Love
The sun’s life is much too short, there in the sky. Then you walk in the half-light, only knowing that you’re going somewhere. Well, I know I am going. And I can see his face but I’m not sure he’s with me. It’s so hard to convince yourself that there is only one sun and that the fluorescent gods screaming at you to worship them can never save your soul. We adjust so quickly that we forget there was ever any sun at all. And we function fairly well without it. We believe.
It’s so easy to live in the half-light of the moon. It’s so easy to believe that the beautiful night world surrounding you is the same reality that the rest of the human race shares. Then it rises, and everything is gorgeous and there never was a life without the sun and there never will be a life without it. There is no such thing as night. There was, and always will be, sunlight; sunburn. And then, once you’ve become absolutely secure in the concept of perpetual daylight, the sun sets. But you’re so struck with the glory and unrationed beauty of such a brilliant death that you don’t even realize what is happening. How quickly our eyes adjust to the darkness.
Death
I think that, sometimes, we die unknowingly. One day we just wake up without waking and see the world with dead eyes and with a dead heart. And everything else has died with us. There is nothing I can do. There is nothing I can be except Death. Nothing I can see or hear, touch, or taste, or feel that isn’t surrounded by the overwhelming staleness of mortality.
And as he walks down the hall, my stoic eyes watch him; his muscular frame jarring slightly with each effortless step. And HE is alive. He once said, “I came to you trying to find life, but I only gave death to you.” You didn’t share it with me- I took it in willingly, thankfully; foolishly. My eyes lock with his. A shooting pain rips up my spine and into my eyes and I’m forced to smile. How painful it is to know that you are dead and why. He knows. He told me. I wonder if he can see that spark. Pain is the only thing that can survive within me.
Chris
I do not love you because you were my first kiss. (You weren’t.) I don’t love you because you were my first in every other sexual act. I don’t love you because you were given my virginity. I love you. Because. It’s that simple.
It was different then. You used to bring me goofy presents, and held my hand while driving, and walked behind me with your arms around my waist when we went out. Now the only times you show affection are when we’re sleeping together or about to sleep together. You say if this is love, then you must love me. And you say that one day you will “finally get the balls to get up and leave.”
What is it you think you are losing by being with me? You used to hold me in your arms when I asked you to without asking why. It was enough for you to know that I needed you. It was enough. I’m starting to think I should go. I mean, it’s great, sleeping with you and all. It gets better every time but we’re not even technically together. We’ve been ‘not together’ for seven months! We’re sleeping together! I feel like I’ve given you everything I have but you’ve left it just sitting out in the open.
Take it. I don’t want it. I don’t need it. I need you to call me and have four-hour conversations and I need to go to your grandmother’s house to watch Tremors and I need to know that I’m not just a cheap fuck that you stay with because you get head. I ache so badly and it’s not worth it. I know that after this- after you, I will never be able to love another human being. That’s why I’ve got to be with you. I can’t have my best experience of love be some guy who fucked me over in high school. I want to love you for as long as possible. I want to remember every second of this because I won’t be alive long enough to do it again.
Italy
Clear. Liberating. The pale blue sky; a sky the color of his eyes, light and warm. I think that I want him to miss me. The Duke University program for which I’ve been selected is in Italy. Come with me. Come with me and we’ll live together abroad so young and so free. Nothing to tie us down or hold us back. I want to see the world. And I want to see it with you. There’s so much out there to see, to taste, to experience and become that I crave all of the beauty for myself. But I am young. I don’t even have a driver’s license!
But this is what I want. I can work and take duel-enrollment classes this summer, take senior classes as a junior, save up until I have enough to pay for the trip over and spend my senior year in Italy. I can get room and board with tuition. But wait. I could graduate an entire year early. No, I would feel guilty considering all the people who helped me switch majors. Maybe I won’t switch. I could stay in the music department, graduate early and still get my seal. Or head to Italy and get my foot in the door of a great school.
We will never last that long. You have already ‘promised’ me that we will break up by prom. I have to be realistic. People change and grow. People grow apart. I know that, no matter what the circumstances are, I will feel used and angry when you leave me. If we do last long enough to even question Italy I mean, shit! That will be almost three years of us being… whatever the hell we are. Very very good friends who sleep together, know everything about one another, and occasionally say I love you. That used to make me mad but now it makes me laugh.
