your blood would burn like acid
in your veins underneath silky white innocence skin
and your mind filled with electricity
like schizophrenia energy
these violences would trickle downward until they're inside you you're a river
filled with sludge and you can feel slick
dirty nausea behind your eyes
stomach turned into boiling water
mixed with thought like disgusting hatred
when you can't ever forget
this is jealousy
"Take your hands off her, while you're talking to me....."

That's you. She says. How can it be me, I ask? You are always doing that, that stare thing. That look. I give her a puzzled look (though I do know).

I don't touch women. True, she says, but your eyes do plenty of walking. And, I think, and what?

Why does that matter, I look at cars, at books, at CDs I don't buy- it's window shopping isn't it.
No, it's not, she says, and now she's looking (away).

Is this anger or jealousy? So I ask. Both, she says, but her glance is still "out there" (Man, I am thinking, where is this going?)

I do not "do it" as the expression goes. I have one SO and that is sufficent, but maybe that isn't enough. Should we have the kind of oneness that precludes a glance, a leanover the chair and take a second look/look. I'm not sure, but I know we don't have that. I don't have that.

"Why?"

She asks. Why aren't I sufficent? I don't know - both how to answer such a loaded question and also why her question hits the mark. Do I know why she is not enough? No, but if I did, it is not likely I would tell her.

Anger, immediate. I'd like to have a little talk with her, explain in quick low seething breaths why she is not allowed to stand that close to him. Anger, unjustifiable, mean. It's not her fault, she is only responding. His actions are what's driving me nuts across a room, silently, pretending to talk to other people but really keeping a constant beam of crazy nervous radar trained on the both of them, in the kitchen, laughing. I can hear her laughter from here. His is quieter, like he's laughing about something he will not tell me later.

Maybe he doesn't see the way his eyes are when he is with her, his hands, his legs. They all angle toward her, his posture mirrors and encompasses hers. It was only a conversation, he will say in the car on the way home from the party. You were there the whole time. It wasn't like we were sneaking off to talk to each other. I wasn't flirting with her / just talking / I wasn't / no reason to worry.

Unjustifiable, I know he's right, all his words. He can be right, I'll grant that, but he doesn't understand.

We've talked about little things. He helps me watch strangers. I know he understands subtlety. I wish he understood that it is the tiny things that get to me, his eyeflicker, eyecrinkle, tiny smiles she does not notice but I do. It is the tiny things that are eating the lining of my stomach, destroying the fabric of every logic circuit in my brain.

I'm begging to be talked to, begging to have attention paid to me, but those at whom I look invariably continue on with their daily lives, with their own friends, no need to look beyond their circle of the moment and see what might be waiting outside.

And I’m that girl that men fear, I'm the girl who looks at an attractive man and my imagination takes off. First he'll speak to me. He'll find me intriguing, someone he wants to talk with again, and he'll call me in a few days. Before long we're hanging out all the time. Then he starts staying the night at my house, and then we go on personal histories and problems, paranoias and financial situations.

Then we either suffer a thunder-and-lightning breakup or we get married.

And then I realize I haven't even spoken a word to this guy, the boy with nice eyes 30 feet away from me in a strange coffeehouse where I've only been to drink chai twice. Suddenly I am defeated, I have no chance, and he walks out the door with his friends.

Will it always be this way? Will I always be afflicted with the passions of my youth, seemingly unabated and surely undiminished from when I was 16 and in love? I was spoiled, once, and only once, by someone who felt as strongly for me as I felt for him, and ever since then it has been a weird trickle of men who don't know themselves, don’t trust themselves, or delude themselves with visions of their lives that just can't exist.

They say a kiss is just a kiss ... but what if that is sacred to some people? What if a kiss is still to some people an old-fashioned way to say that they like you enough to have this most intimate contact with you, but that kisses are handed out only as rarely as gold bullion?

Then I guess I will be fated to sit here, looking at that guy with nice eyes and a prematurely failed relationship and wonder how the hell it will all happen, when I can expect to find someone to whom I am irresistibly attracted and by whom I am never revolted, yet will also feel the same about me? Someone who does not inhibit my thoughts or speech, and who is not inhibited by me - that is the man I seek. Someone who will stimulate all aspects of me, but inflame me with anger fierce enough to lash out and not meekly whimper away into the shadows.

And what the nature of jealousy? Is jealousy proclaiming to be "over" someone and then needing to leave the office for the day when you overhear a co-worker invite him for a friendly jog after work? Or is that being irate that the a relationship in any form, even a friendship, cannot work because there is something there neither of you can get over? And that this girl -- who cannot know the things you know about him -- is free to jog with him when you are not even able to talk with him lest things be misconstrued?

