magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

in the library today. typing thoughts into the old-school typewriter:

there's always this desire to speak in second person, to address a particular "you", but i'm a little lost right now as to which you i should be addressing myself to. you who hurt me, who continues to hurt me? or you whom i feel that i can only end up being hurt by, although not to any particular fault of your own? and why is it always about being hurt? am i looking for some sort of redress? some sort of consolation (post or pre)? or, am i simply being overdramatic as usual? yes.

i can't tell if the propensity to be overdramatic is reactionary against all the overwhelming emotions though, or if it is simply something to fill the space that i feel bad for not filling with all those overwhelming emotions: i don't feel bad enough, i don't feel sad enough, i'm not crying enough, i'm not screaming enough.

and a lot of it boils down to just plain not understanding. not being able to put myself in the other position. not being able to empathise at all. what would make someone act this way? how could you just stop talking to me? how could you still be looking for something so shallow, when there is something much more meaningful, emotionally invested, substantial, potentially fulfilling so easily available? i suppose i answered my own question with that one though. because it's too much. maybe that's the root of the problem for both of you, it's too much. but it can't be all as simple as that.

whatever

and a little later:

i heard your voice this morning and wanted to cry. i didn't want to leave my room, to face the possibility of having to look at you, to maybe say goodmorning, to maybe make eye contact, and then to watch you go away. i chose my paths today so as to be least likely to run into you in the stairs, in the hall, in the kitchen. the other day you were sitting at one of the computers and i looked at you, briefly, from behind, and turned and went back out the way that i came. this afternoon i did see you in the kitchen. of the three or four people in the room you were the only one that met my eyes, a flash of unspoken greeting, mundane (maybe with undercurrents of other things, but so far below so as not to really matter much) before i turned the corner and tried to find some release in chocolate, not lunch so much as a means to fill a void (in vain) while listening to the tones of your voice from the next room. minutes later, you poke your head in and ask what i am up to. i want to push you away, to tell you that i can't handle this. but out of desire, on a higher emotional level, and of courtesy, on a lower one, i cannot say this to you. i tell you that i was reading hamlet. that i talked to george last night. that i tried to call stef but that she didn't answer. that i got email from her sister this morning. but i don't tell you how much you are in my thoughts. i don't tell you all these things that you know already but that i feel the need to reiterate over and over again, even if it is usually without words, with half formed sentences or with a certain look or with a timid touch on the arm, an attempt to reach out, hopes that maybe this time that touch will be different, will be requited, that you will put your hand on top of mine. close your eyes. lean into me. and i worry that i go to far with this constant reiteration, not just for my own sanity, for which you truly do seem to be concerned, but that through my words and actions i will start to push you away (i think this has probably already begun) or that i will cause you to push me away. which is was i am afraid of, which is partly why i do this in the first place.

i think that maybe i should just let you read all these thoughts, unfiltered, as i write them, even though a lot of what i say is not necessarily the absolute truth of that i am thinking or feeling.

a few hours later, when she came into the library and sat down, i let her read the preceding paragraph, as a prelude to later in the evening.

you poked your head in the door, seemed about to say something, were distracted by a question from the other room and disappeared.

in a way it is simply comforting to listen to the clicking of the typewriter keys. it is not even so much about what i am writing, it is therapeutic to let certain things out, but sometimes it is just about doing something.

that's true to an extent, but ideally i feel as if i want to be writing about you. or her. as much as i know that i would probably be better off not thinking about any of this at all and simply losing myself within rome, within my work. but i'm not one to just let things be so easily. i was only really able to get stef out of my head at the price of putting you there. and in a way we're not so entirely different in this regard. your act of looking for a 'fling' falls along similar lines. if you were okay with this apathy, with simply living your own life, it wouldn't be as important for you to find something to fill that space, even if you convince yourself that it is a part of moving on. why a fling and not a looking for something more? because there is not that real desire to move on, just an emptiness to be filled. and i'm not judging. or trying not to. i feel the same things, although express them slightly differently. as we both know. and i don't want to judge you. i don't want to feel like i'm judging you. judging comes from a feeling of superiority, and i can't accept feelings like that. i guess that when i recognize that i have them i have to acknowledge them, but should take them for what they really are and i know that a large part of what i am feeling is born from a deeper feeling of possible jealousy.

so back to the top of this page. you poked your head in, now some time ago, but didn't come in, didn't say anything, haven't come back. i wonder if this is out of the same impulse that kept me from leaving my room this morning. that made me turn from you at the computer the other day. are you starting to feel that it is just too hard to do this? or are you afraid of my reactions to you? or are you afraid of your own reactions? are you afraid that you are going so start getting swept up in this more than you will know how to say no to? or did you simply get distracted, and forget? or was it only a sense of being on autopilot that led you here to begin with?

i was lying on the floor of the library when she came back. she sat on the table. i sat up. i wrote:

so while i was lying on the floor over here, before sitting up before you came in i was running through the story in my head of all the girls i've ever kissed: first kisses. don't entirely know why, i could probably follow the kind of thought [it] came from [though], er!n and i were sort of talking about it on the phone a week or so ago. don't know exactly why it's relevant either, except that in my head i was...

i started too low on the piece of paper. ran out of room. said the last bit out loud, "...kind of telling the story to you."

i told her that maybe i'd let her read the typed pages later. after she got back from dinner.

