For Remembrance

Watching a video of one of his performances.

God, that man, that voice.

And part of me, a voice inside me, was screaming, "I was with him this morning. I am who he calls when he gets so caught up in his own intensity he can hardly breathe. My body rocks into his, he moves with me. We're perfect."

I love his words, his poetry.

This morning's texts:

"It won't get better.
Now it's six-thirty
The sun is stretching toward us
And I want your mouth on me."

"Door will be open.
I'll be the naked guy in the bed.
Wrap yourself around me."

"If I'm sleeping, wake me.
Put me in your mouth
And speak me out of dreaming."

A Letter - Part One

Of everyone, I think you might be the only one that remotely gets this.

Well, as much as one person can "get" another.

And even if you don't, I just need to purge my brain. It helps to think that someone is listening, someone who might just understand, just a little. I reach out all the time, just usually not to shadow men.

I really don't know where to start.

I'm spiraling inwards.

No, that's nothing new.

Even though my entire life I have been set apart from my peers, for various reasons, it just doesn't seem like enough sometime. There's not enough distance.

Or, rather, there's not enough connect, and the distance allows me to forget how little I connect with everyone else. It allows me to say that the disconnect is under my control, is at my whim.

It's really not.

I just stopped fighting it so hard. Just let myself drift away.

I spent my Saturday almost totally alone. I did not want to be around anyone who would attempt to talk to me, friends who would expect positive response.

So I drove. I explored streets and their curves, watched the people outside of my car. I enjoyed a late lunch at some little cafe on Sunset Boulevard, reading my latest book, enjoying the sunshine. It was so nice to go somewhere that no one knew me, no one was interested in me. They sat me in a far corner where, if I had chose, I could watch the whole restaurant.

I read.

And when I felt like it was time to go, I went.

A solitary movie experience, some movie and music shopping, and I found myself waiting outside the Avalon for a concert I had not heard was happening until an hour before it started.

It was odd, standing in their main room, watching this industrial band rile the audience up. Mostly because of the wide berth everyone gave me. Two to four feet radius at nearly all times, in a packed concert, full of kids jumping around.

After the show, I visited a new club at a venue I enjoy. Death rockers, the music was annoying and nearly undanceable. I don't drink, I don't socialize (if I can help it), so I left shortly after arriving.

It... wasn't a lonely day. It was a relaxing day, enabling me to get back to myself, enabling me to shrug off the taint of the views, opinions, and expectations of other people. It was so nice to not to have to put on a show. It was so nice being inside myself all day.

There was no one to reach to. No one to express to.

There are times when I walk, late at night, thoughts flying around my head. There's some pull in me to be somewhere, to do something, but it has never told me where or what. So I walk. I drive. I go and hope that somewhere there is a place for people like me, that somewhere, maybe one day, I'll find this place.

I'm always solitary. Usually I don't mind.

I don't mind that no one quite gets this disconnect. I don't mind that no one else seems to analyze the actions of the people around them as much as I do. I don't mind that no one can quite get inside me.

Usually.

Every so often, I run across someone and I know that they know.

I know that whatever it is that makes me this way, they have the same creature inside them. There's this unspoken recognition, this passing nod as we continue to be our own beasts. Smile for the camera.

Is there truly some point when a person gets so damaged, so exposed to something or someone, that they can never really rejoin the world they used to know? Am I to be forever outside of it all? I have been for as long as I remember.

Does it bother me enough to cause a fracture of self?

Hell, it hasn't so far.

Autumn gets to me most of all. Something about autumn makes me think of rain, finding overhangs and huddling beneath them. The winds suddenly change and I feel marked. I walk a lot in the autumn. Through my neighborhood, through the city. Just looking, swinging my head from side to side, trying to figure it out, trying to think myself into the right place.

I'm pushing off.

And my constant reading, is all that just an escape? An quick route out of my mind and into another's?

God, I'm too tired for this. I'll just write more later.

It's the way that you do it.

I walked today, around the area that I work. I do this fairly often, book in hand, lost in my head, lost in interpretation and application. Sometimes I walk for a couple of miles before returning to the office. Sometimes only a mile, mile and a half.

I like to walk. I like to hear the sound of the traffic rolling by me, the trucks and the people on their way to the airport, always late, always rushing. Occasionally I'll pass other people walking, some solo travelers, some pairs. Most of the time, I don't even look up, just step to the side and keep walking. Sometimes they say hi. By the time their words have registered as not part of what I am reading, not part of the surrounding noise, but is almost an interaction with me, begging response, they're long gone.