Sometimes I think I should just go by myself. That would be amazing. I can get some time away. Away from you. I mean, I love you, but what if you’re right? What if I’m just overcome with flattery by the way you look at me? You have been my first everything. I want to get away and find out what I want and what I need. I want someone I can look at randomly and say “Let’s go to Paris” and then we just go. I want someone who believes in keeping love fresh and new and beautiful all the time. I want flowers for no reason, and tiny love notes in my backpack, and day-long marathon sex. I want long hair and all black and blue eyes. I want you. Oh, and I need someone who will put up with my bullshit; that’s really important. I’m sure I could find that in Italy.
Love: A Realization
You know how, sometimes, you randomly have these shocking revelations?
It’s not enough.
I stood there before him, naked under that musty leather bomber, and listened to what I had heard a thousand times before. And I told him the truth: I don’t want to hear it again. And I don’t want to hear it again! Because looking at his beautiful face, I realized how dulled I have become after hearing it so many times. It works exactly how running water could dull a razor blade. I am so dead that you couldn’t even provoke from me stale tears. Dead to your touch; to your pale, cold eyes. I realized that what I feel for you truly is love. It is still, stagnant, pallid, twisted poisonous love, but love, nonetheless. And then I realized something else:
I love you and that is not enough.
It will not keep you. It will not destroy you. I don’t have enough for the both of us- it’s not enough. “We can never be anything,” you said. Of course not, because I love you and it is not enough and never will be. Never has been. My love and your fickle, partial affection mean nothing. Who is ever going to acknowledge it besides us? God? If we don’t make it real and important, no one will. Because no one cares, Chris. It is all up to us, and I’ve done all I can so it’s up to you. And if you don’t care and God doesn’t care and not another human being on this entire fucking planet gives a rat’s ass that it dies, then it will.
I love you enough to know that you need me; need me more than almost anyone else. I love you enough to know I need you more than anyone else. I love you enough to give up everything for hope, and enough to know that hoping is useless and everything is wasted. I love you enough to stay by your side and hold your hand and to talk you to sleep every night. I love you enough to look at you with these dead, stoic eyes and tell you I don’t want to hear any more of your bullshit. And enough to know that it is partly true. And enough to know that ‘partly’ means almost, but not quite. I love you enough to satisfy your sexual cravings and, hiding my numbness, pretend to enjoy it. I love you enough to let you kill me. I love you enough to die without contest. But I don’t love you enough; not enough to make you love me back.
Meditation on the Divine
To be of the damned and to pose here like I’m some sort of holy creature- what a wretched feeling. How horrible it is to sing these songs. Lift my hands. Read these words. Live a lie. It’s the most terrible of lies to deceive these who look to me for assurance of salvation. When Chris took the medallion back, I had nightmares. The power of the sub-conscious. Understand; don’t condemn. Don’t be disappointed and don’t look down on me. I’m searching; clawing desperately; blindly clutching to anything that resembles justness or fairness. I must be rewarded for my service.
I thought Christianity did that but it only decimated any humanity I had within me. God wouldn’t even look at me when He pronounced my sentence. So shall I defer to him. No man no god no religion serves anyone; they leech the good out of people and leave you clutching air where your heart (and cash) used to be. I’m going out for myself. I feel the call deep in my veins, pulsing through my body and into the air- into others. The call of night thrills me. What a beautiful sound.
A Letter to my Church
Money can’t make you _____. Success can’t make you ______ .
Sex can’t make you ________. Education can’t make you _____.
Happy?
So the only thing in life that is worth working for is happiness. And if I do not have the biological capability- I do not have the capacity to feel that thing which I crave so badly, what then? I trusted Him. I leaned on Him, I knelt at His Feet, I plead with Him. I lived according to His Love. I watched others be healed while I FELL at His Feet, and you know what happened? NOTHING. It makes me feel defective as a Human Being. All this talk of the “Joy of the Lord” that I agonize over. If I cannot be healed by that amount of faith, I cannot be healed.
Demonic
How strangely similar this new… shall I call it a religion? no, practice is. I must admit that it is appealing. The entire thing is meant to merge your conscious mind with your subconscious. Even in Christianity, where is that prohibited? Self-knowledge always appeals to me. Is that what I should call it? The true focus is the unity of physiological self to astral self. I must continue my practice of hypnotism and meditation.
