12 AM somarsthesia. (Taken with instagram)

Dear you,

I love you very much. We don’t spend enough time together, and I know you miss me too because every once in a while I’ll catch you staring from behind a couch, from below when I’m up on a balcony, or you’ll fly over me when I’m gazing up at the empty sky from the rooftop of my house. I’m glad we went to that one place and had those cheeseburgers, and I’m definitely glad we opted for the glassware because they were really asking for it after the tenth time. You don’t know and you never will know what you mean to me, because we’re never within hearing range and now I don’t have a phone.

I wanted a real conversation with you that entire night we spent parting glances from the foyer. I told you I didn’t know what a foyer was until I moved away from desolation valley, and we didn’t know how to live until we were apart. We were safe together that entire time, but we pretended our lives were dangerous and that we were too. We’re only people, and we’re only too sensitive and intelligent to be surrounded by smut all the time. So we took it upon ourselves to take trips out into the wilderness, blaring Iggy, Bowie, J Lo and Diru; dreaming of rock stardom.

I’m the one with the drumset now, and it’s not even mine. The voice in my throat is mine; I’ve strengthened it with first Sunkist, then Whiskey, and now strain. Where were you when I was alone that night? You were off dreaming in green, and I was becoming more obscene. I really get tired of all these sirens. I guess that’s why I invested in play doh doll houses with little doors that I could shut behind the backs of my imaginary friends countless nights, even when I couldn’t decide what I wanted to be when I woke up the next morning, dehydrated and migrainesque.

I recently revisited The Last Unicorn and ruminated. I really just wanted another me to hold hands with; to unmask villains and to share a toothpick with; perhaps just opposite ends because my gums bleed prolifically. I just don’t want to be glum with someone else; but I can be happy knowing they’re still playing hide and seek because I haven’t found them yet. Enough with touching base; let’s play the way my mom and I used to. I would pick a hiding spot and wouldn’t dare leave unless she found me; and often she didn’t. I’d spend almost an hour hiding before she came around the tihrd time and an escaped estornudo would be a dead giveaway. I wonder if she or I knew that our last game would indeed be the last.

Last night I, still sans-tattoos, went and saw our friend Nina sing, and I still want to marry her. She in the back of her mind recalls our lip kiss after the show when I handed her two seedless watermelons. She must recall when I carried her guitar at the Cactus Cafe. She must recall when I reintroduced myself again and again. She has to recall my face, if not my name. She’s still a month older than I am, and we’re still meant to be if anything else, friends.

That tall dark and mysterious man I married? With the exception of the darkness, he was not who I thought he was, even after the I do’s and the abalonium rings and the smiles and the places places and the reiteration of greetings and our plans and hopes and combined dreams. Tearing apart our ancient Rome was exhausting and a waste of labor. Did he mean to tape my eyelids shut? Did we mean to drop a house on each other’s sisters? Our illusions predestined us to fail. I wonder if he’s still deluded. I wonder when I’ll be forgiving.

There were others like me, all dancing in triangles and waving their hands; there had to be. I can’t truly be the last. I cannot vanish. We had each others’ names written in our little elementary hands, the same hands that first ate raw pinto beans against their teacher’s wishes, then drew their own names onto chemically processed paper. Somewhere between learning to write our names and finding our identities between the double spaced lines we decided we’d forget each other, then forgot ourselves. Someone found my identity in the dumps and kindly returned it to this address.

I live in this house surrounded by magical woods now, and I still sing those songs. I’m still playing hide and seek, and I’m still seeking. Is seeking really a word? I hope you know that I’ve been thinking of you, and I hope I find you again soon.

