Anyway, About My Darling Boy

Anyway, about my darling boy...

His name is John Broderick-Kartye and he's absolutely incredible. I know I've already been saying that but it's only because whenever I'm around him I cannot help but have it solidly reaffirmed that he is indeed such an astounding individual.

He works at Blue Hour (a somewhat...no, make that a VERY pretentiously sophisticated upper-end restaurant in the Pearl District of downtown Portland) and he and I met one random Friday (November 30th, to be precise) while I was on break from my job serving at P. F. Chang's. I had wandered across the street to Whole Foods where I typically spend my 30 minutes of free time eating, listening to music and writing about the people I quietly observe.

Sitting there with my Odwalla juice and croissant, journal pages in front of me just begging for ink, I was listening to a song called "Snowflake Vectors" (which is a lovely synth instrumental piece that is very mellow and "soundtrack to life"-esque) gazing lazily over the crowded interior of the store.

The people around me were eating, some checking out, some organizing their backpacks for the bike trips they would embark on after leaving through the automatic doors.
Then my eyes fell upon this tall figure wearing a deep aubergine scarf tucked neatly into the collar of a black wool coat with epaulets and square pockets. His slender limbs painted a subtle, heathered navy by denim disappearing into weathered brown, square-toed boots.
I was spellbound by his calm, innocent face, his graceful poise and elegant, liquid gate as he walked through the register line.
While it is my custom to watch from an objective and demure distance, my would-be glance quickly developed into a hypnotized stare as I found myself completely lost in just seeing him. Just drinking in his organic beauty.
His golden brown hair, coiffed in a pleasant disorder, contrasted with the starry blue of his mysterious eyes and his lips resembled vibrant ginger adding a natural, lush sweetness to the poetic composition of his angelic face.

I was transfixed.

He settled into a chair and began reading as he consumed his recently purchased meal. I could not see the title of his book but I observed his pupils traveling from side to side in a wave-like rhythm as he slowly followed each sentence on the page. It was like his eyes were dancing with the words he read.

In this moment I felt myself come to as if I had been sleeping and dreamt of falling to a point of rousing impact. My focus turned to the open journal in front of me and to the pen in my hand resting patiently next to the leather bound tome.
I began to write about the wonder I had for this character in the momentous theater of real life to which I found myself playing audience. I posed the question of where he was from, what he had been through, who he was inside. I couldn’t persuade my mind from its sprite like flitting around and about this unknown person and felt compelled to approach him.
It was like I was a flower in the presence of fresh and warming sunshine and I was so dazzled I couldn’t bring myself to bloom.

I finally wrote my name and number on a napkin followed by a short message, “I find you fascinating. Call if you would like to have coffee sometime.”

It felt so mundane. So uncreative.
So blandly solid next to his mottled and colorful aura.

I set my small work in front of me and proceeded to wrestle with the thought of actually giving it to him, my reason equivocating mercilessly between the rationale of the path of least resistance being to just follow my urge versus avoid the quite possibly awkward exchange.
Just then, the girl sitting next to me slid off of her stool unexpectedly, her shoulder grazing mine causing me to put new effort into my balanced perch on my seat.

“I’m sorry about that,” she said with an embarrassed smile and genuine tone of regret.
In order that she not feel by any means vilified for her unintentional clumsiness I quickly responded by saying, “No worries, honestly it’s fine,” smiling jovially and returning her imploring eye contact.
Her expression changed to one of relief and then relaxation as she then said, “By the way, I love your hair.”
“Why thank you,” I said with a grateful warmth.
“It’s really, really beautiful,” she continued with an unguarded glance at my tussled dark curls.
“Well I really appreciate that,” I replied, “what a sweet compliment.”
After a briefly extended conversation she and her dining partner across the table rose to leave and I began gathering up my things, once again looking in the direction of the beautiful boy.
He still sat, reading and eating.

Then I made a decision to myself. If a girl next to me can step into my little bubble long enough to repair what very well could have been an uncomfortable situation I should have no qualms about following suit in my instance; namely, giving my brown paper napkin to this person.

