SMN

She was here two nights ago (you know the one, she chased away my friends, my roommate, made me insane with love/obsession? --I'm lying a little; see, I can't live with people, so I pseudo-chased the roommate away myself with mess and madness that comes with trying to be an "Artist" and supposed selfishness) and I was getting the good guffaws out of her. She was doing little but dying laughing; I was aglow. I was trying not to think of her soft mouth, but it was impossible. I was trying to remember how much I love her for that laughter, the things that come out of that mouth word-wise, the way her memories always excite me just as much as my own (if not more)... you know, not just how much I love to kiss that mouth. How much I miss her just laying down beside me.

I let her read everything I write. She sits down on the shitty futon beside me, cramped warm arm to arm, warm leg to leg. She tells me to stop looking at her, with a giggle. I can't tell if that means I really need to stop looking at her, or if she's only vaguely embarrassed. I look anyway. She points out things I don't think of. She tells me I'm too dark, too morbid.

I make her coffee. She keeps asking if we can hunt down some pot. I don't want to smoke. I'm trying to take my shit more seriously. So instead, I tell her to ask for something else she wants, something she can have. She asks for coffee. I guess I can do that. We sit together on my bed a long time. We talk about how neither of us are "relationship-people" (whatever that means), and she says, "But I want to adopt kids; maybe I just need to find another non-relationship person" and tells me in great details the imagined children-- an African boy, a Chinese girl with Southern rock names; she wants to raise them to save their respective countries. We shoot kid names back and forth at each other. I'm thinking about what it would be like, sitting on a future bed, with children, with her. It hurts a little, but I like it. And at one point, my story-words make her blush. She's not laughing. But then I can't handle the tension if she isn't going to reach out and take my hand or something (God, how I miss holding that small hand...), so I make her laugh again.

She decides, all caffeine-high, that we should go for a drive. She drives me out to Herrodsburg, some place called Line Station or something like that; she's describing the images that pop into her head as we drive these dark, tree-lined roads-- stuff about Napoleon and Northern Italy; we sing real quiet together-- myself always taking the lower parts-- Cat Power's cover of "Wild is the Wind." I'm dying on the inside, the wild animal is back. It is going to destroy me.

When she leaves me, however, she stays in too long for the hug. I'm breathing her neck, she's talking 'She loves me' shit; I kiss her cheek, gentle as I can be. And of course, comes in for that charateristic sneak-attack kiss she's sometimes uses (sometimes I believe she's as shy as me), so fast I don't know she's kissing me until it's over, millisecond style. And she's out the door, walking backways, smiling at me... She says, "Don't worry, because I want to stick around because I want to know you..." I'm thinking, "What kind of 'know'?" But she's gone.

Then, last night, she's calling around 8. I'm at ALW's in the city; I don't answer the phone even though I know it's her, to be polite to A. I leave an hour after anyway; the roads are icy, it's been snowing. I call up my mother and say, "How safe is it to drive that one-lane road to Danville right now, given the conditions?" She sounds wary, but just tells me to be careful. I think to myself, "Is it worth it to drive back now for a girl?" and answer myself with "Of course!" Then, I think, "But is it safe? ... Now you've reached the real question. I never gave myself a straight answer. I got back and called her; she didn't answer. An hour later, she calls back. She sounds sad and tired. She says she'd wanted to see me earlier, but now she's going to sleep. I think it's for the best. I shouldn't be putting myself through this again.

But I'm probably going to.



PS--Workshop is going really well; I'm making new friends for the first time in a while. There is one man who is particularly nice to me. I like him for his nice and his overly-English sounding name. I'm feeling all right about writing again. Funny how that works...

PPS--I just work up from a nap in which I was seeking God in psychadelic rainbow mooncrater under the sea... my backpack fell over the edge and I lost it. And I remember feeling in constant terror, constantly unsafe.