I find that hypnotism is particularly easy for me. For some reason, I connect really well with whomever I’m with. Astral projection is undoubtedly more difficult. What an exercise for the mind, to have to visualize and control your waking REM! Rick thinks it is demonic. I don’t really care what he thinks; I just thought it would paint a more accurate picture of reality. What is so demonic about learning to use your mind to a greater capacity? What is so wrong with learning to work with and connect with your own psyche?
Even if there were something wrong with it, I wouldn’t give a shit. I have done much worse. I am drawn towards darker things. Books of death contain many truths, just like any other religious text. I will continue to explore elsewhere of course. Maybe with a combination of truths, I can find a Truth or Meaning. That’s all I really want: something that rests easily in my heart.
Peace and Promises
Simple peace, for the ten days I’m up here. Then it’s seven months of the year with my ability to feel pleasure so stricken that I can’t taste my food. God Himself says that I am not to look at the short-term effects. Now they’re doing this stuff on Faith. “If you want to be full of faith, be faith-full!” I had faith. God blessed me with many things, so I must acknowledge the conveniences that I’ve been given. What blessing can be truly appreciated when you lack the ability to enjoy anything at all? It’s as if God is mocking me- teasing me. Unlike the promises of the scriptures, I was not rewarded for my faith. So now I have none.
I don’t have the courage. I have the courage to wrestle with bloodlust, join legions of demons, and stare, unwavering, into the very face of Hell. But I don’t have the strength to get on my knees again. And ask God to heal me again. And hear Him say “No” again. It wasn’t just once. It’s not like I tried and failed and quit. Every night spent on my knees, tears pouring, heart bleeding every night for years. And nothing. They say that God never gives you more than you can take. I have thirty-eight scars. The evidence clearly bows to me. I search for a god who keeps His Promises.
Fat
[Author’s note: I was severely anorexic at this time so please read this entry in context and don’t take it personally- it’s insane.]
I don’t understand how people get fat. If I woke up one day and saw that I was fat, I would go back to eating < 800cals a day and running six times a week like I do now. It’s only logical. And if I ever got fat, I would never go out in public. Because it’s gross to have to look at people whose bodies are disfigured for lack of self-control. And if I ever get fat and go out in public, say, to shop for more food that will make me fatter and more grotesque, I will wear a tent. I’m tired of scantily-clad fat girls waddling around with their dimply flesh protruding in large quantities from underneath miniskirts and insufficiently-sized tank tops. Fat is revolting. Call me cold- call me insensitive, but I just don’t understand what the fucking mystery about weight loss is.
When I take over the world, all the skinny women and all the fat men will die. The only acceptable thin women will exist in several islands in the Pacific for procreation and breeding of physically perfect men. No women, thin or otherwise, will walk the floors of my palace to serve me. Only beautiful beautiful genetically altered men will have the honor of servicing- I mean serving me. Fat men and women are equally gluttonous in consuming space, stealing movie theater armrests and invading precious airline seats all across America. The end of obesity is for the common good. I should pass out fliers.
Lace Rose (a vision I had during sex)
Spun within me from the sweet, fragrant petals gradually unraveling in my heart, the soft, silken thread is new and so violent to me. Drawn from the center of my body to weave the delicate lace that covers us; comforts us. A skillful hand works diligently in the dark. Loving fingers gingerly guide the fragile red thread into place but it snaps. It recoils, visibly; the darkness is violated and all can be seen. The last petal sighs and shudders away, its ashes tenderly kissing the lace bleeding in the sunlight. Bed of roses. Crown of thorns.
Hooray for Gynecology
I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow to get birth control pills. I really don’t think Chris and I will be together after Valentine’s Day but I figure I might as well get them just in case. There are some things you just have to be adult about. You know I’ve never had an orgasm with him? I got really close, once, and then he came and we stopped. Sex with Chris is still missing something. I mean, he’s really big and all but I think that may be more of a problem than a pleasure. On the other hand, I’ve never had sex with anyone else, so what do I have to compare it to? It’s still the best sex I’ve ever had. Oh well, if at first you don’t succeed…
I Believe In:
Love: God: the Truths that exist beyond the two: death: compassion: pain: evil: beauty: the cool salt air: the touch of a lover: midnight: a world I cannot see: freedom: salvation: tears: knowledge: art: questions. I believe in my thoughts. If this were the last sunset I ever saw glancing off the ocean in lavenders and green; this that I can smell and taste and feel clinging to my hair… I could die in this moment, happily.
