Untitled Three-State Fling

Who doesn’t lock their phone anymore?

I want to say I picked it up to check the time, while he was in the shower, because there weren’t any clocks on the wall, but I didn’t. I picked it up to read his messages, to look at his pictures, to snoop.

He jumped up right after he came and started rolling a joint on the bar. It might be insecurity; he seems so god damn guarded. Or maybe he’s just a spaz; cuming can be like a shot of adrenaline.

He walked into the shower with the joint. I walked to the bar with an e-cigarette.

"It's a disgusting breach of privacy. I know it, but excuse it because I'm too cool of a chick to say anything. But it's embarrassing that it's a thought I indulge, which is really the only reason I'm putting it here.

It’s a habit of my life with a sociopath.

---------


Everyone has their defense mechanisms. I’ll tell a man anything. I’ll be completely open and pretend as if nothing really matters. And then they think I’m tough.

Do I care that my dad was an alcoholic and I never let my mother take me to a hotel those nights? Or is that my favorite color is turquoise have more meaning?

“U don’t wear the badge u wear the bruises.”

I’ve over-analyzed that text he sent after I left El Paso without a kiss. But if I ask him what it means, he’ll say, “i dont kno,” because his defense is feigning ignorance.

And it’s infuriating, like his misspelled, poorly formulated text messages.

“Ok well im where u met me chomping at the bit.”

“Im sweet and ……… u r the boss”

“Calm. Down not a creepee”

Why is there a god damn period after calm but not one at the end of the sentence?!

My sex drive got the best of me.

"Let me show u the west texas u r awesome i love ur face”

“So glad i met u  i wanna live your life again”

Going through the messages now at the bar covered in dust and 22 rounds I can’t help but laugh. Why am I looking through his phone at our text messages? It’s like I’m reading someone else’s words. That’s not him; that’s not me.

“I only knew i loved her when i let her go. ..”

That should have been a clue that he’d get out of the shower, sit down with a guitar and only play sad, country songs. I couldn’t let him see me cry; he would have thought I was reminiscing over some other man. But I wasn’t.

---------

I’m laying in my 10-year-old cousin’s top bunk in central Texas while they’re out of town, staring at the ceiling while Bella chews on her leg and Boco licks the carpet.

“Bella!!! For fuck’s sake.”

It wouldn’t matter though. I’ve been talking to a guy friend of a friend in Colorado because I need a goddamn rebound from a four-day fling. Why the fuck does he spell jealous with a G?! And why did I think it was adorable?

I think it better to tell people how you feel, whether they accept it or not. At least I’ll know I said what I wanted to say and gave what I wanted to give. But then you feel like a fucking idiot for giving to someone that doesn’t even have the backbone to reciprocate or put it to rest.

I know there are plenty of people that think they’re a fucking idiot for giving me any kind of attention.

“Xoxo wish u wer here in puddle in my bed”

“Puddle?”

“Of your cum” “Oh jesus that sounds bad i suck at dirty talk” “Oh jesus that sounds bad i suck at dirty talk” “Lol”

“No. You don’t… I’m totally into it. But there’s a stipulation, if you’re going to talk dirty to me you have to use complete sentences with correctly spelled words and punctuation. And then and only then will I respond… dirty.”

“I love your unrealistic expectations.” “You are so fucking sexy.”

That’s the guy I’m looking for with some sort of respect for the English language. Sitting at a bar in Boise, Idaho, I tell him I’m in a Super 8 bed with only leopard print panties on.

“Im hard already!”

“I would really like to tell you more but I can’t find the apostrophe in that contraction of I am.”
“I couldn.t find the apostrophe dammit. I am trying over here!!!!!!  Love and kisses on all your pink parts.”

----------

He’s recently started messaging someone under the name Psycho. The gist is that she wants to come back… when she gets what she wants… wherever she is...

Psycho asks for money; the way he’s talked about his ex-wife makes me think she was a money-
grubbing cunt.

There’s hey’s and good morning’s, all the pleasantries. And the cadence suggests he loves her.

