when you were done, we’d take showers, sticky from the sweat and sunblock. we’d make love then we’d watch a movie in your bed. sometimes, we’d stop in the middle of the movie to make love again. then we’d go out for dinner. the julienne platter from la esquina, this was your favorite. or rice on elizabeth, the indian curry with the mango chutney, you loved it too.

i think about how this summer is so different from the summer before, and the summer before that one, the summer i met you.

while you are gone in london i think of all the ways we will start leading different lives and how the thing we had will slip through our fingers like water. while you are gone my boss flirts with me and it makes me angry and then it makes me laugh. while you are gone, i write a lot about my childhood and stay up nights crying after writing. while you are gone, i think of other men. i think of all the other men i could have, i think of even the guy who cuts my hair.

he’s like the japanese johnny depp. he is ridiculously good looking in this subtle, can’t-speak-a-lick-of-english-way. the whole time he was cutting my hair, i closed my eyes and believed it was out of tenderness that he grazed my face with his fingertips. i wanted to lean forward and rest my hand on the inside of his thigh as he trimmed the front layers. i think, oh i think, he wouldn’t have even noticed.

simone weil on beauty:

beauty is the only finality here below. as kant said very aptly, it is a finality which involves no objective. a beautiful thing involves no good except itself, in its tonality, as it appears to us.

it offers us its own existence. we do not desire anything else, we possess it, and yet we still desire something. we do not in the least know what it is. we want to get behind beauty, but it is only a surface. it is a sphinx, an enigma, a mystery which is painfully tantalizing. we should like to feed upon it but it is merely something look at; it appears only from a certain distance. the great trouble in human life is that looking and eating are two different operations.

it may be that vice, depravity, and crime are nearly always, or even perhaps always, in their essence, attempts to eat beauty, to eat what we should only look at. eve began it. if she caused humanity to be lost by eating the fruit, the opposite attitude, looking at the fruit without eating it, should be what is required to save it.

reminds me of an exboyfriend of mine. ahem. when probed, the doctor, over gchat will tell me he plans on proposing to his current girlfriend early next year. then, he asks me to take off my shirt so he can see on videocam my, not to brag, perfect tits. but not even he can wake me from my stupor. as he leans in close in the back of cab, ready to confess how much he wants me, i am suddenly turned off. i’m disgusted even. i know this game, i know how it ends, this game is old.

well, i ate him. i ate him and him-inside-of-me tried to kill me and then i killed him by killing me.

1. we must all grow up. we must fend for ourselves, find jobs, keep them, get better at them, hoard enough money to be secure, accept that no one will feed, clothe, and care for us. that your resistance on settling on a viable career path was not in fact, as you incorrectly suspected, blatant evidence of your laziness and ineptitude; but rather a deep and rooted fear of having to swallow and keep down the all-silencing truth that you are alone in this world. to digest this choking pill is to grow old.

2. this is something you knew before but learn it anew with wonder every time: that the exhilarating glory of having in your clenched fist the infinity of love can cease. mysteriously, it does not discourage you from thinking you can grasp it again. how can it cease but continue to exist in some, strange, satisfying metaphysical sense…? magic.

3. you can change yourself if you acknowledge and then work hard to overcome childhood pathologies. but like with any long term, satisfying goal, it must be worked at little by little every day because EVERY DAY COUNTS.

madness doubled is marriage.

saw anne carson at mcnally’s last weekend. as i waited in line for her to sign my book, i admonished myself to not say anything stupid as i have done in the past while writers have been signing my books (john updike, chang rae lee, vendela videa, george saunders, etc). she was nice and i know she was nice because when i told her to “enjoy the weather” laughing nervously, she laughed, nervously along, too. that’s nice.

before i went to the reading, i reread “the beauty of the husband.” here’s some marvelous shit from her hand that filled my head with dreams of a tan and brawny asian man for days after:

a wound gives off its own light/surgeons say

loyal to nothing/ my husband. so why did i love him from early girlhood to late middle age/and the divorce decree came in the mail?/beauty./no great secret./not ashamed to say i loved him for his beauty./as i would again/ if he came near./beauty convinces. you know beauty makes sex possible./beauty makes sex sex.

