Saturday, August 22, 2009

dirty tick

I used to pine for love in such a structurally visceral way that every inch of my body ached for it. A slice of the devil courting me into a lustful affair of no inhibitions. My eyes full of wet tears, and wonder. These things were so wonderfully innocent, broken in parts of nonsense and yet my heart seemed to adjust to the rhythm like nothing else. I miss these days of innocent record, the way my heart reacted to a simple word or a sound - my pulse vibrating in my wrist. I enjoyed the mimic of pain and hunger Jae reminded me of, the discord of emotions that strung wildly inside of me. Strange how one becomes addicted to the actual act of being in love even if it is not the same love. Our minds can play the tricks on us so that we cannot see it as anything but. I should copy my heart and post it to both their chests and attach a cord to each side, and wrap it around their pristine waists.

I am destructive today, tonight - the weather marking an deep dark hole scathing itself in my heart. I laugh crazily so when I see that a garbage can is on fire, smoke spewing forth slowly but surely - yes so surely that the woman in front of me stops to a halt to stare. I cannot bother to look too long. There is enough fire in my heart to sustain me forever right now - forever is now. My heels are like the sound of a drums when stroked with sticks, and I bundle my anger into tight red fists, my fingernails painted that metallic blue that now reminds me of her apology - her desire to be right - to be okay. I wish I did not hate her so much, for it would show me that I never cared at all. It is apathy I wish for, the bright stem of apathy - no feelings at all of discomfort just a bright shiny glow of oddity. I could punch her in the face, but I suppose this might satisfy her - another acknowledgement that I cared enough to be angry.

Tomorrow I shall ignore her, ignore her until she becomes a ghost to me. Isn’t this what she has done to me? Reminded me of my other ghost who does not speak to me. How can I have fallen for two women so similar? Shouldn’t I have run in the polar opposite direction? I suppose had I not missed what Christi represented to me I would not have let myself get to deep in this sea in the first place. This sea, this sea of ugliness. It is a shame really since all that could have succeeded even briefly in beauty is restored to ashes. I can’t stand her last words, but they are what she wanted to leave on and they are not too different from Christi’s. I make jokes of her projection but I’d lie if I said I wasn’t shocked. I was disgusted when she began to grip me with words that held no meaning. I hope I will never write of her again but I enjoyed the desperation she made me feel because it reminded me of love. It reminded me of Christi who it is obvious I still pine for. I walk the streets with her memory. I am her memory.

It is not her I wish to erase though, it is this - this (Jae) I’d flick a match to (not literally of course). It isn’t wasted time I suppose because that would be downing my emotions, feelings - thoughts but I am still angry I let it continue this long. Long enough for me to realize my true feelings, and then to watch them wash away in some abandoned box in the sea. If only she knew what she had gotten rid of it in her deliberate selfishness I wonder if she’d been so blind and stupid. Probably for women often desire, or think they desire women like me but do not know what to do with me when I come barreling into their worlds. I make them assess, change. I never thought of these things as bad but I suppose this is why I spend so much of my time alone, and in love for if the people I loved so much could actually sustain me for all the time I have loved them it is possible they would have left sooner

Thursday, August 20, 2009

you want him you got him

I think I may be slightly in love with her although I don’t know how this is even possible, as love has never struck me like this. Maybe it is just a powerful and even violent degree of lust? I expected so readily not to hear from her, and in a way as painful as the idea felt it gave me some sort of comfort to think this torture would end. It is true I have as much control over this situation as she does, but I cannot walk away or dismiss things as easily as she can. Maybe it is because my life has been a constant stream of seasons (events) and I cannot fathom her being a season and not a lifetime. I wonder if I will look back on these writings and feel frightened or even pity for my former, lustful self. Her latest message affected me so much that in the middle of dinner I simply stopped speaking to my mother who hadn’t seen me in a few days. A close friend constantly tells me that she will not disappear but I rarely take this idea to heart, as she has dismissed me for months before seemingly dismissing me from her system as easily as yesterday’s underwear. It is worse since I described certain events that had happened to me as a child, and then to think that she avoided me at this party because she couldn’t explain her mood to me is such an ugly, and devoid of emotion cop out. I still feel like this pathetic, wimpy little girl and I know I am not this person but I have no idea why this woman pursues me so religiously, and yet does not want to be with me. I was the storm she wanted to live through, the woman she wanted to run away with. Were all these things lies? Did I manifest our connection like some lonely soul who is in dire need of a a body to protect her from the cold winter nights? I cannot think of myself as that pitiful since my options have never been all too slim. I want to tell her I’ve slept with someone, and I wonder if this will make her feel less than what she already feels or doesn’t feel for me and the thrill of causing her any sensation of pain lingers inside of me momentarily that I contemplate throwing the fact out there just as some brutal test, another declaration of how little she means to me (which is untrue as I would drop anyone and anything to be with her).