I felt my blood flowing more rapidly as I slid my journal and pen into my black work apron. My fingers trembled quietly, almost indiscernibly, as I wrapped my headphones around my iPod and placed it with the other item in my pockets. Then my feet began to carry me over to the far end of the seating area where I knew the quietly stationed figure could not help but notice my direct approach from his peripheral vantage point.
I squared my form to be carefully in front of him as I prepared myself to actually go through with what only moments ago had been a defeated plan.
“I know this may seem somewhat forward,” I started, displaying the same nervous half-smile the girl had given me just prior, “but that’s just the kind of person I am,” I finished almost apologetically.
“Oh,” he said in a curious tone with a hint of amusement. He had begun to look at me just as I had begun to speak and at the end of my presentation he accepted the napkin, using two fingers to slide it toward him across the tabletop.
“My name is Noah,” I said, trying to fill the potential silence before either one of us was able to begin feeling that sickening tightness of social invasion.
“I’m John,” he replied with a smile.
“Hello John, it’s nice to meet you,” I said while inwardly regretting the fact that I had just said the most stereotypically Boy Scout response imaginable.
I felt I looked and sounded trite and ridiculous.
Even so, I came back to the moment in order that in talking a bit I might be able to salvage my first impression.
“You seem really familiar. I think I might have seen you somewhere before,” I stated with a playful tilt of my head and a jocular squint.
“Yeah,” he said with a tone of moderate seriousness, “possibly around campus.”
Suddenly feeling like I was actually being taken with some semblance of gravity my whole body relaxed slightly as I grew more composed and confident.
“Do you go to PSU?”
“Yeah- well- I’m taking a break right now.”
“What are you studying?”
“Environmental studies. But I just needed to take some time to myself.”
In that instant I realized that we were actually having a conversation and I was actually caring about what he was saying and asking genuinely interested questions.
“Oh believe me, I understand that need,” I said with a muted guffaw, “I took a spring term off last year and then subsequently went into summer so I had a long time away but it was definitely refreshing.”
“Yeah,” he agreed again with a cheerful seriousness, “I’m hoping it will be for me, too.”
“Well, I need to get going back to work. My break is almost over,“ I ruefully informed him as I stepped back from the table, “but it was definitely great talking to you. And seriously, if you ever want to do coffee…” I finished in what I hoped was a smooth and casual open diminuendo, gesturing toward my napkin now in his possession.
“I’d enjoy that, thank you,” he quickly said, not breaking eye contact, ”I’ll definitely call you.”

With that we said our good byes and I walked back across the street, oddly elated at having actualized my intentions.

Upon returning to the restaurant, I was in such a giddy mood that I had to show the hostesses what I had written about this “man with the bright violet scarf and brown leather boots” and proceeded to read directly from my journal relaying the whole experience along with my undisguised excitement.

The Louder The Sight, The Blinder The Man

I have a strong feeling that whatever it is I choose will somehow end up being wrong.
Whoever I settle on...myself, himself...will be turned into some form of dreaded mistake.

I'm truly confused as to why I was so quickly thrown into this state of disrepair.
If I were to trace a catalyst it would have to be somewhere in the vicinity of Jemme, or possibly Terrie, or possibly Allena...then again, the likely surmise would be to say that all three combined played some cooperative role.

And now I sit here staring blandly at a computer screen while this boy who really and truly wants to know, to make more reason to like me, is laying in my bed getting so close to slumber.
And yet I still feel on edge.

Perhaps I really am pushing myself to know something or decide something prematurely.

If so, I have the faithful knowledge of premature babies who survived and thrived.
Will I survive?
If so, will I also thrive?

Or is that too much to ask?

Naked Truth

I feel like my heart is half-in, half-out of the water right now.
It can't decided to swim or stay dry.
I hate this indecision.

I feel like I am stuck on these feelings of "maybe something better will come along," just because Jarod isn't the stereotypical "steamy, sexy gay man" that I've become so accustomed to in recent bouts with my digital fucks.

I can't see myself deserving to be liked by anyone, but then I'm giving myself these ridiculous ideas of what I should and shouldn't be "settling for" when it comes to standards of beauty.

I fucking hate my surface level, vain, shallow self sometimes.

Looking and Looking

I feel like I'm not letting myself be satisfied.
Then again, aren't I supposed to be hard to please?
Isn't there some maxim that goes "never settle, never be satisfied" or something like that?

I'm really torn between feeling like I want to find something to calmly, relaxedly grow comfortable with and used to...and thus be contented.

It's evident that Jarod likes me.
I'm flattered by that.

I feel like some moments I like him while at others I am getting this painful sense of dissatisfaction. Like once again I'm getting into someone only because they showed signs of affection first and I feel the flattery of a longing touch.

During French class a couple of days ago I was attempting to capture some of the residual feelings from my reactions to the previous night (Jarod and my first date) and wrote something I find to be prosaic but very true.

"I feel inept in attempting to write down what it is that I experienced last night. I feel as if I stepped into a scene I thought I had memorized only to find I was in a completely different play." - Tues. Nov. 27, 2007

I guess I owe it to my literary honesty to explain what that previous section was referring to.

On Monday night Jarod picked me up to go find me something to eat after having a long day of class, work, then class again.
I was looking forward to spending time with him in person because we had had a really great phone conversation the night before.

We talked for a little over an hour and it was very smooth and involved. We both had meaningful input and laughed and I felt like I had a very clear, witty command of my verbiage.

