How Expected
Nothing has really topped Morrissey's How Soon Is Now as the epic anthem of solitude in a crowd; and my iPod conspiratorially conjured it as I lie here in the early afternoon, the Sunday following, just as I'm in the midst of that song's sentiment. A little melancholyncholy, perhaps feeling the first strains of homesickness.
I'm not willing to accept those heart strings being played. Let's blame the booze.
Booze, darling?
My first boyfriend, Adam, the first man, the first naked stretch of learning (not on a curve, but flat out), came to visit me during the summer I was on the farm. I was out of the city because I couldn't afford to stay while school wasn't in session, and he had gone back to his family in Montreal. Out of the blue, he announced over the phone that he was coming. His visit was disastrous. Over those few days I think we both started to realize that we had bitten off more than we could chew, respectively; but I was elated when he drove up the lane in the minivan. (Yes, I did say minivan.) When he stepped out, we kissed... and the first thing that he said to me was, "I think nostalgia is a subtle form of depression."
Which was the best explanation I could have had for his visit, but it was also probably the most useful thing I took away from the six months that we tried to make a go of being together. It remains one of the most insightful things anyone has ever said to me.
And when I think of him I prefer to think of that bequest, rather than the fact that the lad refused to let me ravish him in the daylight. Or nightlight. No light at all, in fact.
He's the one I determined was sleeping with his therapist. Yep. First boyfriend. Yay me.
The nostalgia thing, though, resurfaces intermittently, like fish winnowing the water. I'm not one particularly given to regret, my decisions are (on the whole) made peace with when I make them, and I try (TRY) to let go of those things I cannot change, the ones I have no power over, like the past. (At least not yet. I'm still working on the time machine; and Corba has a theory about bending the speed of light with crystal. Fingers crossed everyone.) But these slow aches wind their current still. As far as I can determine, it's the price of memory; but it doesn't mean I have to like it. Music is probably second only to smell as the manifester of the big ones, the sizmic heaves that purge molten jets, and I haven't had enough time to connect any new strains to this volcanic soil, where I (according to my own expecations) am supposed to flourish.
Every song I know has a habitat in rivers back home. Listening to the iPod is dipping into dysthymia.
Shortly after we arrived in New Zealand we attended the Hero Party; Auckland's answer to Pride. Big venue. Lots of gay. Mustardseed and I went, and danced as we're good at: flirty; coyly; slutty. I can say this defintively: being sandwiched between two panted boners in throbbing base does nothing to ease the sense of aloneness that clublife is so good at highlighting. In lazer light.
I didn't want a romp. I wanted a friend.
I got a phone number instead. Lust is a perennial accessory, and it goes in every direction: chaste and shameless, all at the same time. It, at least, is immediate, has little to do with a relationship to the past when it's a new infatuation. A rise in blood pressure of this nature is suitably crushed on the future; on possiblity and roads untaken.
I'm not there yet. I'm squarely between then and when. Now is taking up all my resources.
I've put away the clock.
I'm not willing to accept those heart strings being played. Let's blame the booze.
Booze, darling?
My first boyfriend, Adam, the first man, the first naked stretch of learning (not on a curve, but flat out), came to visit me during the summer I was on the farm. I was out of the city because I couldn't afford to stay while school wasn't in session, and he had gone back to his family in Montreal. Out of the blue, he announced over the phone that he was coming. His visit was disastrous. Over those few days I think we both started to realize that we had bitten off more than we could chew, respectively; but I was elated when he drove up the lane in the minivan. (Yes, I did say minivan.) When he stepped out, we kissed... and the first thing that he said to me was, "I think nostalgia is a subtle form of depression."
Which was the best explanation I could have had for his visit, but it was also probably the most useful thing I took away from the six months that we tried to make a go of being together. It remains one of the most insightful things anyone has ever said to me.
And when I think of him I prefer to think of that bequest, rather than the fact that the lad refused to let me ravish him in the daylight. Or nightlight. No light at all, in fact.
He's the one I determined was sleeping with his therapist. Yep. First boyfriend. Yay me.
The nostalgia thing, though, resurfaces intermittently, like fish winnowing the water. I'm not one particularly given to regret, my decisions are (on the whole) made peace with when I make them, and I try (TRY) to let go of those things I cannot change, the ones I have no power over, like the past. (At least not yet. I'm still working on the time machine; and Corba has a theory about bending the speed of light with crystal. Fingers crossed everyone.) But these slow aches wind their current still. As far as I can determine, it's the price of memory; but it doesn't mean I have to like it. Music is probably second only to smell as the manifester of the big ones, the sizmic heaves that purge molten jets, and I haven't had enough time to connect any new strains to this volcanic soil, where I (according to my own expecations) am supposed to flourish.
Every song I know has a habitat in rivers back home. Listening to the iPod is dipping into dysthymia.
Shortly after we arrived in New Zealand we attended the Hero Party; Auckland's answer to Pride. Big venue. Lots of gay. Mustardseed and I went, and danced as we're good at: flirty; coyly; slutty. I can say this defintively: being sandwiched between two panted boners in throbbing base does nothing to ease the sense of aloneness that clublife is so good at highlighting. In lazer light.
I didn't want a romp. I wanted a friend.
I got a phone number instead. Lust is a perennial accessory, and it goes in every direction: chaste and shameless, all at the same time. It, at least, is immediate, has little to do with a relationship to the past when it's a new infatuation. A rise in blood pressure of this nature is suitably crushed on the future; on possiblity and roads untaken.
I'm not there yet. I'm squarely between then and when. Now is taking up all my resources.
I've put away the clock.
Comments