(no subject)
I wrote some more Webgott. I haven't figure out why I still keep writing it. But it's actually kind of fun. So here it is. It's PG. Feel free to comment at rimuffins4@aol.com.
The page was dated January 3rd, 1946. It had two words on it: “Dear Liebgott,”
I was tapping nervously with my pen against the desk. And what was I nervous for? I hadn’t shaken like this since combat.
I had to find a way to describe him how I felt without being obvious. It wasn’t as simple as a letter one would write to their parents, or their girlfriend, where one could end the letter with “I love you” and take a paragraph or two to remind them how they feel.
I lit a cigarette, letting the smoke all the way into my lungs and exhaling it in combination with a sigh.
I stared at the blank piece of paper in front of me. What the fuck could I possibly say?
I could be blunt and say “I miss fucking you a lot.” Or I could try some form of double entendre, but if his parents picked up the letter, I don’t think they’d be quite that stupid.
It was such a simple thing to say, a phrase used so often in the every day language it had almost become trite. Three words were said every single day across the country, to family, to friends, to lovers, hell, even sometimes to complete strangers.
It’s funny, too, how three words could mean so much. It made lives in some cases, ruined them in others.
And I know I can’t throw around these words. Sometimes I have trouble saying this to my parents. But I knew this was true. I knew it when I took a hit to the leg, even when this boy didn’t acknowledge my presence, I couldn’t hide it.
So I typed it. “I love you.”
Who the fuck am I kidding, typing something like this. I took the piece of paper out, crumbled it into a ball, and chucked it somewhere near the window, missing the garbage bin by a good foot and a half. My head fell into my hands in frustration.
For an emotion so simple, it’s really hard to say.
Just days ago, I had been looking through my journals. I’d taken this week to reflect, to take a break from studies, from writing, from everything. One observation was that I lost my touch of writing. I had regressed, almost to elementary school. But only when I wrote about him.
It was simple. I touched him here, I touched him there. The vocabulary didn’t alter, the syntax was facile, everything about him done in the fashion of third grader. I remembered the way I felt when I wrote about him; jittery, uneasy, so overcome with complexity the only way to get it out was to be as elementary as possible.
One night in Eindhoven we were lying down together, far away from the other men. He found a soft spot on my chest. I remembered my hand stroking his hair absentmindedly, staring into the stars of the night sky.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked, interrupting my train of thought. I smiled slightly.
“You, actually,” I revealed. I never revealed anything more.
“What about me?”
“How you’ve lay on my shoulder every night for the past two weeks,” Liebgott grinned at his words.
“You have the most comfortable chest in this company. And that’s not a compliment,”
“So you’ve slept on more than one chest in this Company?” I asked, half joking. He chuckled.
“Got me there,”
I went to move the hand underneath my head to my side but my elbow hit something harder than the grass: my journal. I picked it up to place it farther aside and then move my arm comfortably, ending up around Liebgott’s stomach, pulling him slightly closer to me.
“You don’t-,” he said, moving closer to me. “You don’t write about me in that journal, do you?”
“Eh. Sometimes I do…” I wasn’t about to say I recorded every moment of our time together. “But it’s hard.”
“Why?” he asked, a bit alarmed.
“I feel like whenever I try to write about you….” I was choking back my words. “I… lose my eloquence.”
“Oh,” was his only response. I had a feeling he didn’t know what eloquence meant, but I wasn’t going to clarify.
That was one of the moments when I felt closest to him, not physically, but emotionally. In the hospital I would long for someone to lie next to me, perched on my shoulder, not speaking, but just having the comfort of someone there. But I knew in the hospital the only one I wanted next to me was him.
And now, a little over a month later, I still craved for his warmth on his chest. I started a new page.
“Dear Liebgott,” I started, slowly to fend against errors.
A simple phrase, short, sweet, something he didn’t even have to understand, as long as I knew that I was still thinking about him.
So I typed, “Still when I write about you, my eloquence fades.”
I signed the letter, let the ink dry, and placed it neatly into an envelope. I scribbled his address and mine, placed a stamp, and hurried out to a mailbox to send it. Now my words were in fate’s hands.
***
Joe Liebgott was shocked to find a letter in his apartment mailbox when he got home that wasn’t taxes or bills. He froze when he noticed the letter was from Web.
Rushing up to his apartment, he waited until he got there and sat on his couch to open the letter, when he tore it open hungrily.
He read. “Still when I write about you, my eloquence fades.”
Throughout the war, he had made mental notes of words to look up that he didn’t understand. Most of them were from Web, and eloquence was one of them. One of the first things he did when he got back was to go the library and spend a half an hour with a dictionary, reminiscing with the stories each word had behind it.
