ici c'est merde et refuse

walking home last night (circa midnight) i passed the famed hendrix statue on broadway- the one that, every time i see, i am reminded of the amateur porn-movie contest a few years back that i only got to hear about- the one in which one of the entries did "unspeakably lewd" things with, i assume, his conveniently outstretched hand. it is, after all, perfect twat height.
local legends get no respect. (i am not a huge hendrix fan and i use the term very loosely.) last year hendrix's "childhood home", a ramshackle crack den in the CD, was put on the market for a collosal sum by his half-brother. i don't know if it ever sold. it was probably bought for the land only, to be transformed into a luscious am/pm or similar.
the variety of garbage is sociologically entrancing. note the old-school safeway cart (and note that the nearest safeway is multiple blocks away.)

it reminded me of a picture i took on 30 december of a downtown trashbin. fucking starbucks jenga.

and then i thought of a few weeks ago, when i was wandering around the sculpture park- home of "don't touch the (HUGE METAL OUTDOOR EXTREMELY DURABLE) art" signs- and saw a man scrubbing the calder "eagle". did i already post this? it is colorful and ridiculous enough that i shall do it again.

municipal priorities are woefully misguided here. i passed at least a dozen people sleeping in doorways whilst walking around today. last night, post-hendrix, i was accosted in front of a hotel by a very classily-dressed older woman who resembled an asian anna wintour. she started on a convoluted diatribe about her abusive boyfriend and her 15yr old son who had to be up for school in the morning- and it became apparent as she babbled that something was amiss. a security guard suddenly materialized as i was saying "no, i don't have any money, i'm so sorry." she darted off after a man at the corner. "i was trying to save you" the guard said. "she's a heroin addict. what story did she tell you?" i reiterated, lamely adding "she's dressed very nicely." "she was out here all day yesterday too, coming into the lobby to puke in the bathroom" he said scornfully. "she's a damn addict." he asked me where i was going, if i needed to have a cab called, if i wanted any hot chocolate. "be careful out here" he said. "you're walking like you know where you're going, and that's good, but there's some crazy people around."
"my naive vibe will keep them at bay" i said cheerily. and yes, like a douchebag, i really fucking said that. he laughed, i laughed. i thanked him and walked off, clutching my bag, feeling grateful for random kindness and horribly sad about the shit that lurks everywhere else.
today i went to v's. her physical therapist was there when i arrived (carrying 12# of apples, among other things). i was cleaning her bathroom mirror and trying to not listen to their conversation in the other room. she was being asked about her depression, incontinence, pain- and i was inwardly panicking. not only for her, but for myself, wondering what i'll be like 5 years from now. i am currently very pleased to be strutting around the city, up and down hills, carrying heinous bags of fruit, capably (albeit apathetically) remaining employed- but she was probably like that once too. and i cannot help but feel like a fucking asshole to have the same diagnosis but a very different manifestation.
and i cannot stand her kid. today he shat in the bathroom with the door wide open, making dramatic groaning noises as i sat in plain view in the living room. i went into another room out of mortification and revulsion, hearing him flush the toilet repeatedly. his grandmother began yelling at him in serbian; he was yelling back. he probably clogged the fucking thing. the apartment stank of crap. i was scrubbing the mirrors and windows with cleaner that left horrid streaks, inching around piles of adult diapers and medications as v continued to answer questions in increasingly frustrated yet strainedly polite broken english, and i thought: i fucking hate every bit of this situation- for everyone involved.
'tis a fine time for a happy image:

oh you DON'T SAY. no, seriously.

