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She was just going to say it.
Things might have gotten a bit meta on her, yet she had long since reconciled with this strange affliction of hers to ... whatever you call this.
She felt strangely sad today. She definitely had her ass handed to her on a takeout box.
Beyond that, mowing the grass always gave her some kind of sense of baddassery. If she could save the Norfolk pine that sat dying next to her, she would but scrub if it needs more than half-remembered watering - maybe she shouldn't have tried to build her green tribe back.
and death.
she thought of death a lot now. Her friend had just lost her first love at 59. She said he fought it the whole time she was visiting him, but heard from his sister when the prognosis was six months that he just wept all day.
As you would.
She had been such a punk about so many things, yet so cavalier with life. How many times had she hurled to the mother: 'god, why didn't you just abort me'... yet like the nordic pine - here we all were - here.
So she sat at. her desk listening to the whrrrr of neighbor lawn mowers wondering if she should do the weirdest thing - go to ace hardware on a peak Saturday when she worked from home and didn't need to do anything right this minute and obtain a bigger pot and a replacement screw for her push mower.
and the part about death and being a punk.
there's no reason to live if you just watch jeopardy all day.
and then there are times you get a lump in your neck, but you're off the good insurance you have had for 18 years. You feel like - always it could be the Big C - right? and she thinks "who deserves cancer more than me"
And Lisa's friend had been kind of similar to Narcissi - never really taking a chance - staying inside, playing it safe, worrying.
she herself just had to get up out of the chair and pace she was so freaked out about another calling of her arrogant bluffs:
"oh, so you'd like to live now after all your bitching and grousing and wining well too fucking late. you did this. lay in it."
what a gift huh - wanting to live.
And she felt it yesterday and got - as she picked up in cali - hella drunk. It was actually kind of fun. She went in like a wounded martyr and bedded like a shell-shocked lackey. It was fun to go out with the Macon man. They projected shit tons on to each other.
She cared a great deal about the pain of others. She reached out to all six of the people she loved and sent them the videos that you make when you're hella drunk - the kind when you fucked up hitting the record video of the band playing the band that always reminded her of the man she used to end her first marriage.
She was going to retell it because it had felt like magic. She had only had it happen with her first husband before.
picture it ILM downtown the early 2000's. It's night time. Last call has been issued. It is cuculorus film festival and she was the wife of one of the founders, so she had been soooo lonely that she went to the soap box event of that night. She was sure she had been crazy. She didn't know it then though, she thought it was fucking magic.
She walks into the bar after having seen her first ghost in an attic window (later determined to be a coat hanger). and the usual thing happens when she walks into a bar in Wilmington in those days, except amplified - she knows practically everyone there - except wow what?! - she sees her lab partner from that time last year she was going back to school to be a teacher.... He was talking to Zack - weird. She goes up to him thinking she'll say
"hey lab partner - how do you know Zack"
he had never talked in lab and just been the nice guy. She was thirty and assumed he was their age - around 20 - well he's in this bar so 21. And she had never talked to him really - it was four people in their lab group - but saying "hey lab quardro" or something just didn't have the same ring.
Tonight Brian was talking. It breaks her to write this - the wet tears come still so it must still need processing - she will slow it down (yet, spoiler alert, she falls madly in love whatever that is with him)
"we play basketball together."
So it turned out he was only a year younger than her and had had a mad crush on her.
"I'm just thrilled to be talking with you right now."
The conversation was hard to remember - she knows they talked about string theory and physics - and they talked to each other exclusively and they talked until the venue shut down.
"You'll walk her home won't you."
"Oh, please. I'm fine. I don't need anyone to walk me home. You both live on this side, and I'm on the other side anyway."
Obviously he walked her home.
"I'm married, and I love my husband. I am not going to cheat on him. I have many male friends, and I'm capable of having a really nice time with you and not fuck you. I want you to see the home I created. I'm curious what you'll think of it."
She kissed him first purely because she didn't want him to be culpable. They were going to kiss, but they didn't have to. She could have played it cool.
She.
did.
not.
play.
it.
coool.
Before that, he had fucked with her mind.
"I bet I know what you're thinking."
"oh, I doubt it. I'm thinking of a song."
"hey, been dying to meet you...."
fuck.
and the next morning when she awoke as a fucking
whore
who fucked her life
she was so scared and happy.
she had found what people call love.
it was the first day of spring on the calendar and the pollen had burst in the shower of yellow sperm.
She understood nothing. She caused pain to all who loved her and still demanded love.
she existed
and tried not to feel things on her neck.....
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