we have this deep sadness between us and its spells so habitual i/can’t/tell it from love.

rabbis liken the torah to the narrow sex of the gazelle/for whose husband every time/is like the first time.

you know how they say a zen butcher makes one correct cut and the whole ox/falls apart/like a puzzle.

coward./i know./betrayer./yes./opportunist./i can see why you would think that./slave./go on./faithless lecherous child./okay./liar./what can i say./liar./but./liar./but please./destroyer liar sadist fake./please./please what./save me./who else do you say that to./no one./no one he says.

bloodless monster! had i never/seen or known your/kindness what/might i/have been.

pretty good, right? afterwards, i’d wake in the early morning to see the frenchman’s pale, lovely freckled back to me and feel guilt, like a steel rod from my throat to my coccyx, my body full of longing for another. but it was a dream, just a dream. first of all, who cares what our subconscious wants. and second, it does not want good things. case in point, i dream of beating my mother. so there. without the choices we have made to in this life, we are animals full of bloodlust. forgive me for even writing about it.

“…he reached to hold what cannot be held, what already ran among the mountains at once terrible and of great beauty, like flowers that feed on flesh. what blood and bone are made of but can themselves not make on any altar nor by any wound of war. what we may well believe has power to cut and shape and hollow out the dark form of the world surely if wind can, if rain can. but which cannot be held never be held and is no flower but is swift and a huntress and the wind itself is in terror of it and the world cannot lose it.”

you say whaat? fo sheezy? yeah, cormac mccarthy. a bit over the top when i read it now but it was striking a chord with me late last night.

how come i’m posting so much? frenchman is away in france, a few days in paris and a few days in burgundy for some company retreat. when he’s gone i relapse into my normal self: sleeping too much, eating too much, writing less quality shit than usual (like blog posts as opposed to short stories, personal statement, etc). he’s leaving again in may for almost the whole month to interview across the european continent, though mainly in london. his 2010 bonus apparently sucked ass (alas i wear no diamonds) and is looking elsewhere for his career, his future.

i encourage his pursuits. anything he has to do to advance his cash-money-making, i am all for it. even it takes him, for the time being, across the atlantic.

will i follow him?

…

against my better instinct, i will routinely check out the doctor’s facebook. we are not linked on it but i can view his photos. just the other day he uploaded two new ones. one, which is not so new, i took of him when he was in medical school in ohio. he is shaving, i am standing behind him and snap a picture of his reflection in the mirror. my face doesn’t show–just a white flash where my nose and mouth and eyes are suppose to be. it is captioned, “halo” by his hand. number two photo is with him and his new (recycled) girlfriend. she is thin and pretty, kind-looking and they stand next to each other, in front of a blossoming magnolia tree.

i took this image in my head with me as i went to take a shit in the bathroom just now. and there on the toilet, i saw clear, crisp, consecutive snapshots: wedding, him smiling hard, eyes down; bundled son, mother looking worn but pleased; salt and pepper hair, him looking more like his father than himself.

no anger, no sadness, just wonder how i could not have seen this before. of course, how could it have ended any other way than the way we did not expect?

what i thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel, says tony hoagland.

if i could write to him, and i can but i won’t, i would say: things will work out and we will live with ourselves.

i would say: see, i am happy and loved and he is good to me and has surpassed all my expectations.

another thing: you ass, the first thing out of your mouth should have been an apology not a plea.

last thing: it’s okay. it’s okay. it’s okay.

i couldn’t find it, so i walked down bowery for a long time and admired the architecture of the the bowery hotel. i love that bar, that bar is the bar that the frenchman took me to and peeled open his perfect heart.

