And my imagination sees you crying, curled up in a ball so weak. I want to go to you. I want to tell you that you’re pathetic. I want to look you in the eyes and tell you to stop crying before I give you something to cry about. Just turn the crying off! The grief must be held in at all times. I don’t want to hear it. I won’t listen to you anymore!
Because I understand. Because I’ve felt what you are feeling. Because I don’t ever want you to feel that way again—your diseased emotions.
I don’t dance. It’s a fact that many women have balked at. Every girlfriend or wife I have ever had has tried, at least once, to liberate my inner Travolta. Come on, move your hips. Come on, feel the beat. Shhh. I can feel the beat in every inch of my body. I’m a poet. When I sit still and listen, I am the beat. Yeah, sure. That’s partially true. I am a natural observer. I feel no desire toward daredevil antics, extreme sports, or the like. Living my life sincerely is adrenaline rush enough. I’m boring. Sorry. Dancing is not my thing, but I will watch you dance for hours. I will watch you pound the floor with your small black boots. I will feel you try to stomp out your pain, stomp out the loss, stomp out the aching inside you.
Her name was Larisa. I went to the club, every week, to watch her dance.
I don’t remember the first time I saw her. There are several candidates. The most likely: I was in college, twenty-or-so-years old, and my friend Micky and I were high. We used to smoke joints behind the library before our film class, and smuggle beer in Coke cans into the showings, sit in the back and drink. College was awesome. Each week we watched a different classic film, high out of our minds, and participated in an analytical discussion afterwards. The professor loved our attention to detail. We had a good eye. He applauded. Being stoned in a class and owning it always made me smile inside.
As we left the library, we noticed a gathering of girls huddled around a table. A sign on the table read “Women’s Studies.” Behind the table sat Larisa. Her hair was streaked and frosted and frazzled, her eyebrow was pierced, she was wearing a fading leather motorcycle jacket, she was five feet tall, and she instantly hated me. I left her very little choice. Once I saw the Women’s Studies sign, my drunken, marijuana smoked, movie-laced wit produced this little gem:
“Hello, I would like one woman to study. No PMS, please.”
Some of the hottie girls giggled. Some of them chuckled and groaned. Micky snorted his approval. Larisa just stared. Her eyes were cold and blue and hard. Her expression was more than angry. Anger wasn’t the half of it. She looked disappointed in me. She looked as if she wanted me to explain why I had just decided to ruin the god damn world. She was so stern. She was so insistent and small and her body looked so strong. I wanted to fuck her instantly.
But she decided on Micky. He was tall and lean. He had spiked hair and blue eyes. He drove a hot car and listened to Ministry. He drank like a fucking fish, and he loved to dance. Larissa told him about a local club, and it was done. Every Thursday, I was standing in a dark corner watching Micky dance with Larissa. I should say, dance near Larissa. She wasn’t one for partners. She owned the floor. She stomped around with no regard for others, yet never disturbed a soul. It was entrancing. The way her muscled flexed and released, the rhythm of her twirling on her toe, the stomp of a foot to the beat of each song—I wanted to feel every inch of this woman’s body. I wanted to be beneath her every commanding push, her every grind of disappointment with the world. I wanted to hold her by the throat and feel every orgasmic scream of rage vibrating my palm.
Micky disagreed. She was too short for him, or something. He never was clear with his objections, but Micky had weird issues with women, so I let it go. Week after week, I watched her dance with Micky. Week after week, my fever for her grew. Micky felt awkward with her pursuit.
“You know, man—If I were you—I’d be all over her,” I said casually. “You want her?” he asked. I denied interest. I was just saying, he should stop being a baby. Shit, or get off the pot. But if you don’t want her bothering you, I mean, I could try to get her attention. Yeah, of course I would do that for you. This was my favorite routine. I called it: taking the cute girl away from my friend, who would never make the move, and making him think it was his idea. Yeah, I’m sometimes a real douchebag like that. Sun Tzu would be proud.