With love,

Cheese

sixtyforty:

We were outback and I kicked over an empty plastic cup with my heels and was about to walk back inside when this white guy with dreads grabbed my by the throat and started shoving me back to where the cup was and was screaming at me to pick up the cup and put it in the trash can “like a human…

Three a.m. and my heart is being wrenched from my chest. My mom and I turned water into wine at her neighbor’s house last night, so last morning I spent three hours divinely hung over. Tomorrow, I drive home to Austin; my Austin, where I work at a coffee shop and go on dates with strangers.
I shouldn’t say strangers; I get to know the people I date. A problem I’ve encountered is that the guys I’m really interested in are elusive, and the guys who want to commit are ones that don’t have anything to offer aside from their own undealt-with issues.
By elusive I mean that they’re difficult to get a hold of, even to get to know. It’s as if they’re afraid to open up, but maybe they don’t realize that both parties have just as much to lose.
The majority of young people, much like roaches breeding in a rotary phone, are predisposed to promiscuity, and the stereotype is inherent prior to them getting to know me; that stereotype being that all twenty-somethings cushion thoughts of free-range cavorting beneath their craniums.
A reccuring issue is the one where people don’t define the lines of compromise and respect and end up trying to mold their partner into something completely different from what they are. I am not clay. I will not play. Coming to the realizatoon that I enjoy my friends and want a similar connection with my future partner, I don’t want to have a relationship that’s sex-based. It’s not how I function. There is seemingly a wait list for such universal things.
With three before I need to be up for the drive, Tabatha’s Salon Takeover is ensnaring all my attention. I should be sleeping.

I’ve neglected writing to you because I’m too frustrated for words to come flowing freely like sauteed garlic pieces on melted butter. I’m chopped, prepped, and willing to cook with the ingredients I know I have. I’m ready. I’m just so sick of finding my stoves to be busted.

I’m in a compartment sink, washing out the silt, and slanted, I’m resting against the damp end. There are particles floating around me as I try unconvincingly to tell you that I am the only way. I don’t believe it either sometimes, especially when on the day I don’t have to work til 5pm I get phone calls at 7:20, 7:25, 7:41, 7:44, 8:04, 8:05, 8:15, 8:30, 8:45 and finally 9:04 from my mother because she after 23 years can’t cut the umbilical cord.

I suffer through it all, and let me tell you it’s not easy working with an asshole of an ex who I can’t stand. But if he leaves his hearing aid batteries in his inbox, well, you can’t blame me for throwing them away. He did apparently steal more than money from the tip jar. He stole my confidence in humanity when he was supposed to be everything opposite of evil. I can only keep tabs on him and pray that I can catch his next victim in time. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to work, because I’m loyal to our boss, who pays for my lunch every evening and sends me texts that are hopefully not flirty saying that he misses me.

Most people can hardly rouse emotion or worry out of me, even if they’re wounded. My composure is less steady when an animal is injured than it is when a human being is in distress. Keep in mind that I’ve dealt with a lot of sick relatives and friends over the course of my twenty-three years of “living”, and have actually been at my uncle’s death bed. I say I break down because one night I came home from the grocery store to discover my adopted outdoor tabby cat -whom I acquired from a careless, self-involved, and apparently heartless ex-roommate the third-to-last day of us living together - with what appeared to be a torn-up leg that was in reality (as I found out later) a busted abscess. Never in my life can I recall having been frantic or as worried as I was that night - a night before a seven-hour shift at 6:00 am the next morning - and despite having only seven dollars in cash on me to last til the end of the week (it was a Monday night, five days before pay-day), I got her taken care of at the ER.

This happened tonight.

I wanted to hug you outside of Coffee Bean tonight when you tldivulged your latest drama, but my ahilty to second guess my reassuring gestures once agai madecitsekf known to the universe. So many times I’ve tried and I’ve gotten “this is not the time for hugs” as a response. Is it just my hugs that are unwanted? I felt guilty when you hugged Chris, because that’s exactly what I should have done. You make me second guess myself.
I don’t believe you give me same treatment your other friends get. This is impossible. I just want to take every bit of payment I deserve and depart from this ongoing recurrence of emotional turmoil we call a friendship. Had I the strength to fulfill this dream, this blog wouldn’t exist. I want to be freed.

