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.