segues
bedtime
I watched the bed out of the corner of my eye, sitting sideways in the hard desk chair.
The metal was not unpleasantly cold, but sticking to my bare back, just wearing red and gray-
checked boxers. The yellow light from the pump lamp wasn’t enough to wake her, but enough to
draw by, gray lines rubbed over and over and cleaned up a little, or just smeared into one line.
Yellow glowed through the dark streaks in the lampshade.
I wasn’t really watching her, as I’d meant to a few minutes before, when I squeezed out of
bed to draw. I was caught all up in it, the compelling artistry I might have if I drew her body in
repose. I even wore my little glasses, wire frames grabbing my ears. Maybe they took away
from the deep setting of my eyes. It was mostly dark in the room, and they gave an academic
glint. I hated the self-consciousness pulling them off.
Her lips were just barely parted, skin smooth where the blanket rumpled around her
shoulder and neck. She might’ve been naked there, but I knew she wasn’t. I was almost, now,
but it had just been kisses, and only more in that we tried to swallow each other in them, my
small mouth and hers matched. I hadn’t said anything, when I knew we were both pretending to
sleep before I passed away, never thinking I would.
This was all beautiful, least she by herself there, as one curved line is perfect. Her name
was one line of the s in Lisa, the s in Asia. She was a girl, something I would miss when I could
only be with women.
I stopped drawing painfully dramatic sketches and climbed back in next to her. She
thought she’d shed herself when she began with me, but all her talent and self lay there with her,
and I was ruining it with thought. She was not meant for the corners of my eyes. I was glad she
knew everything, and was more than me. For a long time I had lived with the egotistical notion
that people like me were the best I could hope for. I loved her for proving me less. It is
something to know, to know that someone understands you and more. It’s warm to have people
to struggle with, but it is more to be with people who succeed at what I want. I had no reason to
believe she had. But to see a perfect curve in my room there, having let me touch her, the girl
seemed better.
* * *
a pull
I don’t think you’re ready yet. I always have been and I go too fast. You change for
advantage, you have “darling.” You want me in PMS. You give me “cute.” You regret things
with me. You are some kind of show, for whom, I’m not sure. But you want something I don’t
know. We are not alike, but we understand one another. You are delicate within and without.
There is something not yet protected in you that scares us all and affects me in some different
way. That makes me feel better for me and my conception of you if I am with you. This is part
of it. It is something like how your beauty strikes me sometimes. It has something to do with my
crying if I think about you too much. It is the cold I know in five months. Do you know how it
feels to have something slip out of your fist? I believe that I love you.
That’s what I can’t tell you.
* * *
appeal
my appeal is please don’t let me stay behind
please pull my line along
it’s rolling back from me repealessly
the viewfinder’s lost sight
the camera self-conscious out of eyeshot
my appeal is a ruffled sketch
i want to wear loose pants, turtlenecks, and dark sweaters
i want my hair in my eyes and
a dog-eared book
i’ve got the shoes
i always wanted silent communique
but that’s why i meet eyes
i smell good
i think my appeal is trying
though i don’t want to appear it
don’t you just want to be eyed?
i’m working to be judged by my image
it’d be more accurate
try to project all that anyway
it seems none of it does appeal
think the dice have cracked
for the people i want
i don’t work right
* * *
the selfishness manifesto
I’m beginning to think that what I really want is mainly to have a choice in everything.
When I find that I’m being asked, or forced, to do anything, I look for a reason. A value that will
come from my doing it. Obligation does not exist. I am a believer that the definition of
selfishness as it stands is mainly the base of logical human nature. To deny every illogical
obligation imposed on oneself by other people is to be selfish. But I’ve come to expect others to
be unselfish. Without their generosity, I’d be screwed, and lonely to boot. So that’s part of
where the choice comes in. I don’t have a problem being unselfish with my friends; I choose to
be around the person - I respect and have affection for the person. But one doesn’t choose
family. We’re expected to love these people most dearly because we know them so well. But
though many people are born to families of friends, clearly not everyone is. It’s not quite just
luck-of-the-draw to be in a family of people you’d like even if they weren’t relations.
Environment fosters some part of compatibility, and compatibility helps one be unselfish. And
maybe it’s not just a basic incompatibility with family members that leads one to resort to
selfishness. Family roles are easier filled by some than others - you may like your father just fine
when he’s not acting as a dad. But if his personality seems to clash with his role in the family,
it’s awfully hard to appreciate the guy. So when this sort of thing happens, one becomes keenly
aware of how things stand, and that whatever unselfishness showed toward these people is either
a show, done out of obligation, or both. You don’t want to face the rather bitter message
underlying the realization that you’d rather be selfish than inconvenience yourself for a family
member; it reads something like this: I love you because I have to. There really isn’t any sort of
happy way out of all of this. One can’t be satisfied doing things out of obligation, and it’s no fun
to just leave someone who cares (or at least pretends to) for you. But then, this isn’t a set of
instructions, but just an observation. Choice just isn’t realistic.
* * *
little pieces of tissue stuck on
the end of my penis
i waste every day.