I’m trying to impress somebody but no one’s keeping track. They all have their backs turned or are looking at newer, less efficient models. I may only at times be upright, but my upside is that I’m never too uptight. I can speak when I’m spoken to and usually have a witty response. My downside is that I have a tendency to let my foam fall flat, but I’m only a steam wand and a tap of the spoon away from presentable.
I’m built like one of those little round people toys, but I manage to fall flat on my face. Luckily, or unfortunately, no one seems to be looking. Maybe not unlike some trompe l’oeil stairway to nowhere I look unreal, and most people are used to illusions that tend to disappoint. What I’d give to have the imaginary friends of my childhood. I’m not sure who I’m reaching out to because I don’t like most people, and most people want more than what I can give.
Damn you, age 23. You’ve made me develop standards. You’ve made me want more than what I can really obtain from other people. You’ve made me want to accept my own character flaws. You’ve made me dislike in others what I don’t like about myself. You’ve made me realize that a two-year-train-ride is what makes me prone to opening up. You make me give less, want more. You’ve made me feel terrible things, say or say nothing. You make me wear a customer service grin. You make me trust and distrust my own instincts. You sure are a questionable motherfucker, age 23.

I can’t bring myself to write about anything. Anything I write about is just the end. The end is the amount of times I’ve had to stop myself from writing stupid things. Things are brimming but I can’t verbalize them. They are the things. Things are the preoccupations of a lifetime. Preoccupied I am with thoughts of things.

This is rough drafting. This is something seizing my fingers to I can fingerspell what I mean to say and still not say it. Saying is expressing. I’m expressing pain. This is painful. I can’t bring myself to do it. It is overwhelming.

Bring me the axe, Christina. My mom spells hers without an H. She’s the Mexican female Christ. I know a  Chelsea whose last name is Christ; friends with the unholy.

Things are hinged together and sky scraping. Sky scraping like your awful art, Keating. KeatingKeatingKeatingDispleasingEntreating. As if you’ll ever be anything more than who you were before. Before, you were someone. I don’t know who you are. Does anyone know you aren’t what you seem? Am I the only one who tore? Seems so. Seams so stringy. Stringing along. Cut me off. I’m second guessing. Guessing is tossing and turning and tracking the tracks in the playlist this list is endless are you listening I’m not listening I’m not looking I’m not feeling well is the times of the time and the findings are esoteric and I’m rigid and frigid it’s cold int this room I can’t really bring myself to stop running into the walls and listen to the music with the buds in the ear that I can hear because music is important and you’re not touching this isn’t a touching this isn’t touchstone this is a run on to the next thing and the process if you don’t think I’m reading then you’re obviously mistaking me for the illiterate philistines that you call your friends I’m not sure who you think you are, no i know is the thing I’m not in the know I’m lighting your fire like shirley bassey not like that guy whose name is Morrison with a Jim before it. 

Several hours of conversational foreplay, in good company. Awake at 2 am. Contemplative. Pensive. Biding.

There’s something coming and I’m waiting on it.

Not in the first fuchsia now flesh-tone tissue paper kept for too long in storage, and never at the bottom of a reusable ceramic mug. Beyond the dad and son foreplay on cam4 and deeper than a written exchange with a guy who at a bar I kissed and danced with then never called or wrote with. Not even after that something awkward between that came from kissing after dancing that one night at The Tuezgayz. For some people, shame and sobriety come hand in hand. There are no portents coming from one-sided conversations with the digital extension of another human being.

It was a surface level event just like any other.

Alone, with each other, the substance is fluff, the feeling is comfort. We do this when no one else is looking and after we don’t speak of it. It’s written in the notes we never passed each other, it’s ingrained in our being to relate and to compensate. We’re insatiable, desperate for different but comfortable with complacency, enough to repeat something that immediately means something else entirely. A millimeter prayer bead on a ten-yard band. A ritualistic intangible item to be worn not for show, but for its sacred meaning.