I felt like a live and in person date would go much the same way and, in serving my hope of gaining trust and openness, I was very unguarded in my topics of conversation and personal disclosure.
I thought that if I made the point of being open and figuratively naked in front of Jarod he would experience the anticipated relief of knowing that I wasn't afraid of him knowing the intimate details of my own life thereby feeling liberated to exercise candor in his own self-disclosure.

This was dead wrong.

I found that after I broached the subject of past relationships and sexual mistakes Jarod began to visually shrink down and close off as seen by his self-contained retreating body language.
I immediately halted and he began informing me that he just wasn't ready to talk about such personal information.

I was a little flabbergasted.

This method that I had come up with- yes, it was a tried and true method- had failed me.
It was like I had gotten so deftly used to playing the part of the "first date mold-breaker", the "guy you could instantly be comfortable and open with," someone "everyone can easily and dependably trust."

All of these hoped for, and in essence, assured results were all but actualized by the time I was finished wolfing down my chicken sandwich.

As Jarod told me of his discomfort I felt the blood drain from my face. It was like my stomach just decided that it wanted to eat me from the inside out.

Everything was going wrong.
I was ruining a perfectly good opportunity.
I was burning a bridge before I had even crossed it.

Day 2 or 3

Something of a painful thick surrounds my body.
Inside and out.

Every motion feels like I'm pulling my appendages through gelatin. Nothing is easy, simple, or untroubled.
Everything about me just wants to curl up and let the tension pulse around me until it's through chewing on my bones.

I'm looking ahead right now.
Michelle is coming to pick me up and we're going to Rose's on 23rd.
I almost thought too far ahead and lost the excitement just from knowing that it would end at some point in the eventual future.
I had to mentally back up from the edge, thoughtstep by thoughtstep.

If only I knew some secret pathway where I could guide myself along its mulchy, soft, limited snaking wanderway.

I feel left out in the misty cold with no one to blanket me other than myself.
This will pass.
Perhaps.

Stabbed In The Kidney With A Blunt Object

It simply must be allowed for one to love his setting.
To embrace the lives he has constructed so carefully and finitely.

Yes, I'm materialistic.
Yes, I'm vain.
Yes, my idealism is filtered by a healthy amount of skepticism (sometimes I am seen as too imaginative, too faithful, too hopeful).

Yet I am happy with it.

I'm going to eat my processed foods.
I'm going to text message.
I'm going to check my Myspace and (God forbid) Facebook.

This is the life I have chosen and I am through with feeling the need to compete, repent, or silently, cruelly ridicule.

Be aware of your present self in order to revisit this point of reference once you have gained a better sense of maturity...yes, maturity.

Wisdom follows experience when combined with analytical thinking and comparative logic.
This is a concept of irreducible complexity.

The Point Of Willful Return

There's so much going on.
We're all just being together.

Do I want to be with them?
Do I will myself to just be and not be with?

They feel what I cannot feel and yet I find myself in a place where I do not want to feel with them.

With is so strong.
I remember telling Lance on the balcony in Anchorage that "with you" was one of the most powerful two-word utterances possible.

I continue to learn, more and more, day by day, what that really means.
Maybe I've come around to that place where I am beginning to see what, who, where I should and should not want to be "with you".

I have been so constantly searching for any and all ways I could be "with you" and now I am beginning carefully, thoughtfully filter.

I just want to go home.

Here's the Frank and Honest Truth

How can I be confronted all at once by two people with so much perturbation?
It's like that one-

(your sense of humor makes me want to scoff and gripe to others about your face and voice)

-coaxial moment where two people both hit their stride in a walk away from a house in exchange for a bar.

This is going to be the most interesting situation seeing as how I've brought together very oddly same and different people.

I need to make myself take a break.
I feel like everything is crowding in on me and beginning to fall inward on my head.
Even my arms get scratched up and dirtied by the debris as I try to protect myself.

I'm having this incredibly Woolf-esque moment of wanting to be alone to "write my first line."

I think that missing my writer's event this evening has soured me...quite a bit.

Collections Agencies Call Too Often

This is to every dinner interrupted by that annoying ring of impending awkwardness.
To every unidentified cell phone call answered out of curiosity immediately followed by an unmatched regret.
To every sinking, hungry feeling in the pit of a hostess' stomach when their table assignments turn out to be a large, potentially party-spoiling mistake.

I don't care a fig for your product, your perspective, your attempt at convincing me that my life is incomplete without you.

I want to curl up in a corner padded with 5 pillows and a little, too-tiny afghan.
I want to read the books I keep telling myself I'm going to delve into with unwaivering focus.
I want it to be just a little too cold so my form reserves all of its energies for the betterment of my sustenance.

You pompous, touting idealist.
Don't make me sick to my already disquieted stomach.
Be frank about your points and don't dress up your unnecessary thoughts.
They're extra to me, they're not wanted.
I already said so.

