimed she was an actress, had zero tolerance for Jimmy and Alma, but appreciated the dense fog that precluded their awareness towards her nonexistent financial contribution to the household. She successfully bobbed and weaved Jimmy and Alma for weeks at a time, convincing them through silence and lack of eye contact that she wasn't even there.
Marla was the reason I eventually left. She managed to somehow convince Jimmy that she was the one who was living in my space, paying my way, and the owner of my luggage. To be perfectly honest, we did share a similar complexion and were using each other's rouge but it was a nonsense approach all the time. It took all my strength to tip my belongings from her meth-friendly hands.
I ducked into a library for my final week in town and found my next benefactor on a Thursday.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Comforting
I find myself sleeping covered in blankets these days. As one with a severe affection for the chilled, I dislike this sudden want of flannel and fleece to keep my naked body warm during the night. I pile it upon me, layer after layer as if I expect a princess to sit upon me and discover her royal line. Laying unblinkingly in the mid-night, I thought to myself "Perhaps I throw so much down upon me as to not just float away."
Indeed, I have been feeling somewhat untethered to the ground, unfixed my to keepings. I do not enjoy it. As one may surmise, I have a certain taste for adventure, but tedium has its delights as well. Certainly, wandering from place to place leaves you uncertain whether you will be eating that evening or if your rest will involve unforgiving haystacks or a calming yet unmoving rock of some sort.
Sticking to one post is actually quite like me. My father did not travel. Vivienne did, of course, in her "career on the stage and back allies," as she called it, but my father would stay within the same local towns and my mother stayed at home. I know now she resented it, but at the time, I thought it rather pleasant. She would allow me to act out a one man show as I played the Hatter, Hare, and Dormouse all the while in the back of her head she must have been saying, "God damn, Finland is probably beautiful at this time of year."
The traveling began when I left home to find my fortune as it were. Circuses, theatre performance groups, whores, and thieves led me to where I am now: a short walk from somewhere else. Our group is tired these days; half asleep after eighteen hours of pulling ourselves through hog-covered pastures in Scotland or perhaps bustling through the fancy horse-driven cabs in the City. I'm sure I've forgotten.
But the cold that once refreshed me now merely... makes me feel cold. Certainly this winter has only just begun and I know I just haven't the socks to make it through.
Indeed, I have been feeling somewhat untethered to the ground, unfixed my to keepings. I do not enjoy it. As one may surmise, I have a certain taste for adventure, but tedium has its delights as well. Certainly, wandering from place to place leaves you uncertain whether you will be eating that evening or if your rest will involve unforgiving haystacks or a calming yet unmoving rock of some sort.
Sticking to one post is actually quite like me. My father did not travel. Vivienne did, of course, in her "career on the stage and back allies," as she called it, but my father would stay within the same local towns and my mother stayed at home. I know now she resented it, but at the time, I thought it rather pleasant. She would allow me to act out a one man show as I played the Hatter, Hare, and Dormouse all the while in the back of her head she must have been saying, "God damn, Finland is probably beautiful at this time of year."
The traveling began when I left home to find my fortune as it were. Circuses, theatre performance groups, whores, and thieves led me to where I am now: a short walk from somewhere else. Our group is tired these days; half asleep after eighteen hours of pulling ourselves through hog-covered pastures in Scotland or perhaps bustling through the fancy horse-driven cabs in the City. I'm sure I've forgotten.
But the cold that once refreshed me now merely... makes me feel cold. Certainly this winter has only just begun and I know I just haven't the socks to make it through.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Love Letters
At first it was all I could do not to read them. I had found them stashed in a trunk that by appearances had every intention of being presumed forgotten. However the dusty atmosphere in the southwest attic corridor coated nearly everything in at least a thin filament, so it bared to reason that at least someone was sneaking regular peeks at this collection during indeterminate intervals.
And, truly, a collection it truly was. Stashed within pockets of the inside cover, taped fondly under aged photographs, and sealed and opened and resealed, was a box. The box was marked with a black lace rose pattern, peeling at the edges but otherwise in tact (although whether it had been lovingly reglued over the years was unknown). The hinges on the box, wooden and stained before its decoration, were not nearly new and the clasp was more of a suggestion than anything else.
