This is one of the things that happens, because even with my ovaries perfectly intact I can be just such a cad as to think will you just please shut up it is harder to kiss you if your lips are moving. Or please those hands should be sliding up and down my back, get over what you are saying and come to me. Stop with the gestures, I get it already.

Last week I was grumpy and hating my friends and struck out on my own in the coffeeshop. I came armed with my journal and a book on exploitation film. And then I hunched over it and the coffee shop I frequent has this most amazing stereo and I always end up writing about the songs and how they almost always push me to bursting. Like one afternoon when I was missing him out of nowhere and ten minutes later and equally out of nowhere "Most of the Time" comes on and I didn't want to cry because it made me believe in something. The word "synchronicity" has dropped out of our vocabulary but that was what we used to called it then. That was also his fault for liking Sting so much.

So here I am hunched over a brand-new notebook and swooning at every song coming on and swooning and moping. I am aware of embarassed by and in love with the cliche I have become. At 13 I would have wanted to grow up to be the kind of girl who sulks in coffeehouses and geniuses around alone on a Friday night. It was no small comfort that I had.

This boy came in periodically to read to his friend at the counter passages from Baudelaire. Then he returned to his table out side where his cigarettes and the temperamental air awaited him. And then some other people sat down. And this one could not entirely hide his eyes behind his nerdy glasses and those eyes were I knew following me. I made this movie in my head. There are a couple of people in a cafe with only glass between them. And something important is happening, they know, because it is never this instant. And the song is swelling and you are singing along in your heart (you don't know what it's like to love somebody to love somebody the way I love you). It hurts and is excellent and then he leaves. Hank Williams has a song about this, only it's about sculptures of American Indians who gaze at each other until one ofthem gets bought. It is a peculiar warning against shyness. I am trying to be less armored. I am not afraid of dying alone, but I'm very much afraid of living alone.

Some nights. Nights like this, I just want to cut to the chase. I am always impressed by words but I'm also impressed by horrible pickup lines and makeup and clothing and the sight of things thrown on the floor. Really. I am sorry but when you were talking I was admiring the shape of your lips and evaluating their kissability. I have caught others doing this to me. It makes you feel golden or covered with shellac. But give yourself to me. Leave your mark. I need it.

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