Her initial message was spread with an apology for Sunday, for this obvious disregard for me. I told her that I am invisible to her, some lanky ghost she barely sees which she denied - and maybe there is truth in both sides for it is obvious that she thinks of me even if briefly in a guilt stricken sort of way. I am desperate enough to take this attention for now but this cannot sustain me for much longer. I haven’t cried over this, not in the traditional cry my eyes out sort of way. I haven’t watched sullen movies to get my emotions out although I did watch ‘walk the line’ recently and became grief stricken enough to cry slightly for my loves lost and the one I cannot seem to have. I even told Jae once I would wait for her, wait till she was ready to be with me - but this is useless as she already left me once and to my surprise to be with someone else. I only learned this recently as I’d never expected it nor anticipated such an odd betrayal of emotions. I would never had continued to pine for her at those initial stages of loss if I had known she wasn’t contemplating the loss as much as I was. Although she never said a word about it, all those times we ran into each other. I do not even know where this woman falls into the timeline but it does not seem fair to hold it completely against her as I ended up dating Sal out of loneliness. On the short topic of crying I let myself cry this evening, not for long but my mind began to wander sadly to these places that she brings me in my mind. Rejection linked with abandonment are prominent here, and I almost feel like the rain is a blessing to disguise my tears.

I walk home, brushing my feet along the sidewalk and think about sex with this other woman, a much older woman and it was wonderful but it lacked the passion I need in order to survive in anything. I won’t forget her, nor ignore her but I fear my heart is taken and what is one to do when that is so obviously the case? I wonder if Jae saw me leave with this woman, for I was too drunk to remember not that it should matter since she gets some sort of pleasure out of my misery. I wouldn’t be surprised if I bedded more women in this state of mind, although I’ve never considered myself that type of woman I feel like the farther away I get from these feelings the easier it will be to say goodbye. My mom was kind enough to put in her two cents tonight but I still cannot help but feel foolish. Why am I reliving these foot steps Christi perfected for me years ago? It is obvious I am learning but I still don’t understand this let go process, especially when my heart has not had the challenge of attesting to all these feelings. At least with Christi even though I discovered later on how much I loved her, I’d had years of expressing everything I felt even if we did not end up as the lovers I had always thought we could be. This feels worse because there is a future not yet discovered, one that exists in some far off place and yet does not exist for me here. I am even beginning to think I am a bad lover although no one has said such a thing I can’t seem to keep my brain from thinking of her. Maybe it is that I don’t feel I am at my best unless I have genuine feelings for the woman.

tell mr campbel madison square garden is dead

It could be that the August heat is getting to me, my mind wandering off in directions that appear a bit insane or simply wild. I wasn’t surprised when I decided late at night that I would meet an old friend for a drink. I have to get out of my head sometimes, break the vicious cycle of thinking about both these women so constantly. I can feel the bubbling of an eruption about to ignite - and when I feel this it is only a matter of a time before I burst open. The seams breaking to unleash a pile of muted flesh, and a sliver of a broken heart. It is at these times I know I am at my strongest and weakest. Alcohol can either help, or make the madness worse. Once again I feel ignored, as if I am some repelling creature that has no contemplation in her mind, in both their minds. How can I waste my time caring so much for women who so obviously do not deserve a single thought in my head or heart?