to get my retarded fucking idealism-squashing out of the way: the foolish boy, the one i was googly-eyed and lalala and "oh did march come EARLY?" about? vanished. gone. i feel like a fucking idiot, again, as usual. are there no fucking MEN in the world, MEN who aren't full-time students with their living expenses completely paid for by their parents (yeah, him too), who don't sit around and smoke pot and blame everything wrong in their lives on their "psycho exes", who don't wait until they're inebriated to shove their tongues down my throat? FUCK! i am so fucking DISGUSTED with BOYS, with BULLSHIT, with MYSELF for continually falling into the same fucking morass and being hypocritically bewildered that nothing is any different.
is there something really fucking wrong with me?
(crappy self-esteem. gullible. lonely. horny. wanting to believe the best in people. insane in the sense of expecting the same shit, done the same way, to somehow change. please feel free to add others.)
i am, after all, part of the situation. the last two-plus years of post-seperation chronic clusterfuckery cannot simply be a really huge coincidence.
i want to be fucking cared about again. that's all.
the picture i took from the park in everett: i actually really like this, even though it's incredibly off-center. it sort of says everything.

okay, enough of that shit.
here is an inscrutable sign from the wendy's near my work. i don't fucking get it.

and here are some wily pigeons inside pike place market. i waited for about 5 minutes for the little twerps to walk IN THE ACTUAL SUNBEAM, but they never did.

tomorrow i help v. she requested "more apples than last time." (i brought her 10 huge red deliciouses, deliciousi?, per her stipulation.) "like thirty" she said tonight. 30 fucking apples? oh my god. what have i gotten into? i am smiling as i type this, because it is pretty funny. and yes, i will be walking.

rainier cold storage, a majestic building adjacent to the original rainier brewery, was demolished last week. people left flowers in the surrounding fence. this is in georgetown, the area of town i have that crush on, despite the horrid lack of public transport, grocers, silence, and green grass.

on the outside of the aforementioned brewery (also vacant; cavernous rooms visible from the sidewalk):

the butcher album. i think. i hope. the proper serial number, stereo, original liner. i am a fucking nerd.

petting pussy in the languid shadows. i think this is tiresias.

entropy kicking catnip ass.

more spoiled brat bullshit

the yuck feeling continues. work was horrible. people were being bitchy and i felt stupid and unappreciated, burned out and indifferent. another day of not getting a chance to pee until 7.5 hrs into my shift, of frustration making my eyes burn and my nose run, of feeling immature and guilty and fucking incompetent. i cannot keep doing this line of work. i love less about it than i despise it. there were enough surreally vile moments today that i consciously thought: "why the fuck am i here, in this windowless hell?" like: stuffing dead animals into garbage bags, animals that had lives and names and were still warm. like: having to lean into the corpse-freezer to read a body tag and the ice-crusted lid hitting my back, trapping me with the smells of death. like: condescending coworkers. and grown men bawling hysterically in the parking lot. and diarrhea all over the lobby. and animals frantically clawing at their cages because they don't understand why they're there.
i want to do something pleasant-smelling, mindless, and nurturing with my life- like knead dough in a sun-filled bakery while good music plays.
i am still in a wretched mood, though singing along very loudly and ascerbically to "horse with no name" as i drove too fast through the bowels of, inexplicably, west seattle, helped a bit. blaring "easy money" (king crimson, not billy joel) several times in a row helped also.
i am very grateful to be employed and able to sustain my inane lifestyle- lest i sound like a complete fuck. and i would BREAK OUT THE BOOZE and HAVE A BALL, as it were, if i, you know, didn't have to be up at the ass-crack of dawn to do today all over again.