He didn’t need to know what eloquence meant to know the significance of this letter. He knew what it meant.
And if only he knew how to write it back.
The page was dated January 3rd, 1946. It had two words on it: “Dear Liebgott,”
I was tapping nervously with my pen against the desk. And what was I nervous for? I hadn’t shaken like this since combat.
I had to find a way to describe him how I felt without being obvious. It wasn’t as simple as a letter one would write to their parents, or their girlfriend, where one could end the letter with “I love you” and take a paragraph or two to remind them how they feel.
I lit a cigarette, letting the smoke all the way into my lungs and exhaling it in combination with a sigh.
I stared at the blank piece of paper in front of me. What the fuck could I possibly say?
I could be blunt and say “I miss fucking you a lot.” Or I could try some form of double entendre, but if his parents picked up the letter, I don’t think they’d be quite that stupid.
It was such a simple thing to say, a phrase used so often in the every day language it had almost become trite. Three words were said every single day across the country, to family, to friends, to lovers, hell, even sometimes to complete strangers.
It’s funny, too, how three words could mean so much. It made lives in some cases, ruined them in others.
And I know I can’t throw around these words. Sometimes I have trouble saying this to my parents. But I knew this was true. I knew it when I took a hit to the leg, even when this boy didn’t acknowledge my presence, I couldn’t hide it.
So I typed it. “I love you.”
Who the fuck am I kidding, typing something like this. I took the piece of paper out, crumbled it into a ball, and chucked it somewhere near the window, missing the garbage bin by a good foot and a half. My head fell into my hands in frustration.
For an emotion so simple, it’s really hard to say.
Just days ago, I had been looking through my journals. I’d taken this week to reflect, to take a break from studies, from writing, from everything. One observation was that I lost my touch of writing. I had regressed, almost to elementary school. But only when I wrote about him.
It was simple. I touched him here, I touched him there. The vocabulary didn’t alter, the syntax was facile, everything about him done in the fashion of third grader. I remembered the way I felt when I wrote about him; jittery, uneasy, so overcome with complexity the only way to get it out was to be as elementary as possible.
One night in Eindhoven we were lying down together, far away from the other men. He found a soft spot on my chest. I remembered my hand stroking his hair absentmindedly, staring into the stars of the night sky.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked, interrupting my train of thought. I smiled slightly.
“You, actually,” I revealed. I never revealed anything more.
“What about me?”
“How you’ve lay on my shoulder every night for the past two weeks,” Liebgott grinned at his words.
“You have the most comfortable chest in this company. And that’s not a compliment,”
“So you’ve slept on more than one chest in this Company?” I asked, half joking. He chuckled.
“Got me there,”
I went to move the hand underneath my head to my side but my elbow hit something harder than the grass: my journal. I picked it up to place it farther aside and then move my arm comfortably, ending up around Liebgott’s stomach, pulling him slightly closer to me.
“You don’t-,” he said, moving closer to me. “You don’t write about me in that journal, do you?”
“Eh. Sometimes I do…” I wasn’t about to say I recorded every moment of our time together. “But it’s hard.”
“Why?” he asked, a bit alarmed.
“I feel like whenever I try to write about you….” I was choking back my words. “I… lose my eloquence.”
“Oh,” was his only response. I had a feeling he didn’t know what eloquence meant, but I wasn’t going to clarify.
That was one of the moments when I felt closest to him, not physically, but emotionally. In the hospital I would long for someone to lie next to me, perched on my shoulder, not speaking, but just having the comfort of someone there. But I knew in the hospital the only one I wanted next to me was him.
And now, a little over a month later, I still craved for his warmth on his chest. I started a new page.
“Dear Liebgott,” I started, slowly to fend against errors.
A simple phrase, short, sweet, something he didn’t even have to understand, as long as I knew that I was still thinking about him.
So I typed, “Still when I write about you, my eloquence fades.”
I signed the letter, let the ink dry, and placed it neatly into an envelope. I scribbled his address and mine, placed a stamp, and hurried out to a mailbox to send it. Now my words were in fate’s hands.
***
Joe Liebgott was shocked to find a letter in his apartment mailbox when he got home that wasn’t taxes or bills. He froze when he noticed the letter was from Web.
Rushing up to his apartment, he waited until he got there and sat on his couch to open the letter, when he tore it open hungrily.
He read. “Still when I write about you, my eloquence fades.”
Throughout the war, he had made mental notes of words to look up that he didn’t understand. Most of them were from Web, and eloquence was one of them. One of the first things he did when he got back was to go the library and spend a half an hour with a dictionary, reminiscing with the stories each word had behind it.
He didn’t need to know what eloquence meant to know the significance of this letter. He knew what it meant.
And if only he knew how to write it back.