He didn’t think I could do it. He almost dared me to try. She hated me from the start, and now she barely acknowledged my existence. Larisa danced. I watched and waited. The seasons wore on. In the spring, there was a party. I was going with Micky. Larisa would be there. I told Micky that tonight was the night. He said, “yeah, sure.” At eleven o’clock, and drunk as fuck, I suggested the party play truth or dare. I was going to battle Larisa.
At first, the questions went around the room. Who would you fuck? Who have you fucked? Or a dare: kiss so and so’s nipples. Silly shit like that. Then someone called on me.
Truth or dare? Truth, I say. Who would you fuck in this room? Larisa, I answer, with no hesitation, and the room explodes with OOooooOOOOoooos. I call Larisa. Truth or dare? Truth, she stares. Do you know that I watch you dance? I ask. Sometimes, she said, and we were off. By the end of the game, the air was clear, and Larisa and I had picked up each other’s scent.
She took the initiative and called the next day. She got my number from Micky. I loved her for that. She asked me out until I said yes. We drove to the beach. I read her a poem. She liked it. We kissed by the ocean. And the rest is a mystery.
No one knows for sure what happened next, and everyone still wonders: did I have sex with Larisa? Only she and I know. I kinda like it that way. And besides, the point of the story is not really Larisa. We dated for awhile. It didn’t work out. We became friends. The end. The point of the story is to demonstrate karma—how one choice leads to another in a web of interaction.
Observe: Larisa had two roommates. The first, Dawn, was a lesbian. Well, she was dating a woman, but she didn’t call herself a lesbian. Dawn was confused, and Dawn was gorgeous. I was with Larisa, and I wanted Dawn. It was a bad scene.
It gets worse. The other roommate, Brenda, was always flirting with me. Brenda was not my type. It was becoming clear that neither was Larisa, really. Dawn was my type, but she was with her girlfriend, Shannon. And round and round it went, until one night it exploded.
We argued. Larisa was furious; I was screaming. In a fit I walked into Brenda’s room and slammed the door. She was on the phone. Out of nervousness, she did all she could think to. She told me about her call.
Hey, she said, I’m on the phone with my friend from Connecticut. She’s in California for graduate school. Don’t you want to go to graduate school? You should talk to her.
I didn’t care. In that moment, I wanted to die. I hated my life. I hated my luck with women. I hated myself. But I picked up the phone, anyway, and said hi. On the line was my future ex-wife, Sylvia.
And it really is time for me to tell that story.
I’m trying to dig deeper. I’m trying to understand my mind on a more fundamental level. I am trying to discover the foundation of my thoughts.
I’m trying to feel correct in my body. I’m trying to feel at peace with my thoughts–all of them, beautiful and grotesque. I’m trying to understand the appropriateness of my existence. I’m trying to interrogate every voice of self doubt in my head. I’m trying to debate and disprove them all. I’m trying to understand–to feel in my gut, to believe that I am qualified to be a human being, simply because I was born.
I must start taking more responsibility for the state of my own life—for my choices and the consequences of those choices. I can no longer justify my negative actions and reactions by pointing out the negative actions and reactions of another.
I have to work on that.
Isn’t the whole problem with the world that we have taken things too far? I mean, we decided a long time ago that we had to control certain of our instincts. This was a good idea. Some of our instincts are bad for us. So we went down the list. We shouldn’t kill each other. Ok, yes. We shouldn’t steal from each other. Sure. That Makes sense. We shouldn’t fuck each other. Woah! Woah!! Woah!!! Slow down there hatchling. How do you think we all got here>
I used to think of myself as a worker who would do anything, work anywhere, as long as my employer allowed me to and paid me good money. Now I am looking for an institution that is worthy of the genius of my labor and the gift of my time and attention.
At least I’m trying to think that way about my work. Imagine what the world would look like if we all did.