teeth dreams=a loss of control

everything is in transition and instead of being frisky, i am in a fucking bad mood. i blame my horrid lack of sleep over the last few days; i've been up since 3 this morning, dazed and useless and irritable, like being uselessly jetlagged in a place i've always wanted to visit.
yesterday i went up to marysville to see (the new) t. he lives in a house with wooden floors and plants and a ratty piano that holds his paintings and sculptures and a bowl of antique marbles. the kitchen has yellow '50's-boomerang formica counters and a corner sink surrounded by windows. he has a fucking file cabinet of catalogued ephemera- tintypes from the 1800s, 50's porn, old greeting cards- the shit i thought i was the only one who collected. i walked around his lair and thought to myself "i have met my fucking match." and it was clean, too.
we went to thrift stores and drove around everett. the day was warm and i held my arms out of the sunroof. i saw where his grandparents used to live, where he fell off playground equipment and landed flat on his back, the field he used to cut through to buy crap at the corner store. i felt a weird ease. that is an oxymoron. i also felt like i had to keep looking at him so i wouldn't forget what he looks like. it was a rather drugged feeling.
back at his lair, listening to 'the last waltz', smoking a bowl, him starting to inch closer, asking if my hair was always this curly, what my tattoos mean, all the silly lines that every guy uses, the ones that i love and adore and answer with naive earnestness, all the while quietly thinking "oh fuck, what's next..." and stuporously fretting that my tooth was broken- i was seriously concerned, in that comical pothead way, and kept biting my nails as a way of making sure it was still there. (it was and is. sometimes marijuana is just annoying.) i really fucking like this guy already. he asked if he could, i said "well, yeah" and we kissed. i was more ribald than i expected. so was he. he felt fucking wonderful.
but i couldn't stop my fucking brain. i thought of s. it had been about a month and a half since i'd kissed him, and that was what i remembered- akin to the way i stood on my toes automatically after kissing anyone who wasn't (my ex) t (6'3). i thought: i wish i wasn't high. i wish i was naked. i wish we had years of history and didn't have to do this awkward learn-how-to-kiss silliness. i wish i didn;t have to drive back to seattle and get up early and go to work and only get these brief glimpses of greatness instead of having it be my daylong reality. and i didn;t want to want it more than he did- that's the fucking worst feeling in the world.
i don't think that was a problem, but today, tired and paranoid and generally cantankerous, i get to dwell on my bullshit more. and i am reminded of how much i need and fucking crave that sort of feeling- the feeling of being with someone, touching them, exchanging ideas and experiences. and i really love making out.

blah blah blah.

people should have to EARN being missed when they're not around. i don't know if i qualify for that yet. i don't really know if he does either. but i want to know more. does that count?
this is the same girlish fuckery that i have nerdily written of before. every time it's SO TOTALLY NEW AND STUFF, and every time things evolve in similar ways. i am still a fucking teenager thinking that every moment is the cataclysmic end-all and each regurgitated revelation is so FUCKING GODDAMN IMPORTANT. what a wad o' shite.
i really fucking need to sleep, and not post this.

did march come early?

was my post from mere hours prior eerily prescient?
i am grinning like a fucking trollop. must stop. very, very optimistic. i am hoping. whatever. shut up, brynn.
i did my first volunteer help with v today. the weather was warm and springy; i procured, per her request, a very heavy assload of apples and bananas at the qfc near my lair, half-hoping i would be able to catch a bus to her apartment in belltown. but i missed the bus and was running late anyhow, so ended up walking. ended up at her condo covered with unctuous springtime sweat, 12# of fruit in one arm, a case of bottled water and my stupid bag in the other. her mother is visiting from serbia. she knows no english. she taught me "thank you" and "small" and "good morning" and literally shoved a banana in my face as i was trying to clean the windows with watered-down dish soap. p, v's son, was being a real asshole as only 7yr olds can, slamming his greasy hands on the windows as soon as i was done cleaning them, purposely getting in my way, slamming doors in my face. he knows english. i basically told him off in front of his grandmother, who smiled benignly through the entire exchange. v, meanwhile (who speaks english very well), was in a panic because her abusive ex-husband was coming by this evening to pick up his shit. she has a restraining order against him. she was worried that he would take her things too. "my mother, she is too polite and will not tell him that it is not his" she said. i went through the piles of boxes in her bedroom, showing her each one's contents. "you should put all his stuff in one place so he knows what to take" i said. i wish there was more i could do. a lot of what i saw today is too fucking personal to her for me to blithely babble about in a fucking blog, but i will say: goddamn, i am fucking lucky. and goddamn, i fucking hope things work out for her.
*
after: a convoluted bus ride to georgetown, a gleeful procurement of 'yesterday and today', photographs of the demolished rainier cold storage building, an hour-long wait on a skanky stretch of 4th ave S at a bus stop next to a vacuum shop that was giving away bibles, watching a seedy man repeatedly try to open a locked residential door and then stumble away. and then: the coolness i shall not yet name or explain further, because every time i get enthusiastic about another human it ends up kicking my ass. around 8 i remembered the eclipse. we ran into the street to view it. it was just waxing, a fingernail-sliver of white against the bottom. ridiculously, i couldn't help but think "this is the start of a new world."