Get some Ritalin and leave my head and my hands alone.
Make everything about your posture submissive and original, you imposing bastard.

(I feel this odd sense of triumph as I spill these words with a decisive poise...like I've been waiting all these weeks for the moment of expounding and it has, indeed, arrived)

Your obliging nature is cut short by your disagreeable taste.

Peeling Back the Veneer

I'm really quite frustrated right now.
Granted, missing the writer's event this evening didn't HAVE to happen but I felt this odd condescension from Chris, as if he was saying, "what's the problem with you? Just go."

I didn't like it and I know I probably (most likely) projected it onto him.
But now I'm just being lame.

Traci is just now coming into Portland and needed someone to smoke with.
I'm looking forward to seeing her.

I'm also very happy that Anna is here.
I know this whole social mess is of my own construction but I kind of feel overwhelmed by all of it.

I think this financial aid money is going to provide me with a temporary but much needed sense of release.

I just need to tell myself to stop actually spending it.

I'm glad I'm writing.

Saxophones and Empty Fountains

As I set out, once again, on the all-too-familiar route to the place I call work I found myself wanting to pull away from everything.
To pull my veins back into my own body and let my lifeblood recirculate in some cheap, not-as-real warmth.

I just wanted to stay where I was so I wouldn't sink any lower.

I saw a man playing a ramshackle ballad on his saxophone, standing on a dry platform in the middle of a dry fountain.
He seemed almost as unsatisfied with his art as I feel with mine these days.
He kept halting to frown, shake his head at himself, then start again with another unpredictable, sad trill.

A woman with her child paused at the top level of the dry fountain, listening to this sad swan. It was as if she found someone who was just a little sadder than she and that made her just a little happier.
She was searching so intently for understanding, for companionship, that she was almost desperate in her want for this, her child, to understand. To feel. With her.

I wanted to stop, to take part in the feeling.
To once again reunite with the flaming leaves on the fall-kissed tree branches.

But on I walked.
Steady on to that foul restaurant.

Steady on to yet another evening of genuiness wasted on random, temporary nobodies.

I just want a somebody but I feel guilty.
I feel like I want to want nobody. I want to frown at myself, shake my head, and keep trying to play an original set of notes.

Heal Over

I can't understand this onset of downward motion I seem to experience to readily these days.
I don't get it.
I feel like I can't get it.

I don't look forward to anything.

I don't look forward to anyone.

I feel like so much is losing its luster.

It's not even money. I have money for now.

It's just that something about life is so disappointing right now.
I feel like I'm disappointingly boring.
Life is boring.

Maybe I'm just tired.

What To Do About David

Quickening,
still and slow
rapidly drawing
a subtle breath.

How was I to know?

How was he
to know
his palette calls
for something unfamiliar,
strange,
and yet so craved.

Pulling back my hair and exposing the skin of my forehead,
I see the scars and dents of time and thought.

Can he possibly see them?
Want them?

What calls from me
to him?
Body to body?

Body to body.

He asks for what I do not want to give
to him.

But I want to give
to him.

To tell the truth
means lying
to his face
and his heart.

It's such a painful honesty.
An openness only
comparable to dissection.

Cutting in and seeing
the bloody depths of
real and awful self.

He calls for a piece of flesh
or is it a piece of beating
fluttering
honesty?

There seem to be so many questions.
So many unknowns and yet
they call.
Body to body.

I want to be called and
I let myself.

I call a returned want.
A desire is not mine
and is made mine.

Is it really mine?

Questions,
posed
and delivered
and left.

He told me without his words
but with his mouth.

What will my mouth say
without words?

Considering The Rose's Thorn

I see what is happening with Nick and Tony as it pertains to Chris and it saddens me.

It makes me feel rotten inside especially because I knew it was going to happen and now I just wish I were wrong.
Wrong for everyone's sake.

Chris is slowly but surely (and possibly unwittingly) coming between Nick and his happiness with Tony. I doubt it if Tony knows the full extent of Nick's care for Chris.
Then again, I sensed it at the beginning.

I probably ought to be telling myself, "quit worrying about something that is none of your business," but I'm still allowing myself to be upset.

No, I don't have any right.
I don't give a twig for whether or not it's my business.
I still sense the pain in an overwhelming way.

The seeming remedy would be to stop associating with the situation as whole until it either blows over or someone brings me into it.

*sigh*

I think I need to pull out of a lot of concerns much like this one.
Concerns based in wanting to feel for others when my empathy is completely unwelcome.
I think that's a large part of why I end up getting so intensely emotionally offended.

I must focus on myself in a non-selfish way.
I need to be self-ful.

Perhaps it's just one of those "times of trial" you read about in the Bible and epic poetry.

The cruelty of fate's irony.

A Little Link

I spent the evening with Michelle and Julia this evening and really went into detail about my intense level of observation.
I think I may have given them a bit of a scare when they realized just how much I saw...not only in them but in all things.