Today I started Tropic of Cancer, and walked a little less than three miles.

In that time, I was honked or whistled at repeatedly. More so than on any other countless walks I have taken around this area. People in cars, with their standard horns, and then, more often than not, truckers attempting to honk and sometimes having the courtesy to tap the horn, as oppose to blast it as they launch past me.

I started paying a little more attention to my surroundings by the second mile, if just so the occasional blaring horn would startle the shit out of me, jarring me out of my pages.

This activity amuses me. These catcallers tend to fall into one of two categories:

1. The stupid. The ones who think that women actually find this sort of behavior flattering, the ones who consider it normal and a way of expressing appreciation.

2. The dicks. The ones who know it isn't flattering, the ones who know that a person walking down the street will be startled by their horns and whistles, the ones who enjoy objectification of women.

Not that I'm complaining about being objectified.

I just prefer it in the bedroom, not the street.

Either way, I prefer the latter. The ones with half a brain, the ones I would get enjoyment out of, if solely on a bantering level. It's always fun to sit there, innocent blue eyes, pink lips, and watch them play the asshole game before you rip them down.

The look on their face when they realize they're talking to someone who isn't offended by their behavior or ideas, who finds amusement in it, and revels in turning their cocky behavior into offended disgust.

Yes, I love those guys. I could entertain myself for hours with them.

Pushing Towards Purity

I seek purity in my life.

No, not sexual purity. This purity has nothing to do with morals or ethics.

I seek to be solely me, unhampered by outside influences, intune with myself so well that I can sing my own song.

I feel like a crumpled piece of paper, slowly unfolding myself to see the image imprinted within.

I strive for purity of self, purity of emotions and thoughts. I want to untangle these things in my head.

I'm attracted to those who are clean. Whether or not they are damaged, whether or not they have enough baggage to fill a Surfliner, I seek those who are sane. Insanity is a jagged line, instability a wobbly table.

I sand at my legs until they stand flat.

You look towards wind, and it is pure. It is nothing more than itself. No internal conflict, no stressors, no desires battling it out, looking for victory. It may hammer you, it may knock you to the ground, it may be full of particles not originally belonging to it, but there is no question of acceptance of self.

You have to respect that.

There's no wavering definitions.

It just is.

I strive to just be.

I drive towards that moment where I know that no matter where I am, who I am with, what I may be doing, there is internal purity. I am untainted, unfolded, the perfect image of myself.

Solipist

I had one of those moments today.

One of those moments where I would have done anything to escape my own skin, crawled out of my skull a la Athena out of Zeus. You hit that point where you're feeling and thinking so goddamned much you just want to get up and run. No location, no set direction, just go.

Burn off those emotions, burn off that energy.

I was reading between various projects at work, looking for my next book recommendation online, skimming through quotes of authors, trying to find that one book that will change my life... for at least a week. One that will scramble inside my brain and reorganize thoughts, introduce me to new concepts, new ways of thinking.

And then I stumbled on a set of quotes from Rollin's Solipist.

Fuck me.

I went from calm, easily distracted, but chugging along at a decent pace, to nearly incapacitated as my mind attempted to digest his words. It took me almost an hour to calm down completely, almost an hour to stop my brain from buzzing, telling me that this isn't real, that this person, this concept, this idealization is not real. It does not matter how much those words sing to me, they sing to thousands, maybe millions.

It feels like loss. It feels like there could be such an explosion there, if only the chemicals existed. I find it sad that we live in the same town, but we'll never meet.

For one moment, I was not isolated. For one moment, words bridged that gap between the rest of the world and myself. I could reach someone.

You live your whole life in this place, with set goals, set expectations. You learn to take what is given. You settle, your insides scream until they run out of breath.

I will not settle. I will be alone, or I will be with someone that makes me burn.

Shadow Man

Your lips are against the curve of my ear. I hear your whispering something, your breath tickling my hair, your jaw brushing the side of my skull.

You tell me you understand. You tell me that you are with me every moment of every day, watching me live. You wait in bookstores while I read, curled up in an armchair, and sit with me in diners until I leave at odd hours of the morning. You ride with me, sitting in my passenger seat, the highway crumbling beneath my wheels. You watch me dance late at night, until my clothes are plastered to my body and I cannot stop smiling.

At night, in bed, you run your hand through my hair, and down the curve of my spine. You stroke me until I sleep, and stay up the night, watching me.