I Love You
AND YOU DON’T GIVE A FUCK, CHRIS! You don’t give a fuck.
Dream
You told me. And I stood there, furiously bathed in candlelight, the tender side of me showing as I reached out a wounded hand to caress your face. I let it slide gently down your neck; rake my nails across your chest. The thin, hard, sharp nail of my right forefinger draws blood just to the left of your breastbone. The mark is dull and sweet, but you do something entirely unexpected. You slit my forearm vertically. Aroused by my hatred and bloodlust, I slide myself over you and we fuck hard and long until we both collapse in a pool of blood, sweat, and cum. Hatred and lust and pain, and it was a wonderful dream. It’s what’s been going on all along.
Copy of a Letter from June
As I begin to write this letter I don’t really have an idea of what will be written. The clean blue ink on white paper looks so pure. There is a great deal that MAY be said, but I don’t know how much of it I CAN say. And this particular time of year has me drowning in memories I cannot escape. I find that I am terrified to… but I digress. Or do I? I can’t even keep my thoughts straight. My life and my view of life were changed drastically this past year. In this year I experienced the best and worst days of my life so far. These changes were brought about by two specific people.
I am certain that you know of one, so he need not be mentioned. The other is you. You befriended me and brought me to renew my belief and my faith in church and that meant so much to me. How, I ask the air, could the two people who changed my life, a life that has always been incurably stubborn, how could these two that I hold as treasures of humanity so completely and entirely not care? I cared for him more than I could ever have shown at the time. How could both of you fail to see your connection to me, and how could I fail to see the impossibility of my situation?
I say, “Things just happen; feelings change” but why did they have to end up the way they did? And could I have changed it? I’ll never know. This letter can only be seen as the martyred crying whining letter of the bitter girl, but that is not my intent. As for what is my intent… well, I don’t know. I apologize for my terrible rudeness as of late. I don’t know what brought it about. I really don’t. If I was bitter I would have been rude a long time ago, but all the past hurt and veiled pain cannot excuse causing pain.
The Break-Up
I did it. I finally did it. I finally gathered the courage to get up and leave. But was it right? It is never right. We made love to this song, “Love Song for a Vampire.” Here, in this bed. In these sheets. In this room that still echoes the sweet warm smell of sex. End it while it still has worth. End it now. “I’m sorry that when you fall in love with someone else and he loves you, that you won’t be able to… he won’t be able to take you because I already did,” you said. Maybe that’s why I did: because I knew that it would be another excuse not to love again. Not after you. “I like the day and you like the night. Once, we both liked the night. Now I like the day, but you still like the night,” you said. So? Let me like the night. What is wrong with liking the night? The first star to the left in Orion’s Belt: that is where you are to me. Because I can never reach you, and if I ever do I’ll burn up and disappear in the heat.
Time
It was hard for me to get up this morning. I knew that the second my feet hit the floor it would start: time. Not seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, or years, but the faceless, anonymous, measureless void I refer to as the time that I have lived without you. No clean slate for me. Everything is dirty- desecrated. Stained by you. But my oatmeal is ready and I need to shower. Routine calls while life passes away from me. I throw off the sheets, and exchange the warmth of satin and velvet for frigid morning air, and slide off the bed. THIS bed: the bed we slept in together. I fall off the bed. And it takes so long for my feet to touch the carpet. Suddenly I feel so young and vulnerable. And at the same time, I feel as if I have lived forever and will never die.
Ancient
We’re just kids.
I mean, look at us. We’re children. We’re not responsible adults. We’re not taxpayers. We’re not on top of the world; we don’t know everything- we don’t know anything. Why do I feel so old?
Double-Blind
I wear my sunglasses to hide the eyes I don’t want people to see the green or the grey or the tear that rolls down my cheek behind the shadowed glass. I don’t want you to see me I don’t want you to see how much I suffer I want to hide behind the black hide behind the red and my perfect body hide behind the sunglasses cower within my intellect hide and let the world think whatever it wants about the weird morbid girl who would be so lovely if she’d smile once in a while but I’m so dead I’m not going anywhere don’t look at me.