Hmmm...I wonder how I am supposed to be using this descriptive ability.

Maybe I'm writing to be read again.
I don't like that.

If this journal becomes another town crier when it's supposed to be the candlelit scribblings of a malcontented sister then I will be officially angry.


Part of me wonders if I'm wanting to draw closer to those two girls because it will make me feel slightly closer to Drew...even though he's so far removed. So gone.

He kept coming up in conversation and the girls were showing pictures of old, good times with him. I just still feel so attached.
And that attachment has now become something I see as being against my better judgment.

I'm feeling like I am in the midst of having it proven to me, once again, that everything was just momentary and poisoned with passion. Like the things he said were just to fulfill the script in his head for the "perfect evening".

But I ache to think that that's actually the case.
I want him to have been as thrilled as I was.
As excited.
As peaceful yet crazed.

I'm not getting any messages of reply.
I'm not getting any phone calls.
I'm feeling accessory.

But then again, I sort of am.

Settling Into Diligence

Once again I find myself ready to sacrifice all eternals and buckle down.
To let go of the possible momentary excitements in exchange for an assurance of my own successes, both academically and emotionally.

I hope this pays off...and I am hoping I am not going to pull another "excited beginning into a half-assed follow through"

A Letter To Drew

I just spent a very pleasant couple of hours with our dear Michelle.
We reminisced about the past and recounted classic tales of our former renegade activities and joyful romps across the old Canadian campus.

Then, of course, the topic turned to you.
We spoke of missing you and how nonsensical it seemed to be that we were all brought into each others' lives at such odd times.
There's an order to everything when reduced to mere function and I think that the pragmatism of relationships tends to be an illusive study.

That being said I thought I would write you the first of my promised correspondences.
Life here turns toward a somber note as the trees begin shedding first their verdigris for a fiery bronze and then lose their sheets of pressed metal.
Sidewalks begin to resemble the littered floors of an art room post-class; clippings strewn about in an effortless shift and sway according to the wind's direction...or lack thereof.

That selfsame wind carries with it a voice, a whisper of pending gray.

We can only hope the gray will produce just a little white.

Of that, among many thing, I am quite jealous of your current location.
You'll have snow, oh so much snow.

Coming back around to the gray of the coming days, I look forward to spending brisk walks bundled inside the trappings of my winter's preparation. Evenings spent on the couch with a cup of coffee, a good book, a friend, and a conversation.

Michelle and I are already staking out certain sections of our break for movie nights, dinner parties, and cloves on my balcony.

Julia, she and I are planning on attending Cabaret this coming Tuesday night.
I'm really hoping we can get in.
If not I'll be purchasing tickets for the last week of the recently augmented run. A few of my work friends are going as well and look forward to brights lights and lap dances.

I grin to think of what is to come this season.
More academics, more talks of the finer points of life, existence, and our role in this massive social construction.

I left you a phone message asking this same question but I figure repetition ensures clarity:
What will be your new mailing address?
I have something I'm intending on sending you in the near future.
This of course implies that I'll have somewhere to send it.

Having just humored my random love of childhood cereals, I have a mostly-empty bowl which formerly contained a heaping mass of Cookie Crisp.
That's another thing I look forward to about this Fall into Winter season: breakfasts of sugar cereal and toast as the Sun comes up over the ridge.

How has life at your famed Soho bakery come along?
I hope you're enjoying it immensely and looking forward to your now unlimited access to pastries and croissants.
I know I would be.

Wednesday fast approaches.
For what it's worth, know that I'm thinking of you and hoping for only your best.

Michelle and I talked about your upcoming meeting with this director and were mutually giddy with the expectation of your charm and wit winning them over.

We're rooting for you.
It's like I told you in the truck right before slipping from the side door and descending to venture city-ward, "you'll always have people here who love you."

You're finding your feet.
You're doing what you love.
Never lose that, my dear boy.

I hope to hear from you soon,
With Best Regards,


-Noah C. Buck

Having Been Far Too Long

I'm sitting in the newfound relief of being told that I do not have to work this evening.
Not to say that money wouldn't be useful but I am so tired all of the sudden (again).

I want to take a nap and then do some homework and then possibly go to a movie.
All of this hinges upon just how fast I get my work done, of course.

I spent the evening last night with Allena and Evie.
Evie was absolutely wonderful.
I was incredibly attracted to her not only as a person but in a very sincere sexual manner.
Odd.

After the two of those lovely girls, I spent the rest of the evening with Michael Newman.
I know, blast from the past.
But the truth of the matter is that I really enjoyed myself.
We ended up staying up far too late (something close to 3am) talking and taking random pictures of cell phone keys and hookah smoke.