Or maybe he just thinks he loves her. He’s been taught to be in a love like that from 80s TV and sad country songs. He’ll drink himself into a stupor until she comes back, not because they’ll actually work, but because he’s supposed to.

We must always think about the things that work against us. Who or what has manipulated me into living like I do? My horoscope? An ex? My parents? I worry we are never anything except fully authentic and absolutely inauthentic.

I love him.

I put the phone down after that... because to see that dumb bitch lead him on makes me livid. He’s like the first crack of thunder in Oregon before it starts to pour when you need the melancholy it brings but wish it would hold off one more day because the only person around to fuck you out of it is his best friend.

---------

I had followed him through a 10,000 acre ranch in Montana to a gigantic house and a row of cabins. We had brought his deaf cousin a couple packs of cigarettes and he warned me she was pissed. She opened the door, grabbed the cigarettes and immediately slammed it as I was extending my hand to say hello.

“She wants to fuck me.”

Said so blasé.

“Are you fucking her?”

“Well no.”

I wondered if that was actually his ex-wife and later in the night when he had his head between my legs if I’d catch her looking in the cabin window sobbing.

---------

He steps out of the shower.

Wait, wait, wait. Is Psycho is cousin? They are fucking.

“I’m pretty high. I was trying to get a spider high in the shower.”

He sits down with a guitar.

“I tell you

The high cost of livin’

Ain't nothing like the cost of livin’ high.

My whole life went through my head
Layin' in the hotel bed

Watchin’ as the cops kicked in my door.

“I had a job and a piece of land

My sweet wife was my best friend

But I traded that for cocaine and a whore.”  

My hair covers the tear on my cheek. I don’t mind being his fix or his floozy.

And that… that moment when you let go of the things you want to the submission of another’s desires, that is love. Right?

You’re nothing but a heartbreak waiting to happen, and I’ll take it whenever and however you want to give it.

"I've got so much to give for my heart ain't so broke."

"Isn't that the other song he played that I should have been singing?

Big Timber and Jackson Hole

Big Timber

You said,

"I love you.

Don't tell anyone." 

You were wasted, I know

but I wish you hadn't been. 

Because I'm lonely 

on the road, 

alone. 

And domestication seems nice when you're eating Lunchables from gas stations 

and keeping classic books in a plastic tub. 

I, and you, 

left it at, 

"If it's not through Jackson then yes, you are going in the wrong fucking direction." 

Maybe in the next hour 

You'll surprise me.

Jackson Hole

He came back to my window 

and said,

"I just wanted another hug and maybe a kiss." 

I pretended 

like I didn't hear him. 

 Because I was thinking about your attention to my ass, 

eating me out from behind, 

I fantasize about this daily, 

"one last taste"--

and then you skipped out into the cold to grab a condom from the truck.

Hesitation and bite marks aren't your thing? 

"I can change. I can change. I can change. I can change. 

I can change. I can change. I can change. 

If it helps you fall in love. If it helps you fall in love." 

Repeating wine bar playlist, 

fuck off. 

Anger is always associated with fire

You want me to make a poem of it?

I'll make a poem of it.

Since you need answers,

            some understanding in the way I  marry Centralia

to you.

There was no fire.

There was no fire.

It wasn't like we expected. 

So a ghost town means a ghost heart, huh? Must we always search for a link between every arbitrary impulse? 

It's only fire. 

It's only fire. 

You ask if I'm 100% sure.

It's like saying "always" or "never." 

Didn't you learn anything in science class? 

But I saw it with my own eyes.

There was no fire.

There was no fire.

I'll put your questions before mine.

It's the selfless thing to do. 

I know how much you want selfless, like all the rest...  

You like how I smell from afar

but your kind is always so quick to bath me

in cages 

of attention,

demanding me to tiptoe on hot coals. 

"It's only fire. 

It's only fire." 

