2004
I think it's funny the Americans traveling here in this train. American dads lifting the suitcases of old German men. Overweight and heavily made up American moms. Meanwhile, I sit and try to keep it a secret that I am an American myself. I'd like no one to ever know that, really, as it's definitely nothing about which to be proud. I can't wait to get away from it and to live speaking some other language and renounce my American-ness.
I'm definitely a stranger here but that's only because I don't understand. Americans want to but tend not to know any better. The cuteness that is everything Europe getting me. Striped buildings. It's cute like that. I wish I could sleep. I still cannot.
I cannot what?
I cannot cranefly?
2007
8:51 pm, brooklyn
My inevitable sunday night as it begins to dwindle. I want it to be later, or earlier, or with company, or with inspiration, or even better yet with wine or weed. Not wanting to want them. By Friday I will no longer have an interest in Alex. He will not get my hopes up for friendship or fucking. He will be gone as he already should be. Unfortunately… not so true. If only I had a joint to tide me over… a joint, twelve joints, cuddling by self with only words which suffice to keep me relatively cool awake and tired ready for the following week at nearly minimum wage, alphabetizing, climbing up and down ladders sneezing in the dust having crushes on people based on the books they like and the shy disinterested looks they give. And just because I want to have crushes, crushes, crushes galore! Again… and again. But Justin isn’t even very much fun to have a crush on. At all! He’s so boring to crush on, in fact, it makes me want to puke and not care all at once! A good for nothing little crush he is. The worthless truth as it bites my retarded ass… Ow! I suppose I could get some wine… maybe, maybe not. $12 later. It could last through to tomorrow night, even. But I just please want a joint, just please… I’m totally stupid and high on coffee. I’ll try to read the rest of the night, sober… but something has to happen. I have to be tickled or else I’ll feel bald and too specific.
2008
5:27 pm
Adan & his for some reason yellow eyes, letting the streetlight wash them to clear as I gaze from an inch away, or from no inches away on the porch of Max & Fingers at a three a.m.
It’s Adan, only Adan I think of now. We met at the party, and there he was without leaving my side. Back to Tucson he went some 36 hours ago or something like it. Elements impossible to recall thoroughly.
I intended simply to kiss him on that very porch before journeying off to my house, knowing I wouldn’t be sleeping any longer with Fingers, knowing at least not then for certain. The kissing was too full, too real, I fell asleep as it was too much, tingling in dream sensation and everything taking its time, nothing hurried in the slightest, his lips not eager nor his tongue any splitsecond more than mine; house could easily have passed with just the subtlety of lips and tongues, nothing persistent too. I was dizzy. I asked him what he was doing the following day, he said nothing. His perfect teeth always smiling, his lovely lips from a second, just a minor distance from my eyes. I asked if he’d like to go to the beach; he said we could go right then. In the apartment we gathered out things, he had nothing. He suggested we bring a beach blanket and took two towels. He said, will we need sunglasses? and found some perfect for us. We walked through a sunrising bedstuy, nothing nervous, and to the beach catching all the trains at just the right times, growing delirious now, the perfect early morning light I never get to see over jamaica bay, pink & blue with my hand on his leg, his pretty orange eyes, rows of white teeth always smiling. Our faces hurting from the smiling. Holding hands now because why not. Catching a bus on time, arriving to the fresh cool of an early beach morning. All alone, walking across the dunes barefooted, gasping at the air & scents without the sick new york so used to by now. A spot, the waves taller than we, blue grey & a sun coming up yellow just over west. In our underwear and kissing in the rough waves. He dives, I watch. Bright. Laying on the towels, sand fleas going crazy for us, kissing and sand, not to mind the sand, or even the bugs, or the sunburns, just wanting the kissing & so much of it, and touching and he laying atop, his beautiful face & smoothe brown body. My hair as a shade, then, protecting his eyes from the blaze… and my back growing hot, and company now that it’s reached 9 oclock, so wanting then a breakfast, and catching the bus immediately, sandcovered, drowsy, arms around each other. At the wharf he sat next to me and we touched knees. He tried to order sourdough toast, the waitress laughed and said, this isn’t manhattan. His accent of Tucson and undeniably. A sweetness around him killing me every second. A bird coming by, eating toast off the plate. Every glance so glad. Back to my house where I knew finally we could be naked. I suggested a shower; water on cold, our backs pressed, massaging backwards the other’s body. For hours it seemed again, in slow motion, our cool smoothe skin radiant under delicate fingers. And kissing, and kissing, and tasting water from faces. So much of our mouths all over each other. In bed we had sex for something like six minutes when we came simultaneously, I bursting into hysterics & the blood everywhere, hands and legs and stomachs and testicles. Every sex we had was the sweetest somehow deepest, like climbing down into granite crevasses. Into cool geothermal pools. And naps, but never for a moment untouched, or unspeaking, or ungazing or staring.