Once Jae and I speed closer to a shared intimacy, one where our childhoods are brought up as if we are old and trusted friends she always backs off. I am reliving the moments of when I finally told Christi I loved her after years of her pursuit. It is the fact that rejection seems so evident here, the pure unadulterated ignorance that rips me up inside. I can stand for more, anything other than this would do - would be understandable but when she connects with me and slithers off once again only proving that our intimacy must be of a false nature when it does happen for how does she abandon it so quickly? I even told her about my father this week, a story I save for close and trusted friends, and she became angry expressing that he didn’t even deserve to have me in his life - to hear me laugh. How can someone feel so openly aware of caring for me yet abandon me just when the connection begins to peak again. I know in my heart this is a test for me, that she is not worth it. What does she have to offer me that keeps me from abandoning her myself? Yet the anger and frustration broke last night and I picked up my purse, grabbed the keys to my second home and hopped on the subway declaring that for the evening I would forget.

On Sunday I feel rather pathetic when I run into her outside of this summer lesbian party, where she always is apparently in the same black tee shirt and jeans. I remind her later that I have shirts waiting for her, but these things don’t matter so much as I have no intention of meeting up with her so she can have these items I bought her. She barely acknowledges me, which isn’t uncommon for her. Her mood swings run rampant and grossly. Later I tell a friend I wish I could erase her, and I get drunk when I notice she is only feet away from me. Why is this community so tight, so full of the same women everywhere? As soon as the second shot of gin washes down I am full of temptation. Does she care for me at all? I don’t catch her glancing at me once, and I know it is her mere snub of me that hurts the most. If I knew in some respect that I mattered I probably would not care so much. I disgust myself when I stalk her to the bar, and catch her while she walks through the dance floor. Her friends must think I am an obsessive child, after their friend like some sort of vulture but she made this all possible - had she not given me slivers of hope I would have dismissed her with the flick of a hand.

Friday, August 14, 2009

I will finish off by taking the path away

Sometimes I imagine my life in sequences, split screens, edited and conversations drowned by the cut in of a song. The sand is quilted in between my toes, and I remember summers where my heart stood still, and snippets of those conversations took place at sunset when the air chilled and the waves moved to a different rhythm. It isn’t surprising that my mind began to speed on Sunday, after seeing everything relating to my life now and then. I used to cut out photos of beautiful women, clothes, shoes from fashion magazines and plaster my painted walls with them. I can remember jumping up and down, bellowing out ‘wonderwall’ on my bed before I was expected at school in the mornings. I named a Barbie doll I had in earlier years Cindy after Cindy Crawford, the resemblance I always thought was uncanny. Had matel planned it that way? That I should project my child girl crush on a famous model onto my own Barbie doll? I didn’t discover that Cindy’s resemblance to Gia would fascinate me till I was in my late teens, and devouring information about the beautiful yet deceased super model who alas was a lesbian herself.

I awoke this morning to read a strip of text messages, and then attempt to plummet back to sleep with no such luck. I began to run through Fall fashion in my head – maybe my mind felt inspired by sifting through numerous fashion magazines this week or it could be that the ‘model and muse’ exhibit is still refreshing itself in my memory – replaying itself over and over again. I am still in awe of the John Galliano dresses shaped like overflowing cupcakes of fabric. The way my body stopped immediately to admire them, and how I couldn’t help but notice how some observers seemed to pass them by. I wish I had seen this exhibit sooner, put aside the time to really sift through all the imagery, and fabrics – old magazine clippings dating back to the 1930’s where a five foot four model was all the rage. It seems black is in a wild come back stage this coming season, although as a New Yorker I don’t think it ever often leaves. Many of us are stuck in our black sweaters and leggings with slick boots to compliment them.

I always anticipate the Fall after the rush of the summer heat dissipates. I am not sure it will go away as quickly as it has it in the past as this summer has proven to be a bit of an oddity. I look forward to packing away most of summer clothes, forgetting about the memories some of those pieces created all on their own and whipping out my Fall and Winter clothing. These thoughts always make me feel like such a girl as I obsessively begin to think of wearing my old vintage coat bought at a thrift store I frequent for $10. It is still to me the most beautiful coat I own – others are there to simply keep me warm and toasty but this one is there to make me feel other worldly. It occurs to me now that I have not spent one day this summer in Central Park although I planned multiple dates around this the weather seemed to always get in the way. I am sure it is bright and green by now.