Inside, were stacks of papers, folded repeatedly, and the last two the most weathered of all.
"My darling. He will never leave you, for he loves you as much as I do. I do not envy his sincere disappointment when I've stolen you away and our lives become one."
"My darling. The war rages on in my soul during this time of confusion. I know now that you must stay with him, despite the hopes of our own future. Never forget me. Someday perhaps the complications that deal ourselves in our own wretched lives will dissipate and and we will have the opportunity to be one, without prying eyes or half-hearted commitment. With sincere affection and regret."
Naturally, I was stunned. I stayed silent, very still for a long time as I tried to process all of this. A woman that I thought I had known all this time who kept a secret correspondence. A lover from somewhere indistinct yet with a readily available postal service. My world was not shattered, no, but rocked in increasingly ungentle waves.
I quietly, with moisture in my eyes, folded the papers and restacked them to their places. I closed the box with the letters inside. I reclasped the vaguely fictitious latch on the front of the box. I placed it back in an everyday, unsuspecting, nonthreatening location, nearly just at the edge of window, signifying no true value of it's contents for what was it but a box of random jumblings, perhaps pins or thimbles or disinteresting, outdated wires for appliances a neighbor couldn't bring themself to toss out so you took, knowing you would never utilize any of it.
I walked silently to the stairs, my only betrayl a hushed creak under my footsteps.
As of today, having read these letters, and while I would continue to love regardless of whatever the past held, I was never exactly going to think of my mother the same way again.
And, truly, a collection it truly was. Stashed within pockets of the inside cover, taped fondly under aged photographs, and sealed and opened and resealed, was a box. The box was marked with a black lace rose pattern, peeling at the edges but otherwise in tact (although whether it had been lovingly reglued over the years was unknown). The hinges on the box, wooden and stained before its decoration, were not nearly new and the clasp was more of a suggestion than anything else.
Inside, were stacks of papers, folded repeatedly, and the last two the most weathered of all.
"My darling. He will never leave you, for he loves you as much as I do. I do not envy his sincere disappointment when I've stolen you away and our lives become one."
"My darling. The war rages on in my soul during this time of confusion. I know now that you must stay with him, despite the hopes of our own future. Never forget me. Someday perhaps the complications that deal ourselves in our own wretched lives will dissipate and and we will have the opportunity to be one, without prying eyes or half-hearted commitment. With sincere affection and regret."
Naturally, I was stunned. I stayed silent, very still for a long time as I tried to process all of this. A woman that I thought I had known all this time who kept a secret correspondence. A lover from somewhere indistinct yet with a readily available postal service. My world was not shattered, no, but rocked in increasingly ungentle waves.
I quietly, with moisture in my eyes, folded the papers and restacked them to their places. I closed the box with the letters inside. I reclasped the vaguely fictitious latch on the front of the box. I placed it back in an everyday, unsuspecting, nonthreatening location, nearly just at the edge of window, signifying no true value of it's contents for what was it but a box of random jumblings, perhaps pins or thimbles or disinteresting, outdated wires for appliances a neighbor couldn't bring themself to toss out so you took, knowing you would never utilize any of it.
I walked silently to the stairs, my only betrayl a hushed creak under my footsteps.
As of today, having read these letters, and while I would continue to love regardless of whatever the past held, I was never exactly going to think of my mother the same way again.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Gossip
I contemplated writing some great essay on the morality of gossip--its complex aromas situating between malice, good fun, bald lies, and particularly the thrill that you are sharing tales that may return to their illustrious moron of a target. But that seemed more pretentious and heady than even me.
It all comes down, I suppose to Fucking Other People. Either the salacious rot is literally about some floozy shag and a half or it's about ruining someone, taking pleasure in another's unaware misery--or having a laugh at Thank The Christ we aren't as damned fools as the one we dare speak of.
I suppose I have failed at catching myself before the essay began. But I'll attempt--no demand--to be brief.