You're a beast, a predator. You understand me better than anyone. You know the dance, the games, the engineering of movements. You understand the bait dangling and the teasing, the shy smiles and the "accidental" contact between two people. You know what it is to find someone or something you want, and how to analyze the situation before driving towards it, full speed. You understand my need for solitude, you reflect with me late at night, read over my shoulder as I write for hours.

You know why I move alone. You understand the multiple social groups and the continued aloofness. You understand what is it to unintentionally intimidate those around you. You know what it is like to have a past years long gone continue to haunt your footsteps, to step into a room of old acquaintances and have them all turn to you with expectations.

You know what it is like to constantly be in your own head, always slightly separated from the moment, part of you always watching and detached from everyone and everything else. You share with me those moments when a person says something so wrong, so outside their experience, and pretend, just for a moment, that you agree with them so you can appear normal, undamaged. Like them.

We're both masses of scar tissue, strong and serene. Beautiful and damaged, but still functioning. We've embraced it all, we've embraced each other. We know we need pain to grow, we need those twinges running through our souls that make us think, make us more.

You know what it is like to burn.

I'll find you. Somehow, I will find you.

Underwater Harmonies

Hardwood floors again.

We laid in bed, my lips resting on his shoulder. While he was thrusting into me, while I was rolling my hips into him, I noticed we both hummed. Brief "hmm"s of pleasure, constant companions to our sex.

"We sounds like whales," I said, "Singing to each other under the waves."

He laughs and reads me poetry in the dark, book illuminated by the light of his cellphone.

When we roll, we match. There are none of those moments where the rhythms don't align, where mutual thrusts have timing that is slightly off. Our internal songs match, we are synchronous in our flesh, together we blend and overlap harmonies.

Sunday Morning

Muscles are still sore from moving against him.

I wake up at 1130 and lie there, on his thin mattress, my lips resting against the back of his skull, chest against his back, arm wrapped around his torso, hand over his heart.

I listen to him breathe, feel the heat rising off him, the sun on my skin, streaming through the window, highlighting the books, notes, pens, journals, scattered across the hardwood floor along with our clothes.

He creates beauty.

A Decided Lack of Introduction

I'm not good at introductions. Let's just pretend we've already met, shaken hands, exchanged pleasantries, yes? There, now we're both comfortable, like old friends.

Things you know about me?

Well, I'm in my mid-twenties. College graduate, gainfully employed, and happily single.

And that's what all this is about, you know.

This is everything.

Finally having burst my way free out of a too-confining relationship, I've discovered that I've lost pieces of myself in the last few years. I've been too comfortable, too sedentary, and now I find that I've got to make up for lost time.

Losing yourself is never pleasant.

I spent most of the last two years of my life attempting to make a normal life for myself. Dutiful boyfriend, gorgeous apartment, solid, unchanging group of friends, holiday parties, softball in the park, pet-sitting for neighbors...

You know what I am not?

Normal.

Living this life, scrabbling at my skin, trying so hard to achieve the American dream. Trying to hard to do what was expected of me, to keep everything under wraps, drummed into me that no matter how bad things were, everything had to look good.

So I crashed.

And I loved it.

It has been said of me that I feed off pain. Not of others, but of my own. I need pain to learn, to grow, to develop. I cannot do things the easy way... it just isn't in my nature. If there is an assbackwards way to attempt a goal, that will be the first route I will take, hands down.

It isn't on purpose, though.

It's just how I work.

This is why I am who I am.

This is why there are scars all over my body, this is why people come to me with their secrets, their truths, their fetishes. I am a vacuum for others. The most uncomfortable, private people open their lives to me without any attempt on my part. I don't ask for their secrets, I just give them my own.

Secrets. Like so many things, they only have power if you let them.

Lovers. I've had many. Enough to have lost track, forgotten names. In the last few months I've tumbled in and out of enough beds that I'm even concerned about my behavior.

But you can't really help it when you meet so many amazing people. Or rather, I won't help it. I like learning another's body, their scars, their skin, the spots that make them shudder, how easy or difficult they are to please, what the head of their penis feels like on your tongue, how smoothly skin can glide when enough sweat is present, and how that sweat tastes when licked off the shoulder of a man pounding into you.

My life is not poetry. It is not beautiful or metered. It is crazy and raw, full of honesty, pain, and joy.

But my flesh, my flesh and yours, how we move together... that is my poetry.