Posted: 1/6/2006 2:23:47 AM EDT
I used to, eons ago when I was a dreamy-eyed little swingset, think I was going to be a writer. Well, all I ever did was jot about 500,000 words down on an old laptop and forgot about it. So, I mounted up that old hard drive the other day to get something, and found my old journal/diary/whatever. Jeesh. Ever read something you wrote, and it seems so foreign to you that you can't believe it was really you? Ok, so this was just a couple years ago, but still it's like I'm reading something an alien wrote. What struck me was how sappy I was - like some of the young fellas around here I like to preach at (shame on me). Anyway, I found something I was going to turn into a short story and didn't finish, and it's one of those rarer times where I admit I'm a numbnuts so here ya go ladies...enjoy. It's a golden gem....
Seven years. Has it really been seven years?
It's been almost eight, to be accurate. So long ago by the calendar yet I still remember every one of those days, small clear details amidst a soft, fuzzy dream. I remember the smell of hot pretzels, floating on the air above where we walked, tho I don't remember exactly where that street was. The tiny, faint, almost invisible hairs on her forearms, softer than a baby bird's feathers....only there if you felt them yet sometimes I can't picture her face for days or weeks a time. Then, it hits me all over again and in my mind I have clarity, and she's new again.. I remember fire-engine red painted toenails, room number 209, wonderful imported beer and shrimp, the songs we heard, the ways we made love, and sometimes - worst of all, I still imagine the warm breaths in my ear and the moans that carried them.
I dream those things, often....and instead of waking with a warm memory, there is a haunting empty feeling that balls up my chest and stays there for the remainder of the day. All of the things that remind me of those few days are like a daisy-chain curse, reappearing throughout my life, throughout my days.....the signs that tell me I will never forget, and yet I try to put my mind beyond it. It's a feeling I must hide, and pretend is anything but the pain of a love long gone. And, worst of all, no one on this earth knows of that love but me, and her, and that will never ever change.
I used to ridicule people who abandoned their heads, for some reckless, drunken lust. I fancied myself a smarter lot, incapable of being twisted or knocked off my course. And, like all arrogant men, I bent over for fate's wicked paddle and took it on the ass. And, what strikes me as I have grown away from that flurry of base emotion is that I would be a lucky man to never know such weakness again. Like the primative who meets his image in the mirror for the first time, I stared in abstract awe of myself, disbelieving I could be so foolish, so eager, so completely vulnerable. I did want to resist - to escape her in any way I could, but her beauty wouldn't allow me. And, transfixed on feelings, her body, sex, I became the very worst of myself. Greedy, selfish, pitiful and jealous, the smallest man I could be. And now 7 years, 2 months and some change later, I still want to blame her looks for that. I haven't changed at all. I still feel small, and still wake up with her warm breath in my ear.
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Jesus, please take my man card now. I feel an episode of Oprah sucking me in. Help.
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