By the time we went to sleep I was beyond delirious and awoke in a cloud of dazed exhaustion.
I still made breakfast (because apparently Michael is not in the habit of eating in the morning) and then went to church.
I saw my sister and Ted there for a few minutes and that was a welcome episode considering the fact that it has become something of a normal thing to encounter one or the two of them.
I'm happy about that.

I also saw the Leisure family at Imago Dei and that was random.
It was lovely to get a hug from Diane.
I've always liked her.
Chelsae was there as well and she looked lovely.
Although she did mention that she's with Mode and I made a pointed effort to let her know about the inconsistencies of the agency and reps.

We'll see if she heeds my words.

I'm really tired right now.
As I previously mentioned.

I'm tired for many reasons.
I feel like I am in need of written output and yet I don't have my usual knack for it.
It's almost as if I have it until I really need it and then it's gone.

And I don't even know for sure if this illusive "it" is talent, ability to copy, natural and organic output...I just don't know.

I want to write all about Drew.
I want to write about Aleks working into the concept of Drew.
I want to write about me.

I feel like I can't.
Like I really am unable.

I think I just need sleep.

Waiting For 15 Minutes

Having spent the last 48 hours wanting nothing more than just a voice, just a word or two, I feel the most pathetic I've felt in ages.

This pathetic weight has been resting on my shoulders for the last little while and yet I wish I had had it for a long, long while.

These are the times when I fully embrace wishful regret.
I wish I had met Drew months ago, I wish that I had had more time with him.
I wish that I had had more of a chance to be with him and know him and just lay next to him...knowing him. Breathing the same air and stirring in the same midnight chills.

Waking in a cold, damp sweat and being happy to be in such discomfort because I would have known that it was due to his proximity, his closeness.

Now I am having to rest with the knowledge of his departure.
Having to hold to this hopeless romance which is necessarily temporary.

He's right. It will be easier for him than for me.

I'll be adjusted in the cupboard to find my place behind the cereal boxes and soup cans.
I'll be that cardboard corner poking out from behind the bag of sugar, just wanting to be seen, let along brought out. Opened, tasted.

I want him.
I want to be near him.

I just want this pain to stop and I want him to be the band-aid.

I'm going to have to let this heal in an open manner and I will scar.

Sipping A Cigarette

I just spent the last 10 minutes on my balcony, in the wind, accompanied by a cup of coffee with floating bits of cinnamon and a lone cigarette, listening to the haunting strands of desperate songs coming out from the warmth and safety of an empty apartment.

In that time I allowed my unchecked imagination to hope for the possibility of a romance like you see in the movies.
I would fly out, I would pick up and move.
I would continue to work, to finish what I've started while beginning something brand new.

In those moments of caffeine and nicotine my body responds to the lick of the passing gusts in a manner not unlike an infant to his mother's caress. Wanting to find comfort in the touch of a chilled hand. Wanting to slip into a sleep so deep that the dreams feel like the most brilliant reality.

It's in this momentary lapse of judgment that I find a truly awakening sense of freedom.
Perhaps I should hold myself away from this dangerous flame of passion, looking only to the solid, blocky corners of the set constructed on this stage of my life.
Platforms and framing nails are my strength and power.

My control is in the knowledge of my supporting places.
I am holding to a fastidious discipline of reality.

Throw me to this wind.
Let me sail about like a half-burnt fall leaf riding alongside the fiery brilliance of the butterflies I see inside myself.

Burst forth with new passion and embrace the bleak of now as the hard, flat road leading to the golden mountains on the horizon.

An Utter Separation

I am feeling that same sense of loneliness I remember having felt and forgotten...


...felt and forgotten.

...felt and forgotten.


And now I've come to a place of decision: sink into the depression so easily succumbed to or make the painful effort of learning from what I am in the midst of right now.

It's like Jenny tells me oh so often, meditate and be outside of the moment so that you might see the whole picture. Observe and take from it what you can.

A Quickly Developing Romance

I really like Aleks.

Granted I only just met him and only today actually had anything of a lengthy interaction with him.
After he picked me up from work the other night I had an inkling of how much I felt I was going to enjoy his company.
However it wasn't until I actually had brunch with him and then walked about the blustery, wet leaf-ridden boardwalks of the pearl today that I began to come into full realization of just how drawn I was to him.
It's so compelling, his presence.
It's so comfortable and appreciated and I just want to be close to him in the innocent and unassuming manner.
I want to cuddle up next to him with a book, blanket and fireplace.

The book will no doubt be forgotten as he grins over my shoulder with his teacup resting on the cushioned worn leather arm of the couch. I'll simply nuzzle into him and find a place of safety. A haven. A respite.

Rest.

Rest for me...and my name means rest.


I fear the distance and the timing and yet I will not let the fear continue.
I think he likes me.
I told him I like him...a lot.

I told him that I think he's adorable.
I actually used that word.