ringo's sweater should be visible

one of my coworkers returned from a hometown stint to north dakota. "my accent was so thick when i was there" she said, somewhat ashamedly. she brought back local delicacies: chocolate-covered potato chips (FUCKING AWESOME), chocolate-covered jalapenos (which people promptly spat in the trash), chocolate-covered pickles (also), and chocolate-covered pimento-stuffed green olives. i tried an olive. it was... peculiar. "how does it taste?" i was asked. "like a green olive covered in chocolate" i said inanely. the olive itself was disarmingly juicy. i would probably not go out of my way to eat one again, but it really wasn't as horrid as it sounds. "this is total pregnancy food" someone commented.
last night j and i went to georgetown to see the ellen forney exhibit. it was housed in a record store which, as later research appears to prove, has a beatles butcher LP of 'yesterday and today' for $18. i put it on hold. the serial numbers match up. "the guy who owns this place knows his shit" said the bored guy working there. "i don't think he'd price this so low if it was an original." i will be rushing back today to buy it, because i think it may be a fucking find- the nirvana of beatles lore, if you will. there was a butcher cover on sale at an anchorage pawn shop years ago for $700; i've seen another one for $750.
there is a bar near the record store that offers free old-school gaming. i am completely retarded with all things joysticky and nintendoish, which i am rather proud of; hence my ass was whipped in several rousing rounds of super mario world. trains ground by relentlessly on the other side of the parking lot. i placed a dime on the tracks and was unable to locate it later. a barback stepped outside to very blatantly smoke a joint. i gave a drunk lesbian a cigarette. "i want to move here" j said. "i do too" i agreed reverently.
everything dramatic in my life seems to happen in march and september. last september was a bit bland, if i recall (that is, i recall nothing)- but otherwise... i blame the weather. change brings a heightened sense of optimism. and there is a lunar eclipse tonight, clime permitting, around 730pm PST...

trespass!

what did i do on valentine's day, the day of LOVE and RAPTURE and TASTEFUL SUCKING? i spent it in a weirdly gleeful state, having finally fulfilled a plan of several month's duration:
i drove to olympia, listening to the goddamn beatles, drinking an energy elixir, parked my car in the wide-obvious-open, and sauntered around the "private property" gate of the original olympia brewery.
my only regret: the sky is the color of nothing, and consequently the light is flat and without lustre.
from the front, sort of. i am trying to stay out of view of the park across the river, the park from which i took my first photos.

and various other exciting detritus!



adhered to a southeast-facing wall (sheilded from much sun by the flora), one of the coolest vines i have ever had the pleasure to witness:
that was an odd sentence to type.