a plan
Save up all money. Try to write, try to print, try to publish, send things off. Apply for residencies. But! The money saved to move to Tucson. At least for a few months. From December the 1st until. Sublet the bedroom, stay forever. Maybe don’t have to pay much rent, even. I wish I could just be Adan’s girl, like he’s my boy. I can’t imagine it another way at all. Ever.
2012
At goldys. Coffee. I saw the business men at FORK, I saw the smiling servants in their white buttondowns. And I saw Dusty, my linguistics boyfriend, or see him on occasion; he, always on a bike, crossing a road, or about to get into a gorgeous old volvo, waves, smiles, calls my name. Not so exuberantly as all that, just still. And I, on a bike, or entering Lisa (sadly named subaru), take moments too long to recognize him. But he is still beautifully handsome and so fully bearded, and his eyes behind glasses appear slanted in the corners like those scandinavian men about which we tend to fantasize, and green, too. We are internet friends now, and I was even planning to attend Stephanie’s moving party: she is Eli’s new girlfriend. Very small and pretty with a pixiesh hairdo and an insane amount of laquered-on eyeliner and clumps of mascara. She, on occasion it is said, makes love with Eli using a strap-on at his request. But this is neither here nor there. She is having a moving party, to which Dusty rsvp’d. Only, the party has moved until next week, and so, in my delicious maniacal evilness, I became brave and messaged something about my disappointment that we won’t be meeting one another for realz. Oh, but he responded that he won’t be at the other party… etc. but it was left with him knowing that we might run into one another at a show at the lux. And now: fantasy detumescent. Who does he think is to make claims that I will ever attend the neurolux??! And then in my insane stalking, I found that he claims to be going there TOMORROW night for some sad bastards with beards & banjos show. For $7. I might just show up on the patio to witness the shenanigans… of me. But now, no. He is at least 3 years John's junior, and to the day. A true June 13 gemini, if you can believe it. I think for posterity’s sake I need to make him lovely number 34. And also: QUIT telling your new sexual partners how many you’ve had! This is getting ridiculous. I think John was a sort of getting-back-out-there practice kind of a guy. I mean, I told him everything, fucking everything, and now I'm fully lacking in mystery. There is nothing left to be said, no claims to be made. I am just there, and almost just a month later. Too Much Information. So! no more. And also: John is annoying the fuck out of me. Actually, just about everyone/everything is right about now. I have been doing my late nights, with John, with Brittany, with Kyle, with Nickey. And Brittany, I know you are sad & angry and have every right to be but really, you guys did get two kittens together and now you have to be stuck with all of them. Oh, it’s so unfair! Life is so unfair when you don’t give a second thought to the future & to what the fuck your actions will make. No matter, Kyle is sort of the funnies, the best. But Nickey sort of likes Kyle, which is funny, because she wouldn’t say so. But they are brother & sister, and would make such a strange and attractive sexual encounter. But I like John because sometimes he is so smart & thoughtful, and especially when we talk everyday about how it might be over now… I get tired of talking like this, and I think it’s coming from his side, his thinking that I’m over it, done. I don’t think he’s trying to quit me… but alas. After yesterday (during which I was a bit saddened by the thought) I just really felt it, truer and stronger this time. His cock remains nowhere near my mind. I guess my little yeast infection was the kickoff, and then my noticings of his superficialities, the things about which we could argue because like he said, maybe couples are just trying to create each other out of themselves, each individual in an attempt to change the partner into that person, just to be solid, but be two. I think that seems insightful, and exactly what I’d keep trying to do should I keep wanting John. There are too many picky little things I dislike, and then the fact that I will never like him enough to love him just how he is. Alas. We have our sex we have the good conversations, the beach, the attempts at intellectualism. And I am not looking for more than that, save for the spontaneous experiences of multiples, when necessary… how could I put out of my mind thoughts of Tim, which will never happen for he would be so weird and cold and never would we joke or flirt at