I began this summer in a relationship I didn’t desire. I only think of her now when she calls, or texts and I do not answer either. I do not think it was meant to last as everyone says she was my rebound from Jae. At the time I couldn’t fully admit this to myself, as admitting it seemed to give her power in hurting me. My feelings and strength not strong enough to hold her rejection even though it felt like a morbid rejection since even though she seemed to let me go she continued to haunt me in numerous ways. It is only coincidence I ended up with Sal that evening and became so drunk after running into Jae that I fell down on the street outside Henrietta’s and in a rush to forget her bedded Sal. It isn’t the first time I’ve tried to forget a possible love by being with someone else, only it was the first time I ended up in a relationship because of it. I never saw myself as in a relationship with Sal anyway since I did not love her. I am sure karma has a plan for me on this one as I feel I have to be paid for giving this young woman false hope that we had any future at all. I won’t lie now. I was biting time, attempting to forget the all consuming passion I so deeply desire.

Although I should have left sooner, and I was so slick and conniving that one evening Jae began text messaging me, writing me long and mysterious messages while I was on a date with Sal. I took note of where Jae was and made sure I would be there too. I am not even disgusted with myself for doing this. I couldn’t fight the urge to be around her, even if I was with someone else. That evening was weird, and telling. Jae struck up a conversation with a woman behind me, and they began to dance close to me so close that my back would often hit this woman whose name I actually do know (who is married to a man but I wasn’t about to tell Jae that). I was reminded of high school this evening, the way you crush on someone so badly but how they are so aware they begin to taunt you. A few times she walked past me, grabbing my waist so tightly that our abs touched, and others she would twine her fingers with mine, and pull. I feel like crying as I write this, out of pure frustration – how can someone be so cruel? Did she not know it was cruel at the time? That my desire for her still overpowered me, that I would have left Sal that evening to be with her had she simply asked. I felt my heart plunge to my feet when she kissed this married woman behind me, a sickening feeling tore at my insides.

I wish I could expunge her from my system but even Sunday when she spoke to that not so attractive blonde I became jealous, wanting to scrape the poor woman’s eyes out with a spoon. Later she had told me she cared for this woman but couldn’t be with her either although I don’t know why she would want to be with her when I am so readily available (not to toot my own horn). I felt like punching her in the face especially since I took note of how she looked at this woman, and it was not as she looks at me. I wish I didn’t care about this, why does it bother me so much? I wish I could accept that she did not want me, as Christi once told me in a fit of anger that she did not love me anymore although it hurt it made it easier for me to move ahead in some respect. I need those declarations no matter how painful they are. I cannot move ahead unless I know for sure the person feels nothing for me otherwise I am always attached to them in some suspended link of space. She must sense this about me as she does play off it. I hadn’t spoken to her in months until she popped up again with some stupid random message, and when I didn’t reply she became insulted and I couldn’t stand that she would be offended by me even though she has already hurt me. She says while staring at me, head down, eyes wide that I am so sensitive, and passionate she worries for me maybe it is her she worries for more for if she actually gave herself to me she’d have to break down that stupid façade that is so fucking obvious.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

there must be some kind of way out of here

Dreams unleash possibilities, even those rendered as nightmares. I quaked in earlier days under a spell of distorted medication but it wasn’t pleasurable. It wasn’t as if I was seeing ghosts of a lover past, or hallucinating myself into magical places. My emotional well being was curled up in a ball, in the fist of my heart I could feel my soul dripping away into madness. I swept my skin over the past like a lonely woman of a desperate heart club, wanting to grab onto anything that I could remain still for. But is stillness necessary in life, just as patience? I am not a still person, not planted in the ground, or destined for soil. My soul is that of a gypsy and when submerged in a drowning pool of depression my thoughts began to wander to a places I didn’t know existed inside of me. While drunk I slipped onto the subway, staring gingerly into space and laughing - my hair curled into tiny tendrils. There is something familiar about the splinter of yellow, and orange lights and although the anxiety that had been plaguing me, even the anger began to swell I let my thoughts be consumed by drunkenness and the idea of meeting a new lover.