i love new york city on early mornings, especially on the weekend when everyone who is anyone! is sleeping off a hangover. it is dead quiet before 1 pm, the only people that are out are mommies and daddies and old artistic couples carrying bags home to their soho loft, in preparation for tonight’s dinner for 6. let’s imagine the guest list: a renown portrait photographer of scottish descent, obligatory attorney or financier, cinematographer of blockbuster but also artistically appreciated films, recent divorcee of an australian magnate, and me, a nobody.

not. i settle at the whole foods on bowery and houston (i think). it is much better than the one in union square which reminds me of cows gone crazy in a slaughter house. come to think of it, i thought, as i walked in and grabbed coconut water on sale, last time i was in here was with the doctor. it was oh so many years ago before trader joes opened up in cobble hill and us brooklynites….starved.

anyways, i was beating myself up for missing my class. so i decided to eat of course. indian food, upstairs, next to the window. across the street is a park and i watched grown men play basketball, some of them really sucked. i could probably play better than them, i thought, my attention half at the table behind me. a table full of little girls, no more than 6 years of age.

i want a child too. and i wonder how long it’ll be before i have one. persephone will be her name. i think she’ll be a ballerina (hopefully she’ll get the frenchman’s legs) by day, and a heartbreaker by night. she will be much better looking than me, and more mysterious for it too. i’ll love her and it’ll be a pure love, not all shadowed by death like man-o to woman-o love is…

because with children, bar any calamitous events you can dream that they live beyond you, and therefore forever and you never have to imagine living without them.

back to the window at whole foods. it started to rain. i finished my food, and walked out with my bag of coconut water. as the bajans say, “it’s good for ya, daughter.”

but here i go again (thanks for the query, weonhee).

it’s the new year and i feel myself aging. not just yet physically, though i combat this rigorously, spending most of my paltry income on facials, facial lotion (oil of olay daily, creme de la mer when i can), pilates classes, sleeping — but inside, i’m aging, rapidly.

and as with age, all things non-essential begin to fall away. and things you cared about in your youth (fame, power, money, name your sin) are rendered meaningless by experience. but the things that remain, usually people, become ever more important, more stressful, and the doubts and fears and hopes i have for my friends and family grow deeper, more insistent.

and i can see how at one point, one could not be afraid of death.

…

i’ve been reading, as always. please read, it’s the only pleasure that’s stayed with me all these years. i haven’t written much but the imperative to write grows stronger, louder everyday.

…

the frenchman and i are fine, great. we just got back from barbados. we sunned and swam in the ocean and made love occasionally. we ate from the take-out place next door to our hotel, watched “the shield,” and fell asleep early.

…

the doctor showed up at my door christmas day. the frenchman was inside my apt and wasn’t too happy that i received a text from the doctor to come outside. i sent the doctor away. as expected, he called, texted, and emailed me. i didn’t reply. even though i thought of replies, and i thought of our past and i re-lived everything all over again. i felt bad for him, bad for myself, and bad for what had been us.

i don’t reply to him because i guess what he needs to know, i can’t say. and if i could say it, he wouldn’t understand. aye, there’s the rub.

i don’t have much confidence that he will end up happy. whatever that means, more good days than bad, i guess. but i comfort myself in the knowledge that he has always been that way: not-happy. before me, while he was with me, and after me. and so, it is not as if i deprived him of something.

but i’m going to hope and pray anyways. i don’t know how. i can’t fathom a way out for him but i’m only me. brooklyn is beautiful, winter thaws and spring comes shyly at first but the trees and cloudless, sunny sky … life is so much larger than we can imagine and full of surprises and grace and most of all mercy. if we want it, that is.

i probably think about our past more than he does. i don’t know, it amuses me. when he asks me to do something or i am asking him about something and i think, wow you were inside of me once. strange, and i smile. sometimes, i’m very paranoid that everyone in the office knows. i don’t know, how could they not? these guys have known each other for 15 years; don’t good friends pick up on that shit like dogs? je se pais.

and then i think how nice all of them are to not mention it to me and forgive their friend for his dalliance. that’s all.