Nobody Gets Theirs. No--no one will get what's coming to them for their fabrications or (worse) blatant honesty. In fact we just go on, and if we learn of the stories our beloveds have said, we make a fuss and gossip on back to The One we think hasn't told the same story we've just heard. Because if we didn't, we would be too afraid to again connect with anyone--be it parchment or flesh. When wronged by the gossip we've heard about ourselves, we go on and spread it to someone else because Damn The Mouth that started it, but Bless The Ear who will hear our side. Oh, and what a bitch she was, you know; did you hear what she wore to the festival? Total tramp.
Eventually we--or perhaps just I--will forgive or forget (Never Both) the wronging party and move on with lives, perhaps with them again.
Because without the gossip, you'd never know anyone gave a damn about you.
and that almost is worth finding out for.
It all comes down, I suppose to Fucking Other People. Either the salacious rot is literally about some floozy shag and a half or it's about ruining someone, taking pleasure in another's unaware misery--or having a laugh at Thank The Christ we aren't as damned fools as the one we dare speak of.
I suppose I have failed at catching myself before the essay began. But I'll attempt--no demand--to be brief.
Nobody Gets Theirs. No--no one will get what's coming to them for their fabrications or (worse) blatant honesty. In fact we just go on, and if we learn of the stories our beloveds have said, we make a fuss and gossip on back to The One we think hasn't told the same story we've just heard. Because if we didn't, we would be too afraid to again connect with anyone--be it parchment or flesh. When wronged by the gossip we've heard about ourselves, we go on and spread it to someone else because Damn The Mouth that started it, but Bless The Ear who will hear our side. Oh, and what a bitch she was, you know; did you hear what she wore to the festival? Total tramp.
Eventually we--or perhaps just I--will forgive or forget (Never Both) the wronging party and move on with lives, perhaps with them again.
Because without the gossip, you'd never know anyone gave a damn about you.
and that almost is worth finding out for.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Monsters
I was mad with Theresia's lover--and I can't promise I won't be again--but I go through moments of empathy. He is in love, going through his life. He does not owe me or anyone anything. He is doing the best thing for him, which is something I cannot deny. I've done everything in my power to do so as well.
Sometimes it works out. Others, rather not.
A vicious world greets us when we wake up every morning and when we go to our beds, the thoughts run through our brains, desperately trying to find a way to make it better. Some smoke, or drink, fuck like gods or schoolchildren, bury themselves in work, learn from professors... still more are privileged to find someone who is willing to wake up with them, to face that vicious world with sword in hand--side by side--to fight the real life nightmares.
When you wake up without for the first, second, thirty-eighth time, you feel abandoned. How dare they go off to fight someone else's monsters.
To risk the fortune cookie parallel--I suppose we're meant to fight our own demons. But to be fair, I was there with her monster for monster. Demon-fighting is not just left up to one party. I can't argue that perhaps I failed... perhaps the monsters were too strong.
Or too weak. Yes, maybe, I fought the wrinkled rat beasts away too fast. She had no reason to stay. Or this new guy has no monsters to speak of, knows when he should shut up, and fucks like a knight off to war.
Tonight--only tonight--I hold a truce, my successor. May you experience love, joy, and undignified pleasure at my expense. For it has nothing, truly, to do with me.
But someday, when you tire, when you burn, or take your leave to the battlefield you have long neglected, I ask this:
Break her heart.
Make her grieve.
Bring her new monsters.
Monsters I can deal with.
And do not love her as much as I do. When you leave, and you will leave, you will have saved yourself some demons as well.
Sometimes it works out. Others, rather not.
A vicious world greets us when we wake up every morning and when we go to our beds, the thoughts run through our brains, desperately trying to find a way to make it better. Some smoke, or drink, fuck like gods or schoolchildren, bury themselves in work, learn from professors... still more are privileged to find someone who is willing to wake up with them, to face that vicious world with sword in hand--side by side--to fight the real life nightmares.
When you wake up without for the first, second, thirty-eighth time, you feel abandoned. How dare they go off to fight someone else's monsters.