Rose
This picture in my head, I cannot extinguish or put it into words. A girl; a rose, both of which are one and the same. The rose’s color drains from her- runs through the stone floor, smooth and cold, until it is pale pink. So pale as the girl’s tears fall from the stem in a stream that mingles with the blood until there is nothing but the empty shell. It looks and smells real but if you touch it, it will crumble. They are so pale. The rose is stale and pallid in the girl’s thin white hand. All her warm, precious blood and treasured jeweled tears are spent and rotting on the floor. Just as you see her hit the ground, she turns porcelain and shatters on impact.
The girl and the rose that are both the same stares ahead, seeing nothing, because she sees everything. She looks right through you as if not you nor she nor the room nor the light nor the blood nor the tears nor the rose existed at all. The rose absorbs the liquid, glistening as it drinks. A splash of red kisses the edge of the petal until the tepid pool of crimes disappears. So does the room and the light and the floor and all that is left is the girl. Staring. Her breath softly imposing on the air- fragrant and sweet with pain, it makes no sound. It is a scene of horrific beauty. Still the words do no justice.
Change
The shops are closing: 30% off all merchandise! The places I go to occupy myself when there are people sitting at my table are lonely. Today there was no one, but I went anyhow to remember myself to the beach. To watch all the life continuing without me. To survey what has become of me- everything I stand for and have fallen for. But food was discounted so I got a cup anyway. The coffee is lukewarm- bitter. I’m still the same person I was two years ago, sitting in the corner with a notebook and a pen. I’m lukewarm and bitter, like the coffee that is different too… and 30% off.
You are not the stories you tell yourself.
You are not the stories others tell about you.
We are not the stories we tell ourselves.
**********
It’s not only that there is more to us than the best or the worst of our stories.
It’s not only that there is more to everything than our strongest or weakest stories.
It’s not only that the structures of stories can twist themselves between and away from our concepts and intentions.
It’s not only that stories do this because they are partially constituted on the structures of language which must depend upon its own inherent, contrived, or random sequences.
It’s not only that language is loosely but treacherously entangled with concepts and images that resist our formal notions of sequence and sense but still have their own grammars for emerging, blending, combining, dividing, and dissipating,
It’s not only that our stories, our language, our concepts & images, and our intentions are not purely ours, but represent also the infections, intrusions, blessings, and curses of others who surround us: supporting, mocking, undermining, manipulating, inspiring, ignoring, helping, hindering, giving to and and taking from us just as we instrumentalize, influence, uplift, denigrate, and abandon others.
It’s not only that our symbols and images, concepts and intentions, fears and longings are partially shaped by family entanglements, but also by traditions extending outward and backward into histories of religions, empires, systems of oppression, and struggles for liberation, escape, empowerment, and non exploitative mutuality.
It’s not only that our stories, symbols, intentions, fears, and longings extend outward and forward into our future selves, predicaments, and then into generations to come who will be weighted, tainted, confounded, agonized, and inspired by our struggles and our failures, our victories and our compromises.
*******
Our best stories would interrupt themselves, mock themselves, interrogate and dissolve themselves so that their readers or hearers would stay on edge, enlivened and alert to to the dangers and limits of stories, others stories, and their own stories.
Be suspicious of names and labels. In stories they are as arbitrary and contrived as timelines, arcs, and artificially concocted sympathies.
Be wary of endings and beginnings, especially when they are made to seem “naturalistic,” “quirky,” “outlandish,” or “seductive.”
Be on guard about style, polish, symbolism, allusions, “‘character’ development” and plot — or any other intrigue to control or manipulate your sentiments and attention.
And be careful about how you (or what passes for you) intrigue to do any of this to your “self”. The better stories you take in or generate might help you here because you cannot be the author or your own story because you do not have “A story” and the storieS that might seem to have you are not only yours.
We are NOT the stories we tell ourselves we are.
We are NOT the stories others tell us we our.
You are NOT the stories you tell yourself you are.
Not just because there is always something else.
Not simply because there is always something more.
Certainly not only because every story has gaps and falsehoods.
Simply not because faith and imagination are always somewhat betrayed by stories
But also because faith and imagination will never stop crafting, repeating, recycling, deconstructing, exploding, or escaping from our stories (best or worst).
You are not the stories you tell yourself you are.