work anymore; or Dusty, that bearded beautiful-eyed, linguistic-studying gemini; or Luke, wherever he is, probably gone gone gone for good; & etc. No, I can’t. Bruce is being better. He is at home, has been cleaning, has plans for himself that I hope he recalls are only for himself. He thinks he will be able to make it so we might be together again. I think I love Bruce very much and imagined forever that he and I would make it work. But now, not now. I hope for him and eventually for any us (friendship etc) that he can get his beautiful shit together. Because he is such beautiful shit. I miss him for days. The night before last I couldn’t take anymore of waiting for them all at the lucky dog; Brittany’s got her popular, her whims, and Nickey’s got her sliver… and I was walking, pulled by Ida, just wanting to go home WHICH I ALWAYS SHOULD DO WHEN FEELING IT and thinking how angry I was at Bruce because I really wanted it to work, too…
So today I have the beginnings or hopefully middle of a cold. I am running, the nose & everything and maybe this could account for the ease with which my specificness and annoyedness came yesterday. I don’t care what fucking sandals you wear. Or camel lights or arm & hammer. Or if you bitch that you can’t afford the coop, yet are able to go out and eat & pay for drinks whenever you like. Or when you complain that you hate rich people. Simple. Banal. Is that how John is showing himself to me now? No, I am also troubled at the idea of not being able to be with anyone else, having to explain or admit things. I want to be isolated! Isn’t this a part of becoming single? Let’s see… when even did this happen? June 27, the day of real single. My own truths are there, but my guilt is leaving. Because I left first, it happened, things happened first. Sometimes I think that John is so handsome, with his somehow scandinavian face, his straight profile, his slanteyes that are blue and green and with all of their beautiful wrinkles surrounding. And sometimes, he is so sickly thin, and blondehair covered, and his hair is balding, you know. And his lips are strange, and teeth… he looks old, and very young, and it is confusing. What is he? He is like Adán in the way he walks, and with distrust I notice… the sort of shuffling on the ball of the foot, the hunched shoulders. Does it give the impression of tallness? The hushed laughter is reminiscent of Adán as well… but then there are other qualities, Jer-like qualities, those disturbing attributes owned by an uncertain gay-ish man. He is good, I like him, you know, and our sex was getting good, and the making out and everything but yesterday, the night before… he is cynical, too, and a little evil and those things are uncontentious for me. But he & I will never be compatible. Who knows what he wants. Someone cool like me “you’re the coolest girl- I almost said ‘girlfriend’!” with that great smile of his that is so honest, o honest and I sort of loved him for that. Sometimes during the slow kissing I found myself thinking I love you, how do you say that to someone without ever saying it because it is untrue?
Last night I was in John's room, begrudgingly, because I’d been wanting to go home for hours & hours, and I was facebooking, and then there was Dusty and his figure came into my mind. I went to the car to retrieve the tiniest bit of pot I had, and a watermelon beer. I saw that guy Brian who lives down in the John's basement and he had just sprayed some AXE body spray around his “bachelor pad.” He has a very large television and carpeting. His buddy was coming over, a glass-blower. Brian used to be one of the handsomest boys in Boise. He wore a bolo tie and was tall and Spanish-looking. But now his hair has grown and he has those chops of mustache, and he is just looking like CCR in the least gorgeous way. And I think he is an idiot. But no matter, he gave me a couple of hits of hashish and then I went to find John, probably annoyed that I hadn’t arrived earlier. We took a shower, and he was rubbing his genitals with soap and getting extremely hard and it seemed at that moment that the giant cock springing from his tiny muscular fair-haired body was atrocious and repugnant. I got out of there, disgusted by the bathroom, by the toilet carpetings, by the gross toothpaste and easy cheap soap- shit, I forgot my soap- and then facebooked to see what could be seen. Wondering what Dusty might say; he has a girlfriend? girlfriends? He is so handsome, but maybe he is daft. He seems charming and sweet. Maybe he is completely unfunny. It wouldn’t surprise me. His smile seems to crack his entire pretty face into pieces. I just really think that we need to fuck. End of story.