I feel like I'm being too sudden, too direct.
And yet that thrills me.

I want him to hold me close.
And closer and closer.

I'm sighing to myself as I write these words.
I hope so sincerely.

The Cycle Goes Up And Down

Having now realized just how much I am willing to trust Chris despite the jealousies and pains I still hold I come into a new sense of emptiness.

Perhaps it's because I've scraped clean the insides of my innermost chambers in order that I make him see that he's inflicting pain.
Perhaps it's because I need someone to know who won't think I'm crazy.
Perhaps it's because I ought to be committed and I'm looking for someone who will send me on my merry way to a small room where I can sit and ponder why I didn't ask my mum to cook me breakfast more often.

These are the rolling and colliding questions which make me willing to lie to myself.
I am deceived by the confidence of a fast-paced day.
The smooth rhetoric of a happily encouraged friend or colleague.
The clever smile of a lover in my future as he glances at the time to make it look as if he has some reason to stop looking at me other than sheer embarrassment at his inability to tear away his attentions.

Having come to a very firm place of decision a short while back about my intentions to seek a deeper and more meaningful understanding of myself I am constantly battling the distractions of poorly formed old habits and trial-ridden new tradition.

It's like there's some sort of cutoff between my hope and my reality and yet the two operate so effortlessly synonymously when I merely close my eyes.

I have to keep listening.
I have to keep wanting to love.

The moment I stop wanting it is the moment I begin to glance longingly at the bladed edge of a wine key next to a half-empty bottle of blood-red Cabernet Sauvignon.

Feeling Me Out

You wanted to stay, Chris, and you wanted to stay alone.

It was like you were pushing Jenny out because she was in your special way.
Perhaps what I am writing is dripping with pain, annoyance, jealousy, but that's why I have this journal.

I know now, more than ever, that I cannot stand when people act two-faced.
I know why this is.
It's because I've seen it in myself.

Call it projection, call it unfair, it's still the truth.

I would like you to be happy.
However I would not like you to have your cake and eat it too.

I think that when I said I wanted you and I to stay close, to be a part of one another's lives, I was meaning in a way where we were still of some sort of paramount importance.
I feel like I am being slowly slid down some notch of measurement.
Like I am losing my appeal and/or importance to these new friends you're so eager to meet...on mother fucking Myspace.

Yes, I lied.
I don't respect it.
I find it tragic, pathetic.

Yes, I have met ONE person via that website and yes, we're still friends, but it's not as if it's this all-consuming passtime.
It seems to me, in my upset and looking-for-reasons attitude that this whole myspace canvassing for males (check), gay (check) 18-25 (check), within (10) miles of (97201) has become a regular thing.

What ever happened to really meeting people.
In daily life, at work, through people you already know...that's how organic relationships work.

Yes, I am being judgmental.
It's because I am spewing it all out right now.
I'm purging, in the emotional sense.

Since it seems that in these types of situations I am the common denominator that I am part of the problem.
I'm too attached to the consistency of a single person.
When it's gone, I'm thrown off balance.

When I choose to let it go I am able to ready myself but when it's all stored up and then dropped on me I feel kind of floored, exhausted, and excluded.

Exclusion still lies in the circle of my largest, most over-developed fears.

I need to practice more meditation, more centering, less object-referral.

I need to be okay with this and not snap.

Rid the Self of Hate

Having come to a point where I'm actually making a concerted effort to be a more fulfilled and peaceful person, I'm somewhat simplifying my life.

I say that with a little bit of a chuckle because it comes across as if I'm just another one of those wannabes who found the "fountain of youth" and are under the impression that it's brand new and just for them.

I know I have an incessant need to clarify myself in order that I not be taken the wrong way...then again...

(there's been something of a break in this)

I think I'm just on the constant verge of frustration for a bit.
It's like PMS.

Pulling a Dried Scab

Jeremi is seemingly asleep on the couch in my living room as I sit here in the dark, peering somewhat painfully at the stark screen of this plastic prison for my thoughts, feelings, habits, and communications.
I really don't know what to think about me lately.
I've been sexually active in ways which I would call irresponsible.

First, I did not allow for a clean break between Chris and myself.
Unwise.
The fact that I allowed myself to sleep with him even after we had fought and separated tells me that while I may be over he and I in the permanent relationship sense, I am still very attached to the idea of someone knowing me...just knowing.

Second, James was a person who was little more than a quick physical attraction which I attempted to culture into something more for the sake of it "making sense" not to mention my goddamned need to fix other people's problems and make them happy at my expense.
I can't even find my own happiness.
What business is it of mine to try and force my ideas of happiness upon them?