Fucking the Mirror

"There's a city somewhere
And you wonder
If you could have the same thing, as one thing
Two sides of the same cracked plate --
Or if it's always four halves,
Two plates in two universes
In colors so different, one isn't a color
More a feeling than a sound."
            -Excerpt from a poem I did not write, but wish I had...

He doesn't bore me. He makes me nervous.

Holding up a mirror can be tough.

And in him, I see the things about myself I never noticed with self-reflection.

"I just thought you were the go with the flow type."

We were somehow both on a bed that neither of us could comfortably fit on alone. In a room claustrophobic for two people that don't know each other that well.

How many times have I said those exact words in an effort to get what I want?

It was in a similar vein the email I wrote to South Africa when he interrupted going down on me to say how he already feels attached to me and he doesn't want just frivolous sex but he also just got out of a relationship and so doesn't want to get in another, yada, yada...

This couldn't have waited? I wanted him to shut the fuck up. I wanted him to continue wanting me. I wanted him to fall in love with a fun-loving person who knew there would be a bereavement in 5 months.

So I said, just go with it.

But in being the one on the other side, it's not so easy, "to just go with it."

People allow things to hold them back, and those things aren't always unacceptable or inferior to the chaotic impulsion that "go with the flow" types exude. The baggage can be mature, to care about how your actions will not only affect yourself but others.

It's not that I'll feel bad for South Africa... We both understand the basis, that no rules are spoken so no rules exist.

I'll feel bad for the other one, because I'm kissing him but thinking about course curls and bony hips. I want to be present. But it' unlikely I will be until the act is done. It won't be a pity fuck, but an appeasement, knowing that the ideals I tout can be lived.

Bottle caps like bread crumbs

We ended up at The Green Door Store, a bouncer's recommendation, dancing to music from the 50s or 60s, maybe 70s (I'm bad at matching music with its era). 

One day till June. I couldn't stop thinking about June, and wondering what he thought about June. 

He abruptly decided he wanted to leave. I felt insecure, uncomfortable. I still feel uncertain quite a bit as it relates to him. Both his remiss and his regard come out of nowhere.

Eighteen days into June. I can't stop thinking about June, and wondering what he thinks about June. 

A journalist friend and fellow wanderer said I should travel with carnies and I mentioned I've tossed the idea around. In college I decided to write a piece about the carnies that worked the fair in my hometown. I became friends with the niece or daughter or cousin's kid (something like that) of the owners. I was introduced to her for a tour and further introductions to the mostly South African "exchange students” working the rides. She quickly started flirting with me. I quickly put her in the friend zone, albeit with a smile. At one point she left me with a couple guys that were manning a game—I can't remember the rules or object now—the one where rubber ducks float around in a small pool. I was asking the normal questions: where are you from, how long have you been traveling with the fair, why do you do it, when one interjected, “There's a party tonight. We always throw a party before we pack up. You should come.” I'm not sure why people divulge information to me.

Close to 10 pm, I walked into the fair grounds with my photographer. We could hob nob with the worst of em... we were the worst of em... Under a red and white striped tent, Daisy Duke, newly impregnated midriff showing, was double-fisting strawberry wine coolers, cigarette hanging from her lips. Alice and the Mad Hatter passed around a fifth of rum (once the kegs were tapped) in front of their trailer. When asked to see inside, through the crack in the door Mr. Hatter slide hallucinogens in the nightstand before opening the door a bit wider. Batman was sweating because of “the meth.” And the adults eyeballed us newbies,  not with disdain but with corrupt smirks, hoping for “fuck me” eyes back. 

Surreal is a carnie costume party in small town Missouri. 

"I don't usually meet people that like such weird experiences, where nothing is strange enough."

"I think, it's like, I feel more comfort when I'm uncomfortable." 

"I do too."

"I think that's why I'm always leaving."

A girl between 10 and 12 years old got on the M 15 bus towards South Ferry, waving as it pulled away. After one stop, she got up and asked the bus driver what stop was next and where she needed to get off for her destination.

“You travel by yourself?”

“My mom is waiting for me.”