I’m sitting here trying to write this, but in the back of my mind I’m thinking: be careful what you say, you never know who reads this. Sad to say, I live in a world where some of my experiences could wound me. If the right bunch of dudes decide your immoral, or amoral, or even just gay—you could be out of a job. You could end up homeless. Have you ever thought about that. If I honestly open myself up to all of you: just tell you everything I have ever done, without shame or regret—remorse for the tiny wrongs I’ve done, sure, but absolutely no guilt—if I did that, it could be dangerous.
My mother comes by to talk. She hasn’t read the blog, but she has heard about it from family. My sister-in-law responded to my stalker stories and suddenly I have an interested audience. The people who know me best, who raised me, they come here and read about my life. It’s like they’re meeting me for the first time.
This was getting alarming, people were getting angry, so I called my mother to my apartment. If I was going to write about these things, I wanted her to hear them from me, and not the family grapevine leaves.
Here’s the thing, Mom. I have done drugs. I don’t encourage it or discourage it, based on my experience. I never did any major drugs, like heroin or cocaine, my public school education taught me to steer way clear of that. But a lot of my friends didn’t. A lot of people I used to know, who suddenly disappeared, some of them are dead. I didn’t tell you. I was trying to protect you from it.
Mom took that one in stride. She was a teenager in the sixties, after all. She claims that she never inhaled. I claim that she lies. It’s a stalemate. I tell her that my experiences were mostly positive. I tell her that I dabbled in hallucinogenics–LSD and mushrooms—and that I laughed at first and then made love to my imagination until dawn. But I will never do them again., I say. I’m a reality man, now. I tell her that I tried an Opium concoction twice, and felt better than I have ever felt before. I tell her how that one scared me. I was depressed my entire life, and opium completely erased it. I was on the front porch of addiction, my friends. I pulled back just in time.
Next up, sexuality. I enjoy sex. I have no intention of graphically describing my sexual encounters, I am a very bad pornographer, but I won’t shy away from the facts. I have been with several women. I have engaged in situations that some people may frown upon. My mother frowned upon a lot of it. She shook her head. She sighed. I sat stone stiff and stared her down. I was not her little boy anymore. I was a man, and my mother was asking me with her eyes: How could you do all this?
I would like to answer.
The thing is mom, everything I have ever done was a means of survival. I did drugs because I wasn’t properly medicated, and in the face of mental anguish or the drive to die, I smoked some pot. It worked. And I gotta tell you anti-drug folks—it wasn’t hard to find. In the 90s there was marijuana between the cracks of every sidewalk. I’m sure it is much worse now. But enjoy your expensive drug war fantasy.
I tried hallucinogenics because I was a young writer, and everyone I worshipped had used some substance to enhance their vision—at least that was the image I was sold, but that’s another story.
My sex life throughout my twenties was purely self preservation. If nothing else could crack my depression, surely an orgasm would. So I tried, and sometimes it worked. Sometimes the clouds in my head would clear for just a bit, and I could write something down. My journals in those days were short and painful I think that’s what made me a poet. A glimpse of light in the deep night of depression is not the place to write novels—short poems, that’s all.
So, yes…I tried to self-medicate my way out of major clinical depression. Did it work? No. I tried to fuck my way out. Did that work? Hell no. Because when post coital embraces can’t soothe your depression, there seems no reason to exist in those moments.
Oh god, even this can’t make me feel happy? Collapse. Weeping.
But here’s the thing: when students comes to my class, and half way through the semester I see them lagging. At the midterm, when I see the grief on their faces, I can approach them with knowledge and real understanding. The young girl who feels like hurting herself, the athlete hooked on speed, the depressive girl from a depressive home who is just about to falter—they all come to me. They come to me because they feel like they can. They know they can because I don’t flinch from who I am. I don’t flinch from how I survived. It was an imperfect plan, but I made it. All I can do now is stand here, naked, with complete empathy and compassion, and share what I have seen. Talk about what worked, and the many, many mistakes I’ve made.