the original olympia brewery was called Cascade Brewing Company. the building dates to 1896 in two websites, 1905 in the tumwater historical preservation records. after prohibition the brewery was moved to the new building up the hill (the present-day, also vacant, orangish monolith of wondrous art-deco sensibility, readily visible from the freeway). the old building went through several incarnations as various manufacturing plants, none of which i can remember at the moment. a deal with a bottled-water company fell through a few years ago. (i can imagine their gruesome proposed slogan now: it's still the water!) on the tumwater historical site there is a full proposal regarding use of the property; plans were underfoot to turn it into a Community Place with Scenic Grounds: a spot for people to get fucking married and hold government xmas parties and shit like that. i read through the entire proposal, because that is the sort of sexy thing i do on VALENTINE'S DAY, and was startled by how much hullaballoo goes into property planning. permits, utilities, building soundness, parking, ecological impedimentation, surveying. i much prefer it as it is: gated off and overgrown, it felt like my little secret as i walked around it today.
the signs surrounding it threatened of electronic surveillence, which i imagine to be bullshit, but i did not enter the building anyway. there wasn't really any way to. as it was, i spent a lot of time on the perimeter staring at the ground and expecting to find a rotting corpse. it would truly be an excellent place to hide a body.
i have always had this bizarre obsession with abandoned buildings. i love them. i think about them when i should be doing other things.
the brewery is too far gone to indulge in fancy of days past, as with tacoma. it is hard to picture stony-faced brewmasters (?) tending the casks when i am looking at a building with water seeping out of its bricks. this is a building that has always been exactly like this, in this state, vacant yet sealed, oddly free of graffiti and litter, getting slowly swallowed by its verdant environment.
i climbed up the hillside, over fallen logs and tangles of ivy, rather than return the way i came. i felt a peculiar unreality, not unpleasant, but that odd sense of not knowing quite what time it is, what year it is, what is and what was- like when i wake up from a midday nap and everything suddenly seems more cacophonic and complicated. but then i got a text informing me of jane fonda's cuntployment and the world regained its sharp modern edges.

i came home from work on tuesday a bit before 5pm. this was the marvelous vista from my deck. note the traffic on i-5 (snaking horizontally through the bottom of some of the images).
craigslist, i tell you. it provides.




last night i was walking in capitol hill and came upon this dischordant still life in front of a dentist office. i have coveted this sign for years.

washing brain out with soap

i woke this morn from a disturbing medley of dreams:
-i am in an open-air airplane in anchorage with my mother. there is a festival with many lurid decorations of elephants lining 5th avenue- the part of 5th avenue that is beside merrill field. though it is anchorage, the space needle is in the background, framed perfectly at one point by a huge ferris wheel. i take a picture right as the needle is centered within the wheel; immediately afterwards i start to feel nauseating vertigo. the plane is now over a frozen lake and i realize that i am not strapped in. i begin to float away. my mother is trying to grab my arm; she has a hold of me, but i am 3 feet above my seat, 1000 feet above the ground. suddenly we are in a hotel. i am very sick and huddled in the bathroom.
-next frame: i am under the brown polyester quilt on the hotel bed, fading in and out of coherence. a doctor comes to visit. he has a sidekick with him, a young (teenage) guy who is completely naked. i wake to find the teenage guy essentially dry-humping my leg. i tell him off in a very horrified yet articulate way, though the only phrase i can remember now is "i hope no one ever treats your sister like this." he is very abashed. the doctor denies everything and they both exit the room hastily.
-next frame: i am walking down a dirt road. there are yellow flowers growing on either side, nondescript breeder-box housing developments beyond that. the area reminds me of palmer, though it isn't. the same two men -the doctor and his retarded satyr- are standing roadside, masturbating two dogs. i pass them just in time to see both dogs ejaculate into the gravel.
i wake up.
WHAT THE FUCK?
this is seriously what i dream about?
again: WHAT THE FUCK?
*
last night i won 2nd in j's poker night. the other two girls were snarky and growing increasingly drunk; the other two guys were disarmingly attractive and much kinder. i drank water. they invited me back.
i was supposed to work a relief shift in tacoma today, my first since leaving in december; they called this morning to say it was slow and i didn't have to. i am delighted by this. it is a fucking beautiful day and i spent all morning with the patio open, feeling spring.

ta-coma!

my other favorite, also in multiple decades of decay (but now suspiciously quarantined in fence...) is on pacific ave.

the sky was attempting to spray snowliva.

the adjacent lot has been vacant for years- currently utilized as a parking lot. and this building is rather skinny, teetering on the edge of the corner. that was always my preferred part about it. what was it like when it was shiny and new? everything was spankin' fresh once; everything was originally constructed with "you know what would be a REALLY GOOD IDEA?" was it a manufacturer? did it hold employees who wore fedoras and smoked indoors? were the streets filled with classily chatting Ladies Who Lunch instead of skanked-out hondas and minivans with "i'm the NRA" stickers?

