This hurts a whole hell of a lot more than I thought it would.
Waking up was bad. The half Xanax I took to sleep wore off into the kind of tears that squeeze the back of your throat and burn your cheeks on the subway. Thankfully, I have a mother prescient enough to be online and emailing at the spank of Thursday morning, who knew enough to forward me a horoscope advising me to, among other things, relax the manic intensity of my current pursuits, because:
"Life can't bring you the sublime gift it has for you until you interrupt your pursuit of a mediocre gift."
Well there you have it. Stop running headlong into the wall of some man's emotional infancy because the glass betrays behind it the mirage of his potential.
The hard part now is holding on to what he gave me. Keeping that torch trained on my smoldering signal fire. Keeping the words, the films, the blues tunes, and the idea that—someday—somebody else might love me for my brain. My fucked up, book-addled, melancholy brain.
With him, more than anyone else, I felt like myself, my true and taciturn postulate self, swimming in pretty words and sitting around in the dark listening to gruff men sing sad songs. Trouble is, I just couldn't be myself. There's plenty about me that's easy and open. The ennui comes just as much from joy as it does despair.
Which will I miss most? The book exchanges, the rutting of prose in heat, that mind to mind intellectual intercourse? Or the flowering that happened, my blooming in the hothouse of his basement, the warming and the thaw. I will ache for both, I'm sure.
What I won't miss is the emotional storm front, always on the horizon. This is his loss. I wish I could say: don't tell me I'm young and beautiful, adored and in demand. I don't want the boys you say are breaking down the doors. I wanted you. Messy, malcontent and surrounded by books, piles and piles of books. I wanted seriousness and dignity. A song for the goat.
Waking up was bad. The half Xanax I took to sleep wore off into the kind of tears that squeeze the back of your throat and burn your cheeks on the subway. Thankfully, I have a mother prescient enough to be online and emailing at the spank of Thursday morning, who knew enough to forward me a horoscope advising me to, among other things, relax the manic intensity of my current pursuits, because:
"Life can't bring you the sublime gift it has for you until you interrupt your pursuit of a mediocre gift."
Well there you have it. Stop running headlong into the wall of some man's emotional infancy because the glass betrays behind it the mirage of his potential.
The hard part now is holding on to what he gave me. Keeping that torch trained on my smoldering signal fire. Keeping the words, the films, the blues tunes, and the idea that—someday—somebody else might love me for my brain. My fucked up, book-addled, melancholy brain.
With him, more than anyone else, I felt like myself, my true and taciturn postulate self, swimming in pretty words and sitting around in the dark listening to gruff men sing sad songs. Trouble is, I just couldn't be myself. There's plenty about me that's easy and open. The ennui comes just as much from joy as it does despair.
Which will I miss most? The book exchanges, the rutting of prose in heat, that mind to mind intellectual intercourse? Or the flowering that happened, my blooming in the hothouse of his basement, the warming and the thaw. I will ache for both, I'm sure.
What I won't miss is the emotional storm front, always on the horizon. This is his loss. I wish I could say: don't tell me I'm young and beautiful, adored and in demand. I don't want the boys you say are breaking down the doors. I wanted you. Messy, malcontent and surrounded by books, piles and piles of books. I wanted seriousness and dignity. A song for the goat.
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4 comments:
I know it sounds trite, but it's so true: Your brain, regardless of how fucked up, book-addled, and melancholy it is, is one of your greatest attributes. Any guy who is intimidated by it or can't love you for it is a sack of steaming shit. We all deserve better than that.
The flowering of which you speak is yours to keep. It can't be taken away. Bruised, sure but if you really felt like yourself than that's yours too.
To say you deserve better is obvious, that you'll find better, true.
u r a SM
Following a Stream
Don’t do it, the guidebook says,
if you’re lost. Then it goes on
to talk about something else,
taking the easy way out,
which of course is what water does
as a matter of course always
taking whatever turn
the earth has told it to
while and since it was born,
including flowing over
the edge of a waterfall
or simply disappearing
underground for a long dark time
before it reappears
as a spring so far away
from where you thought you were
and where you think you are
it might never occur
to you to imagine where
that could be as you go downhill.
poem by David Wagoner
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