I say what I have seen, and not what I have learned, because I am working that out too. The more I write, the more I understand my own stories, the more I unfold my thinking, and the faster I will become who I’ve always been underneath all the weeping.
I have to do that, or I’ll die.
Dear_________:
I do want to see you. Honestly, I want to see you every day. You are one of the few women I’ve loved on first contact. That may be the problem. That may be why we never make concrete plans. My feelings for you haven’t died down. I don’t think they ever will. I don’t think I want them to.
You should know that I noticed you long before we spoke. I watched the way you moved and held your body. I loved the ease of your intelligence, and the confidence with which you made your points. You were strong like a beast but still intensely feminine, and gentle, and yielding. I wanted you instantly. You made me hungry.
I wondered what kind of lover you would be. Would you be submissive, allowing me to caress your body, to penetrate you deeply, to push your mind beyond the need for control? Or would you throw me down and teach me how to live, fully and completely swallowing my body until I exploded in release and screaming.
So when I saw you smoking, I bummed a cig. I had recently quit, but you were standing ten feet away, and knowing you, for just that moment, was worth the return to addiction.
We talked for more than a minute. I followed you all day. I felt like a puppy, but I didn’t care. I was sticking near you until you made me go. I imagined our connection growing. I imagined telling the story of our meeting–years from now. Everyone would envy the two pure lovers colliding in a world of reading, lost in a whirlwind of art and passion from that point on.
I saw her, and she lured me, I would say. I talked to her and I was hers, and I will be hers until my life stops beating.
My stomach dropped when you mentioned a boyfriend. My body went cold when I realized he moved here with you. I respected that, I did. So everytime you asked me for advice–he had done something thoughtless or hurtful–I talked to you with grieving. I couldn’t try to manipulate you away from him. I wanted you to be happy. I loved you so much. I still do. I always will, because I want to.
Please don’t presume this note is some crass ultimatum or an attempt to lure you to me. Please understand that I don’t expect a romantic reaction. That’s the part of us that has to die: my persistent hoping.
I am working on quelling my longing for you. I’m working on loving you from afar. I’m working on convincing myself that what we have is good enough, and I still believe our love is rare.
I may never get to kiss the small of your back, or run my fingers up your naked spine while you’re dozing. I may never know what it means to be your lover — to hear you sigh in safety and release, wrapped in my arms and sleeping — but I will always be out here, loving you throughout my life, all the same.
I’m sorry if this letter rattles you, but I’m tired of not speaking. You are magnificent to me, a holistically beautiful being, and you deserve to know my feelings.
Always,
Charles
An ex just sent me a message. It read:
Ok so im starting to catch up on reading…excellent work but for tomorrow can u write something happy?!
She’s right, of course. This has been a depressing time, and it’s been difficult staying happy. But the thing is, I realized in that moment that I am actually very happy.
I spend several hours, every day, doing the only thing that I ever wanted to do. What I write about is incidental. A writer writes, and I write every day. Therefore, I’m a writer. Just saying that and feeling it as true, that alone is happy.
The trouble is, we live in desperate times. The darkness surrounds us, the poet Robert Creeley once said. His solution, back then, was to buy a god damn big car and go go go.
Well gas is too expensive now, and some of the cars are just too god damn big, and I reallyvdon’t understand my world a lot.
I find myself saying, I just don’t know, more and more often these days. So be it.
As long as I’m writing I’ll be ok, with or without conclusions. I am the writer of postmodern confusion.
She said I didn’t give. I was as stubborn as she was, and she needed me to let her win. I lovingly disagreed.
People like us don’t need others to give. People like us need gentle pushing. Sometimes, people like us need not so gentle pushing. To do otherwise, to give in to our depressed expectations, is to allow us to settle for what we think we can handle. And what we think we can handle is far below our actual threshold. What we think we can handle bores us. So, for me, not pushing her would be to admit that she didn’t deserve so much more than she’d gotten.
I loved her. I really did, but I just couldn’t agree with her on that one point.
I was right, she said, and that’s why she left me.