i have a romanticized notion of what tacoma used to be. it was a fairly happening berg until the eighties or so. perhaps boeing can be blamed.
time stumbles on. this the back of the building, reflected in its nondescript modern neighbor.

after about an hour, i am always more than ready to leave. i am flabbergasted that i almost moved there.
one of the only "yeah, this could be my kind of place" environments in tacoma is antique row. kind of. the main antique building is a warren of tiny shops, where the various purveyors are usually standing around and bullshitting with one another- a very artsy little club of which i am a spectator. the shops there sell bicycles from the 1800's- the sorts with the one enormous 1/4" thick wheel; theater seats; a wooden apse (that if i had a spare couple thousand i would be very tempted to buy. who doesn't need a fucking apse in their lair?); a sundry of toilets and ill-fitting garb and life magazines. i bought a framed photograph of a scowling girl for a dollar.
across the street was another antique shop, this one appearing as if all the crappiest CRAP of the last hundred years had explosively vomited onto the shelves. the place was dead quiet and overpriced. it was being overseen by a grizzly man who reminded me of the cover of 'aqualung.' there was a bust of a man wearing studded armbands and a black cap. "this is so cool" i said, or similar. i asked how much. he made a disgusted noise. "she wants 125 for it" he said. "it's supposed to be rob halford, but then she found out he was a homosexual." "it's really neat" i repeated inanely.
"woman, you have some terrible taste!" he announced. it rather startled me but i continued to smile. "i was born before ALL THAT was so popular" he muttered, turning away.
try and get away with that in seattle, pal. there wasn't anything else in his store worth getting, or breaking. but a ROB HALFORD BUST... just the idea that such a thing exists makes me very happy.

when i was a kid, visiting my relatives in tacoma, my grandmother would kindly drive me around to look at the old buildings. the downtown/hilltop area was my favorite. it was far seedier then, back when martin luther king st was K Street (cue chris rock); she would reach over my lap in the passenger seat of her buick eighty-eight to lock the doors, smelling of doublemint and aqua-net, saying "oh, i don't like this. your parents would be so mad if they found out i took you here."
my favorite was always the elk's club building on 7th and broadway. it was vacant and rotting 20 years ago and remains the same today, a squatter's lair and one-time clubhouse for those wily juggaloes (so the local lore claims). no one really knows the history of the building; i went online and found out little. apparently it has extensive structural damage from earthquakes. it also has underground tunnels that connect to the tunnels underneath nearby stadium high school (where my mama graduated in 1971- look it up, for it too is famous), an indoor swimming pool, and six levels below ground- a veritable elken bunker.
looking at it from the east. those are the 'spanish steps' from, i believe, 1916.

i fucking love monkey trees. there is a huge one near my house. when i first moved in i found a dried fallen limb on the ground and took it home. it has leaned next to my door ever since.

note the gangrene.


but the best part was in a puddle beside the building!

tacoma: the metropolitan equivalent of a five-dollar whore.

wilderness

finally: the fucked-up tire. yes, i drove on this. i drove on this for about a mile.

i received a note on my windsheild the other night- in perfectly passive northwest style. signed "a neighbor" and introduced as "a friendly note", it berated me for "taking up valuable parking space". WHOEVER IT IS, they are giving me a week before "taking further action." this fucking disgusts me. you haven't the balls to sign your name? who are you, blue-inked asshole? and don't you realize that if (i mean, when) i get the tire fixed, the car will still be taking up space in the neighborhood?
i admit, i have been waiting for this. i have, apparently, until sunday, before the Further Action. meanwhile, i am at the library, doing nothing about it.
*
reflections at the UW bookstore bathroom! they were getting ready to close. i was all by myself in the loo, taking these, trying different poses and angles, when a guy walked in to make sure the place was vacant. here i was, a camera pointed at the trash can, saying "just leaving!" too brightly, moving past him quickly. rather embarrassing.

progress! they are building a new parking garage! i cannot wait!