Third, Tony.
I fell hard.
I couldn't really venture a realistic guess as to why but for right now I still have the unerring feeling that it was a true and untainted attraction and hope for something more.
As with James, nothing more than kissing occurred.
And yet emotionally I was so sexually invested.
Yes, I do see the two as inextricably intertwined within myself.
I can understand how others would pull the meaning of one from the other and hold them at arms length from one another, much like the crucifix.
And again, like the crucifix, there is a deadness, a cold.

I'm far too sanguine to fall into such a diffidence.

Fourth comes with the title of Jesse.
He is someone I don't even know and I have had something of a latent attraction to ever since meeting him the night we all went to see 300. Nothing to the point that I couldn't help thinking about him, merely a light pleasure at his recollection.
The joking, flirting, banter, etc. was always an option.
A Safety.
A Cruel, Selfish Knowledge.
If I needed anything, there was an availability right there.

I refuse to even attempt a lie to myself in stating that I'm interested in dating him.
I guess he was right.
He doesn't do second dates.
Undateable.

Then a brief reconvening with Chris.
I felt so passionate but once again, it was due to the fact that I was in the midst of being known.
Perhaps now the biblical reference makes more sense. Hits more keenly.
Adam and Eve were in fact the only two of their species and they knew one another.
They were all that there was to know of anything other than their tasks.

And finally, I just fucked Jeremi.

I cannot write any other description because that's really all it was.
We both understood that.
We find some odd, latent attraction in each other.
We were at the "right place at the right time" and then it occurred.

It wasn't because we loved each other.
It wasn't because we were overwhelmed with passion.
It was just because it felt inevitable.
Like there would be no avoiding it so why not just get it out of the way now...no question makr because it was no question.

I feel like I should feel.
I see all of these things as typically invoking of some sort of emotion: regret, excitement, sadness, thrill, a dirty guilt

Not so.

I just go on feeling the same mediocre I have been feeling.
Where did my reactivity go?
How did I reduce to this?

It's a seeming battle to stay random and diverse and yet I want it so badly so I fight harder and harder.
When will I give out?

How long will it take me?

I don't want to be like this, this wanton thing.

I feel like my sexuality has become nothing more than an exercise.
It's so devoid of reality.
The romance once saturating my physical thirst for another's body is now robbed of me by a culprit with a face much like my own...except there is no fire in his eyes. No curl in his hair. Not even a sneer of victory.
Only a blankness.
A deadness.
A Cold.

When Thinking of Change

I talked to Chris today.
Finally.
It took me nearly a week to convince him that it was worth his effort to spend a single conversation with me.
The conversation took place at the Starbucks next to the old house.
I met him there and felt a stirring sense of panic in the pit of my stomach as I took more and more strides down the heated concrete.
I began to gnaw determinedly on the dry skin at the tips of my already hideously misshapen fingernails and it was then that I realized how fully nervous I was.

The truth of the matter is that I never know quite what I'm going to utter verbally when I make a point of having a planned conversation. I simply hold to the repeatedly proven fact that I will be profound and my thoughts will come out in a new way which will in turn improve my perspective causing me to learn new things about myself. About my ability to be happy. About my life.

These things could be said to be the sole drives for what it is that fuels my daily reason to get up and tackle yet another morning routine before yet another afternoon routine into yet another evening routine.
Can a person be afraid of doing the same arbitrary thing twice?

I guess I have no idea about people in general, only myself.
Even then I don't always trust what I have to draw from.

I have realized that a large part of what causes me this overall sense of insatiable craving for something more from life stems from my inability to find contentment in anything over which I do not hold any power or command any level of respect.

It's as if there's a certain amount of harnessed surety I need in order to embrace the fullness of everyday.
I need to know everyday will be everyday.

Chris is a constant reminder of my lack of ability in this area.
I cannot always know.
I cannot always hold it in my lanky, warm fingers.

I cannot always know him.
I cannot always hold him in my lanky, warm arms.

And yet now I seem to have found an increased confusion.
I can't see what's right...only what my lying emotions tell me "feels" right.

I don't want to make Chris another quote-unquote.

I don't want to love him and I don't want to want him and yet I cannot help the fact that I do.
Oh, so sincerely.

I don't feel safe with anyone.
I want to feel safe.
I want to make someone feel safe.

The Luck Of Me

I'm lucky.
I can accept that.
I cannot assure it and I'm getting scared that it's going to run out.
Should I have to be afraid of good fortune?

I love it and I hate it.
It makes me comfortable while making others frustrated and sometimes jealous.
I just want to live.

I got signed with the International Modeling Agency a few days ago.
It's official, I am a model...well, on paper anyway.
I just want it to come to some huge point of fruition.

I want to make a lot of money right away and pay off my credit care bills and get everything back to zero.
I want to go from zero.
Actually, I want to go from far above zero.
I want to go from raving success.

I'm betraying the selfish side of me which is always so carefully hidden or glossed over.
I just want to make a royal SHITload of money and not have to worry about finances for awhile.