---

i was in my studio when she came back. "so i've got about half an hour." a group of kids were going out to some bar.

"i'll go get those typed pages then." and handing them to her, "keep in mind the disclaimer, they are not necessarily the exact truth, and i haven't read them so i don't know exactly what they say."

she commented on a few things that she thought were insightful, or well written. but it's not as if i was treading a lot of new ground. she pointed out that in the last bit, i do seem to read too much into things, she had just seen me typing and because i didn't say anything, she felt she shouldn't disturb me.

and i let her read what i had written last night. again disclaimed, "remember that i wrote this at three in the morning. it's really just notes to myself, not fully formed thoughts. and that by the end of it i was feeling whatever it was that made me want to call stef."

she read it. "i suppose that's where the stuff about first kisses kind of came from, the thought last night about how you would respond if i kissed you." she nodded.

and then she was off again.

---

i walked into the kitchen thinking about this honesty kick that i'm on. i've always had the tendency towards complete honesty, but i often have the habit of being unnecessarily metaphorical and opaque. i thought of telling lindsey the next time i saw her: "i feel like i have to be completely honest and say that part of the reason for my feeling that i need to be completely honest is that i think it might draw you closer to me." i caught sight of myself in a mirror while i was thinking this. my next thought was about my hair, and about how i'd like to take a photobooth picture with it dark (no longer black, but pretty close to my dad's hair colour).

it was about twenty minutes to midnight. i figured that if i wanted to check my email again today, i should do that before i left. there was nothing new, but i looked at the logs for magicbeans, and saw a pattern like stef's. reading through all the recent entries. and stopping on the last one only minutes before. if it is stef, i thought, maybe she's writing me email right now. (he sister's email this morning had said that she was in memphis, and was planning on writing to me when she returned.)

and.

and there was mail from stef. after two weeks of silence. after feeling that she had pretty much pushed me away for good.

Amy had a dream the other night that I had black hair and I looked great. I read your website and you have black hair. I feel left out, we always seem to do hair things together.

At this point I think you aren't remembering how much I really love you. You are thinking about things i would never do. I am here but I haven't emailed because I was in Memphis. Im not giving up and am living from one voicemail to the next.

I love you too.

I don't know where to go with this except to say Im here and Im not going anywhere ever.

You and I are meant to be and u know it.

I love you
yr girl always
stef

and immediately i was holding on to something that had slipped away over the past two weeks. but on the heels of that thought was, i want to be with lindsey for the next two and a half months, and with stef from then on.

i printed the email, and the previous one, sent within an hour of exactly two weeks beforehand. i walked to the photobooth. i started composing a note to leave on lindsey's door. i took the picture. i walked back. i found some paper, drafting dots to stick the note up. i sat in the lounge and started writing on a little piece of paper. after a few tries:

[Dear Lindsey,] an hour and a half ago i wanted to tell you to come and find me when you got in, to wake me up if i had gone to bed. now i'm not sure. i still want to talk...

and my phone rings.

"hello?"

"hi."

it's stef.

with the exception of her voicemail greeting, which she hasn't changed since i left, i haven't heard her voice in over two months. i don't scream at her. i don't hang up on her.

i sit in the stairwell and we talk for about an hour. i do tell her that i just can't understand. what goes through your head when you're with someone else? that after i got her email the only way that i could console myself with going to bed at night, alone, was to think that it was six hours earlier there, that it was still late evening, that she wouldn't be in bed with anyone else right then. i told her how i couldn't bear to think of her with anyone else. how much that thought hurt.

she told me that she'd go to bed alone tonight. that she had for the past two weeks. i wanted to ask her to promise me that, but i couldn't ask. she did promise though. she said that she would break it off with the other guy for good. tell him she's in love with someone else. she can't do it anymore.

her friends were bugging her to go out (which doesn't do anything positive for my impressions of them). she told me to call her back when i woke up in the morning. i said that would probably be around four her time. she told me to call anyway.

we hung up and i sat in the stairwell for a few minutes. lindsey came home from the bar.

---

we sat in the stairwell and talked for about half an hour before she asked, "aren't you cold? do you want to go somewhere warmer?" i was wearing a short sleeve shirt. i was in my socks. the stairwell is open to the courtyard. it has cold marble stairs.

"that might be a good idea." we sat on her bed. we talked.

and i was fighting against the gravity that still pulls me towards her. i tried to explain some of the voices in my head. the one that was telling me i'm weak, i should just give in. the corresponding argument, no, you're strong. a third, damn right you're strong, you've held out this long, that's enough, give in to it now.

i told her about the twister wheel i could see, left hand to right cheek.

at some point, and i can't remember the specifics of why (to disagree with a self-depreciating comment that she made?), i put my hand on hers. and left it there.

and after a while, "bean, what are you doing?"

"being stupid." and we rehashed all the reasons why not. "i know. but i still don't want to let go of you hand."

she closed her eyes. only our fingers dancing. "i'm going to touch your cheek now."

---

just shy of six-thirty she was ready to go to bed. "wait," i said.

"what?"

"this might be my only chance, and i'm trying to decide if i want to add you to the list of girls that i've kissed. even if it just going to be a one time thing."

"you know it would just be a one time thing for me. just because i'm curious what it would be like. do you think it would make things harder than they already are?"

"i don't know."

we sat in silence for a little while.

i leaned in to her.

and we kissed. and it was really nice.

and then i went to bed. alone.