from Broken//Open
written 15 October, 1998
Watching the fiery veins of my age-warped window waver afternoon light across the wooden floor. I wonder if I’m not addicted to this sickly feeling of expectancy. Of want. She said Quite the opposite, to my question. Quite the opposite, and the fiery veins in me wavered. Didn’t they also in her? She reached for my lips with hers and I caught her forehead with mine.
She is a nineteen or twentyyearold art student with a jittery air and a compulsive way about her. She seems like she would be wonderful to live with. She can talk softly.
Last spring I drove my roommate Josh I’s clunky station wagon down town to pick up Josh Q’s stuff from the art school dorms. They – Josh and her – were standing out front. I pulled over. We loaded the car. Josh went up to get a few more things and I stood on the corner with her and I wanted to kiss her, thought she had a cute ass. I wanted to kiss everybody back then. I wanted to kiss everybody who attracted me. She attracted me.
Her name is Kate. She has clear brown eyes.
This last summer almost drove me absolutely under. Between satisfying the monstrosity which is Chicago’s caffeine craving amidst dealing with clueless middle management and lazy upper management and a dwindling amount of clearheaded, lighthearted fellow shite takers – between *$’s and a maniacal search for the Divine and a ripping drive to create and think and hold on to the power of creation while simultaneously trying to fix myself and meddling with other’s fixatives, solutions – between all that and an immense need for solitude and silence and a passionate discourse with my father which, for me, held the key to my definition and selfhood by redefining and, in a sense ‘killing’ the faith he imparted to me – between all these factors and a deftly controlled, out of control sex drive I was pretty much on the verge of getting the chance to see all my neurosis flourish and multiply and become quite tangible before my e’er reddening eyes…
*
But I’m on the other side of that now. I quit my job in a big bang that might or might not have anything to do with anything other that retail rage, and I took off with Christina for Pennsylvania where I bummed around her house for three weeks. We went to New York one weekend and I got my nipple pierced and tripped in Times Square and very nearly ripped through that herd-sanity into a purer pattern but was stooped short by a monkey and a knife in my chest and I faltered and Christina had left me alone to go get film and everything – the traffic, the music I was dancing with, the crowd who looked on – all paused and I screamed “What do you mean I can’t dance?”
Aside from a handful of direct contacts with Christina in her bed, the three weeks were a long stream of slightly intoxicated stupporings and paranoid flushes of Anxt. The first week I wrote next to twenty pages to dad (unsent) that brought me up to speed with the whole theoretical side of my belief. The remaining two weeks my head literally shut off, which is a shame only because of the incredible amount of intelligence being slung around in that place.
*
I haven’t talked to Kate since last Saturday when we first intersected…
She just now called. I don’t really know how to start with her. I’ve learned to not worry and just let it be taken care of, but that knowledge doesn’t seem to resonate with my heart as much as it does with my head. So, expectancy.
Clear brown eyes.
*
Yet again we had a dinner party here. Kate and Chris (who was with us on Saturday) as well as Josh ad I supped and communed over pizza and boiled corn, sipping at just a little wine. By way of the four of us, after the meal was prepared, there didn’t occur much cohesion. Chris popped off a lot of jokes more crude than witty – though quite a few of his ejaculations would have been humorous to me had I been in the right mood. Kate and I, from time to time, would get alone and speak a bit, until such time as interruption seemed appropriate by the others.
Dinner was had, wine and cigarettes ensued on the porch, and when either Kate or I would go inside, the other would follow. The boys took themselves, after our lead, into the living room where we listened to music and I swiveled to look at her. I took out a stack of pictures and we ended up arranging and rearranging them across the floor, prickling at the synch we caught. Together.
I got up to change the cd, in the kitchen. “Love me tender” bassily pervading the house – she came in to find me staring out the screne door, overlooking the back yard. She got water. I turned around. I don’t think we said much. There was no light on. Close. Closer. Kiss. Kiss her.
We both marveled (after an hour or so of this, moving out to the porch) how this is a backwards way of going about things. Start in the middle, work outwards. She astounds me, and yet what can I really say? To know?
I’m willing… I said, trailing off, my mind jettisoning to another moment, which I quickly swept back until my thoughts simply quit, and my entire store of energy drained out of my left foot into the dirty wood, to soak the cigarettes and water the discarded m.j. seeds.
Factors of weariness:
1) close contact without any definite prior knowledge.
2) Prior relationships with roommates, thus what’ll happen will not be free of certainly direct ‘outside’ inside influences. That is, everyone is going to be a participant in this, which will force me to be more linear, honest and careful than I’ve had to be when what I do happens out of the (primarily social) scope of those I live with.
3) I read somewhere that the phrase “Have your cake and eat it too” is a sort of inadequate rendition of the original. After all, should you not own the cake you eat? But the general gist holds: Sometimes one food clashes with another. Thus Lilly.
4) Thus Lilly: resolution of some sort!
5) (this possibly doesn’t need to be brought up) My goals in life. Who do I wish to be? How to attain? What is a detraction and what not?
Also: Patience. Being aware of being in time. Strength. Clean up. Level out the head.
What if… in order to keep balance among the multiplying connections, I must compartmentalize? Seems
Weariness.