To risk the fortune cookie parallel--I suppose we're meant to fight our own demons. But to be fair, I was there with her monster for monster. Demon-fighting is not just left up to one party. I can't argue that perhaps I failed... perhaps the monsters were too strong.
Or too weak. Yes, maybe, I fought the wrinkled rat beasts away too fast. She had no reason to stay. Or this new guy has no monsters to speak of, knows when he should shut up, and fucks like a knight off to war.
Tonight--only tonight--I hold a truce, my successor. May you experience love, joy, and undignified pleasure at my expense. For it has nothing, truly, to do with me.
But someday, when you tire, when you burn, or take your leave to the battlefield you have long neglected, I ask this:
Break her heart.
Make her grieve.
Bring her new monsters.
Monsters I can deal with.
And do not love her as much as I do. When you leave, and you will leave, you will have saved yourself some demons as well.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Diaries Kept
Dear Vivienne,
Glorious--strange news... I have met a wide-eyed, silent little slip of a girl. She seems to be telling a sad portrait of a story. I needn't believe it all. I know there is truth even in the most vicious of lies--but I am not as certain she is so aware.
I read her journal. She pressed it to my chest one night. Her eyes told me read it--or burn it--perhaps one right after the other: glimpse enough of the tortured thoughts on the open page, commit snapshots to memory, and then incinerate all but the very last of her words.
I read, for hours, her horror stories. In the morning, I returned it to her. Her eyes were never as green as but in that morning light.
I asked for it again the next night. I had seen her scribbling furiously in the margins. She shook her head--she would not. Perhaps there was finally something she had written that was so personal. Or perhaps this was a new journal, the other cast off in a trunk or a lake or a firebed and such new entries were not for my eyes.
The girl has murals of her dreams up and down her arms.
Glorious--strange news... I have met a wide-eyed, silent little slip of a girl. She seems to be telling a sad portrait of a story. I needn't believe it all. I know there is truth even in the most vicious of lies--but I am not as certain she is so aware.
I read her journal. She pressed it to my chest one night. Her eyes told me read it--or burn it--perhaps one right after the other: glimpse enough of the tortured thoughts on the open page, commit snapshots to memory, and then incinerate all but the very last of her words.
I read, for hours, her horror stories. In the morning, I returned it to her. Her eyes were never as green as but in that morning light.
I asked for it again the next night. I had seen her scribbling furiously in the margins. She shook her head--she would not. Perhaps there was finally something she had written that was so personal. Or perhaps this was a new journal, the other cast off in a trunk or a lake or a firebed and such new entries were not for my eyes.
The girl has murals of her dreams up and down her arms.
Monday, October 27, 2008
21/39
I had a love affair with a man in my early 20s. He was in his late 30s. We had this game that we enjoyed to play. He would tell me tremendous lies and I would pretend to believe him. I would tell him tremendous lies and he would pretend to give a damn.
It's not a time I very proud of, as I have my suspicions that this gentleman was no gentleman. He may have been married. He may have had kids. He may have been using me all along to get through some early (or late; he may be dead by now) mid-life crisis. It's all very possible and likely. But I enjoyed it for what it was: encounters with lightning. Our affairs were split into multiple stormy encounters, conversation for the sake of hearing ourselves talk: me pretending to be much older than I was (which, admittedly may have been a turn-off for him) and him pretending that he really had more than an hour to spare when he was with me. 59 minutes later and he was almost certainly out the door. But he'd be back. He always came back.
Well, until he didn't.
It's not a time I very proud of, as I have my suspicions that this gentleman was no gentleman. He may have been married. He may have had kids. He may have been using me all along to get through some early (or late; he may be dead by now) mid-life crisis. It's all very possible and likely. But I enjoyed it for what it was: encounters with lightning. Our affairs were split into multiple stormy encounters, conversation for the sake of hearing ourselves talk: me pretending to be much older than I was (which, admittedly may have been a turn-off for him) and him pretending that he really had more than an hour to spare when he was with me. 59 minutes later and he was almost certainly out the door. But he'd be back. He always came back.
