2006
Plane. Chicago to Ottawa. Then Ottawa to London. And London to Amsterdam: 8:05 pm somewhere.
Charlie & I slept in a little longer. Though it wasn’t sleep, I know I was tossing around and he was turning, too, though we were both entirely comfortable and wrapped up in one another. It was blue white morning light and peach warmth all over us. A charlie brown blanket, wool and rainbowed on one side and Alex’s big square fan atop the reversed hamper. A COLD BREEZE and then 9:00 happens. He removes the covers from my body and turns off the fan, threatening eminent heat… not so fast. I reach for the glasses and find something to wear; shorts, a floral tank top… he makes breakfast which I don’t eat save for the tofu… too much tomato sauce… I guess we’ll always forget… There is a somber attitude, though Alex is contented with de Beauvoir’s all men are mortal and Charlie looks quietly around.
When we say goodbye in front of the palmer house and all its tourists, I hold his face recently cleanshaven, between my hands… we kiss one another lightly. He puts one chin on my head. I remove my glasses. He rides off… Alex and I enter the photo shop to get pictures developed. It’s too pretty outside and it’s made everyone come out. The gay games thrive somewhere near the end of the pier. I go to find Charlie there. He’s smiling genuinely at lines of tourists. I lock his bike up and leave him chips and hummus. I hand him a figi water. I pass over $5 for french fries. He bends over the railing and I kiss him waving goodbye. I go to the beach and whip out Céline. I finish it, thinking I’ve wasted my time, that it wasn’t an end, that there was disappointment… but also the hurry of needing to go go go home to get packed and everything… but there are girls on the beach, and whole families, too, and I smile because there’s sand in my bag and in my book and now in my nose and mouth… A boy walks by, following a man, just a regular, mustachioed man with a tan and shades and the boy calls out, screeches in that little boy voice much too loud, “Steve! Steve! You stepped on a piece of glass!” He holds it high above his head. “I know,” the man replies with resignation. The sight makes me think of very little boys and how nice they are, and how eight year old boys are the worst…
I ride madly to the mcdonalds from which a furore of Wicked crazed tourists pours. I use my first atm card since 2005. I’m not sure if I’ve memorized my pin number… a man selling streetwise guards my bike… I put two dollars in his cup and ask if he’ll watch it some more… he does…
And still later, on another plane to London… I only have an hour of computer left before the lights and music go out… It’s terrible listening to music that makes you feel in the pit of your stomach just as you did those months ago, when all you did was lay with coats on sucking self indulgently from a lemonade glass or a cigarette or a joint… and the tears once again well up in your heart… and you feel like it’s ineluctable… somehow since you’re going over there, over there anyway… and your stomach heart blood tears wail a certain familiar jeremiad… I wonder did I accidentally bring Charlie’s bike key with me on my trip… The thought makes me cry with glasses off in this darkened cabin… my stomach growls in combined guilt-sadness and hunger, for of course in my haste I have also forgotten anything at all to eat… not a bite… not a crumb. I feel like the dead and rotten. And it’s just in remembrance, just in a photo developed today of regent’s park in London where Charlie & I broke up. A picture I took while cradling his voice in my ear, uncaring, thinking about the Possibility of Romain in Dublin. I took a picture of my view that moment, a green park, sunny, but the light of the flash catches the snow. A moment simultaneously hopeful and foreboding. And I feel too sad, now, I feel apologetic and angry at myself and missing Charlie for all he does to me and for all I do to him, and how hot tears welling up just make it worse and I know it, and for the truth now that I don’t want to ever be apart from him. How when we were together we were truly together, and how we couldn’t let family holidays keep us apart… how we’re a team through and through… and how terribly malignant we can be to one another… and how we don’t understand each other or trust each other fully enough even though we want nothing more than to. We both go through the idea, the knowledge that we’ll break up soon enough. I hate this, I detest it… it can’t be spoken about, it becomes all too real & inevitable and then, then it seems like a good idea after all.
Oh, and isn’t it pretty around here; the film just ended, that is, I can’t remember what it’s called something with matthew however it’s spelt and sarah jessica parker… it’s unusual to employ three mediocre names to form one… And now it’s everyone’s claymation favorite… I refuse to look.
Look, I only watched that stinking movie because I needed to get my mind away… it was circling around mistakes made and fuck-mes directed at myself… entirely detrimental, undoubtedly… when the flight attendant came by casually to ask if I’d like beef or chicken and told me I should have ordered a vegetarian plate, I really did start crying. Honestly… it was the kind of tears that feels like nausea. Getting all hot in the head and stomach, trying to fend it off… and then it just comes pouring down and I hide in my hair & glasses… so I accepted the salad and a sparkling water and a bland roll… I even ate ice cream… then the wine… And truthfully, the film and that terrible red wine really helped… I wish I was next to one of those portholes right now because I tell you… it’s daylight somewhere… I have no idea what’s below us, though I’m guessing it’s the great atlantic. It’s 12:58 am in Chicago…nearly 8 in Amsterdam, 7 in London… my precious little Eleneus is rolling in bed, about to awaken… perhaps he’s still up, fixing bread…
I don’t know where I am, and that leaves me in a curious place… this peregrination… so new, in fact as to leave me wondering at the wandering… I am thinking about Eleneus… It wouldn’t surprise me at all, in fact, should I dream of him… I hope I should see him… but this is the hot part of me, this is the part I’m so keen to question. This is the part who masturbates near strangers.
2007
brooklyn: 10:10 am
Actually calls me, he does, after sending the letter I miss not having you around I like being around you all the time, etcetera. And at maracuja we’re happy or courting one another and talking about taking a shower and having no one to wash… and doing a dance rendition to hit me baby one more chime, and moments, and it’s close and suddenly I’m out from the bathroom where we first kissed and he’s closed off to any flirtations and jubilations… ah.