All these rhetorical questions never get me anywhere, and this is simply unfit to be read. It means nothing outside the membrane of my mind and my life, and it means that I am being obstinate about having the last word. You can only decide to initiate conversations so often, because then you would be giving too much and you would have lost the age-old battle, but is it better to concede when it means the air would be clear?

I feel as if I've never been so stubborn about anything in my whole life, and if I don't start taking a stand some time, then perhaps I never will. Too bad for him that he has to be the whipping boy, the first one who will be ignored because that is my only option. Too bad he is too beautiful for his own good, and that he puts me in a foul mood when I see him because I loathe that we cannot be friends. Too bad that things have transpired so that you will see more of him, now, when you need to see him least.

You say to everyone that you're over him, but some stupid thread continues to persist within your heart. Admit that it is pure physical attraction-no wait, you know you would be lying to say that was all. It is his lifestyle, the way he lives life, the way he does things, and you hate to say you might be in love with him because you hate him at the same time because he can't admit truths to himself.

And you hate that he is fearful rather than flattered because some of his interests have piqued your curiosity and become things you like to do, too. Isn't that how you discover some things, through friends? You hate that he can't understand your genuine interest, and can't discern your platonic intent. You'd like to tell him that you're treating him no different from any other good friend, a friend you value and a friend you love, but if you have to tell him that then it's not worth saying.

And you hate that this is one of those people who is like no one else you've ever met, but most of all you just hate him for being such a coward. For not being able to face up to himself.

But you can't do it for him, you can't be his mind or his intellect or his conscience, and this is why you keep your silence, because any woman who throws a man's faults in his face will only feel his resentment for saying out loud what he already knew deep inside but couldn't admit aloud. He'll only be worth having once he can admit his faults to himself of his own volition, and in the meantime because you can admit those things to yourself where he can't, you're far better off without him, better to find someone more grown into his skin, beautiful as it may be, sickeningly magnetic, so terrible you have to leave the room and avoid his eyes when you do.

And you won't ask, you won't mention, it will just become your own black secret, a mark on your heart that you still feel something for him. But no one else can know. And he will go down in your personal history as the one who got away, the one who still makes your heart flutter from a brief but long-ago encounter, and the one who still makes your mind reel from the possibility of what it might have been like with him.

But no one can know.

Jealousy is the follow-up album to X Japan's major label debut, Blue Blood. Although not as highly revered as Blue Blood, it was the album that finally catapulted them headlong into the mainstream, making X Japan shows at the Tokyo Dome sell out.

Jealousy was released in 1991, and was the last album to feature Taiji on bass guitar. The record features more variance in songwriting than any in X's career, and due to Taiji's own songwriting direction, is the most 'American' of all their releases. This 'Americanized' X Japan did not sit well with Yoshiki, however, and Taiji left the band a year later.

1. Es Dur no Piano Sen
music: Yoshiki
2. Silent Jealousy*
words & music: Yoshiki
3. Miscast
words & music: hide
4. Desperate Angel
words: Toshi
music: Taiji
5. White Wind From Mr. Martin ~Pata's Nap~
music: Pata
6. Voiceless Screaming
words: Toshi
music: Taiji
7. Stab Me in the Back
words: Hitomi Shiratori
music: Yoshiki
8. Love Replica
words & music: hide
9. Joker*
words & music: hide
10. Say Anything*
words & music: Yoshiki

An asterisk (*) designates a song released as a single.

"I... Gotta tell you something" she says. I already have an idea. At this point we've been a couple for three years and change, always living in the same apartment. "There's someone.. Someone I really like." It's been barely four weeks since I left, drove across the country and moved into a tiny dorm room to go to school, leaving her behind to focus on work.

I guess who it is on the second try. It was obvious, after all. We've an arrangement within the spectrum of polyamory, even if it's been mostly on paper and less in practice over the years. "No fair that you knew before me!" she pouts. They kissed, after he had helped her move. My gut roils, but my message says "aww!". I can't be the contrarian this early on, or she'll recoil. I probe for more information, but she doesn't know how she feels or what she wants.

"Well, I want to have sex with him" she tells me a little later. My heart stops for a second. This was expected to a degree, we've had similar talks before, but they've only led to fruition once or twice. "Well, do you have to go that far right away?". She says she can't know how she feels about somebody until they've had sex, and my intestines attempt to flee through my throat. "Well, as we've talked about, I wanna talk with him first" I try, clutching straws. "I was thinking of inviting him over for wine in the weekend" she volunteers. It's too much, I break down.