You'll get curious looks when you travel alone. Most people forget what it feels like to be waited for. 

My friends ask me how it was and I say something like, “It was amazing.” Period. How can I put five months into a coherent statement? How can I explain why I'd rather still be in London? ...Love is probably an appropriate word here, huh?

I'd like to call someone--not him--to recount to someone the quirks I particularly miss. Things always feel more real when said out loud...

He would open my cider bottle with the bottle cap of his, and then as we walked he would scour the streets for sharp corners on trash bins or fences. It reminded me so much of Missouri. Turns out, South Africans and Missourians aren't all that different.

Thou Shall Not Be Redeemed

Money and its Redemption
Forum on Religion and the Department of Anthropology public discussion
Can "bad money" be made good? Leading economic anthropologists will debate the morality of money, philosophies of philanthropy, and the lure of redemption.
Date: Thursday 7 May 2015
Time: 6:30-8 pm
Venue: Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House, London School of Economics

The first speaker makes her way to the podium, and I notice a white-haired man in the front row. From my position in the row behind him and one seat off to the left, I watch as he strokes his hair down in the back, touches his beard, wipes his mustache, puts his fingers to his forehead, strokes his hair down in the back, touches his beard, wipes his mustache, puts his fingers to his forehead, strokes his hair down in the back, touches his beard, wipes his mustache, puts his fingers to his forehead... The fidget was constant, but the quiet, though audible mumbling was intermittent.

The lectures and discussion commence without interruption, an hour and a half.

Then for 30 minutes, during the Q&A session, the white-haired man hurriedly sticks his hand up when the priest (moderating the panel) asks for other questions. And each time, the man is skipped, noticeably. Noticeably. Noticeably.

What's worse:
A priest of the Church of England deciding not to allow the man to ask his question out of indifference or apathy?
Or deciding not to allow the man to ask his question out of pity, thinking the audience would make fun of him or get annoyed?

The question "Can 'bad money' be made good?" starts a conversation that focuses on the impoverished in society, and how a collective, altruistic "we" can spread the loads of money people in power make (commonly with the assumption that the people in power got their loads of money by being "bad" or keep their loads of money by being knowingly or unknowingly socially irresponsible) to the lesser in society.

I'm not saying this is a senseless goal or an incorrect assumption. I'm saying that, if you want to speak, you should listen... If you want to know, you should be... Otherwise you come off sounding pompous.

And after all that talk of economic inequality, you're not going to allow the economically unequal to have a say?

Dirty money can be redeemed, not dirt under the nails.

I can't tell you what was "wrong" with this man. Maybe it's biological. But I'm going to assume that the things he's been through psychologically have only exacerbated any issue.

This man has likely spent several decades being ignored, not given a chance to ask a question, much less give an opinion, excluded from seeing a directed smile or even brief eye contact.

Were you looking for a cleaner hand, Father?

Sitges, Spain - 3/1/2015

At one time people looked out over the water
and thought it ended out there,
falling over an edge
into space.

Sometimes I wish it were that way,
and when we were 97
we could lay back in the water
and float out to the edge
looking up at the sky.

After months of floating...

We wouldn't even notice
dropping off the end.

But we'd watch the stars, which were also thought to be part of a flat plane,
get swallowed by the night
as we fell farther from them.
And we'd feel the water
on our face
not drenched but more than a mist
like when we stood under the falls near Lake Superior.

As we opened our eyes
We'd see the underbelly of the Earth
see it bubbling and toiling
with the weight of us homosapiens.

I thought of this as we walked the boardwalk that first night in Sitges
and I saw a light,
I assume from a ship,
blinking out there.

But I wondered if instead it was a family
set sail to plummet over the edge.

Maybe it wouldn't be that bad to drink the kool-aid,
to watch as they put the poison
to their lips.
Throats rise and fall
and you swallow and look around,
The warm feeling that you're surrounded by people that would give up so much for you
that would die
for you...

or at least with you.

