Thu, 19 May 2005

over forever
Q: Where were you when you realized no one would ever be in love with you?

MR, 25, programmer: A year ago. I was at home watching TV, I don’t remember what, some ambient late-night cable movie, and I tried to think about movies I really liked, and I couldn’t really think of any. I mean, there were some movies that I knew were classics and that I would mention to impress people, and there were some movies that were somehow interesting in a way that I would structurally consider them from time to time, and there were movies that I knew were childhood touchstones for most of my friends, but I didn’t really like any of these movies, they were just interchangable pieces of my social environment. And as I thought about it, music was like that too, and the rugby team I was on, and just everything in my life, none of it stuck to me, it was all just pretexts for conversations. And I went through that thing, that “Who am I?” thing, and what I came up with is there’s just not much to me at all. I’m entirely on the surface, and even that lacks texture. So if that’s the case, how can anybody ever really be in love with me?

JO, 42, package delivery: I was thirty-eight at the time, and was happy to see the accumulation of wear and damage that so many of the people I used to know were trying so hard to hide. Face-lines, old scars, a slight palsied tremble in my hands from time to time collectively gave my words a specific heft that I attribute to my uncles, giants among men, meth merchants and tired farmers feared by the world as men without doubt, no end to the strength of their resolve. All that shit-work, all that rehab, all that solitary December meditation had scrubbed me clean of the weakness of indecision and appeal for change and desire for the things I could not put my hands upon. People who spoke to me took on an increased seriousness, held in the nervous habit of small talk. I was thirty-eight, and changed entirely in my essence, which was all I ever wanted.

It was February then, and the heater had killed in the night; the floor was so cold it stung like needles against my bare feet. The thermal couple had burned out, as it did a couple times a year ever since I moved in, so I went down to the basement where the pre-dawn light couldn’t get past the snow piled up over the ground-level windows and walked down the stairs by memory, walking to the switch on the far wall (a feat of prior-owner stupidity that I kept reminding myself to fix) when I heard something move. I figured boxes had shifted, or maybe fallen a little, but as I took another step I heard a specific sound, the sound of something moving away, against the wall. Something or someone. It was too early and cold to think of being afraid, this was just another small problem to be dealt with, so I kept walking toward the switch while keeping my upper body turned toward the sound, reaching out with my left hand to find and flip the hundred-watt bulbs on, but the lights didn’t come on. I turned the switch off and on again, once, and still there was no light, and I thought to myself “Well, that’s it, this is how it’s going to happen.”

I heard her voice then, and I knew it bone-deep but couldn’t immediately place the sound of her to her name as she said “I didn’t think you’d mind if I slept down here. I promise not to be weird.” I hadn’t seen her since we split up, and that had been three years ago when she disappeared with some other guy while I was at Windward House, after which I never thought I’d see her again. Her name was Cheryl, and for a couple years I thought she was in love with me, and now she was living in my basement, eating out of my fridge while I slept, learning all about my new life, the life I thought was so far away from everything that happened before. I instantly felt very tired, and wanted to go back to sleep, and I told Cheryl that she could come upstairs and sleep on the couch, which she did, and after a while she just kinda officially moved back in. We had sex once, just because it seemed inevitable, and since then she sleeps in my bed, staring at me in the dark.

I don’t feel strong anymore, or serious. I feel like someone’s always laughing at me, like I’m a joke to everyone who knows how my life is now. People stop by, sometimes, and they see this woman who lives her own small life inside my house, almost entirely seperate from mine, and they wonder, they speculate, they gossip. I guess that’s just one more thing I won’t have to worry about anymore.

LS, 61, retired: Oh, but I always knew. When you’re like this, you just know, you don’t expect too much. You can be different and it’s okay, but then on the other hand sometimes it’s too different, and when that’s the case you…it doesn’t work. Oh, not that I didn’t try or nothing, but you know. You know how it is.
(12:25.05.19.2005) [/scrytch] #