Suddenly I feel broken inside, like what we had has just been thrown out the window. Intellectually there's still a distance, this is still technically the early stages of negotiation, if I've remembered our rules correctly. "To be honest..." I hate myself I hate myself "I'd prefer if you took it slower than that, really. I don't mind kissing, fondling etc, but I really don't feel comfortable with the thought of the two of you..." my vision blurs "you know, fucking. Or being naked together..."

"Come on!" her furious sadness is palpable through the monochrome text. "Here I thought you were FINALLY letting go, and now you're in control again?! I need more autonomy, you don't OWN me for FUCKS sake". My head is filling with static, like a thousand televisions with the volume turned to full. I have no idea what I'm feeling anymore, and can hardly express it. The sickness in my stomach has set like food poisoning.

"I've never demanded LESS control, don't you see?". There are tears in my head somewhere, but they can't seem to find their way out. Years of conditioning and subconsciously fighting them back whenever faced with my own real emotions forbid it, once more.

 

The week trudges on, my heart full of acid and my mouth full of bile. All conversations we have now revolve around me trying to express my insecurity, and I feel met with non-sympathy. I try to talk with other, wiser friends. It helps, a little, but as friday evening rolls in, I instinctively buy a sixpack of beer and barricade myself in my dorm room with light hearted comedy and alcohol, trying my best not to allow any part of what might be happening in her new apartment be subject to speculation. Did she keep her word? Would she tell me if she didnt?

I macerate a garlic on my kitchen counter making dinner. My hand bleeds, but remains unbroken as I pick the splattered remains off the walls and floor and gather the usable cloves into a cup. My mind is ablaze with feeling replaced, cuckolded and reduced to a prop in her life's play. Later I drift into fitful sleep, still unable to cry.

 

The next morning I wake and ask her. She replies with as few words as possible without directly withholding information. I hate myself I hate myself "you said so many times you didnt want to know, but now you do?" she objects. I ask her directly, and the reply comes six hours later. "We made out, that's all". Part of me trusts her, but a Dragon on my shoulder lists the reasons why she doesn't have to be honest, I'm nine hours away after all. Considering how I've reacted, what incentive is there to be honest? "We've talked now, so you can talk to him". I don't take her up on it until later.

"I just wanna bang her, and she's nice to talk to" is the wordsmith's reply. I've just bared my soul to him, in an attempt to squash the Dragon Ambergris that has taken residence in my gut. He's apparently unable to discuss emotion, and his motives are nauseatingly straight forward. He was my friend in that town, second only to her, and he has no qualms with stepping on the grass. The dialogue progresses slowly, I attempt to make myself clear, but he's unable to reply with anything but trite idioms and news-kiosk-clichés.

"Around her I don't joke my feelings away, and I don't know how to talk, think or react to feelings. She's really nice to be with". I thank him for his honesty and leave, to get wasted in a cheap bar downtown. The alcohol numbs me enough to shove the war in my heart to some unread section for the night. Going to work a few days later, the thought acts like a skullbound baton, disabling my focus until once more, I shove it back down the hole.

The Dragon is less furious today, but his claws are buried deep.

I don't know how this will end. I just want the pain to go away at this point.

 


 

Faced with my own emotion for so long, rationality is the first casualty. Later in the week I find my focus once more, exploring Buddhist methods for handling jealousy. As it turns out, being such a ubiquitous emotion, fighting jealousy is considered a core tenet of that way of mind. I meditate, for the first time in years. In the stillness of that imperfect clarity, I find peace. At least for a while.

Instead of sitting inside my darkened dorm, steeped in emotion like a forgotten bag of tea, I explore the little gym room adjacent, the use of which is included in rent. The gym becomes my second home for an hour every other day, the weights and machines become extensions of myself. Grunting like a lumberjack, I ignore my pot belly and focus on the motions. Testosterone and dopamine blend like kahlua and cream, neutralizing some of the acidity.

I meditate.

I lift.

I fight.

Not for myself, for her. For what we built during those years, the long nights of whispering when we should sleep, the hours of making love and the frantic combat-like sessions of passionate, primal fucking. I can't give her up, I can't give us up, not now, not over this. I must grow, and leave the past behind. Like a launched rocket, going back is synonymous with disaster.

He's just a little cuckoo.

I AM the dragon.

Jeal"ous*y (?), n.; pl. Jealousies (#). [ F. jalousie. See Jealous, and cf. Jalousie.]

The quality of being jealous; earnest concern or solicitude; painful apprehension of rivalship in cases nearly affecting one's happiness; painful suspicion of the faithfulness of husband, wife, or lover.

I was jealous for jealousy. Zech. viii. 2.

Jealousy is the . . . apprehension of superiority. Shenstone.

Whoever had qualities to alarm our jealousy, had excellence to deserve our fondness. Rambler.

 

© Webster 1913.

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