Well, until he didn't.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Good Advice
Dear Vivienne,
Life is interesting. You promised me that it would be. I remember you told me it would be difficult. No one else ever said that. Mom was fair about it; she promised that if I worked hard then I would reap the benefits. Dad said that things would not be handed to me in life. For a work ethic, they basically imparted that I had a lot of shit to do if I wanted to get anywhere. You said that however hard I worked, I would be met with resistance, troublesome people who would stand in my way or say no I cannot do that or no you must not do that, and sudden realization that because I truly want something does not automatically mean I will get it.
Earlier, I thought that meant, well, then why work at all, hard or soft on projects or love or commitment or schedules. Just fuck it all, seriously. Fuck It All Seriously. Do not take anything for granted, but accept the things that come and seriously ignore adversity, move past it, and try to find something else that works instead.
Now I am not so certain. I should have asked you to be more specific. It seems that all the good advice I ever got was in metaphors. That's lovely, but what happens if I'm interpreting it wrong? What if I took it wrong? What I was wrong? It only now occurs to me, likely dozens of years too late that the people giving me advice could have been wrong.
Even you, my dear Vivienne... you have lived sixty-seventy-some years and you must know by now that through those turns and twists that you had to turn and twist backwards to get to where you started and try again. And it must be that the advice you gave me at 8 or 18 must have been based on what you learned. But in those 10 years, you must have learned something as well that may contradict what you earlier said. So who do I listen to... the grandmother (yes, Vivienne, I know) that told me so at 8 or the grandmother (yes, Vivienne, again) at 18? All in-between? The days between those years, you spoke to me, were there clues to transitioning opinions? Surely.
Am I asking too much? I can't depend on you to know everything or tell me exactly what to do unless I was I researching to play you onstage (sometimes I wonder if I'm not). So maybe I think that I ask too much of you, am expecting you to give me all the answers when you had to struggle them for yourself. But can't that be the benefit of at least going through it all? To know, triumphantly, that you can impart what you had to go through so the one you love does not have to go through what you needed to go through to get through it all.
Vivienne, I must confirm: I have no idea what in the hell I am doing.
My love to you this holiday season,
Viktor
Life is interesting. You promised me that it would be. I remember you told me it would be difficult. No one else ever said that. Mom was fair about it; she promised that if I worked hard then I would reap the benefits. Dad said that things would not be handed to me in life. For a work ethic, they basically imparted that I had a lot of shit to do if I wanted to get anywhere. You said that however hard I worked, I would be met with resistance, troublesome people who would stand in my way or say no I cannot do that or no you must not do that, and sudden realization that because I truly want something does not automatically mean I will get it.
Earlier, I thought that meant, well, then why work at all, hard or soft on projects or love or commitment or schedules. Just fuck it all, seriously. Fuck It All Seriously. Do not take anything for granted, but accept the things that come and seriously ignore adversity, move past it, and try to find something else that works instead.
Now I am not so certain. I should have asked you to be more specific. It seems that all the good advice I ever got was in metaphors. That's lovely, but what happens if I'm interpreting it wrong? What if I took it wrong? What I was wrong? It only now occurs to me, likely dozens of years too late that the people giving me advice could have been wrong.
Even you, my dear Vivienne... you have lived sixty-seventy-some years and you must know by now that through those turns and twists that you had to turn and twist backwards to get to where you started and try again. And it must be that the advice you gave me at 8 or 18 must have been based on what you learned. But in those 10 years, you must have learned something as well that may contradict what you earlier said. So who do I listen to... the grandmother (yes, Vivienne, I know) that told me so at 8 or the grandmother (yes, Vivienne, again) at 18? All in-between? The days between those years, you spoke to me, were there clues to transitioning opinions? Surely.
Am I asking too much? I can't depend on you to know everything or tell me exactly what to do unless I was I researching to play you onstage (sometimes I wonder if I'm not). So maybe I think that I ask too much of you, am expecting you to give me all the answers when you had to struggle them for yourself. But can't that be the benefit of at least going through it all? To know, triumphantly, that you can impart what you had to go through so the one you love does not have to go through what you needed to go through to get through it all.