things are going well with the frenchman. i’ll keep to my bearish outlook though (hehe, see how i am picking up on these financial terms?) and predict nothing. there was one point in the past 4 months, like right after i came back from hawaii that i really started thinking about the doctor. i think this is what people call “relapse.” i think it was because there were tons of really muscular asian men on the beach and this just triggered something. also i was on my period. also this, also that. i don’t know, maybe i was also all freaked out about having to go home. i hate the home that i have, it’s unfortunate.

aanyways, so like i thought about the doctor. really started thinking about him, and missing him. but i pulled myself through it. i was like, remember you made a choice. a choice to live. and a choice to live is ESSENTIALLY a choice to be happy. and all that good stuff. and the doctor is not the road going to that.

he is: a reenactment of my sorry childhood. a necessary set-up so i could choose to play who i was forced to be when i was younger. then i could also choose to leave. im not going to say this choice was entirely my own, i think god probably had a lot to do with it. and the doctor too, we must give this faltering devil some credit. he made it easy for me to leave him, and that’s sort of nice.

and someday, i’ll probably write a long novel about him. or no, maybe someday, he’ll just be a minor character; a snapshot photograph in my memory. 5′9, sullen, man-boy. lost, too pretty for his own good, a bit of a bore. and a lot of, seriously, not even vaguely entertaining, mental illness. and possibly true evil.

the frenchman?

humble, very contained. capable. smart. kind beyond any measure. looks about 12 years old but has been a man to his family. lets me cry and act crazy. still makes love to me like the first time.

woohoo, this is getting corny.

we laugh a lot, almost all the time.

merry xmas. happy new year. a better year.

i forgot how falling in love is like turning a fresh page over and over again. haven’t done it in a long while (since the doctor) and i can’t remember it being so easy. it probably wasn’t with him; everything with us was so mired in shit and dirty with humiliation and abject misery. and i thought if we could save ourselves, that the redemption (which never came) would be worth everything, even my life.

wrong ladies, don’t do that shit. don’t date men that wear you down with their bullshit, their inability to see you and want you and have you. so strange dating the frenchman who is mostly normal. psychologically speaking that is. what’s normal? he’s content with happiness, he is okay with it, he can endure it and bear it and make it grow. other fucked up people, who shall remain nameless just as i am nameless, didn’t grow up with happiness and therefore find it confusing and strange and almost uncomfortable. and if left alone with it, would destroy it.

so no doubt i am grateful even though it’s so strange how i can’t see a future with the frenchman. not to say i don’t dream of big rings and sandy-haired children with almond shaped eyes, no doubt i am still a woman. but i don’t know, i’ve always been able to determine the exact probability of things happening, to infuse the future with my desire and therefore change the course of it (not necessarily for the best), but it’s all black, all 50/50 with him. it may be lost tomorrow, or later this evening but i feel neither fear nor hope. word, i’m old.

taking off to san francisco this weekend for a short vacation with him. he puts his arm around me and curls his fingers on my shoulder. at night, i kiss his very thin neck. i speak pidgin french at which he laughs. we talk about the meaning of words and i read him poetry that he does not enjoy.

he liked this one though:

it doesn’t matter. what matters is this:

the kingdom of heaven is good.

but heaven on earth is better.

thinking is good.

but living is better.

alone in your favorite chair

with a book you enjoy

is fine. but spooning

is even better.

i’m not much for techno/trance music. i did that rave thang back in the late 90’s, early 00’s as a teenager in LA. and also, i did all that e. haven’t done that drug in a long as i’ve moved on to much more streamlined ways of killing myself but i was up for it at his behest. kitty, surprsingly also took some too. i’ve met her a few times before, she’s a cute chinese girl who was believably perky and friendly when i met her for the first time last winter at a bar called tribe. i didn’t think anything of her, except i was surprised when the frenchman told me that he hadn’t fucked her–her being a cute asian girl and all.