Backbones

This post was written under the influence of a whole bottle of £8 Chardonnay, five pieces of Baklava, white cheddar cheese, toast with Irish butter, more toast, some humus I licked off my finger and what my brain told me was the rejection of companionship.

Every instance of excess comes with a warning...

I miss who I was, I miss who we all were in high school... Selfish and narcissistic, lacking in responsibility, which is especially relevant to relationships.

Oh fuck, she's ranting about love and sex again, thinking she's so philosophical and shit. Mmm, tell me how you really feel. Maybe we'll get into a fist fight, ponytails being pulled, bobby pins whizzing by like hay in a tornado.

Just as back then, it wouldn't make a god damn difference even today. My life would carry on and so would yours. But for a split second this scrap would be the only thing that mattered.

People don't give each other that feeling enough any more... once you're "grown."

We were angry and so awfully depressed and excitable and passionate about idiotic things.

When you get older and you watch the news and read philosophical books and visit other countries, you always have an excuse for why people act the way they do. "I guess she's having a bad day." "Who's to say what's better or worse?" "Sure." "I kinda want to text him, but I don't want him to think I'm clingy." You see both sides and generally try not to let one emotion boil out of control.

In Sweden, it's "Lagom." It's not good. It's not bad. It's so so. It's... lagom. But fuck lagom. I want to see something furious and confused and memorable. Make me nervous and uncomfortable. And happy, please... 

This is what I've learned: 

Coddle every emotion, not only the good ones. Every moment of heat behind your eyes, accept each tear whether there's a reason for it or not. Scream when your throat gets dry with anticipation of the sound. Dance and bump into people. Get roughed up. Fuck whoever and whenever you'd like. Take some drugs man. Drink and do so heavily. 

"Moderation in all things, including moderation," eh dear Petronius? I cannot stress enough how important "including moderation" is.
 

Because there are things you won't understand until you have excessed, until you been so promiscuous the gyno comes in an gives you antibiotics for trich, until you've taken that one pill that makes you lay in bed concentrating on how slow your heart is beating hoping it doesn't stop, until you've driven hundreds of miles after two Shakespeare's triple rum and cokes for no other reason than to sleep in a Motel 6, until you've been dropped off by a cab driver who speaks no English near the Hagia Sophia with a dozen lustful men helping you with your bags and maybe your pants, until you've scoured dirty New York streets for change under the shadows of Wall Street to get a subway pass home, until you've tasted blood from lips you've pierced but aren't sure what filthy bacteria swim in it.

That excess is beautiful. But here's the warning...

Once you've excessed, you won't be able to go back to the desk, back to the mainstream. That safety net starts to itch like that tag in your favorite undershirt. And you're picking at it all the god damn time, scratching at your side or the nape of your neck, trying to lay it down flat against your skin or pull it away. You finally decide to just cut it out, but you can't find scissors and the butter knife at the Italian restaurant is just too dull. So all that's left is to pull and you end up ripping a hole right at the seam in that favorite shirt you wear nearly every day... under all the other tops.

Just like that undershirt, as you get older you start adding layers... And the blemish in your personality goes unnoticed.
 

Life demands you fit in, sit up straight, stop vomiting on the platform, stop speaking audibly when you're alone. But you end up crazy even still... You make yourself normal but secretly do things that are fucking insane. You uncross your legs on the train just to touch knees with the middle-aged man sitting beside you. 

"There, on the soft sand, a few feet away from our elders, we would sprawl all morning, in a petrified paroxysm of desire, and take advantage of every blessed quirk in space and time to touch each other: her hand, half-hidden in the sand, would creep towards me, its slender brown fingers sleepwalking nearer and nearer; then, her opalescent knee would start on a long cautious journey;" 

There's this couple sitting across from each other on the Great Northern line on Friday night, their knees slightly touching. That's it for me. Just to touch knees and to look up and see someone smiling because they love you. Not in the "Let's get married" kind of way, but in the "I see you" kind of way... And all those fucked up things... I like those too because it's different and noble and the world is a bit more colorful with you in it.

