Because this is a secret blog
"Sadly, or perhaps not, I recognize that I have an arid heart" [Fernando Pessoa]
Outwardly, I despise Valentine's Day...hate it, denounce it.
My bitterness drips.
My jadedness glistens.
People are impressed--I'm so over it.
Love is like, a cultural construction. Man. Get with it.
Inwardly though, I have felt lonely for sometime, and today, I can't help it, but I wish I had a boyfriend. I can't really picture him but I have written, in secret, page after page of attributes...the equivalent of a schoolgirl (or boy) writing in the margins of their bluebook the name of their secret crush again and again and again.
Dynamism, compassion, humor, well-read, kind eyes, open face, tender and thoughtful, demonstrative, quiet, spontaneous.
Tonight, I clear my calendar of all obligations.
I spend a lot of money on a nice dinner for us. We're the youngest, sexiest couple in the restaurant. He's brought me a rose. The restaurant attracts an upper middle class, white, straight, suburban millieu. They are incredibly deferential to us, feeding each other ice creams and kissing across the table.
We walk hand in hand. It starts to snow.
It's not even about sex anymore. Sex is boring. The Monday night orgy? Like a Monday night workout. Let's do this for an hour and get it over with so I can take a shower and get a burrito for dinner. I miss when B and I were dating and we would wake up on a Sunday morning, fuck, lay around in the bed and get high and read the New York Times and then fuck again on top of the Arts & Leisure section. Or we'd go downstairs and get breakfast at one or two pm.
Sex is so passé, don't you think?
Tonight I have half a mind to break into the local gym where I work out (the gym closed many hours ago; it's quite late).
I'd turn on one lamp above one treadmill and run for hours and hours and look out at the snow.
Right now it feels like I could run twelve, fourteen miles maybe, do it for hours and listen to music on my headphones.
I wish I had a boy whom I loved and who loved me. I feel so Whitman right now, so Calamus. When I was a boy, fifteen or so, I bought Whitman's Leaves of Grass...why? A sympathetic English teacher, probably, older and married and yet kin to me somehow, put me on to the trail, knowing that I would find what I was looking for, and in that huge volume I somehow came to the Calamus poems as if through divination and read this one which has always been my favorite:
Tonight I think about it again and wish it was true. I was alone a lot then as I am now. When you see me at work I make fun of you and your boyfriend or girlfriend in a casual way, making it clear that the single life is the life for me right now. But really I am wishing for it too--someone worth buying a big fucking box of chocolates for. Happy Valentine's Day.
Outwardly, I despise Valentine's Day...hate it, denounce it.
My bitterness drips.
My jadedness glistens.
People are impressed--I'm so over it.
Love is like, a cultural construction. Man. Get with it.
Inwardly though, I have felt lonely for sometime, and today, I can't help it, but I wish I had a boyfriend. I can't really picture him but I have written, in secret, page after page of attributes...the equivalent of a schoolgirl (or boy) writing in the margins of their bluebook the name of their secret crush again and again and again.
Dynamism, compassion, humor, well-read, kind eyes, open face, tender and thoughtful, demonstrative, quiet, spontaneous.
Tonight, I clear my calendar of all obligations.
I spend a lot of money on a nice dinner for us. We're the youngest, sexiest couple in the restaurant. He's brought me a rose. The restaurant attracts an upper middle class, white, straight, suburban millieu. They are incredibly deferential to us, feeding each other ice creams and kissing across the table.
We walk hand in hand. It starts to snow.
It's not even about sex anymore. Sex is boring. The Monday night orgy? Like a Monday night workout. Let's do this for an hour and get it over with so I can take a shower and get a burrito for dinner. I miss when B and I were dating and we would wake up on a Sunday morning, fuck, lay around in the bed and get high and read the New York Times and then fuck again on top of the Arts & Leisure section. Or we'd go downstairs and get breakfast at one or two pm.
Sex is so passé, don't you think?
Tonight I have half a mind to break into the local gym where I work out (the gym closed many hours ago; it's quite late).
I'd turn on one lamp above one treadmill and run for hours and hours and look out at the snow.
Right now it feels like I could run twelve, fourteen miles maybe, do it for hours and listen to music on my headphones.
I wish I had a boy whom I loved and who loved me. I feel so Whitman right now, so Calamus. When I was a boy, fifteen or so, I bought Whitman's Leaves of Grass...why? A sympathetic English teacher, probably, older and married and yet kin to me somehow, put me on to the trail, knowing that I would find what I was looking for, and in that huge volume I somehow came to the Calamus poems as if through divination and read this one which has always been my favorite:
} A Glimpse
A glimpse through an interstice caught,
Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove
late of a winter night, and I unremark'd seated in a corner,
Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and
seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,
A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and
oath and smutty jest,
There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little,
perhaps not a word.
Tonight I think about it again and wish it was true. I was alone a lot then as I am now. When you see me at work I make fun of you and your boyfriend or girlfriend in a casual way, making it clear that the single life is the life for me right now. But really I am wishing for it too--someone worth buying a big fucking box of chocolates for. Happy Valentine's Day.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home