i took it easy but she collapsed on the ground 20 minutes after she took the pill. i held her, made her drink water and generally enjoyed the music and the atmosphere. she moaned and writhed but i wasn’t all that worried. she kept snuggling into the pocket between my breasts and my open arm and then finally started nibbling, like a little cat at my bare shoulders. scratching my arms with her tiny little nails. she wanted to kiss me so i let her, no big deal. but then, when she swooned and stuck her wide, fat tongue in my mouth, i was surprised. i obliged though because i’m polite and found that her mouth was shallow and warm.

but no butterflies in the stomach. i’ve never open-mouth, french kissed a girl before. not that much different from kissing a guy except that women are so soft and moan all the time. she was so small and docile in my arms, i couldn’t help but like her. but her touch didn’t give me the stomach-drop that the frenchman’s does and i realized right then and there, a little sadly, that i wasn’t a lesbian.

i took her home to the frenchman’s place though where we took another tab. this is where things get fuzzy and i remember arms and legs and being on top of her, wanting her very, very badly. i would have liked to see her cry, or make her cry but restrained myself. it’s only her first time and mine, i reasoned with the sadist in my head. the frenchman, uneasy and neglected, sat patiently on his side of the bed, waiting for my mouth. we did fun stuff, and i like big breasts. but after sucking on hers, and fingering her and eating her — i was completely frustrated and whined, “what am i suppose to do now?” i wanted to fuck her so badly, make her die beneath me but i couldn’t. not possible without the aid of rubber dildos.

so: he fucked me. she fucked me, the best she could without being a man. she tasted sweet, like honey-water and then a little like me after she got excited. he took me from the back and watched with adolescent glee as my tongue searched and searched. goddamn, that thing is hard to find. a little later, i had him put his hands in her while i kissed her, and tossed him a bone by telling her to lick his balls while i rode on top. i also had both our mouths on him at some point, so i don’t want anyone telling me i’m not a generous woman.

i know, it sounds like a porno shoot. and i won’t say it was true love or the mixing of souls or anything but the night and the afternoon that followed, it was all very simple and natural. was he jealous? a little, wanted to change the sheets after she left because he didn’t want to smell her on me, or on him. was i jealous? a little, strange to watch the hand of your man inside another woman while he’s inside of you but overall it was safe because she was most eager to be with me and wouldn’t touch him until i told her to. a very good girl.

i have dinner with her this week in midtown. i promised him that i would only sleep with her in his presence, he tells me he is not threatened by her which means he has already conceived the possiblity that i may get wound up in fucking her. at least temporarily. a dick is a dick is a dick, right. i’ll try my best to stay my hand and my other body parts but she looks so much like this other girl, that i really liked, the same long, slim eyes, and heart shaped face… oh and those tits (men! you are so lucky) that hang down in perfect mouthfuls when she’s leaning over me.

to make a long, endlessly repetitive story short, the frenchman apologized for his antics, swore he was not gay and confessed his undying lust for me and only me and i forgave him.  i always do, don’t i.  

i’m always forgetting things but i haven’t seen the doctor in a long time and i looked at his picture the other day and found that a face i’d known anywhere was now strange to me. couldn’t really remember the way his nose rested on his face or the exact gleam of his hazel eyes or anything really. his touch though, yeah, i can remember that. never sensual, always clinical which was creepy and erotic in its own way. but. yeah, is there anything more for me to add to that except maybe i have to change my thinking about relationships and love and to stop, oh i don’t k now, feeling a deep sense of loss and astonishment everytime i fall in love with someone else? because loving someone else necessarily means that you do not love another? and if you don’t love that other, did you ever love anyone and can you love anyone, ever?

need to write, need to read. trying to sign up for a writing class this fall at the ymca on 92nd. am currently reading joseph roth’s “tarabas” at home (Zzzzzz, his radetzky stuff was so much better), thomas pynchon’s “inherent vice” (seriously funny, i crack up all by myself) at the frenchman’s place and borges, poetry and bolano at work.

in the recent past, i thought of death a lot. not the afterlife, but the moment of death–however many breaths it takes. im scared i’ll be scared, that i’ll want more. (we always do, says the frenchman). your thoughts?