If we as humans could get to that place where we might reach out to a stranger and they actually SEE us...

We wouldn't need a god damn mood chair.

While touring Level39, a large fintech accelerator in London's Canary Wharf, I run into the mycoocoon, a white leather lounge with a honeycomb like dome that drops over the sitter. And the dome changes colors. See you pick a card on the table beside the chair depending on how you want to feel, "emotions" (there is no "negativity" here) like balance, clarity, energy, cheerful and love. LOVE!? Really? Are you fucking kidding me?

They're telling me if I sit in this pod under a pink (yes, pink; how very cliche) glow in this tech accelerator where old investors swap millions of dollars with young entrepreneurs building things as revolutionary as a fucking mood chair, above a crowded, high-end shopping center where business people dash to their next meeting around those just moseying to get another pair of $500 shoes or consume some pre-made chicken sandwich from Pret, I'll feel love. Love! Like that thing people are consistently failing to grasp?

I can't even bear to sit in it. I'm not ready to experience love from a chair...

 

No, instead I'd rather experience love from this...

 

There's a peppery smell, or one I associate with pepper because the smell seems as though it's alive, bouncing around. It's the smell of someone that doesn't where the deodorant I've grown accustomed to in the U.S. or just less of it. There was only a moment when I thought I didn't like it.
 

It's a manly smell? No, that's a lie really. I like it because when he speaks philosophy comes rolling out, and then, "Well I could be talking bullshit." There's really very few that turn me on with their intellect so this seems something unique.
 

I tolerate it, but that's too strong a word. My body, brain, whatever this is that gives purpose to the things I do, has decided to embrace it, because that thing tricks you into realizing purpose when there really isn't one.

It's tricked me into observing intently the situation when we're together. The other day, he's on top, twig-like arms holding himself over me, his head drops into my neck and the only part of him I can see are his shoulder blades. And those shoulder blades are only bone, jagged, pointy, they nearly come together in the middle. They aren't these smooth lumps on the back of a guy who cares a whole lot about physical appearance, lifting heavy things to fit some societal idea of what attractive is.

In that moment, it felt more like a bird of prey, a vulture was hovering over me. And I think back about how I've written about vultures before, equating scavenging journalists to the bird. He's one of them. God damn, doesn't that fit nicely.

But these tricks... Then you're stuck writing a blog post trying to tie high school and knees and mood chairs in fintech accelerators and South Africans and birds of prey together coherently.

But you see he allows me to feel like myself, rambling on about decentralization and what other nonsense we don't remember until we're having the same god damn conversation.
 

He's extreme, like I want people to be. In this certain way... He's definitely living under the poverty line. I've always been told the life of a freelancer is hard. But because it's hard, he has priorities, and us laying around naked on the mats that double as a bed on his floor for days on end just doesn't get him by.
 

Taking things slow is really not my M.O. I don't have time for slow. My life is running out. I want my relationships to burn, to flare, exuding immense energy everywhere and to everyone we touch, until they have to look away.
 

And then we'll wake up and look at each other and blush because we have absolutely no idea why we're lying together still. And we'll shake hands and part ways.

But right now I'm still waking up on the floor with some really great music playing that makes you ask over and over "Who is this?" Staring out at a tallboy Red Stripe with a lime green glob of chewed gum on the top. My American flag zippo is beside that and a small jar with the remains of burnt tobacco and gum wrappers.
 

Writers tend to overuse nostalgic, but there's this sense I've woken up like this before, slightly hungover, nearly heaving when I smell the smoke on my hands, with someone I'm just not that familiar with.

It was in high school... So many mornings in high school.

And just as high school was full of excess, there were so many warnings I did not heed.

And I know he likes analyzing every fucking word, every sentence, every statement, asking himself if he agrees with what's being said, if it's true, whether it has meaning. But if you're reading this, I promise there is no meaning here today. Meaning only happens after the fact, when you've had time to look from an outside perspective and make connections out of coincidence.

Right now, I'm just ranting.