Vivienne, I must confirm: I have no idea what in the hell I am doing.
My love to you this holiday season,
Viktor
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Afterglow
When Theresia left me, I went several months sleeping alone, staring blankly at my eyelids, and unable to think of anyone else.
And then one day, I woke up not alone. I turned to see an attractive, young woman next to me, sleeping a restful and apparently deserved slumber. A pang hit. My first lover since Theresia and I felt guilt. I had gone so long with nothing but a longing next to me as a I slept. I was suddenly faced with my desire for human contact being met with just anyone. It was not love--not a sweeping feeling of completion. Just flailing bodies. Satisfaction. Orgasms. A few.
Was I suddenly over T? Impossible. A love of all ages reduced to a slut moment of weakness. No--still hurt. Still pain felt within to ensure that I was not loved back. Somehow for a few hours and a lot of wine, I had gotten over it long enough to be met with with desperately search my mental faculties for a name that wasn't coming. She didn't stay long enough to warrant tea and a scone, never mind a formal introduction.
Nor did the second girl. Or the forth. Or the young man I met outside Blarney's city limits.
Why am I doing this?
Why do I enjoy myself?
Why do I still not feel "over" as what Theresia so solemnly requested I succumb to us being?
Over.
Lovers since... lovers that paled in comparison to passionate companionship, but remained worthy alternatives to the bleak sorrow for the three hours before that I would pass out every evening I put a nightcap on.
The lovers came and went, rarely with return appearances, except the odd third audition which left me a week for a weekend, filling my brain with jealousy and fear that perhaps this repeat visitor was Theresia's incumbent. Naturally it was not, and the 3rd was charmless.
The worst became when the sex got good. More than functional--hot. deep. enrapturing.
It was easier to just assume I was swine who'd fuck Circe even with the apple in my mouth because that I was simply how I was made to be. While I could still argue that in theory, I would wake up, no sorceress to blame for my behavior, or my feelings of warmth and satisfaction. Feeling of being... happy.
And while every day kept me lockstamped in reality's flaws, I began to think that maybe I could be happy again.
That made me feel awful.
And then one day, I woke up not alone. I turned to see an attractive, young woman next to me, sleeping a restful and apparently deserved slumber. A pang hit. My first lover since Theresia and I felt guilt. I had gone so long with nothing but a longing next to me as a I slept. I was suddenly faced with my desire for human contact being met with just anyone. It was not love--not a sweeping feeling of completion. Just flailing bodies. Satisfaction. Orgasms. A few.
Was I suddenly over T? Impossible. A love of all ages reduced to a slut moment of weakness. No--still hurt. Still pain felt within to ensure that I was not loved back. Somehow for a few hours and a lot of wine, I had gotten over it long enough to be met with with desperately search my mental faculties for a name that wasn't coming. She didn't stay long enough to warrant tea and a scone, never mind a formal introduction.
Nor did the second girl. Or the forth. Or the young man I met outside Blarney's city limits.
Why am I doing this?
Why do I enjoy myself?
Why do I still not feel "over" as what Theresia so solemnly requested I succumb to us being?
Over.
Lovers since... lovers that paled in comparison to passionate companionship, but remained worthy alternatives to the bleak sorrow for the three hours before that I would pass out every evening I put a nightcap on.
The lovers came and went, rarely with return appearances, except the odd third audition which left me a week for a weekend, filling my brain with jealousy and fear that perhaps this repeat visitor was Theresia's incumbent. Naturally it was not, and the 3rd was charmless.
The worst became when the sex got good. More than functional--hot. deep. enrapturing.
It was easier to just assume I was swine who'd fuck Circe even with the apple in my mouth because that I was simply how I was made to be. While I could still argue that in theory, I would wake up, no sorceress to blame for my behavior, or my feelings of warmth and satisfaction. Feeling of being... happy.
And while every day kept me lockstamped in reality's flaws, I began to think that maybe I could be happy again.
That made me feel awful.
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