There is no love in my life except that of a river of ghosts. I will never forget that line from an deep, dark middle eastern movie where the woman says, ‘my heart is like a train at every stop someone gets on, and off’. On Monday I am crazed for my desire for Jae, my mind cannot think of anything else although these feelings were bound to make a headway at some point they evolve like an volcano about to explode. I am on the verge of screaming when we begin to argue while I am standing on an outdoor subway platform. I wonder if she knows that she has manipulated me, been unable to let me go and yet unable to pull me in. this isn’t an abnormal pattern for me. I did this for years after all, and loved that woman through all the madness of our hearts (even still). It is true I would not have cared as deeply had that drug the doctor so readily prescribed even saying that it was my friend (what a mysterious joke) had not been in my system. She tells me she wants me, that she is attracted to me, that I am an amazing catch but that she cannot be with me now. This is destined to be our story, and maybe I should be more hopeful but it shouldn’t be this hard to connect, to come together. What you can’t shake is sometimes destined to simply be nothing. I learned at an early, and even unforgivable young age that despite your desire, and pull towards someone whether you were intertwined in another life holds no meaning to whether your story will conclude in this life.

I’ve never had one of those straight and narrow paths like some people who go through life without an ounce of discord. We all have stories, of course and recently I discussed with a friend who has been through many of the same things as myself why it is that we seem so unafraid of those normal things others are so bothered and frightened by. I can tell Jae I want her without much fear about it because I have already suffered the worst sort of pain. I did in a chilly way ask if she was attracted to me, and she looked at me with ravenous eyes and said ‘I think you’re gorgeous’ but this isn’t enough - not for me. I should plow our story into the ground now before it erupts into another heartbreak. I have an unabashedly obsessive nature. I won’t even pretend that my passion cannot make headway into other emotions, and feelings. I have thrown lamps, phones, bottles, crashed walls with my fist. I suppose it is that initial feeling that is hardest to shake since I only had experienced it once before when I was fifteen - but that should have been my warning to stay away. We are destined to repeat our mistakes until we get them right.

I wonder though if it is that I am still so in love with Christi that I have projected all my left over feelings for her onto Jae because they’re resemblances are beyond the physical - even their behavior is what is of a comfortable nature to me. In a diner in the mid twenties on the east side my mom looked up at me and said ‘you are still in love with Christi’. it wasn’t a question, it was simply an observation but my heart stopped, and tears welled in my eyes. Do we ever learn how to get over a love that felt so grand and yet still felt so unconsummated between all the lies and miscommunication? I know my love for her could still set fire to us, if only I felt she could be with me. I know that our love affair is dead, especially now that she will not speak to me. I do not think we have gone this long without speaking since our initial breakup, and I suppose it is for the best as she has hurt me so many times maybe this will open the door to a new love, and less heartbreak. I do not know if my love for her will ever be trumped as I could never tire of her. I do feel a conscious hatred for her, and her brutal and brave honesty in telling me that I am her other half, and yet being unable again to be with me - but this seems to be my destiny with women like this. Is ten years of love turned to a drain when it no longer runs like a deep, and sounding river?

I imagine my story with Jae with similar resentment already. As I see our story played out in my mind the moment we met, like a flash of negatives framed by fractions of light - playing like an old movie with twisted words, and brief and then hungry kisses. A passion of moments that is or is not destined to play out in our reality - but as I once tried to explain this to her it sounded quite inadequate to what I had already seen. Maybe these were just dreams long past, a life that was lived in another universe, another time. It is her distance that draws me and contains me. I cannot pull her towards me if she does not desire me with as much longing as I desire her, and in the end my resentment would ruin us anyway. This much I am already aware of. Why doesn’t this stop me? I said Monday to her in a matter of fact way that I would not stop pursuing her until I felt I had quenched my desire, and as pushed as her ego may have gotten it is my own selfishness that speaks. I will not give up until it is no longer a part of my thoughts. It does not mean that she is everything but she takes a key place. I will pursue my other options as my reality senses Jae and I will not be together for ages, maybe years, maybe never. I do not understand these people as I am so open to love, to giving it that I am always willing to accept that their love may not be as great as my own - but I can live with that. That seems to be the curse of people who feel much, and who dive into the ocean of the unknown or is it all already known?