more progress! future condos, i'm sure, in tones of honey and fallout, starting at prices no one can afford.

and an album cover that dropped my puritan jaw. the picture is from a book and therefore of shit quality. apparently there was great fanfare over the bawdiness of the artwork when this was released (mid-'70's); the album itself sold quite poorly. i must find this and hang it on my wall.

nothing to talk about in the locker room

how long have i searched for this? how long was i certain that it existed, somewhere- it had to! it's, like, the best soundtrack ever!
2500 copies. the bastards. i shan't even try. to know that it is actually out there in the big bad world, being wonderful, is enough to warm thine cockles.
http://www.lightintheattic.net/news/?p=359
other soundtracks that raised their movies to greater eschelons:
deep end (not available)
buffalo 66 (unsought as yet)
and i draw a blank. i do not see many movies of late. movies take up too much time. i could be, say, wandering aimlessly in the dark, or reading the trite newspaper.
this ergonomic keyboard is contributing to my daftness.

the dream i woke up from:
i am with a man i know- or men- he keeps shifting between two. it is mostly t. he has been in an accident and is now a paraplegic. we are hanging out on a hot sunny afternoon before he has to go to work and i am due at a staff meeting. we are getting along fantastically, laughing, flirting- i am straddling him on his chair and everything is working exactly as i remember. i offer to take him to work after my meeting, which is inexplicably being held at a natural amphitheater in girdwood. "are you sure it's not any trouble?" he asks, and it is then that i finally notice the scared look on his face. he is vulnerable now, damaged goods, dependent upon me- and we are acting reinfatuated and giddy, and it seems far too good to be true.
in the dream, he is feeling the way i have felt for the last two years. he finally fucking gets it.
"of course it's no trouble" i say breezily, trying to keep it light, acting like i didn't catch his expression. "i can get you there in time."
we go to the meeting. i get swept into the crowd- my workplace has blossomed to a staff of hundreds- and have to climb tall bleachers to avoid walking in front of the stage in front. i am sitting next to some coworkers who are giggling among themselves; i pull my knees up to my chest- i am wearing shorts- and idly ignore the surroundings. i am happy and excited and i can't wait to be with him again, touch him, tell him everything that i snottily refused to say over the last five years. i want to know everything. i want to restart our future where our past left off.
but i realize that i lost him in the crowd. and wherever he is, he cannot get to where i'm at. and in a thudding moment of "oh my god, what the fuck was i thinking" it becomes gruesomely lucid how everything has changed, how fucking inadequate i feel about being what he needs- i fucked it up before and now the stakes are infinitely more convoluted- and how i'm still the selfish little girl who darts off with no concept of consequence. i cannot leave the stands without risking my job. "he'll be fine" i tell myself.
after the lecture, which goes on longer than i'd expected, i hurry through the throng to find him. he's going to be late for work and probably resents everything. we eventually meet in the parking lot- and i don't remember the conversation at this point of the dream, just the sun shining through the trees, on his hair, on his suit. he looks lonely and stressed. i am smiling and relieved. and terrified. "please don't let him hate me" i am silently wishing. "please, i need him as much as he needs me now. i need this to work. i need to prove that i fucking love him."
*
i wake up. my lair is light, which never happens- i have been getting up before 6 am for the last two months, watching rush-hour traffic congeal on the interstate under a black sky. i am vaguely disoriented, then giddy, then really fucking lonely. i am also residually aroused. the good parts of the dream felt so fucking right, so easy- that invincible us-against-everything bullshit that made me agree to marry him in the first place. and i was fucking needed. i was needed and appreciated in a way i never felt when we were actually together. and he had to be in a fucking goddamn wheelchair to finally act that way.
now, while typing this, it is occuring to me how fucking depressing my mind truly is.
*
i don't feel needed, or even wanted, at all anymore. by anyone or anything. ephemeral, disposable, there. it is anathematic to dissect this too much. just go through life, ruffle the breeze, make eye contact with everyone else and know that they may occasionally feel the same way.